Chương 99: The Truth We're Willing to Offer

Dororo called the full council together the next morning — myself, Ellia, Kalio, Serel standing in for Rethven, and Dororo himself at the head of the same reading table that had carried most of this season's slow, careful progress.

"We have a direction," he said.

"Not a guarantee. I want that understood plainly before anyone commits to anything further. But we have, for the first time since this began, something closer to a plan than a reaction."

"Offer it a truth it doesn't already carry," Kalio said.

"That's still fairly vague, even with everything Serel's translation gave us."

"It is," Dororo agreed.

"Which is why I spent last night trying to narrow it properly." He spread a fresh sheet of notes across the table.

"The Unmoored are ancient. They exist across countless worlds, hunting fragments of shattered things for longer than any of our own histories can measure. Ordinary knowledge won't interest something that old. But I believe — and the guardian agrees, from what Len Fan's relayed to me — that the shattering itself might qualify. Something happening right now, across multiple confirmed instances, that even a being this old hasn't fully witnessed before. That's rare. That might be exactly rare enough."

[STATUS — Len Fan] Cultivation: Heaven-Reaching Realm, Seventh Leaf Synchronization: 51. 40% Avatar (Kromitos): Heaven-Reaching Realm, First Leaf — steady, attentive rather than wary Kromitos pulsed once, thoughtful rather than alarmed, and the guardian's voice arrived quietly, considering the plan alongside the rest of us.

"I have turned this over carefully since last night," it said.

"I believe your Archmage's instinct is sound. But I want to be honest with you about the risk, child, before you agree to carry this forward. Offering the Unmoored genuine information about the shattering means offering it something that matters to me directly — my own fracture, my own history, laid open to a being that has already proven it takes what it needs without always asking permission first."

"You're worried it'll take the information and still come after Kromitos anyway," I said.

"Yes," the guardian admitted.

"That is precisely my worry. I do not believe negotiation with something this old and this hungry is ever entirely safe. But I have also lost fragments to silence and avoidance before, and gained nothing from that caution except the eventual loss anyway. I would rather risk an honest offer than repeat a mistake I have already made once, long ago."

"What exactly would we offer it?" Ellia asked, once I'd relayed enough for the room to follow properly.

"Specifically, I mean.

'Information about the shattering' could mean almost anything." Dororo considered the question carefully.

"I'd propose the fullest honest account we currently have," he said.

"My own fifty lost years. Rethven's ascension. The guardian's own fracture, as much as it's willing to share. The dead shrine road and the wider lattice beneath Chronos. Presented not as a bargaining chip exactly, but as a genuine offering — proof that something unprecedented is happening across multiple worlds at once, that even an ancient hunter might not yet have pieced together on its own."

"And if it takes the information and attacks anyway?" Kalio asked, voicing the fear plainly rather than letting it sit unspoken.

"Then we're prepared for that outcome too," Dororo said.

"Not alone. Three sects' worth of readiness, plus a full Heaven-Reaching Realm cultivator at Seventh Leaf now, rather than Sixth. I won't pretend the risk disappears simply because we've found a promising direction. I will say it's a considerably better position to attempt this from than we had even a week ago." Serel had been quiet through most of the planning, something thoughtful behind her usual careful composure.

"Rethven asked me to convey something, if the conversation reached this point," she finally said.

"He wants to be present himself, when the approach happens. Not merely informed after the fact. He said — and I believe he meant this quite sincerely — that a truth this significant deserves to be offered by all three sects together, not merely reported to Blood Moon secondhand once Chronos has already decided the shape of it." Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"I'd welcome that," I said.

"This was never meant to be something any one of us carried alone."

"I'll relay it," Serel said, something warmer than her usual diplomatic reserve slipping through.

"I think he'll be glad to hear you say so directly."

"When would this happen?" I asked.

"Realistically, I mean. I don't imagine the Unmoored keeps a predictable schedule we can simply plan around."

"No," Dororo admitted.

"Which is its own difficulty. We can't summon it directly — nothing in the manuscript suggests that's possible, and I wouldn't trust an untested method even if one existed. Our best approach is to return to the shrine road itself, where it's already shown interest twice, and wait. Patiently, properly prepared, for as long as it takes to draw its attention again."

"That could be days," Kalio said.

"Or longer."

"It could," Dororo agreed.

"I'd rather that than rushing an approach before we're genuinely ready. If the past week has taught me anything, it's that patience paid to preparation tends to serve considerably better than urgency paid to fear." We spent the rest of that day finalizing the details — timing, positioning, exactly which of Dororo's careful notes would form the offering itself, what fallback measures each sect would hold in reserve if the negotiation failed outright.

It was well past dark by the time the council finally broke, everyone exhausted but steadier than the past week's mounting dread had allowed any of us to feel.

"One more thing," Dororo said, as the room began to empty.

"I don't intend for Len Fan to be the one speaking directly to it, if we can help it. Kromitos makes him the most valuable target in that meeting, not the safest voice to lead with. I'd rather I carried the offering myself, with the rest of you positioned to respond if anything goes wrong."

"I don't love that plan," I admitted.

"I'd rather not send you forward as the one it decides to focus on instead."

"I appreciate the concern," Dororo said, something wry beneath the exhaustion.

"But I've survived fifty lost years, a shattering I still don't fully understand, and considerably more danger than most archmages my age ever willingly courted. I'll take my chances leading the conversation. You'll be close enough to act, if it comes to that — just not standing at the front of it, wearing a fragment it might decide it wants more than words." Kalio nodded slowly.

"Nightsky will hold the perimeter, then. Same as the expedition."

"And Blood Moon the approach itself," Serel added.

"Rethven insisted on that much personally." Ellia found me alone afterward, the training yard quiet and cool under a sky considerably clearer than the tension of the day had suggested it would be.

"Ready?" she asked, echoing almost exactly the question she'd asked me before our tournament semifinal, weeks and a lifetime ago now.

"No," I admitted, the same honest answer I'd given her then.

"But I don't think I need to be, exactly. I just need to actually walk into it properly, the way we planned."

"Good answer," she said, taking my hand, steady and certain.

"Then let's go find out together whether an old, hungry thing from between the worlds can actually be reasoned with."

I held onto that steadiness through the rest of the evening, Kromitos settled quiet and resolved beneath my ribs, Ember warm and watchful against my collar, and understood, watching the stars finish settling properly overhead, that whatever tomorrow actually held, I intended to meet it exactly the way the guardian had asked of me from the very beginning — not alone, and not afraid to trust, even now, with everything finally on the line.

We left for the border at first light two days later, the full company assembled properly this time — Dororo carrying the carefully prepared account of the shattering, Rethven himself waiting to meet us at Blood Moon's edge alongside Serel and a company of his most trusted scouts, Kalio's own trackers rounding out the perimeter.

Nobody spoke much during the ride, the particular focused quiet of people who'd already said everything that needed saying the night before, and simply needed now to carry it forward properly.

"Whatever happens today," Dororo said, once we'd finally crossed into the contested land, the shrine road's familiar wrongness settling over the party the same way it always did, "I want each of you to know I'm genuinely proud of how this alliance came together. Three sects, generations of grudges, and somehow all of us ended up here anyway, willing to risk something this uncertain together rather than separately." He looked at each of us in turn, something steady and resolved in his tired, weathered expression.

"I don't believe that's an accident. I believe it's exactly the kind of trust the guardian's been asking Len Fan to build from the very beginning, simply grown considerably larger than either of us expected it to." Nobody answered immediately, the weight of the moment settling properly over all of us as the shrine road's buried stones finally came back into view ahead, waiting, patient and quiet, for whatever the day was about to bring.