Chapter 137: Ten Million Crowns
All I could do was stand there, pen clutched in one hand, stopwatch in the other, my brain wobbling somewhere between awe and despair as a rain of envelopes fluttered from the heavens like some grotesque parody of snow.
I might even have been admiring the aesthetic of it—because say what you will about the apocalypse, at least it has a sense of drama—when I noticed him.
The first man.
Not a zealot. Not a crazed competitor. No. One of ours. One of the so-called loyal survivors who had pledged his trembling oath to the man in white like the rest of us. He had been pale and quiet before, just another background character in this sad opera of blood and fire.
But now his eyes glittered like coins dropped in a beggar’s palm. His lips trembled with words that were less prayer and more arithmetic. Ten million crowns.
Ten. Million. Crowns.
Do you know what ten million crowns looks like? I don’t. But I imagine it smells like polished marble, tastes like aged wine, and feels like the kind of bed one never has to leave.
Ten million crowns is not money—it’s a gravitational force, a religion all its own, a number so fat and absurd that it crawls inside your brain and starts rearranging the furniture until there’s no room left for loyalty or common sense.
So of course he moved.
His knuckles whitened around the hilt of his sword, his shoulders twitched, and before any of us could register what he was doing, he lunged. A ragged, hopeless cry tearing from his throat as though he knew he was damning himself even as he did it.
Straight at the man in white.
Now, I’ll admit, I half expected the man in white to dispatch him without blinking. Perhaps flick the coin, whisper a word, reduce the poor idiot to a smear of regret on the cobblestones. But instead, it wasn’t him who moved first.
It was Rodrick.
Yes, Rodrick. My walking brick wall of misplaced chivalry, my stubborn knight errant who still had bruises swelling his face and ribs that sounded like a wind chime every time he breathed. Rodrick, who until that moment had been leaning against Nara like a broken door propped against a weaker wall.
He broke free.
Not with grace, not with style, but with a raw, furious shove that nearly toppled Nara sideways. His hand seized a fallen sword from the ground, and before I could so much as scream his name in warning, he rammed it straight through the charging man’s chest.
There was no hesitation. No noble declaration. Just steel punching through flesh with a sound that turned my stomach inside out. The attacker gasped, choked, and then slumped, eyes wide in disbelief as Rodrick wrenched the blade free.
The world slowed. My heart sank like a stone in tar. My mouth went dry.
Rodrick didn’t even blink. He simply stepped forward, the sword dripping as he planted himself between the man in white and the world.
Saints preserve me, my heart nearly split in two. Because in that moment, I realized just how far gone he was. Not a man clinging to ideals anymore, not a comrade cracking jokes with me at campfires, but a weapon. A blade that would cut itself apart just to shield the one it had chosen to serve.
I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to drag him back, to shake him until he remembered who he was supposed to be. But my chance evaporated before I could act.
Because that was when the stitched man arrived.
Oh saints, the stitched man.
One second Rodrick was lowering his blade from the corpse at his feet, and the next the air shifted, heavy and sour with the stink of rotting cloth and unwashed rage. I turned—and there he was.
Mere feet from me, hulking and horrifying, his frame a patchwork of scars and seams, his breath fogging in the dust like a dragon’s snarl. His eyes—those ragged pits of fury—were locked squarely on me.
I yelped something profoundly brave, like "fuck this shit," and flung myself sideways just as his massive hand came crashing down where my skull had been. The cobblestones cracked like biscuits under a hammer.
"Curse you and your tailor!" I shrieked, scrambling upright, my heart clawing at my ribs. "Did no one ever tell you subtlety is attractive?"
And then all hell broke loose.
Because it wasn’t just one man or one stitched horror anymore. No—one by one, every survivor in the plaza, every zealot who had cowered on the sidelines, every trembling fool who had once pledged fealty, turned their eyes toward the man in white.
And in their eyes burned hunger, lips twitching, throats whispering, fingers tightening around weapons. Until, at last, the dam broke, and they lunged.
Salem’s roar cut through the chaos beside me. "Cecil! Fall back!"
"Right!" I wheezed, though what I meant was something closer to "saints save us all, we’re doomed, please bury me in a nice shallow grave."
The stitched man surged after me, tearing through competitors with wild sweeps of his arms but was slowed but the relentless wave building against his path. Rodrick, bloody and bruised, slashed at anyone in reach.
To my utter disbelief, the naked knight—who, yes, had apparently been dragging his broadsword this entire time as if it were an inconvenient shopping bag—finally hefted it properly and waded into the fray with a delighted war-cry.
Fitch followed, fists swinging, Dunny shrieked incantations through his tears, and even trembling Nara raised his fists with ears pinned back in terror.
For a brief and glorious moment, we held them.
Bodies smashed, spells cracked, steel clashed against steel. My little band of disasters stood shoulder to shoulder against the wave, raw, blood, and utterly, impossibly defiant.
But brief moments don’t last very long. Obviously.
The defenses shattered as quickly as they formed, the survivors’ greed too fierce, the zealots too rabid. We were swallowed. The tide broke around us, and in an instant we were running, tearing through the streets at a pace that would have shamed the finest courier in Soloris.
Spells screamed overhead, scorching the air. Lighting burst against walls, showers of sparks raining down around us. Bolts of violet energy cracked across cobblestones, missing by inches, the stone smoking in their wake. Even a few wicked vines sprung up from the ground, snapping at our ankles.
I sprinted alongside Salem, our shoulders brushing, our breaths ragged. He glanced at me with that feral grin, sweat plastering his hair to his brow. "Having fun yet?"
"Fun?" I shrieked. "I am seconds away from losing every bodily function in the most embarrassing way possible, and you call this fun?"
He laughed, actually laughed, as though this were nothing more than a tavern brawl. "You’ll thank me when we survive."
"Oh, splendid. I’ll carve those words into your tombstone if I manage to survive."
The streets blurred around us. Survivors began lunging from side alleys, shrieking in incoherent mutters. Salem cut them down with brutal efficiency while I swerved and stabbed my pen, just once, into anyone foolish enough to corner me.
Still they chased. Dozens, no, far more than that. We turned a corner, barreling down a narrow street lined with shattered windows and blackened wood, and that’s when I saw it.
A church.
An old gothic ruin, its spires cracked, its stained glass shattered, its doors sagging on rusted hinges. It loomed like a corpse of faith, skeletal and silent, but at that moment it was the only salvation in sight.
"There!" I wheezed, pointing like a mad prophet. "Inside! Move!"
We flung ourselves across the threshold just as another volley of spells exploded against the cobblestones behind us. Heat seared my back, dust and ash raining across my hair, but we made it.
The heavy doors slammed shut. Dunny, pale and shaking, collapsed to his knees and began muttering furiously under his breath. His fingers sketched symbols in the air, complex and trembling, and in moments translucent outlines shimmered across the doors and windows.
Like panes of glass spun from moonlight, his barriers sealed every opening, humming faintly against the pounding of fists and spells outside.
The church trembled with the force of the assault. Ravenous shouts and inhuman cries devoured the silence, the wooden rafters overhead groaning as it shuddered beneath the onslaught.
I belted my pen and stopwatch, my hands trembling, my chest heaving like a bellows.
And then I stormed.
Straight to the man in white.
He stood as calm as ever, hands tucked neatly away, his hood shadowing his face, as though the entire debacle outside were no more concerning than a drizzle of rain on laundry day.
Fury roared through me. I seized his collar, yanking him forward so the front of his cloak bunched in my fists. My voice cracked against the vaulted ceiling. "For the last time. Just who the hell are you?!"
He didn’t answer. Didn’t even flinch. Rage twisted through me, raw and bitter. My fingers shifted, hooking the edge of his hood. "Fine. Then I’ll see for myself."
But before I could tug it back, his hand shot up. Not quickly. Not violently. Just... surely. With the ease of inevitability. His fingers clamped around my wrist with a pressure so inhumanly strong my bones shrieked in protest.
I gasped, my knees buckling, my hand loosing its strength. His grip was not flesh—it was iron masquerading as skin, unyielding and terrifying all at once.
And when his hidden eyes lifted toward mine, for the first time since this nightmare began, I felt the bottom drop out of my soul.
Rodrick, saints damn him, stumbled between me and the Man in White like some collapsing wall of stubbornness. His sword wavered in his grip. His voice was ragged, little more than gravel spilling from a broken throat, but it cut through the tension with startling clarity.
"Not now," he rasped, blood flecking his lip. "You two can tear each other’s throats later. First we survive this."
It was absurd—Rodrick trying to play peacemaker, when his entire life philosophy up until now had been some variation of "stab it until it stops moving." But his battered frame wavered in the moonlight, his chest heaving as though his ribs were little more than splintered wood, and something about that made me listen.
Even through my fury, even through the urge to rip that damned hood away, I couldn’t ignore the weight of a man who might fall dead any second and still insist on shielding us.
Dunny’s voice cracked into the silence next, thin and terrified, his words tripping over one another like loose cobblestones. "This—this bounty. It isn’t random. It can’t be. Someone placed it. Someone with reach, with power that stretches far beyond this little circus we’ve been dragged into. No one just tosses ten million crowns into the wind like pocket change. This is... this is an agenda. It’s a move in a game we haven’t even seen the board for yet."
He clutched his trembling hands together, eyes flicking wildly from face to face. "But who? Who would have such power?"
I should’ve kept my mouth shut. I should’ve let the question dissolve in the charged air. But, of course, my tongue has never learned obedience. It likes to betray me at the worst possible moments, especially when suspicion burns like a coal in my chest.
"I might," I said softly, almost without meaning to. My voice snagged in my throat, quieter than I intended, but they all heard it. "I might have an idea."
They looked at me, Salem’s eyes sharp, Dunny’s wide, Nara’s ears twitching nervously, Rodrick grimacing through clenched teeth.
I didn’t explain further. Saints, I couldn’t. Not yet. Not when his shadow still draped itself across the plaza, smiling down from on high like this was nothing but his little stage play. I swallowed the rest of the words, let them curdle in the back of my throat, and looked away.
Rodrick coughed then. Not the dignified cough of a noble, but a raw, hacking sound that sprayed blood across the church floor. The metallic tang hit the air instantly, and I swear my heart stuttered.
Nara rushed forward, practically tripping over his own cloak in his haste. His hands glowed faintly as he pressed them against Rodrick’s side, muttering words that trembled as much as his voice. A minor healing spell—hardly more than a bandage made of light—but it steadied Rodrick’s shaking knees enough to keep him upright.
I bit my lip, rage boiling, fear simmering, but another thought burst through louder than either.
We couldn’t stay here.
The pounding outside was worsening, spells cracking against Dunny’s barrier like waves hammering cliffs. It wouldn’t last. None of it would last.
"Dunny," I snapped, spinning toward him. "Release the barrier blocking the rooftop."
His eyes went round as coins, but he nodded without question, muttering a sharp incantation under his breath. The faint shimmer across the ceiling flickered and peeled back, leaving the uppermost stones bare.
I needed space. I needed air. I needed a plan before the walls caved in and turned us all into a cautionary tale.
I stormed up the steps, boots hammering against the broken stone until I emerged on the rooftop. The night greeted me like an open wound—cold, sharp, and reeking of smoke.
And below, oh saints below, the mob writhed. A mass of survivors, zealots, and opportunists, all cramming together in the plaza outside the church, their eyes blazing with pure, unfiltered greed.
They screamed, they clawed at the walls, they hurled spell after spell against Dunny’s fragile barriers, their hunger thick enough to choke the very air.
I glanced at my ring, that damned little band of judgment circling my finger. The number burned against my eyes: one hundred and two.
One hundred and two contestants left.
My chest seized. Saints above, after all the bloodshed, after all the corpses rotting in plaza and the broken bodies sprawled across cobblestones, still so many? Still a hundred more with knives in the dark, with spells on their lips, with greed in their hearts?
It was too much. Too many. The storm would never break on its own—we needed to outlast it. To hide. To vanish. But where?
Nowhere in the city was safe. Every street would be clogged with hunters, every alley bristling with eyes. The sewers crossed my mind—dark, winding, stinking—but they’d trap us like rats, cornered and crushed the moment someone thought to follow. No, not the sewers. Not anywhere on the ground.
We needed someplace... unreachable.
I closed my eyes, forcing my thoughts to slow. To stretch. To breathe past the terror strangling me. And when I opened them again, my gaze drifted upward.
Toward the sky.
The air balloons floated there, ragged and swaying, drifting drunkenly in the smoke. Some half-burned, some punctured, but others... intact.
The nobles’ playthings. Their chariots above the fire.
Ah. Yes. The sky. Of course.
My lips curled into a grin so manic I nearly frightened myself.
Behind me, footsteps clattered against the roof as the others emerged one by one. Salem, still catching his breath, blades dragging; Dunny, pale as milk; Nara, ears twitching from the strain of his spell; Rodrick, propped against his sword as though it alone kept him from toppling. Even the naked knight managed to haul himself up, his ridiculous broadsword scraping stone.
They all looked to me.
I spun, my grin blazing, and spread my arms wide like a mad prophet unveiling his revelation. "It’s time to take our leave."
Salem squinted at me, sweat streaking his soot-blackened face. "Leave? Cecil, have you finally lost the last few marbles rattling in your skull? Where do you suggest we go? Every street’s a death trap. Every house has knives waiting inside. The mob will follow us no matter where we crawl."
"Ah," I said, waggling a finger at him as though he were a particularly slow student. "That would be true... if we were still thinking horizontally."
He blinked. "Horizontally."
"Precisely." I turned, my hand rising, my grin so wide my cheeks ached. Slowly, dramatically, with all the flair of a second-rate stage magician, I pointed.
Straight toward the sky.