Chapter 127: Ruins and Lies - Xiao Qi
The ruins of the Spiral Spire rise against Side A's dusk like a skeleton picked clean.
I crouch in a crack at the tower's base, a makeshift bandage wrapped around my wrist—when the bell exploded, the shards cut through an artery. I used a Shadow Walker's tendon as a tourniquet, barely stopping the bleeding.
The vampire world is collapsing.
Not metaphorically. I look up, and there's a black hole in the northern sky. The Moon-Eater hangs there like a suspended black sun. It hasn't moved forward, but it hasn't left either. It's waiting for something.
I'm waiting for Leah's signal.
But the signal never comes. Three days ago, I felt a strong silver pulse from Side B. After that, nothing.
Then the lies started.
Through what's left of the communication system in the ruins, I got a video. It shows me talking with Dr. Chen, giving him Side A's coordinates, discussing "splitting things up after we open the Door." The "me" in the video says these betraying words with a cold face.
But I know it's not real.
It's fake. White Box technology.
"A setup," I mutter.
"More than a setup."
The voice comes from behind me. I spin around, hand on the UV pistol at my waist—the last one I brought from Side B.
A figure crawls out from the shadows of the ruins.
Not a monster. A person. Or used to be.
Ophelia.
She looks terrible. The left half of her body has been eaten away by Light-Eaters, black threads moving under her skin. The right half still has that vampire paleness. She has one golden slit pupil left; the other is just an empty black hole.
"Ophelia?" I lower my gun. "You're alive?"
"Barely." Her voice sounds like torn fabric. "Kaos threw me at the base of the tower, thought the Light-Eaters would finish me off. But I... tasted too bitter. They couldn't digest me."
She crawls over to me, leans against the rubble, coughing hard. Black blood drips from the corner of her mouth.
"What did you see on Side B?" she asks.
"Christina. Leah's mother. Gatekeeper. White Box," I say. "Dr. Chen. He wants to open the Door, let Side A swallow Side B."
"Wrong." Ophelia shakes her head, black threads coming out from behind her ear. She pushes them back in. "White Box doesn't want Side A to swallow Side B. What they want is... to kill the moon."
"Kill the moon?"
"Silver Moon. Waning Moon." Ophelia's one eye stares right at me. "Leah and Kael's blood isn't the key to open the Door. It's the material to build the Door. White Box wants to kill them, take out the Primogenitor bloodline and Gatekeeper bloodline, and build a permanent Door. A door... only for White Box members. A door to eternal life."
I freeze.
"Dr. Chen growing the fragment on Side B isn't to have the fragment open the Door," Ophelia goes on. "It's to have the fragment kill Leah and Kael, then bring back their blood. Christina thought she was using White Box, but really they raised her as a... killing guide. Her job was to lure Leah to Side B, to the operating table, to..."
"A trap," I finish.
Ophelia nods. Her body shakes, the black threads eating away at the last good parts.
"What about the Moon-Eater?" I ask. "Is it also White Box's weapon?"
"Yes." Ophelia says, "White Box raised it on Side A, feeding it Light-Eaters. It's not the network's immune system. It's... a hound. Built specifically to hunt Silver Moon and Waning Moon. Once it locks onto its target—"
She looks toward the black hole in the northern sky.
"—it will keep chasing, to the ends of both worlds."
I pull the bell fragment out from inside my clothes. The last piece of metal, with faint runes carved into it.
"What's the fourth path recorded in the bell?" I ask. "I always thought it was Door-change, or Doorless."
Ophelia reaches out her hand. Only three fingers are left; the other two were eaten by black threads. She touches the bell fragment.
The fragment gives off a faint glow. Inside the light, a line of ancient vampire script appears.
"'When the moon falls, the door forges itself. Blood as nails, bone as frame. The death of the Gatekeeper is the beginning of eternity.'"
Ophelia translates. Her voice gets weaker.
"Not Door-change. Not Doorless," she says. "It's kill-moon-to-forge-door. Using Silver Moon and Waning Moon's entire life energy to build an unbreakable door. White Box's plan... was never to open the door. It was to build the door. And they need Leah and Kael... to die together."
I squeeze the bell fragment in my palm. The metal edges dig into my skin, drawing blood.
"Is there a way out?" I ask.
Ophelia is quiet.
For a long time.
"There is one," she finally says. "But you're going to hate me for it."
"Say it."
"Let the Moon-Eater... consume the target early," she says. "If the Moon-Eater swallows Leah and Kael before White Box can build the door... their energy gets broken down by the Moon-Eater, scattered into the void. White Box won't get the complete blood, and the door can't be built."
"Then Leah and Kael will die!"
"Yes." Ophelia looks at me, her one eye holding no apology, only exhaustion. "But at least... White Box doesn't win either."
I stand up.
The UV pistol's barrel is still warm. I look at the Moon-Eater in the northern sky, at the bell fragment in my hand, at Ophelia dying on the ground.
"There's another way," I say.
"What?"
"I go to Side B," I say. "Bring them back myself. Or... end this myself."
Ophelia smiles. For a second that smile makes her look young again, like she's back fifty years ago.
"The passage is unstable," she says. "Going back... seventy percent chance... of death."
"Thirty percent is enough."
I turn and walk toward the deep crack in the ruins. That's what's left of the passage from when the kin-slaying blade cut it open—a narrow, unstable void rift that could cave in any second.
But I don't make it three steps.
The ground shakes.
The black hole in the north—the Moon-Eater—suddenly moves.
Not toward us. Downward. Its body compresses like a drop of ink, plunging toward the ruins. Blindingly fast, like a meteor.
"It found the target!" Ophelia screams. "It sensed them! On Side B!"
I look up.
At the bottom of the black hole, a mouth opens. No teeth—just a pure vortex, like the entrance to hell.
It's going to cross the barrier.
Straight from Side A, swallowing toward Side B.