The Nolan night wind brushed against Jenkins's skin. His vision was temporarily gone, but his ears picked up the sound of approaching footsteps. He lowered the hand covering his eyes and shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. At the sa ti, he rembered to use a touch of fire to evaporate the blood, preventing it from dripping onto the ground.
"I'm fine,"
he said, a sudden thought striking him. Though his sight was temporarily gone, it wasn't his only way of perceiving the world. With a re thought, the Eye of Reality activated. It was the first ti he had ever used it while completely blind.
Previously, this special vision had always overlaid auras and anomalies onto the normal scenery. This ti, however, his world was pitch black, punctuated only by the shimring of auras.
In truth, everything in this world, tangible and intangible, possessed a spirit. After all, 'spirit' wasn't just a form of energy. As Papa Oliver had explained, 'spirit' was energy, rules, information, history, fate—the sum of every concept humanity could comprehend.
Before, the interference of normal vision had limited him to seeing only the most potent auras. But now, opening his eyes, he saw a world of undulating cycles, a scene filled with vibrant lights that coalesced into a sowhat distorted picture.
The lights flickered, pulsed, and flowed, but their overall shape still outlined everything before him.
Gazing at this 'painting' before him, he felt a sudden sense of understanding. Everything he saw, aside from the style and color, corresponded to the objects in normal vision. Yet the subtle flow of the auras and the distorted details gave him an inexplicable feeling.
He froze, and similarly, the people surrounding him froze as well.
This ti, everyone saw it. Within the bloodied eyes of the Believer of Lies, a pure, violet brilliance swirled. The divine light wasn't intense, but in the smoke-filled square, it shone as brightly as a solitary candle in the dark.
"Destiny? Truth?"
the demigod from the Church of Destiny and Equilibrium suddenly uttered, whirling around to look at the sky. But behind the veil of dark clouds and smog, the purple star of destiny beside the twin moons was nowhere to be seen.
"I'm still a living man, for now at least."
Jenkins, snapping back to his senses, spoke. He condensed the moisture in the air onto his fingernails, forming thin blades of ice at their tips, then lightly drew one across his wrist:
"See? Red blood. What flowed from my eyes just now was also red blood, not oil."
he stressed, feeling natural light gradually returning to his vision, a sign that his eyes were healing.
"What exactly did you see in there..."
Miss Bennett's voice trailed off. Jenkins imdiately turned his head toward the location of her aura. As her gaze t those eyes shimring with purple light, Miss Bennett instinctively took a small step back, baffled by the source of the profound panic that had just gripped her.
Jenkins couldn't make out the details of her expression. Instead, he reached into his chest pocket, pulled out two sheets of paper, and tossed them forward:
"This is what I saw inside. I've drawn it all."
Without waiting for a reaction, he let out a sharp whistle, summoning his unicorn, and swung himself deftly onto its back.
"As for our negotiations, I'll find you when the ti is right. Also, that tower is extrely dangerous. If the Orthodox Church can find a way to destroy it, the Believers of Lies would be most grateful. Lastly, when you enter the tower, the gearification starts from the heart and spreads throughout the body. Perhaps the Church can devise a counterasure based on that. Oh, and one more thing—the light inside is blinding. That's how I got hurt."
He pointed to his eyes as he spoke, then gently patted the unicorn's neck. The creature flapped its wings, took two steps forward, and then abruptly carried its master into the dim sky. The followers of the Righteous Gods didn't try to stop him; most were still trapped in the inexplicable terror that his gaze had instilled.
Only after confirming the Believer of Lies had completely vanished did the demigods approach Miss Bennett. The demigod from the Church of All Things and Nature unfolded the papers the man had thrown, and the others gathered around to look.
"This..."
No one spoke for a long while. Finally, soone broke the silence. The paper Bennett held displayed a pencil sketch. The interplay of light and shadow perfectly captured the brilliance inside the tower while artfully revealing the scene behind the dazzling glare.
It wasn't the malevolent objects or the alien space they had imagined. What was depicted on the paper was a conference room, roughly the size of the tower's interior, so vast that its ceiling seed to reach the spire. In the center stood a single round table, with three bronze-colored tal figures seated around it. The Believer of Lies's brushwork was so vivid that it perfectly captured the expressions of the tal statues of Salsi II, Queen Isabella, and Tackwen the Proud.
"But... why them?"
This was precisely what Jenkins couldn't figure out. Before entering the tower, he had speculated on countless possibilities, but he had never imagined finding statues of the three monarchs inside.
By the ti he returned ho that night, his eyes had mostly healed. But when he looked in the mirror, he could see a very faint trace of purple in them. It was a detail only noticeable upon close inspection, so he wasn't worried about it being easily discovered.
Still, Jenkins couldn't understand the reason for this strange change, rely guessing it was related to his earlier reliance solely on the Eye of Reality. He was equally baffled by the situation inside the tower. Even after a full night of contemplation, he couldn't make sense of it.
Fortunately, Briny appeared in his bedroom in the latter half of the night, which made the evening considerably more interesting.
The Church had made no new discoveries for the ti being, so on Wednesday, Jenkins skipped the trip to the church and the tedious etings. He found Alexia and told her about the previous night's events, but the short lady couldn't explain the tower either, though she suspected it was related to the Difference Engine. Back in Ruen, she had made so progress in the high tower library that could help deduce the purpose of the subterranean Difference Engine, but the ancient texts were obscure, and Alexia had yet to finish deciphering them.
For now, the only clues about the tower were the three statues inside. Jenkins had no intention of re-entering the black tal tower anyti soon, so the next step was to start the investigation with the three monarchs.
All three of them were suspicious. Salsi II was currently using so unknown thod to exist in two places at once. Queen Isabella was collaborating with the Treehouse, plotting who knew what kind of conspiracy. And as for the Proud One from the southern kingdom, who seed to have no involvent in the supernatural, he had recently been hard by a curse and was deeply entangled in a web of political intrigue. It was hard to say whether he had done anything unexpected behind the scenes.
The Church's line of investigation mirrored Jenkins's own. When he arrived at the church that evening, he learned from Captain Bincy that they were preparing to breach the High Tower Accord and directly investigate the royal families and their mbers.
Covert actions were a given, but publicly, they were preparing to convene a joint conference of the Twelve Churches next week. The first item on the agenda would be to nullify the High Tower Accord, which had endured for the entire Eighteenth Epoch, and then formally begin surveillance and investigation of the various royal families.
The gravity of such a move was even greater than the question of whether two kingdoms would go to war. Jenkins knew the Church was being forced into this decision out of desperation. But these were special tis, and it was all understandable—at least to him.
The appearance of the black tal tower had shattered most people's plans for the future. It was like a stone tossed into a pond; though small, its ripples were enough to affect the entire material world.
Perhaps sensing the Orthodox Church's intention to investigate the royal families, on this relatively peaceful Wednesday night, Jenkins once again received an invitation from Dolores's father, the king of the Hamparvo Kingdom, to et him at his residence in the city.
Just yesterday, Jenkins had seen the middle-aged man in a small conference room at City Hall. At the ti, though he was still dressed in unseasonably warm cotton clothes, his complexion was normal, and he had seed to be in good spirits.
Only a day had passed, but when he saw him again, the northern king looked as if he had aged ten years overnight. He was slumped in a chair with a red velvet back in the drawing-room, his face pale and his expression weary. Seeing Jenkins arrive, he rely nodded, lacking even the energy for pleasantries like discussing the weather.
"I'm about to die."
Salsi II said once Jenkins had taken a seat. Jenkins stroked the cat on his lap, montarily at a loss for words.
"This is sooner than I expected,"
the king continued, draped in a red blanket. He looked at Jenkins with weary eyes. In the interplay of light and shadow in the drawing-room, this king, known for his iron fist, appeared incredibly fragile. He looked less like a monarch and more like an old man on his deathbed, breathing his last.
Jenkins knew he wasn't lying. The state of Salsi II's life spirit clearly indicated that his ti was running out. But he couldn't understand how it had happened. Just yesterday at the eting, he hadn't been like this.
"What... happened to you?"
"The Orthodox Church intends to abandon the High Tower Accord."
Salsi II said with his eyes closed, his voice exceptionally hoarse. His face was ancient, and though the wrinkles weren't nurous, they were as distinct as ravines on a plain.
"So you're worried the Church will discover your secret?"
Jenkins made no attempt to hide that he knew sothing.
"It's more than that. When I received the news today, I intended to search the royal treasury in Ruen for an item left by my ancestors, hoping to temporarily conceal what I have done. But I was wrong. I was so wrong. My ancestors gave guidance, and that fate... it's truly laughable..."
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