Chapter One Hundred: The Negotiation in Ruins

“Is the Spark the Ancients?”

Ignaty’s argument was, by any standard, outrageous, yet Amy Ulysses did not care. Unlike the other Glories, he did not treat the Ancients as omnipotent gods. He had always watched this creator race—the kind only faintly recorded even in the oldest and most secret texts—with a careful, inquiring gaze.

“Reason.”

“No reason.” The old man shook his head. “The Ancients had no intention of leaving traces of their presence in the world. Not only you and I, but many others share that understanding. It needs no far-fetched inference, no search for evidence long buried in the river of time. Their vanishing itself reveals their intent. They created the world, wove fate, yet handed the power of choice to us.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“What is this power called? It is free will.” The traveler who had crossed the deepest night exhaled quietly. “On my way I have met so many, of every kind. Some, upon learning the truth, were swept into an hysterical frenzy and lost themselves entirely. Others could not bear the cruelty of it all and rushed headlong into blind, idiotic dark chaos. Still others, refusing to accept reality, raised fortresses in their own minds, rejecting everything beyond in blind defiance, and at last in the deepest night drifted further and further away until no one saw them anymore.”

“What does that show?”

“At least it shows that we are not puppets manipulated by destiny.” Ignaty shook his head. “With our own will, we can decide the road we take, whether it leads to ruin or to salvation.”

“Oh.” Amy replied softly, then laughed without warmth. “Then your choice is to create a new world where humans and demons live in harmony?”

“Yes.” Ignaty squinted, and on his deeply wrinkled, bean-pinching old face a smile appeared. “Hearing you say that, I am relieved. You truly still know nothing of the world’s truth and still keep that simple, pure… fool’s happiness.”

“What do you mean?” No one likes to be called a fool.

“Nothing special.” The old man clearly did not intend to continue the earlier thread. He changed the topic with unusual bluntness. “There are things one learns only when one reaches the moment.”

Amy did not speak, only watched him, watched those cloudy blue-green eyes.

“Keeping guard through the Long Night is the Watcher’s duty.” Ignaty looked past the boy. “And in the destiny outlined by Hammurabi’s Holy Code, so long as the Watcher bloodline has not ended, the age of darkness will never truly arrive.”

“The age of darkness,” Amy scoffed, wanting to shrug but unable to move the bloodbound body, he could only twist like a worm. “Isn’t this it?”

“No,” Ignaty shook his head. “At least we still have… the Spark.”

“The Ancients’ blessing, then. You really buy into this?” Inwardly he had not fully dismissed Ignaty’s possibility, but he gave no quarter in speech. “By your logic, so long as the bloodlines of Fitzgerald, Glaston, and Ulysses endure, the Spark keeps burning, keeping its protection over humanity forever. Then the day it is extinguished will never come?”

“No, only Ulysses,” the old man corrected. “And besides, you should have noticed that even without fate’s interference, the Spark is fading day by day. In the end, order will return to chaos. What we call civilization is no more than a tiny sandcastle built while the tide has not yet come in. When the waves of chaos arrive at their appointed time, everything becomes a glittering bubble of ruin.”

“Why?”

“Why? Destruction needs no reason, and neither does the death of order. But if you ask about the bloodline of Ulysses, the bloodline of the Watchers, then I know part of the answer.” Ignaty’s voice was hoarse. “Unlike Ulysses, the Fitzgerald and Glaston lines were buried with the Wall of the Eternal Night when the Chaos Surge came crashing down.”

“Then how did my forefathers survive?”

After a brief silence, Amy pressed on. Although his original concern had nothing to do with Ulysses, faced with a dark traveler who clearly wanted to dodge the subject, he had little choice but to continue and, in doing so, learn about the former glory of the name his family and Yulia had inherited.

“He had foreseen the eruption of the Chaos Surge, but he had not imagined it would come so fast, so suddenly, so violently. Before he could persuade the other two chiefs of the Watcher Legion, the Wall of the Eternal Night had already collapsed into unfathomable darkness.” Ignaty paused, then continued. “Fortunately, knowing what was coming, he sent forth his bloodline—your ancestors—the last of Ulysses, and the last of the Watchers—before everything reached an irreversible end.”

“So it seems I was born carrying a holy charge.”

Amy gave a cold laugh.

“Yes,” Ignaty nodded. “You must live. No matter how cruel the world becomes, no matter how hard it is to survive, you must live. You must survive strongly.”

“Such a meager mission,” Amy said, the cold in him growing deeper. “But what if I say, ‘No’?”

After a short silence, the old man lifted his head. “Why not?”

“Just like that,” the boy smiled. “No reason. I was only gambling—gambling my life.”

“Should I praise your courage or your absurdity?” Ignaty’s mouth curled into a cold, slight arc. “If you think you can threaten me with death, you are terribly mistaken. I have lived in Hemtika for thirty years. By now you are almost a child I watched grow up, Amy Ulysses. You may still have a little indifference of kindness, but in the end you are not the one to sacrifice. At least, you will not cast away your precious life for the Lower Quarter.”

“Seems you know me all too well,” Amy said blandly. Though his condition now differed from that of a condemned prisoner in little else, he somehow seized the initiative. “Only—if we replace the Lower Quarter with Yulia, do you think I would have the courage to sacrifice myself?”

“Meaning?” the traveler conceded, almost imperceptibly.

“Pandora—” Amy said the name he had heard from Mia, and as expected saw the brief change in the old man’s expression. “Then you know as well as I do that the Upper Quarter—its highest church tower included—is no longer safe.”

“So,” Ignaty looked at him without expression, “you intend to give yourself up?”

“It seems we can’t come to an agreement,” Amy said coldly. “If so, I truly wouldn’t mind a clean break.”

“‘Clean break’?” Ignaty raised an eyebrow in interest. “A good phrase, very rustic. But do not be so naïve. I do not doubt your resolve to protect Yulia; it is because I know that very thing that I am certain you will not choose oblivion.”

He paused. “There is no great reason, only this: you cannot let go—cannot let go of your sister.”

“You are wrong—completely wrong.” Amy narrowed his eyes. “If it had been me before I knew that the name Ulysses carries this sacred charge, I might still not have let her go. But now that you will not allow the Ulysses bloodline to end, what else is there I could not let go of?”

Ignaty fell silent, then spread his hands. “It seems I truly earned this.”

“Perhaps not entirely,” Amy said, choosing not to stir more conflict and instead giving the old man room. “As for me, I am truly grateful to you.”

“No need to thank me.” A grin, suddenly terrifying, appeared on Ignaty’s gaunt face. “Because I do not intend to accept your threat. Yes, from your motive there may be possibility of self-sacrifice, but in this moment with what do you intend to sacrifice yourself? How, with what, will you… find… a way… to… die?”

“Really,” Amy sighed. “You’ve got me pinned perfectly.”

Bound in every limb, he truly could not simply kill himself. He could not put that threat into action.

Yet sometimes death asks for no reasons.

A regular guest of the ferryman of the Underworld River, a seat companion of Death himself, Amy Ulysses understood death better than anyone. In Ignaty’s eyes, perhaps a Glory fettered in so many layers could not end his own life; in truth, however, killing himself posed little difficulty for the boy.

Yes. He only had to remember.

To replay the death he already understood once more.
First, empty the mind.
Then slow the heartbeat.
Then still the flow of blood.
With practiced ease, the boy copied each element of death step by step, drawing his state ever closer to it.

And then, soundlessly, without a trace of breath, he faded.

He was dead.