He strode across the broken flagstones, pulse hammering louder than his boots. When he halted before the grey-robed man, his shoulders dropped into a respectful bend—almost a bow that refused to feel servile.
“Mr. Morse! Of all places, why here, why now?!” Shock blurred into gratitude as realization struck: the newcomer was Sidney, the wanderer he had dragged from the Celestial Stairway years ago. And beside him—alive, truly breathing—stood the wife Jared had begged Mr. Stone to call back from death.
Sidney’s smile was small, almost private, but his gaze swept Jared head to toe as though measuring new dimensions. In that brief scrutiny, Jared caught a flicker—curiosity, maybe mild disbelief.
“Mr. Chance, you remain anything but ordinary. In mere days you have carved forward again. Such depth of foundation, I have never heard of its equal.”
His attention shifted to Aurelian’s circle, each of them locked between fight and flight. “Friends, be at ease. My wife and I come as old companions of Mr. Chance, not as foes.”
Tension leaked from their stances; shoulders fell and swords lowered a fraction, yet no one quite released the hilt. Jared sensed the caution clinging like dust—healthy, he decided, but it could not linger. He moved through them, naming each face, stitching lines of acquaintance between two worlds with hurried gestures. The moment the words “High Immortal Realm” left his mouth, awe rippled outward like heat across summer stone.
Aurelian was first to bow, the rest folding after him in a rustle of armor and fabric. When the formalities exhausted what patience he had left, Jared leaned in, his voice low enough to keep the courtyard theirs. “Mr. Morse, your arrival was sudden… Does something press? And tell me, what do you know of Level Twelve now—of the Door of Reincarnation and the Malevolent Path Hall?”
Sidney’s fingers threaded through his wife’s; the simple touch hardened his features into a warning. He motioned toward the benches scattered near the wall, inviting and commanding all at once. Jared followed, every muscle primed for news that would bruise. Once they settled, Sidney studied him anew, eyes grey as the robe draped around his shoulders. “That is precisely why I have come. Did I hear correctly? You intend to step into the Malevolent Path Hall?”
Jared did not flinch. “Yes.”
Sidney’s head moved in a slow refusal, each degree heavier than the last. “Set that thought aside, Mr. Chance. Until you reach the High Immortal Realm, master every force inside you, and unmask the Lord of Reincarnation, you must not gamble your life.”
Cold pricked along Jared’s spine. He tasted iron on his next breath. “You know who, what… the Lord of Reincarnation is?”
Silence clung to Sidney while he searched for words, thumb revolving over his wife’s knuckles. At last he said, “In chasing a way to return her soul, I walked hidden trails and once glimpsed a fraction of that Door’s truth… The Door is no child of this realm. Its birth reaches back to ages shrouded even from myth. The being behind it—call it the Lord—isn’t truly alive. Think of a rule given hunger, a vast malicious echo wearing thought.”
He paused, letting the weight hang. “Tell me, Jared, do you understand why that Door grants strength so freely?”
Memory flashed: the battlefield, rent stone, energy seeping like light through cracks, pouring into wounded fighters. “We absorbed what leaked from inside it,” Jared ventured.
Sidney’s answer fell quiet. “Yes… yet also no. That Door is carving a path of its own.”
Confusion rippled again; several voices overlapped, chasing meaning. “A path of its own?” someone echoed.
Sidney folded his hands. “The cosmos carries laws like hidden rivers. Reincarnation is one of them—ordered, deliberate.” He pictured the Door of Reincarnation ripping a vital thread out of the world’s fabric, clutching it like a jealous dragon, severing it from every other law until whatever lurked beyond the threshold owned the cycle of souls.
“A blessing?” Sidney scoffed, his voice rasping against the stone walls. “It simply drips back the essence it stole—the reincarnation current that belonged to every living thing. It is like pouring an ocean into a brook; of course the brook surges… But keep feeding it, and the current twists out of shape. Souls lose their way, and the very pathways of heaven crack. Every gift carries its seal. The more you wield it, the deeper it eats, until flesh and will are hollowed out—fuel for the will crouching behind that door. Puppets, all.”
A chill slipped across the circle. Jared felt it settle on his skin like wet ash, and the others stood so still the torchlight looked painted around their faces. So the promise of unending life was nothing more than a trap, one that gnawed at the very root of their world.
Jared cleared the grit in his throat. “Then what is the Lord of Reincarnation, truly?”
Sidney’s gaze drifted past them, as though afraid the shadows might overhear. “I can’t see its core. Only that it is ancient, immense, and carries a cold malice toward every heartbeat… Maybe it’s the remnant obsession of a fallen sovereign, or an ambition that crashed on the way to transcendence… Or perhaps an outsider, starving to swallow this realm. Either way, it cannot fully arrive; it uses that Door and the faithful as nails and claws. And Malcolm, Morven—those are only pieces it moves across the board.”
He finally met Jared’s eyes. “Listen, Mr. Chance. You carry vast fortune and equally vast consequences. The forces braided inside you—the chaotic force, the scent of the Divine Bow—already irritate its reincarnation aura. That is why the Door’s master, or the shells it commands, want you erased. But you are not yet ready to face it head-on. After this battle, Malevolent Path Hall will drink deeper rewards. It is a pit of serpents now; you must stay away.”
Jared said nothing. Inside, waves slammed against each other until thought splintered. Sidney had just stamped a seal on suspicions Jared hardly dared voice and uncovered horrors he had never guessed. Yet the fire in his chest did not gutter; it narrowed—colder, surer.
He drew a steady breath. “Mr. Morse, if Mr. Stone were here, could he break the Door… and its master?”
Sidney paused, lips twitching toward a helpless smile. “I don’t know the reach of Mr. Stone’s hand, but to crush that master would be, for him, the work of a finger flick.”
From deep within Jared’s sea of thought, the Vermilion Demon Lord rumbled, “If Mr. Stone intervenes, forget Level Twelve—with a casual wave he could lift you to the upper reaches of the Celestial Realm.” The demon had glimpsed Mr. Stone only a handful of times, yet even he sensed a strength no lower or middle world could measure.
Jared blinked. “Mr. Stone is that formidable?”
Sidney chuckled softly. “He bends laws at will. He can pull a soul back from utter annihilation. Compared to that, the Lord of Reincarnation is clumsy. If the Lord possessed such skill, it wouldn’t need Doors or promises of eternal life. It wouldn’t resurrect puppets; it would resurrect people.”
Jared turned the thought over. Mr. Stone could raise a mind erased to dust; the Lord relied on hijacked laws and still delivered only marionettes. The contrast felt like daylight burning through fog.
