Chapter 118: Eighty-Seven

Chapter 118: Chapter 118: Eighty-Seven

At eleven o’clock, the Taeyang tower’s shadow lay across the river in a long black band under the floodlights, and Sylvia stood at the end of it on the old stone embankment with Donald and Kang beside her.

"Once you’re in my shadow, you won’t be able to see or hear anything," she said. "It’s cold, and it feels like falling. Don’t move and don’t try to come out on your own." She looked at Kang. "Especially you. If you panic in there, I can’t promise which floor you’ll come out on."

"I’ve been inside a ring for twelve years," Kang said. "I won’t panic."

She nodded once, and the ground opened under them.

Donald had never been inside her storage before. There was no light and no sound, only cold, and the feeling of the floor dropping away again and again, six times, as Sylvia jumped sixty meters at a time up the dark side of the tower from one window ledge to the next. He counted the jumps. On the sixth, the falling stopped, and he was standing on gravel with the wind against his face.

They were on the roof of the eighty-eighth floor, beside a steel hatch in the base of the great black sun.

"Here," Kang said, and knelt by the hatch. He had to work the bolts with his left hand, slowly, and it took him nearly a minute, but at last the hatch came open on a narrow ladder going straight down into the dark. "The shaft runs down the side of the core. At the bottom there’s a panel, and behind the panel is the oath room. Nobody guards the inside of that room, because nobody can get into it except through the main door."

"And the treasury?" Donald asked.

"All around the core, through the walls." Kang looked at Sylvia. "Every vault room has a vent to the shaft. The vents are too small for a person."

"But not for a shadow," Sylvia said.

---

At eleven-twenty that night in Hanseong, it was still late afternoon in Genesis City, seven thousand kilometers to the west, when the black sun on the Glass Field began to glow.

Evelyn saw it from the top of the Wall. One moment the Field was empty and still in the afternoon sun, and the next a dull gold light was coming out of the cut lines in the glass, brighter every second, until the whole mark glowed a hard, steady gold.

"Damian," she said into her earpiece. "Get Helena off the Field."

"Already moving." His voice was calm. A moment later she saw two figures running toward the edge of the black glass, one of them carrying the other, and then they disappeared into the shadows of the Wall’s base.

Behind them, the glass over the anchor cracked open from below.

Things climbed out of the crack. They were tall and thin, in long gray coats, and each of them wore a smooth gold mask with no face on it except two narrow slits for eyes. They didn’t run or shout. They came out in neat lines, three at a time, and began walking toward the city at an even pace.

Evelyn opened her own status display on the Wall’s targeting screen and read the first of them.

[Target: Bailiff of the Crowned King]

[Rank: B-Rank. Level: 46.]

[Effect: Each Bailiff that reaches the city places one district under lien.]

[Count: 112 and rising.]

"Of course," she said quietly. "He’s sending debt collectors."

She drew Starfall.

The blade came out of its sheath with a long, clear note, and the starlight inside the steel ran along its edge. Evelyn stepped off the top of the Wall into the air, and [Celestial Ascent] caught her before she had fallen two meters. She hung there for a second over the Field, with the city at her back and the gold-masked lines walking toward her, and then she dropped.

She landed in the middle of the first line and cut through four of them before the others had turned around. They didn’t bleed. Their gray coats split and their masks fell, and there was nothing under the masks but dark smoke, which blew away in the wind.

The others turned toward her all at once, in perfect step, and raised their empty hands.

Evelyn smiled.

"[Divine Pulse]."

The light came out of her in a ring, white and hot, and swept across the Field for fifty meters in every direction. Every Bailiff it touched burst into smoke and fell, until the glass around her was empty except for gold masks rolling and clattering on the stones.

[Bailiffs destroyed: 38.]

[Count remaining: 91 and rising.]

More were already climbing out of the crack.

Evelyn lifted Starfall again and walked forward to meet them.

---

At eleven-thirty, Sylvia came back out of the vents with her face pale and her eyes very bright.

"Done," she said. "Eleven vault rooms, all of them. Cores, gold bars, bearer bonds, and a crate of something I didn’t look at closely." She pressed a hand to her stomach, where her shadow sat under her. "I’ve never carried this much. It’s heavy."

Donald opened his window, and the System read what she was holding.

[Asset Liquidation: Target — Taeyang Guild Reserves (held in Asset’s storage).]

[Mana Cores, Gold Bullion, Bearer Bonds, Misc. Relics.]

[Liquidation Value: 41,300,000 Credits.]

[Confirm?]

"Confirm."

He felt the weight leave Sylvia, because she let out a long breath and leaned against the wall of the shaft.

[Asset Liquidated: +41,300,000 Credits.]

[Current Balance: 76,460,000 System Credits.]

Twelve million more than he needed. For the first time since the Glass Field, Donald let himself smile.

"Now the room," he said.

Kang went down the ladder first and found the panel at the bottom by touch. He pressed it with his good hand and it slid open without a sound, and pale blue light came through the gap.

The oath room was round and bare, with smooth white walls and no furniture at all. A single column of blue light came up through a hole in the center of the floor and rose straight into the ceiling, humming faintly. That was the Hanseong lock line, and it was the same blue as the light Donald had seen running out of Seo-yeon’s hand in Joon’s workshop.

Seo-yeon was kneeling beside it.

She was still in the blue silk dress from dinner, though it was torn now at one shoulder, and rings of pale light had been sealed around both her wrists and her throat. They held her in place beside the column, close enough to touch it. When the panel opened, she raised her head, and her eyes widened.

"You came in through the wall," she whispered.

"Kang built a door," Donald said, and knelt in front of her.

She looked past him at Kang standing in the gap, at the bandaged hand with its missing finger, and her lips parted. For a moment she couldn’t say anything at all.

"Dae-han," she said at last.

"I’m sorry," Kang said quietly. "I’m sorry it took me twelve years."

Donald took out the tablet. Aris’s contract was already open on the screen, a single page with TIG’s mark at the top and a space for a fingerprint at the bottom.

"If you sign this, you’re a member of my Guild," he said. "Your oath breaks the moment you do. The lock will be unheld, and I’ll have an hour to buy it before the anchor wakes." He held the tablet out to her. "I have the money. I just need you to choose."

Seo-yeon looked at the tablet for a long time. Then she looked at the lock line, the column of blue light she had held for fifteen years, and she pressed her thumb to the screen.

[Han Seo-yeon has joined The Investment Guild.]

[Title Effect: Breaker of Chains.]

[Oath to Taeyang Guild: Broken.]

The rings of light around her wrists and throat shattered and fell away. Seo-yeon gasped and pitched forward, and Donald caught her by the shoulders before she hit the floor.

The column of blue light flickered. The hum rose to a whine.

[Hanseong Anchor Lock: Unheld.]

[Anchor waking in: 60:00.]

Donald raised his hand toward the column.

"[Hostile Takeover]."

[Target: Hanseong Anchor Lock]

[Appraised Value: 64,000,000 System Credits.]

[Current Balance: 76,460,000 System Credits.]

[Purchase Blocked: This lock is under contest.]

[Contesting Party: Signet of the Crowned King.]

[Note: A contest ends when the contesting party yields, or when its bearer is no longer bound.]

The main door of the oath room opened behind them.

Park Jae-won stood in the doorway in his plain black suit, with the gold ring glowing dull and black on his right hand, and six men in black coats stood behind him with rings on their own hands.

He looked at Seo-yeon in Donald’s arms, at the shattered rings of light on the floor, and at Kang standing in the gap in the wall. Then he looked at Donald, and smiled.

"You’re early, Investor," he said. "So am I."

[Anchor waking in: 58:41.]