Chapter 121: A Bond Beyond Death

"You... You’re alive!"

Oswald tilted his head slightly, as though there were nothing unusual about finding him in my bathroom.

"Yes, Sir Henry. Is there a problem with that?"

For several seconds, I stared at his face with my mouth open. Then my gaze dropped to his chest. There was no blood on his clothes, nor a single tear.

"How?" I asked. "I saw you tear your own heart apart!"

Oswald stroked his beard.

"That was simply a requirement of the contract."

I got up and grabbed a towel. As I wrapped it around my waist, I kept my eyes on him. Just a few minutes ago, I hadn’t even been sure this man really existed. Now he was standing in front of me, talking about tearing his own heart apart as though it were routine paperwork.

"I bound my life to yours," he continued. "This way, I can never betray you. As your servant, I can have a true bond with you."

"What? Have you lost your mind?"

The satisfaction on Oswald’s face gave way to confusion.

"Wasn’t that what you wanted?"

"Of course not! Who would want something that stupid?"

I pointed at the mark on my chest.

"I asked you to swear on your life. Not to actually put it on the line!"

The old man listened in silence. It made me think he still didn’t understand just how ridiculous all of this was.

"If I’d asked you to kill yourself, would you have done that, too?"

He placed a hand over his heart.

"If that is the Chosen One’s wish, it would be an honor to offer you my life."

He hadn’t hesitated for even a moment.

I pressed a hand to my forehead.

Great.

I had finally found someone incredibly powerful who wanted to help me. And the first thing he had done was kill himself.

"Before you do anything like that again, tell me what you’re going to do."

"As you command."

I didn’t know why that answer failed to reassure me.

I leaned against the edge of the sink. The running shower filled the brief silence between us.

"So, what’s the deal with you?" I asked at last. "After I left the cave, it was as though nothing had happened."

I raised my right hand and spread my fingers.

"My hand was back, too."

Oswald looked down at my hand, then back at my face.

"And why can’t anyone see you? Do you have some kind of stealth ability?"

"Hohoho..."

I frowned.

Hearing him laugh was irritating.

"You never went anywhere in the first place, Sir Henry."

"...How about being a little clearer?"

Oswald cleared his throat.

"My mistake. I wasn’t sure where to begin."

He raised a hand and gestured at his own body.

"I don’t actually have a physical body."

"I suppose this would be the simplest way to explain it... I’m a spiritual being."

"Sir Henry, the two of us actually come from the same world."

My gaze returned to him.

"The world I came from?"

"Yes."

My throat went dry.

I remembered my face on the cave wall. Henry Walker’s face. A face no one in this world should have known except me...

"But unlike you, I have no body to inhabit here," Oswald said. "I have been waiting for you ever since I fled to this world."

Fled? From whom, and why?

Suddenly, I had so many questions that I didn’t know where to start. Why had he fled? How did he know me? How had he known I would come?

But before the questions could leave my mouth, I remembered the scream I had heard in the cave.

The blood flowing from my ears.

I pressed my lips together. Before getting into those subjects, I needed to find out what I could safely ask.

"Then the place you took me to..."

"Was my Nexernim."

"Nexernim?"

I had never heard that word before.

"To put it in terms you can understand, my soul realm. It wasn’t your body I brought there, Sir Henry. Your body remained beside that young lady."

I looked at my hand again.

"What about the time I spent there?"

"Time does not flow the same way there as it does outside."

I slowly closed my fingers.

So that was why, from Rose’s perspective, I was still at the moment I had dropped the potion bottle. While I had been chained up, trying to escape, and jumping off a mountain, she had been looking at my face and wondering why I wasn’t speaking.

At least some of what had happened was beginning to make sense.

Assuming flapping my wings inside a man’s soul counted as making sense.

My gaze dropped to the mark on my chest. The black eye surrounded by chains sat motionless on my skin.

"So, is this tattoo just for show, or does it actually do something?"

Oswald’s lips curved upward.

"Of course. It allows you to use my powers."

I raised my head.

"Your powers?"

"Yes."

I stood a little straighter.

The man had caught my arrow between his fingers. Azure Flame hadn’t been able to hurt him. He had floated above my head thousands of meters in the air without doing a thing.

And now he was saying I could do those things, too?

"What kind of powers?" I asked. "What can you do?"

The pride on Oswald’s face became more apparent.

"Check your system."

I paused.

He knew about the system, too.

Normally, that alone should have been enough to worry me. But with a man who knew my old name, had taken me into his soul realm, and had bound his life to mine, the list of things to worry about was already far too long.

Besides, something else had my attention right now.

Powers.

I opened the system window.

New lines appeared before my eyes.

[Fallen Moon Waltz: 0/7 (0%)]

[Temple of Night: Locked]

[Eclipsion: Locked]

My eyes moved between the lines.

I waited a little.

Perhaps there was more.

There wasn’t.

"...Is that it?"

The smile that had just formed on my face slowly faded.

The first line was at zero. The ones beneath it were locked. There was neither a power I could use nor an explanation of how to unlock anything.

Oswald came closer and leaned toward what I was looking at.

Then his expression changed.

"What is this?"

He raised a hand and tried to grab the edge of the system window. His fingers closed, then he reached a little farther.

Nothing happened.

"What’s wrong with this system?" he muttered. "It shouldn’t be like this..."

I slowly turned my head toward him.

"You don’t know either?"

"There must be an error."

He looked at the window again. Not a trace remained of his earlier pride. His brows were drawn together, and his eyes kept going over the same lines.

"Chosen One, how many nights have you completed so far?"

"What?"

Oswald froze.

Then his eyes widened.

"Sir Henry... Is it possible that you haven’t connected with the essence of night yet?"

I stared at his face for several seconds.

Which night?

The essence of what?

He had just told me I would have new powers. Now he was standing in front of three lines of text I couldn’t use, expecting answers about things I had never heard of.

"Hey, you old fool," I said through gritted teeth. "Stop going on about things I know nothing about. As you can see, this fucking system is a complete piece of junk, too."

Oswald closed his mouth.

For a while, he stroked his beard thoughtfully. I took one last look at the window.

Even their names sounded cool.

That only made it more irritating.

Oswald suddenly raised his head and approached me.

"Do not worry, Sir Henry. From now on, I will be with you."

He took another step.

He was right in my face.

I wanted to move back, but I was already pressed against the sink. As I looked into his white eyes, I felt my eye twitch.

"Great," I said. "I’m so happy."

Oswald nodded in satisfaction.

He hadn’t realized I was being sarcastic.

I closed the system window.

"All right, old man. How about leaving my bathroom now? I’d like to take a shower, if you don’t mind."

Oswald looked toward the shower, as though he had only just noticed the sound of running water.

"Of course, Sir Henry."

He clasped his hands behind his back again and began to walk.

Not toward the door.

Toward the wall.

"Hey, that’s—"

First his face, then his shoulders disappeared into the tiles. With his next step, the rest of his body passed through to the other side.

I stood there.

"...Like a ghost."

A faint shiver ran along my arms. My gaze moved from the wall he had passed through to the door, then back to the wall.

Was he going to live with me from now on?

And he didn’t even need to use doors.

I let out a long sigh.

I didn’t want to think about that right now.

I put the towel aside and stepped into the shower. As hot water poured over my shoulders, I realized just how tense my muscles had been.

Lowering my head slightly, I closed my eyes.

Listening to the water, I finally breathed a sigh of relief.