The golden chains pulsed against their throats, synchronized heartbeats in a dying room. The girl's eyes had changed. The fear was still there, buried beneath something sharper. Cunning. She was learning the contours of this cage as quickly as he was.
***
"Party One has two answers and one question. Party Two has one answer and two questions."
***
The monotone voice faded. Silence stretched between them, thick as smoke.
She spoke first.
"What is the worst thing you have ever done?"
Lucid's jaw tightened. The question was a blade aimed between ribs. Not a fact. Not a mission detail. Something subjective. Something she could use.
"I killed a god," he said.
***
"False."
***
The chain bit. Deep. Blood welled from the wound, trickled down his collarbone. He did not flinch.
***
"Party One has two answers and zero questions. Party Two has one answer and two questions. Party One maintains questioning rights."
***
Her lips curved. Not a smile. Something thinner.
"Why did you come here tonight?"
"I was invited."
***
"False."
***
The spike drove harder. He felt it scrape against something vital, a bright spike of pain that radiated through his chest. His vision swam. He kept his eyes on hers.
***
"Party One has two answers and zero questions. Party Two has one answer and two questions. Party One maintains questioning rights."
***
She was bleeding too. The chain did not discriminate. But her wounds were shallower. She had answered truthfully every time. She was preserving herself, feeding him to the contract piece by piece.
"What do you want most?"
The question hung in the burning air. Honest. Unavoidable. A trap dressed in silk.
"To survive," he said.
***
"False."
***
The chain convulsed. He choked, blood spraying across his lips. The pain was a white sun behind his eyes. He could feel his heartbeat in the wound, each pulse forcing more blood past the embedded spike.
***
"Party One has two answers and zero questions. Party Two has one answer and two questions. Party One maintains questioning rights."
***
She leaned forward. Her face was inches from his. Blood from her own throat stained her collar, but her eyes were bright, almost feverish.
"One question left," she whispered. "And then I have two answers. Two chances to survive. Do you understand what that means?"
He understood.
Her final question came slowly, each word deliberate.
"If you could go back. To the moment you became what you are. Would you choose it again?"
The air itself seemed to hold its breath.
He thought of Tyriana. Karmen and his iterated lives. He thought of the red mountains, of Ayame in the cave. He thought of Neptune, the goddess's blood on his hands. He thought of Alice, her chains and the black bloodied spear, her desperate hunger for devotion.
He thought of his little group... Mary, Brian and Garfield.
He thought of the girl in front of him, who had stabbed him seventeen times and still could not kill him.
"No," he said. "I would not."
***
"False."
***
'Huh!'
He braced hismself.
The chain did not tighten. It loosened.
A sound like a breaking harp string, high and pure and final. The spike withdrew from his throat, and the golden links began to unwind, reorienting, shifting. The contract was not punishing him. It was recalibrating.
Because his answer was true. He would not choose this path again. But the question was not about his preference. It was about his action. And the truth, cold and absolute, was that he had chosen it. Every step. Every death. Every impossible decision. He had walked this path willingly, knowingly, with open eyes.
What he would do and what he had done were not the same.
The girl's face went slack. The feverish brightness drained from her eyes, replaced by something slower, colder. Understanding.
***
"Party Two has answered falsely. The contract detects subjective truth. The answer is objectively false. Conditions are recalculated."
***
A pause. The flames seemed to dim.
***
"Party Two has one answer and zero questions. Party One has zero answers and one question. Roles are reversed."
***
The chains settled into their new configuration. Around her throat, the spike pressed closer. Around his, the links loosened, granting him the privilege of inquiry.
She stared at him. Her breathing had changed. Shallow. Fast.
He had one question.
He looked at her. Not at her wounds, not at the chains, not at the blood soaking both of their clothes. He looked at her face.
"Whats your name?" he said.
She flinched. Not at the question. At the softness in his voice.
"What do you want your name to be?"
The question landed like a stone in still water.
She had expected something else. Strategy. Information. Leverage. She had prepared herself for interrogation, for the cold extraction of secrets that would doom her organization and everyone she had ever known. She had braced for pain.
Not this.
"What?" Her voice was raw, scraped clean of cunning.
"Your name. Did your parents choose it?"
She shook her head slowly. "It was assigned. All of us. Numbers for the field, names for the world. Elena the eight... was... someone else's. Before me."
"What do you want your name to be?"
Her eyes moved across his face, searching for the trap. She found none. The chain pulsed gently at her throat, waiting for her answer.
"I don't know," she whispered. "I never thought about it."
***
"False."
***
Her eyes went wide.
The chain tightened. Not the killing constriction, not yet. But a warning. A pressure that spoke of consequences.
"No," she breathed. "No, I didn't mean—I wasn't lying, I really don't—"
***
"False. The answer is false."
***
Her face crumpled. Not from pain. From something worse. Recognition.
She had been so careful. So precise with her truths and her traps. She had played the game better than he had, manipulated the contract's cold logic to keep herself alive. And now, with one question, he had undone her.
Because she did know.
She had always known.
"Sara," she said. The word escaped like a held breath. "I want my name to be Sara."
***
"Truth."
***
The chain loosened. But the damage was done. Her falsehood had been recorded, weighted, judged. The contract was not merciful.
***
"Party One has answered falsely. Conditions are maintained. Party One has zero answers and one question. Party Two has one answer and zero questions."
***
She had one answer left. One chance to speak truth and maintain her side of the contract. One opportunity to survive.
Her eyes met his. The fear was gone. In its place was something worse. Resolve.
"You want to know about Miguel," she said. "His plans. His weaknesses. His location. That's your real question, isn't it?"
He said nothing.
"I'll answer it. Truthfully. Everything I know." Her voice was steady now, almost calm. "But first, you need to understand something."
She leaned forward. Her face was very close to his. He could smell the blood on her breath, see the delicate network of veins beneath her pale skin.
"I enjoyed it."
The words hung in the air between them, heavy as lead.
"Killing the silver badges. I told myself it was orders. I told myself I had no choice. I told myself they would have killed me if I refused. All of that was true." Her lips curved. Not a smile. A baring of teeth.
"But it wasn't why I did it."
The chain pulsed at her throat. Waiting.
"I did it because I could. Because for the first time in my life, I had power over someone else. Because watching the light leave their eyes made me feel like I existed." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Because it felt good."
Lucid stared at her.
"False," he said. Not the monotonous voice. Him.
"No." She shook her head slowly. "That's the worst part. It's the truth."
***
"Truth. Conditions maintained."
***
The chain did not tighten. The contract accepted her answer. She had spoken honestly, and the cold machinery of the game recorded her confession and moved on.
But Lucid could not move.
He had seen cruelty. He had committed it. He had watched people die and felt nothing, or rage, or desperate, clawing guilt. But he had never met someone who looked at their own capacity for violence and called it good.
She smiled at his silence. Not triumphant. Almost tender.
"Now ask your question," she said. "Ask me about Miguel. I'll tell you everything. His safe houses. His allies. The ritual he's preparing. I'll give you the information you need to kill him." She tilted her head. "And then I'll die anyway. Because that's what you do, isn't it? You take what people give you, and then you leave them behind."
Her voice was calm. Resigned. She had accepted her fate, and in accepting it, she had found a strange, terrible peace.
Lucid opened his mouth. Closed it.
The question he had prepared, about Miguel, about the conspiracy, about everything she could tell him that would help him end this nightmare, sat on his tongue like ash.
He could not ask it.
Not because he was merciful. Not because he forgave her. Not because her confession had changed anything.
He could not ask it because she was offering it. Because she wanted him to. Because this was her final act of control, choosing to give him what he needed, choosing to die on her own terms.
And he refused to give her that satisfaction.
"No," he said.
She blinked. "No?"
"I'm not asking about Miguel."
"Then what—"
"Your last answer," he said. "You said you enjoyed it. You said it made you feel powerful. You said it felt good."
She waited.
"Was that true?"
Silence.
The flames crackled. Somewhere, distant, a shelf collapsed in a shower of sparks.
"Yes," she said. "It was true."
***
"False."
***
Her eyes snapped to his.
"I watched you," he said. "When your leader abandoned you. When you realized you were alone. When you thought I was going to kill you." He held her gaze. "You didn't look like someone who enjoyed power. You looked like a child who was terrified of dying."
Her mouth opened. Closed.
"You told yourself that story to survive," he said. "That you were a predator, not prey. That the people you killed deserved it. That you were strong, and they were weak, and that made it right." His voice was quiet. "But it's not true. It never was."
She shook her head. Slow, mechanical. "You don't know anything about me."
"I know you answered false."
The chain tightened.
She gasped. Her hands flew to her throat, clawing at the golden links. Blood seeped between her fingers.
"Truth," she choked. "Please, I'll tell the truth, just—"
***
"Party One has answered falsely. Party One has zero answers and zero questions. Party Two has one answer and zero questions. The contract is concluded."
***
The chain convulsed.
It happened in silence. No scream, no crack of bone, no wet tear of flesh. Just the soft, persistent tightening of metal against skin, and the slow, deliberate extinction of breath.
She reached for him. Her fingers brushed his sleeve, leaving bloody smears on the worn fabric. Her eyes, wide, wet, impossibly young, held his until they did not.
Then she was still.
Lucid knelt in the spreading pool of her blood. The golden chains had dissolved, returning to whatever void had spawned them. The contract was satisfied. The game was over.
He had won.
He felt nothing.
Slowly, carefully, he reached out and closed her eyes. Her face, in death, had lost the desperate cunning that had twisted her features. She looked, at last, like what she had always been.
A girl who never learned what she truly wanted, controlled by the chapeu.
The montounous voice carried.
***
The divine maiden Alice has gained the Thread's of Fate of Sara.
Her will and memories are now woven into Alice's Threads.
***
It hurt, his head throbbed, his vision blurred. Everything tilted upside-down as if something overloaded his senses replaced by scenery, smell, touch, names and words.
It absolutely hurt.