Celine had barely savored the thrill of his newfound power when he felt a familiar prick at the back of his neck. This time it wasn't the whispers of the Listener, but the survival instinct honed in the alleys of Arkanum.
He used his new ability: "Capture Intentions."
He closed his eyes and focused on the spiritual vibrations in the room. Suddenly, he heard not the wind outside, but the echo of an aggressive intention standing just beyond the cellar door.
One... not two. One had an aura as cold as metal, the other smelled of burnt paper.
Celine moved swiftly. He was no longer the panicked youth; the "Collector of Secrets" formula had given his body an uncanny suppleness, as if his bones were now well-lubricated gears. He seized the coin now inscribed with "The Severed Ear" and hurled it toward the door, whispering a secret word he'd extracted from the "Secret" he'd overheard in the Inspector's office:
In the name of the void that precedes speech... be silent." The coin exploded in the air, but made no sound. Instead, it absorbed all the sounds in the outside passage, turning the area into a completely soundproof space. This was the Collector's "Silent Attack."
Two men wearing long gray coats burst through the door. They bore not the church emblem, but a strange one: a spider weaving threads around an hourglass.
Members of the Paradox Club, thought Celine in horror. These weren't Purgatorys seeking justice, but hunters looking for "Beyonder" to steal their Characteristics.
One of the men slithered an iron chain from his sleeve. The chain moved like a snake hunting its prey. But thanks to his "third ear," Celine heard the path the chain would take before it moved. He bent down deftly, and extended
He reached for the other man and released the "Secret" he had just captured from Inspector Vargas.
"The expedition is about to begin... and the Fool is watching!" Selene roared in a spirited voice.
The word itself carried the power of forbidden information. The man holding the chain froze, and blood began to trickle from his ears.
Information about higher beings like the Fool acts like poison in the minds of the lower ranks.
"Where did you get that Secret?!" the other man cried, trying to protect his sanity, but Selene didn't wait for an answer.
Taking advantage of the confusion, he leaped through the narrow ventilation shaft at the top of the cellar, leaving behind a "Secret (Illusion); an ability that allows him to leave an echo of his voice, making enemies believe he is still in the room.
As he raced across the rain-soaked rooftops, Selene paused to catch his breath. Looking down at his hand, he discovered with astonishment that the "Shield" tattooThe rusty cord that bound him to the Mechanic's Club was beginning to fade, replaced by a thin black thread that wrapped around his wrist.
He had fallen into an even bigger trap. The Mechanic hadn't given him the formula for free, nor had he sent him to the Inspector's office just to spy. Céline had been bait to attract the attention of the Paradox Club, and now he was being hunted from two sides: the church where he had planted the puppet and the bounty hunters who wanted his head.
In the midst of this chaos, Céline heard a completely new voice, a quiet, deep voice, coming from above the fog.
"Gatherer of Secrets... are you ready to know the secret that will set the world ablaze?"
Secrets of Crossed Paths:
The Paradox Club is a secret society that seeks to gather the characteristics of Transcendentalists to create a "Mechanical God."
Power of Secrets: Céline discovered that revealing powerful secrets (such as the name "Fool") could be used as a devastating mental weaponThe voice coming from above the fog was unlike anything Céline had ever heard. It wasn't majestic or divine, but a cracked sound, like that of an old actor who had lost his audience centuries ago.
Suddenly, Céline found himself not on rooftops, but standing on an old wooden stage in the middle of absolute black emptiness.
There was no fog, no towering chairs, only a dim light on a single chair in the center of the stage.
On the chair sat a man in tattered jester clothes, wearing a wooden mask broken over his right eye.
"Don't be alarmed, gatherer of secrets," said the man, tilting his head. "I have no palaces above the clouds, and I don't care about fate. They call me a fool because I'm the only one who laughs while the world burns. I am the forgotten master of the stage."
Céline felt a pressure in his ears, "the third ear."The thing that had sprouted inside his mind was trembling. This entity wasn't a "god" in the conventional sense, but rather seemed like a "loophole" in the laws of nature.
"Why did you summon me?" asked Celine, trying to keep his balance.
The Fool laughed, his laughter like shards of glass. "The Rusty Gears Club and the Paradox Club... everyone thinks they're collecting secrets to become gods. But they don't realize that secrets are chains. The more you know, the more you become a slave to that which everyone else knows."
The Fool reached out with a trembling hand and pulled from his pocket a key made of bone.
"You are now at the eighth rank. To reach the seventh rank, Possessed Narrator, you don't need a chemical formula this time. You need to open a door that shouldn't be opened."
"And what's the price?" asked Celine cautiously.
"The price is simple," said the Fool, a smile emerging from beneath his broken mask. "I want you to go to the Prison of Dead Light and whisper in
Prisoner Zero was given one secret: to tell him the play had begun.
Suddenly, the stage collapsed beneath Céline's feet. He snapped back to reality, finding himself standing on the edge of the roof, the rain washing over his face. But in his hand, there was no coin; instead, he clutched the cold bone key.
The black thread that had wrapped around his wrist (the Irony Club thread) had burned and faded, replaced by a small tattoo of a broken mask behind his ear.
Céline was now an agent of an unknown entity, one that hated order and the secrets upon which empires were built.
In the distance, the church bells began to toll violently. This was not a call to prayer, but a warning. The Prison of the Dead Light had been breached, and the secret Céline had planted in the wooden puppet was bearing bitter fruit. Inspector General Vargas had gone mad and was speaking in unintelligible tonguesSelene is now not just a fugitive, but the key to the beginning of chaos the world has never seen before.
The Laws of the New World
The Fool: An entity of chaos and liberation, seeking not to rule but to break the cosmic play.
Advancement to Rank 7 (Possessed Narrator): Requires performing an act that changes the course of history (a real event rather than simply drinking a potion).
The Prison of Dead Light: A place where unkillable entities are held, and now Selene is the only one who possesses its key