"!!!"
At the sight of those bookmarks, Klein's chest lurched: yes, someone had gotten there first — but it wasn't Charles. It was a woman. A stranger who was somehow not a stranger at all.
The high-sequence woman who had nearly wiped out the Tingen Nighthawks, left him five hundred gold coins and a rescue scroll, and then turned up again at the Hidden Sage incident to help him out.
Her, of all people?
Bernadette hadn't gotten to the museum much earlier than Klein — most of her time had been spent verifying whether any high-sequence Beyonders or Sealed Artifacts were stationed as guards overnight.
The highest-Sequence guard the museum had arranged turned out to be a Sequence 5. Which was actually unsurprising — everything on display had been cleared through who knew how many layers of confirmation before being deemed "safe" enough to exhibit. Naturally no one felt compelled to post a demigod outside it.
So Bernadette had slipped past all personnel and Sealed Artifacts without incident, entered the study exhibition room, and taken every bookmark in one sweep. That was the precise moment the bathroom explosion went off.
She looked at the Clown's painted face before her and took one slow step forward. "Why did you come for the bookmarks? How did you know to come for bookmarks? What's hidden in them?"
"Is it a Card of Blasphemy?"
"You know there's a Card of Blasphemy hidden somewhere among these bookmarks?"
"!!!"
How does she know?
Only someone who could read Roselle's script would know that. Unless—
Was this woman sent by Charles?
Bernadette walked closer. The dark cracks around Klein expanded, the bloodshot eyeballs within each one widening — as if the whole space was about to be consumed by them.
"Do you know which one it is? Do you know how to activate it?"
With the last question, she raised the Spectator Pathway revolver.
Bang.
The hypnosis bullet grazed light off the muzzle and fired — and in that exact instant, a wide, unmistakable grin spread across the Clown's painted face.
Then the translucent, near-invisible figure simply vanished.
As Klein disappeared, Bernadette noted something: there had been no surprise on her face — no flash of anger. Only a brief, quiet contemplation.
Why?
Klein couldn't answer it. He'd been moving too fast to process it fully. But that expression wasn't a high-sequence Beyonder's emotional control — it was the look of someone who had just understood something.
She saw something in that moment. She figured something out.
What?
Once Bernadette's figure had gone through the Spirit World and returned to York Street, she sank back against the sofa. "Was that 'Clown' Klein?"
"Almost certainly," Vincent said.
Who else would it be?
As for the fact that the Card of Blasphemy's opportunity had been taken from Klein — Vincent wasn't particularly troubled. Klein used the Black Emperor Card in the original novel to leverage power from the Grey Fog. Could he use it similarly to channel power through the Nation of Disorder?
The one thing that did give him pause: without the Card, Klein wouldn't be able to use the Paper Angel. If Amon followed the original story and eventually climbed the Grey Fog through Derrick — Klein would have nothing to resist with.
But Derrick's storyline had completely diverged from the original. He'd never faked a breakdown, never been thrown in the Round Tower, and almost certainly wouldn't be encountering Amon the way it happened in the novel.
While he turned this over, he said aloud: "The Spirit Body appearance is strange though — Klein is a Seer Pathway Beyonder. Why would he appear in Spirit Body form?"
Bernadette shook her head. "Using a Beyonder item to manifest as a Spirit Body isn't particularly difficult. What I genuinely can't explain is why he disappeared so suddenly at the end. That's what I don't understand."
"Do you think… Mr. Fool intervened?"
Bernadette was quiet for a moment. Then: "If that's what happened, it means the one who truly wanted the Card of Blasphemy was the Fool."
"Which says something about Roselle," Vincent said. "The Cards of Blasphemy he made a hundred years ago — even a god finds them interesting enough to want."
"Out of mere curiosity?"
"I'd hope so. Otherwise—"
He trailed off.
"Otherwise the Card of Blasphemy might help Him increase His ability to intervene in the physical world."
"..."
Bernadette's eyes went still, holding the thought.
She raised one hand and produced the bookmarks. "Which one do you think is the Card?"
"Actually, there's a simple test," Vincent said, recalling how Audrey had handled one in the original. "A genuine Card of Blasphemy can't be easily damaged. We could try tearing them one by—"
Bernadette's expression tightened. He could feel it.
These were bookmarks her father had personally used. She had no intention of destroying them.
He caught the shift immediately. "We don't have to tear them. A pin or small nail — press it against each one in turn. If it's the real Card, it'll react in some way."
She didn't adopt that suggestion either. She thought for a moment and said quietly: "What do you think the activation phrase would be?"
If she knew the phrase, she wouldn't need to find the right bookmark at all.
"First, rule out common words — if it were something ordinary, someone might have accidentally activated it years ago. And it can't be something too obscure or specific to Roselle personally, or it would never be found by anyone else." Vincent performed this analysis with the gravity it deserved. "So I'd guess the passphrase might be something Emperor Roselle held dear."
Bernadette looked at the bookmarks. She thought for a moment, then said in Intis:
"Black Emperor."
No reaction.
She tried it in ancient Feysac.
Nothing.
Ancient Hermes.
Still nothing.
"Mm." Vincent ventured: "Emperor Roselle's path to the Black Emperor — I think it was ultimately something he was forced into. Not something he was proud of. So maybe the Black Emperor didn't mean much to him emotionally."
Bernadette said, tone even: "Then what did he care about? By the time he made the Cards, he was already in a state of obsession — almost mania. His entire focus was on building the empire and preparing his Black Emperor advancement. What could he still have genuinely valued?"
Vincent said softly: "You."
"..."
Bernadette went very still for a moment. Her blue eyes lost focus. Then she said, in ancient Hermes:
"Bernadette."
The bookmarks didn't react.
She pressed her lips together slightly — something between expectation and a held breath — and switched to ancient Feysac:
"Bernadette."
A faint tremor of spirituality rippled outward on the word's landing. At the same instant, one of the bookmarks in her hand grew heavy.
It then generated an invisible vortex and began drawing ravenously at Bernadette's consciousness. Several seconds later, clear light began to rise from its surface, and the image of Emperor Roselle it bore transformed.
He sat on an ancient stone throne, wearing a crown of jewels set in black metal, clad in pitch-black armour covered by a cape of the same colour. A sceptre in his hand. Eyes cold, looking forward at nothing.
In the upper-left corner of the bookmark, the brilliance of starlight condensed into a single line of text:
"Sequence 0: Black Emperor!"
Then the bookmark became three-dimensional — like a miniature book.
The book turned without wind, showing a new image of Roselle — in a white hood now — with accompanying text in ancient Feysac:
"Sequence 9: Lawyer."
Bernadette stared at the Card of Blasphemy. In a small, quiet voice, she said:
"It really was my name."
To be continued…
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