The room was quiet for a long while. It settled all over the room like a dead thing. Ark remained silent, there was no sign that he was breathing. His only sign of life was in his ever deepening frown and the blinking of his eyes.

  Melmarc remained quiet on the bed as his half-folded clothes stood witness to what was about to happen. He hadn’t wanted to tell Ark about meeting the Player.

  Norman.

  He could still remember the man’s name. The strong features of the man’s face as he had watched him in confusion. The pain. Melmarc couldn’t forget a single detail. A deep part of him believed that no one alive could wipe that memory from his face, but he was no fool.

  Emotions did not overwrite reality. He knew this.

  “You met him,” Ark said very slowly, finally breaking the silence.

  Melmarc nodded. Perhaps this had been the wrong decision. Telling Ark had been an impulsive decision, something to ease the tension. Ark had told him an experience that had been close to his heart, an experience that had moved him. Melmarc had thought that it was only right to share something of his own. They didn’t keep secrets from each other after all. At least not secrets this deep.

  But he’d also known how Ark felt about the player. Unlike him, Ark was not against the man. He did not hate him. Melmarc understood this.

  Melmarc nodded very slowly to Ark’s statement because it was not a question. “I did.”

  “In the portal?”

  Melmarc shook his head. “In his world.”

  “How different was it? Spitfire says the worlds are often very different. Was it—”

  “It was exactly like our own,” Melmarc said, interrupting him. “Normal people, but they called their Gifted players, just the way we call them. They also have superheroes. When I met him I think he was in a problem with a supervillain… I think.”

  “Did you help?”

  Melmarc pressed his lips into a thin line. He’d helped. In hindsight, maybe he should have allowed the villain achieve victory.

  You hate him but it doesn’t make you a monster.

  He wasn’t going to let the bad guy win just because he hated the innocent person. He wasn’t that far gone, and thinking about it made him a little calmer. His hate did not consume him. In fact, if he was being honest, his hate wasn’t even very active, it was just there, relaxing in the back of his mind. It hadn’t tried to consume him until he’d seen the man, after all.

  “I helped,” he said, remembering the villain in his spandex and how he had won. In a more quiet voice, he said once more, “I helped.”

  “Did you fight him?” Ark asked, there was something in his voice that Melmarc couldn’t quite place.

  “I did not.”

  “Good,” Ark muttered, “good. If you see him again, don’t try to fight him. I’m not going to ask you to thank him but the least you can do is just leave him alone.”

  “Why?”

  “BECAUSE HE’S THE REASON MOM GOT TO LIVE!!!!” Ark snapped. “Why don’t you get it? You’re reasonable, smart. You can’t just lose all IQ when it comes to him. It makes no sense. You have a brain that works better than mine.” He rose from his seat and took Melmarc by the shoulders. “Use it, Mel. Fucking use it.”

  Melmarc gritted his teeth, his anger rising. “Why do I have to?”

  “If you don’t, then who will?” Ark asked. “If you and I somehow end up in front of him what happens? Will you fight me? Because I’ll be stuck protecting him as thanks for saving mom’s life and you’ll be stuck fighting me for what? What’s your reason, Mel?”

  Melmarc opened his mouth and paused. He wasn’t sure that he had any words. He knew he hated Norman. He knew why but couldn’t articulate it. It was just there. All he knew was the feeling that came with the Player. The hate of watching his mother get beat down by some intruder that had no reason being there.

  “Mel.”

  Ark’s voice snapped him out of it, and he looked up at his brother.

  “You hate him,” Ark said simply. “You hate him because he beat mom up.”

  Melmarc nodded. “It hurts just thinking about it.”

  “But you were not awake to watch him lie to his own teammates to protect us and keep mom alive.”

  “I was not.”

  “But you believe that he did, right?”

  Melmarc nodded. “You wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “Really?” Ark snorted in amusement. “I lie to you every time—”

  Dissonant.

  “—but you’re right. I won’t lie to you about this one.”

  “I believe that you didn’t lie to me,” Melmarc confirmed.

  “Then what is the right thing to do?” Ark looked into his eyes. “Will you judge a man for how he has made you feel or for what he has done?”

  “What he has done,” he answered easily. There was no contest.

  Ark nodded, sighing in relief. “Good. For a moment I thought you were going to say logic be damned on this one.”

  “I want to, I really do.” Melmarc sighed. “But that’s not who I am.” He scratched the back of his neck. “We don’t punish him just because we don’t like him. Justice doesn’t work that way.”

  “Justice smushstice,” Ark scowled. “This has nothing to do with justice. This is about you. Justice can go to the courts where it belongs. We are sparing him because you are the type of person that will spare him because of his actions.”

  Melmarc gave Ark a skeptical look. “Doesn’t that mean that I can still punish him for how I feel? You’re kind of contradicting yourself here.”

  “No. What it means is that you won’t punish him because I said so and went the extra mile to give you reasons why I said you shouldn’t punish him.”

  “So… favoritism?”

  Ark snapped his finger. “Now you’re getting it. He is spared from you because I asked it of you.”

  “Just like that?”

  Ark laughed, finally releasing him to pick the toiletries up from the table. “Just like that, brother mine. Just like that.”

  With a shake of his head, and a small smile on his lips despite the thoughts of Norman in his head, Melmarc went back to folding his clothes.

  “By the way, Spitfire wants to know how you traversed worlds,” Ark said suddenly. “I traverse with him, how do you traverse?”

  “I didn’t.” Melmarc shrugged, hands moving through the motion of folding clothes. “There was something called a void beast that helped with that. He took… it took?... He took some [EP] from me and sent us to that world.”

  “One identical to ours with humans and everything?”

  “Yep. He wanted me to meet the Player.”

  “It was instigating?”

  “Not really. It didn’t want me to fight.” Melmarc’s hands paused in folding the clothes just before he said the next part. “I had a chance to kill Norman but he stopped me before I could. Said that it wasn’t me, it wasn’t something I would do.”

  “I see,” Ark mused. “I guess I owe this void beast my gratitude for not allowing my brother to become a murderer.”

  Melmarc smiled slightly at the thought of Veebee. “You do. I think it likes eating people, so maybe get it someone to eat as a gift.”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “I’ll think about it. Now pack up.” Ark twirled, remind Melmarc that they’d taken an interest in ballet once as children. “We move tomorrow, then it’s off to being students of Fallen High.”

  …

  The tabernacle stared back at him, silent as the night beyond.

  Melchizedek was panicking, but he could not let the others know. It was not the place of the leader to look weak before their followers. Masking his frown with a casual presence, he placed his hand on the altar and waited.

  [You have used Oath skill Divine Call]

  Please work, he begged, knowing that he was running out of time. Things were happening on earth that he could no longer keep in check. Stray Oaths, love between Oaths, secrets known by Oaths not of Secret.

  Worse, the sign of the end times had come.

  The altar beneath his hand glowed a soft golden, prying a small real smile from his face. He was triumphant. This time something was happening. The chances of success looked him in the eye and caressed his face. Hope asked him to count on it… and let him down.

  [You are currently in an Isolated World]

  [Oath skill Divine Call does not take effect]

  The altar’s glowed died back into nonexistence.

  FUUUUUUUUCK! He cursed in his mind. Why?

  He turned his sight away from the altar to a congregation of priests clad in their priestly robes. Each one had a stoic expression, the lack of hope did not show on their faces. Melchizedek saw nothing in the way of worry.

  They stood firmly with him.

  “Everyone,” he said, addressing them in a calm voice. “Please give me the room.”

  Without arguments, the priests flooded out. There were no murmurs, no exchange of words. Nothing. They moved away patiently. Melchizedek waited as patiently as the priests until he was the only one left in the room.

  Alone, he fell to his knees, then sat on the ground. He was tired, strained. He couldn’t continue to guide Salem without guidance. He was reaching levels that were now above him. This generation of Oaths had love between Madness and War. It was supposed to be an impossibility.

  Chaos and Order were not supposed to fall in love so deeply that they tolerated each other. It made no sense. It was impossible to deal with Oaths united in a way that went against their very beings.

  They even have children, he thought, running a hand down his face.

  “How?”

  It didn’t make sense. Three children that he could not…

  “They have three children,” he muttered.

  Who were their three children? He could’ve sworn by the name of God that he knew all three names. He had been keeping an eye on them after all. Moving to rise to his feet, he discarded the thought and settled back in. For a moment, he thought something was wrong, but it was not possible.

  He was in Salem. He was practically invincible here by order of his title as Melchizedek. There was no Oath that could kill him here or win a fight against him. However, while an Oath could not come in without his permission, he could not make an Oath remain against their own will.

  Quietly, he turned his eyes to the tabernacle once more. He had been its guardian for years on end, used it multiple times. At some point, he had taken it for granted as all people tend to do with things that worked and belonged to them. Now he missed it. He missed the guidance that came with it.

  He missed knowing that it worked whenever he willed it.

  Melchizedek sat in place, silent. He sighed in defeat. He doubted the other Oaths knew, but the silence of the portals was only the first stage of the apocalypse. There was nothing that they could do about it but wait.

  The problem, however, was in the waiting.

  “And the [August Intruder] shall look within himself and wonder how to stop it,” he muttered, quoting scriptures that were not scriptures. “Then one day, against his will and ability, the world will descend into chaos.”

  That would be the herald of the end times. That would be the beginning of the apocalypse. The portals will leave, then something would happen and chaos would reign.

  His problem was in not knowing what would happen. Melchizedek couldn’t guide the world without knowing what would happen. If he had access to the [August Intruder], all this would be easier to deal with. He could grant useful advice, good guidance.

  “Why don’t I know who it is?” he snapped.

  He was supposed to know who it was. The teachings that had guided him for so long claimed that he would know. He would feel the [August Intruder] and be aware of them. But he could not feel who it was. He was not aware of them.

  “But Madness is,” he reminded himself.

  He scratched at his scalp. The problem was how Madness was determined to keep it a secret. Did the [August Intruder] have some kind of ability that could bring even Madness to silence? There were no records advising him or his predecessors that the [August Intruder] had any true control over the Oaths. All it said was that the [August Intruder] would rise above the Oaths, that the world would not be able to survive the apocalypse without the [August Intruder].

  What else? He thought, hoping to find some type of answer in the records he knew.

  The [August Intruder] would be the path to growth. They would be the only ones truly capable of pushing the Oaths beyond whatever limits they faced.

  He scratched his head once more as all his memories brought him no answer, no help.

  Aurora knows who he is, he thought, considering another angle. Perhaps he could bargain with her, explain why having access to the [August Intruder] would be in everyone’s favor. If he showed her the records, shared what he knew, maybe she would understand that he did not have his own personal agenda, that everything he did was for the sake of the world.

  “She would understand, wouldn’t she?”

  She had to, she was War. The necessary had to be done. The apocalypse, after all, was were she was supposed to stand supreme. There was nothing grander than…

  But she wasn’t War, not anymore.

  She was an anomaly. An Oath who had done the impossible of losing their Oath-hood. Nothing was making any sense. The last decade was not making any sense. Fallen High was a school with a problem within it, but its problem was easily overlooked.

  They weren’t harming the children, so he wasn’t concerned… yet.

  Desolation had been shamed in the last Oath meeting. From his update on the Oath, the man had locked himself up on some island somewhere. Chances were that if there were still portals opening, he would’ve thrown himself into one to lose himself.

  The man just had to be happy that he had made it out of that meeting with his life intact. He’d also come out with a lesson but Melchizedek doubted Desolation would agree with it. He had been shown the hubris of Oath-hood. The false belief that they had no equal except their fellow Oaths.

  Shield was still trying to figure out what Aurora planned to do with the monster corpse that she had taken from her as payment. There was the case of her having an armor made, but that was not important.

  He could look into Shield but he didn’t have to. Inevitability had her kept in check.

  Melchizedek’s focus was on keeping the world intact.

  Motivated once more, he rose from the ground. Standing tall, he stalked up to the altar and placed his hand on it once more.

  Come on, Melchizedek, answer me.

  [You have used Oath skill Divine Call]

  The altar glowed once more but Melchizedek did not let hope lure him. He waited, watching the soft golden glow. Despite expecting it, the disappointment still hit him like a gut punch when the glow died out.

  [You are currently in an Isolated World]

  [Oath skill Divine Call does not take effect]

  “WHAT’S THE POINT OF A COMMUNICATION SYSTEM IF IT DOESN’T WORK, MELCHIZEDEK!?” he roared.

  …

  The room smelled of blood and pain. Pain had no smell, but Naymond could’ve sworn that he could smell it.

  He was currently sitting on a metal table, cleaning one of his guns with his eyes closed. [World of Insight] had hit forty percent in mastery and he had specialized, upgrading the skill rather than acquiring a new one.

  A few hours ago Madness had looked him in the eye in the most terrifying way and told him not to pick the call of the woman who had chosen him. Thirty minutes ago, Aurora had started blowing up Naymond’s phone.

  Right now, Naymond was stuck between a rock and a very hard place. In fact, he was stuck between death and anti-life. The expression was a bit dramatic, but it was aptly dramatic as far as he was concerned.

  Alone in the room, surrounded by blood, broken bones, and people groaning from the pain inflicted upon them, Naymond wondered not for the first time if he could simply just run away from Madness.

  The Oath was currently off somewhere, doing things that Naymond didn’t know and wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Five minutes ago he had heard rampant laughter in Madness’ voice.

  He’s losing it with every passing day.

  It worried him. Madness had been terrifying in his unpredictability before. Now, he was terrifying in his madness.

  Naymond opened his eyes and checked the work on his gun. The weapon was pristine. Done with that, he holstered it and was about to check his phone for any message from Anji when movement to his side stopped him.

  “Please…” a woman missing her lower body croaked. “Please… kill… me.”

  Madness had ripped her in half after she’d bombarded him with countless ice spells that had failed to draw a single drop of blood.

  Naymond’s lips puckered in thought as he watched her. Years on this world and he still saw all of them as enemies. He didn’t hate everybody. God knew he’d actually grown to like some of them. But by default, he didn’t like any of the adults until he got to know them. Why? Because this world was a reason his world lacked the chance of being saved. This world was the reason he had to leave behind everything he knew and loved to come to a world where he knew nothing.

  Taking his gaze away from her, he picked his hat up and placed it on his head. He positioned it properly before unlocking his phone and checking Anji’s message.

  He frowned at what he saw.

  Ariadne met a man at the docks, it read. He seems to be powerful. I watched him kill a man with a touch.

  Naymond didn’t know of a skill that killed people with just a touch. Maybe there was more to it that Anji missed. He skimmed through the message. It was long, detailing the things that Ariadne was doing.

  The foolish woman was trying to make her way to Tatelat. She was looking for connections to Fallen High. The reason didn’t require much thought. Melmarc was famous since a video of him jumping of a plane going to Tatelat after saving it had gone viral.

  His best guess was that she would be trying to find her way to Fallen High eventually. Naymond didn’t worry much. Fallen High was not an easy place to get into. It was also a very eerie place.

  He’d been there twice and knew that something was wrong with the school. He just didn’t know what exactly it was.

  The man that kills people with a touch refused to tell us his name, just that he wanted to help, the end of Anji’s message wrote. But he’s strong, very strong.

  An SS-rank, maybe? Naymond wondered. The thing about this world was that there were more Gifted than it knew. S-ranks and SS-ranks were more than people knew. There was a reason people liked to say that there were officially a certain number of S-ranks and SS-ranks.

  There were those who ranked up and didn’t report it to the government. Then there were those who simply hid away from the government.

  Heck, he doubted the members of the Romanian council he was currently after had their true ranks registered with their government.

  Oh, Naymond paused, looking down at his phone. Anji’s typing.

  He waited a little as the indicator popped up on the screen. It was there for a while.

  He must have a lot to say.

  It was still there as Madness’ voice came through the distance.

  “Oh, cry me a river,” he said sarcastically in the most normal tone possible.

  At this rate, the man might’ve lost it and Naymond wouldn’t even know.

  Anji’s message finally came through. Naymond read it and paled.

  Mr. Hitchcock, it read, what’s an Oath?