Rules Written in Blood (6)
2.
— Written by Torres
“……”
Yuel and Najin fell silent as they turned the pages of the diary.
The book in Yuel’s hands was stiff with bloodstains. Years had passed, yet the blood had never flaked away; it had hardened into part of the book itself.
Starlight was unmistakably nested in those stains.
It was a pitiful starlight compared to the starlight of transcendents like Najin or Yuel—a scrap too small to become a star of its own. That a human who had never claimed even one star had managed to imprint starlight onto an object was a genuine feat, and yet…
Not enough.
Najin, a transcendent who had spent his life resisting the authorities of other transcendents, knew.
This alone would never be enough.
By sheer luck it might resist a transcendent’s power a few times. But that was all. The faint starlight left in those bloodstains could never make this book a true Star Relic.
It shouldn’t be possible.
And yet—why did the book still look like one?
“……It isn’t finished yet.”
“What?”
“There is a great deal of the diary still left.”
Yuel pointed to the remaining pages. They had only examined the beginning; far more remained unread.
A brief exchange of glances, and Yuel turned the page.
In that instant something changed. The moment her fingertip brushed a bloodstain, the moment she made to turn to the next page, the book shimmered with starlight.
“Ah.”
The starlight Yuel carried and the starlight within the book answered each other. Starlight flowing from her body mingled with the starlight nested in the pages. And so the starlight took form.
「…….」
Someone was seated in the lord’s chamber.
It was an illusion—nothing more than a human of the past reconstructed in starlight. A middle-aged man of some unknown era held a single book in his hands.
He hid the book in a corner of the chamber and closed his eyes. His hands were folded in prayer. A moment later his body crumbled into powder and scattered.
He had been deconstructed.
Najin knew at once that the middle-aged man was Torres, the original owner of the book. After Torres vanished, a little time passed and a new phantom appeared in the corner of the chamber. This one was different.
Where Torres had been slight, the newcomer was a sturdy youth. He paced the room, stopped before a wall cabinet, stared at it, tilted his head, and then, as if drawn by something, touched the cabinet.
And so, by pure chance, he found the book.
The instant he opened it, Yuel’s fingers moved as well. She opened the book in time with him. For a while the youth sat and read; then his expression twisted.
I have carefully read the words of the one who came before me.
I do not know whether I am the very next after him, but I too am someone who fell into this city. And somehow I have ended up with the lord’s seat.
The information you left was helpful.
I will make escape my goal. There is too much unfinished business outside; I have no wish to end my life here.
Letters began to appear on the diary’s pages.
The figure of the youth seated in the chamber began to change as well.
Method 1, attempted.
Failed.
Method 2, attempted.
Failed.
3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 27, 41, 117……
Failed.
The once-vital face of the youth hardened. Wrinkles multiplied across it. The gentle young man shouted at someone, clutched his head, and groaned.
1,152nd attempt.
Failed.
He wrote down every method he had tried, then stared at the book with empty eyes. And then he took his own life. The blood of the youth who had become middle-aged soaked the pages.
His form deconstructed. Hermann’s experiment ended, and the next experiment began.
The next figure to appear in the lord’s chamber was a young woman. She, too, found the book by chance. After she opened it and read every word, she let out a hollow laugh.
There is no way to escape.
There is no way to resist.
A being high above that distant sky has already decided our fates. A transcendent existence more than worthy of the name of god has decided our fates—what, then, can we possibly do?
She was looking at something beyond the window. The light had gone out of her eyes. Gazing at the world with those vacant eyes, she wrote in the diary.
With a single gesture of a transcendent, my child died. My friends died. My comrades vanished without a trace. Thrashing about in this world is a meaningless act.
Worthless. Pointless.
After writing those words she left the chamber. Time flowed. Even with the years racing past, a considerable span elapsed before she returned.
When she had first sat in that seat she had looked about thirty; now she looked well past fifty. The middle-aged woman opened the diary without a word.
Over the years I watched ants.
Even in a world made by a transcendent, there are insects. Tiny ants clung to the buildings and gnawed at their foundations. I observed those ants for a long time.
One year, two years, ten years—the ants kept gnawing at the pillars. And in the end they brought an entire building down.
……
Even those tiny ants can topple a structure thousands, tens of thousands of times their own size.
Then what am I? Am I a being lesser than those insects? Perhaps. It may well be so.
The woman smiled.
Then at the very least, let me become an insect.
Better to be something on the level of a bug than something less than a bug. Below are the things I learned while enduring twenty-three years in this city.
I hope this information can leave even the smallest scratch on the city.
Her form deconstructed. Yuel turned the next page in silence. With every page, a new human shape appeared and vanished in turn.
Fuck, what the hell am I supposed to do?
Can’t escape. Can’t hold out. Everyone curses me. What exactly do they want from me?
Not everyone left useful information. Some hurled the book across the room in rage; some screamed until they hanged themselves.
I did everything I could.
It doesn’t seem to have meant anything after all.
Others were killed by people who stormed into the lord’s chamber.
That Star Relic business—doesn’t it just need strong obsession to finish?
I’m not clever enough to leave special information like the others, so I’ll do something simple.
I tortured myself every day. Sometimes I dragged in prisoners and tortured them too, and stained the pages with their blood.
I hope it helps.
Still others chose to strengthen the starlight already nested in the book. And so the book was passed to the next lord, and the next after that.
I was an astronomer outside these walls.
Watching the stars of the night sky, I began to see patterns. Whenever those stars moved, something changed in the city.
In my turn the deconstruction and reassembly described by the previous lords did not occur, but other problems did. In any case, it is clear they are tied to the movements of those stars.
I will leave a method for reading the stars.
The astronomer left a way to read the stars, and a way to link their motion to the events that struck the city.
Um… I don’t think I can write anything as impressive as the people before me. Still, what I know is about farming.
It turns out farming is possible even in this city.
Below are the methods I tried.
Food does fall from the sky, enough that no one has to starve—but people still need vegetables.
A farmer left methods of cultivation.
I was a judge.
This city seems to need laws as well. I have laid down the barest framework; I hope you will complete it.
A judge left the foundations of law.
I am.
I.
I myself.
This humble one.
I do not know if it will help.
Even a little.
For now.
The methods I attempted are as follows.
This is.
Well.
I don’t really know, but still.
But.
Countless people touched the diary and passed on. Countless lords stayed in the chamber and then vanished. Some left something behind; some poured out their rage; some used what had been left to discover something new; some made mistakes, and those errors were corrected only after several more turns had gone by.
Information gathered, was sifted, was discovered, and through that long chain a rulebook began to take shape.
Rules that must be upheld—a code of conduct.
And rules written by one's own hand—a handwritten law.
How to survive in this city. How to read the will of the stars. How to flee deconstruction. Advice that might help anyone trying to play the part of lord.
And so a rulebook stained in blood was written down, line by line.
I am an ordinary human.
The youth who inherited the next turn read the rulebook.
With a complicated expression he turned the pages of the diary.
I have no remarkable talent. I hold no remarkable conviction. I am simply an ordinary human who wants to live as long as possible.
That means I did not sit in the lord’s seat because I had some special goal like the others. I only wandered looking for the safest place I could find, and that is how I ended up here.
He groaned.
And so I am ashamed.
Reading this diary, I feel envy.
Everyone else is trying to leave something behind, and I have nothing worth writing.
Would it be right to pass it to someone else?
He took a coin from his pocket. He rolled it across his palm, then flicked it with a soft tung.
If it comes up heads, I step down from this seat.
If it comes up tails, I take the lordship.
The coin landed tails. And so the youth accepted the seat. From then on, whenever a choice arose, he flipped the coin. He trusted his luck and entrusted his fate to it.
The youth survived for a long time.
After so many years the youth—now more properly called a middle-aged man—looked at the worn coin in his hand. Then he wrote in the diary.
Turning over the information written here, one question has come to me. It is a problem the ones before me named “the unsolvable.” Perhaps I can solve it.
But it will require a challenge.
Standing before that challenge, my body trembles. I am afraid. Whether I succeed or fail, I will certainly die.
The hand that wrote the diary was shaking.
The odds of success are slim.
I will almost certainly fail.
It is a stupid thing to do.
It is not the sort of thing a man who wants to live a long time should attempt. And yet—why do I feel I must try? Reading this diary must have driven me mad as well.
The middle-aged man who had once been a youth gave a short laugh.
If it comes up heads, I will try.
If it comes up tails, I will not.
He tossed the coin high. Age had stolen the easy catch of his youth; fear made his hands shake as well.
Tung.
The coin bounced off the back of his hand, struck the desk, and fell to the floor.
It landed somewhere he could not see from where he sat.
He did not move. For a long while he remained in his chair. Then he lifted the quill. Without checking the coin, he wrote a single line in the diary.
It is heads.
He closed the diary, returned it to its place, and rose. He took the coat from the wall and prepared to go out. As he gathered the last of his things he happened to glance at the coin on the floor.
It was tails.
Without a word he picked it up and set it on the desk, heads up. Then he left the lord’s chamber. His hands no longer trembled.
What he did after that cannot be known.
What can be known is this: the moment he stepped out of the chamber, the entire city shuddered. Through him, something changed.
“……”
Yuel turned the next page.
Little of the diary remained now. This would likely be the final turn. The moment she turned the page, someone’s phantom appeared in the lord’s chamber.
“Ah.”
Yuel’s mouth opened.
Her gaze, which had been fixed on the diary, locked onto the phantom that had formed in the chamber. Her eyes trembled.
They could not help it.
The phantom now standing in the lord’s chamber was the man who had taken her in when she first fell into this city—the godfather who had entrusted her with “what came next.”