Chapter Ten: The Choice between Hell

  The silence was empty and was a presence. The silence pressed against their ears, a cold weight that made the memory of sound a distant echo. For Mo Fei, in his half-deaf world. It was almost a relief, one with neutral grounding and another with howling wind they'd left behind.

  All four of them stared at the two openings, two paths of hell.

  To the right was the path to ‘Trasia’. The air from it was faintly warmer, carrying a distant, almost imperceptible scent of woodsmoke, and livingly human life. The light from the right path had a soft, golden hue, promising that it made sense. This path was a world of walls, masters, nobles and slaves. A dozen known quantities of suffering.

  While on the left was a fissure. It exhaled a breath of air so cold and dry with a faint acrid scent of petrified bones. The light coming within the path was dull, dimming the showroom of forgotten things. It promised nothing but a throat waiting to swallow.

  Han’s face held the grim expression of a man who had seen too many roads that ended tragically. ‘Trasia’ was on this way. His resignation was a physical thing. "That way leads back to the world. To the ‘Overseer’. To the whip, and the collar." He didn’t look at them and said one last sentence. “It is an understandable death.”

  Elara wrapped her arms around herself. “The other… The stories call it the 'Quiet that Eats'. So many stories that those who choose this way don't leave behind even a memory.” Her voice was a fragile thing in the muffling air.

  Grig simply clutched his fist, his knuckles white. His language was of an action. He was ready to fight the devil he knew. The ‘Overseer’. ‘He’ was also made of flesh, and flesh could be broken.

  Mo Fei listened with his one good ear, it didn't work, but he watched frequently. And he watched the golden light from Trasia’s path. It was inviting. It was a ‘Dream-Weaver’s’ lure. Food offered in a beautiful plate to a starving man, taking this path meant knowing it was poison.

  Then Mo Fei looked at the fissure path. The absolute unknown. The negation. It was the total opposite of everything the Dream-Weaver represented. Dull, lifeless and food offered on dirty plates, and they said it's poisonous in their face.

  Mo Fei thought taking any of these paths would lead them to ‘Dream Weaver’, no take-back.

  “We will go this way,” Mo Fei said, his voice flat and final in the dead air. He pointed at the path toward ‘Trasia’; he decided this not because it served him perfection, but because if he had to drink poison either way, then why would he drink it from a dirty, uncleaned glass?

  Three faces turned to him, painted with different shades of the same fear.

  “Why?” Elara breathed; her question stopped the silence from increasing. Mo Fei gave her a ridiculous look of confusion; he couldn't hear her fragile voice. Elara shook her head. She made a hand sign that said ‘Why’.

  He understood and answered. "Because," Mo Fei paused, meeting Han's knowing gaze that shows an understanding, then his eyes lingered on Grig's defiant one. "If both light and shadow take us to darkness, why would I choose shadow to reach darkness when I can go with light? If both paths are predestined, why would I act foolishly and choose the eerie one just to increase my hardship?"

  Mo Fei took a step toward the golden light, the light stretched his shadow long and thin behind him, it reached back toward the silent ‘fissure’ like a tether he was severing.

  “We can't escape so let's deliver a message instead.” By the term ‘Message’, Mo Fei stated that a ‘Slave’, a dull blade could pierce the chain of fate.

  Han’s stoic eyes searched Mo Fei’s face. Han saw not the reckless boy from the slave line and just another number of slaves, but a strategist or a young boy trying to survive in cruelty. “Do you believe that meeting the known devil is safe?”

  “I believe… though we don't have any options left, right?”

  He didn't wait for agreement. He had chosen this for himself. To follow was their decision. Mo Fei knew he wasn't here to be the hero; he was here to survive; he helped them to escape ‘Cathedral of Flesh’; now it was their choice what they'd choose. But he knew the choice was obvious.

  A heartbeat later, behind him, they joined him, Grig, then Han, then finally… with a soundless sob that was only a shudder of her shoulders, Elara stepped forward, and they also knew choosing it was a better option when both paths would lead them to the same destination.

  Mo Fei leads forward into the palace of an unknowable God. Mo Fei felt a single clear thought amidst the numbness:

  “This is the first rule I have ever authored for myself: When all choices are hells, choose the one whose devil you can look in the eyes.”

  They entered the cave, the moments of hesitation now distant. The second they step onto the path of ‘Trasia’, the air changed, the silent cold pressure lifts, replaced by a warm humidity and a soft scent of incense and faint cloying perfume. The golden light resolves. It was not emanating from any source, but it was a property of air itself. This all was like living in a perpetual late afternoon glow.

  “Hmph, this place is definitely comfortable, but it's not enough to make me sleep.” Mo Fei chanted some random words. The warmth of the place was a strange comfort, but Mo Fei didn't feel any familiarity with this place.

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  Han looked around at the walls. They were polished with honey coloured Ambers, a beauty of architecture and within those Ambers were sealed insects who somehow managed to get into it and froze their time for eternity. A hint of a knowing look appeared on his face.

  “Rest assured, we are in a temple. The Forsaken Chamber of Gods.” Grig’s footsteps paced in a circle. He had heard about this temple before.

  “If this is really the temple, then we are on the outskirts of ‘Trasia?,” Grig said, his voice no longer fighting; he had calmed down. Mo Fei once again had that ridiculous look, he couldn't hear clearly, but a few words had hit his ear: ‘Gods’. Mo Fei’s eyes landed on Elara, curiously reaching out her hand toward the warm amber, but quickly took back once she realized the recklessness.

  Mo Fei asked. “I couldn't hear what you meant by Gods.” Han’s stoic eyes stared at him for a second before he sighed and inhaled a deep breath, as he explained it neutrally. Then Han stated more things.

  “And this temple is for the thirteen Gods holding their supreme title; however, there used to be a God that is forgotten, no one remembers him. No one knows him. But everyone prays to him. But the name is forgotten.” Heavy information was dumped on Mo Fei through Han. Suddenly his mind shifted back to last evening, a slave one of us was also praying to the god that he had forgotten. Which was now clear to him, ‘why?’

  Elara’s feet suddenly hit something as she fell beneath her was just a stone. Grig helped her to stand up again. Mo Fei stared down at the rock, deep in thought. One thing that he could collect was that twelve gods were still out there leading his own facts to break apart; he had thought that only ‘Architect’ was behind it all; now his purpose of pursuing ‘Him’ would not be easy.

  Mo Fei’s eyes landed on his ribbon, glowing with the same moonlit, faint silver glow of letter 肆 (4). It had been a while since he looked at it. Everything he had believed in was not the truth. What if this ribbon wasn't tied to the “Architect” What if he was pursuing the wrong person?

  He tilted his head in front of the path. A few meters away on the left side were thirteen gates of different gods.

  Grig broke the silence.

  “Why are we standing here?”

  “Obviously, to admire the so-called beauty of a temple.” Mo Fei managed to put the dots together of Grig's words and replied in a witty remark, a moment of being his teenage self. He was not feeling familiar, yet this place was undeniably those comforting places.

  “I never heard this tone before…” Grig said with a half-hearted.

  “Long time to know me, you may hear this again if the situation is light.” Mo Fei’s voice sounded flat. Elara's lips stifled a small, soft laugh; her expression was now at ease.

  Han also chuckled lightheartedly for the first time. He had gotten the moments of freedom once again, then Han spoke.

  “Mo Fei, you are really a complex man. But I might understand you and your will someday.” He moved his hand toward the way. “Let's get going.”

  Mo Fei’s thoughts on this were. “It's better at least.” He had no better thoughts or he couldn't think more due to his being half deaf now; his wound on his side was stopped, but pain remained, and he knew it too, but he moved anyway, and others followed him for support.

  As they stopped near the gates. Mo Fei placed a hand on the iron door. A cold sensation. He tried to push open the door, but it was shut tightly. It might not have been opened for a while. Mo Fei tried to do his best and, in the end, sat down on the stairs.

  “I should have gone to the gym. Now I'm crying over no strength.” Mo Fei thought in a humorous way but he didn't sit down because of this but he was exhausted from walking for hours.

  “Should we open this?” Grig asked.

  “Not necessary,” Han answered.

  “Let's take a rest then.” Elara joined in.

  “Now there is no danger, Grig, you can break your chains.” Hearing this from Mo Fei, Grig nodded gently indeed. It was the perfect place. Han came forward to help Grig.

  A few minutes passed, Grig was free from the chains, and they all sat together to discuss the next steps.

  Just in that moment, a thing fell from the ceiling of a temple. Mo Fei quickly stood up when he realized what it was. His heart racing as he quickly ran towards it, others were surprised by the sudden action, but they also followed him.

  As Mo Fei reached the thirteenth gate in the ground… There was a feather, not just a feather, but it was “Ji Yu”. His hand quickly took it, and his instinct said it was clear that it indeed was “Ji Yu”. His hand kept clenching it, but nothing happened. He felt no burning pain. He was still here.

  His head tilted upward for a microsecond, he saw something dissolving and disappearing with an almost smug expression it might be an “Imagination”, then his eyes lay on the gate, there was written something on a page, and that page was not a prehistoric paper, it was a paper of modern time, pinned there. One name he hadn't heard before was ‘Jian Yue’.

  “The Forsaken Chamber lies behind the sealed heart. A choice is often long-lasting. If you want to survive, you must choose an ‘Authority’ so open any door and do the ritual that is written there." — Jian Yue.

  And at the bottom was another note.

  “I'll explain everything once we meet. The chosen ones are chosen by destiny."

  With this note ended. First, I got the clue from Lin, now from this new person, but the most important thing to notice was that this note was written a few hours ago. Almost as if someone was waiting and then had to move forward, leaving the hint.

  “Choose one authority and… do the ritual…?” I looked at the gate where a symbol was embedded. A Single, Fractal Feather with quill tips: Not just Ji Yu feathers. It was a wing whose central shaft was a ruler marked with immeasurable, sometimes small growths. Its barbs were geometric lines, like fan ribs or bridge struts.

  At its base, the calamus sharpens into a quill point, dripping a shimmer of primal void-static, not ink. That was merging the ‘feather of calamity? “Ji Yu with the tools of a drafter and a writer of reality. In an archaic mandarin beneath it was written.

  ‘The Path of the Architect.’

  ‘The Authority of the Spirit world’

  ‘The Authority over Fundamental Reality’

  ‘The Embodiment of Spirit and Worlds’

  ‘The Ruler of the Creation’

  ………

  ………

  ………

  ………

  And other sentences were broken, and Mo Fei couldn't understand some of them.

  “Grig, Han. I need you to open this gate. Could you help me?” Mo Fei requested his tone once again, no longer witty but dedicated; he had chosen it. He'd chosen this ‘Authority.’

  Grig and Han exchanged a look. This was beyond breaking chains or fighting monsters, or escaping living execution. This was touching the divinity, a path towards it.

  “You’re certain?” Han’s voice was low and serious, his eyes on the impossible feather-symbol. “This is not a path for slaves or soldiers. We are humans, Mo Fei. Even looking at divinity could kill us… And worse to look upon a god is to invite it to completely reject your humanity.”

  “I’m certain,” Mo Fei said, his own voice sounding distant in his half-deaf world; it was a sound of dedication. “It’s the only one that makes sense. I don’t want to dream, or map, or curate. I want to understand the rules. All that I want is the idea of getting ‘Home’. This,” He pointed at the gate, “is what built the cage. I'll have to learn it… somehow.”

  Grig cracked his knuckles; the sound was swallowed up by the dense air. “I believe in your strategy. A gate is a gate. Tell us where to push.”

  Han heard it, though he still hesitated; the path of divinity was simply a vow to kill the god to achieve the Godhood. Yet he accepted, and they positioned themselves at the vast iron-bound doors. The metal was cold, but the symbol of the Fractal Feather seemed warm with a faint, silver light, reacting to the “Ji Yu” in Mo Fei’s hand.

  “On three push,” Han said.

  As they strained against the immovable metal, Mo Fei acted. Jian Yue’s note said ‘do the ritual’. Certainly, the ritual couldn't be just opening the door.

  The fractal feather on the gate blazed to life when they pushed it; it started shining with the same moonlit silver as his ribbon. Then the gate opened.

  An echo of deep THRUM passed through the door, through the stone, through their bones. A vibration.

  The massive gates unfolded. The gate then completely swings open. receding into a tunnel of blinding white light.

  Mo Fei staggered as his head started to ache, and the wound in his side opened up again.

  “Mo Fei!” Elara’s cry was a muffled concern he saw on her face.

  Before them, now a path that wasn’t a room. It was a conceptual space. The walls, floor, and ceiling were shifting, transparent blueprints and glowing golden ratios. Floating in the center was a single well but it wasn't filled with any absurd liquid; it was empty and not deeper than half a meter. And there was a table made of perfect metal, and there lay a double-edged Glaive.

  It wasn't to fight, but Mo Fei was thinking what could be the ‘Ritual’ as his eyes stared down at the double-edged Glaive.

  Han, Grig, and Elara stood at the threshold; they tried but were unable to enter. This space was for Mo Fei alone.

  “What does this all mean? What do I have to do?” Mo Fei muttered, trying to understand terrifying clarity. The glaive… Using it would mean interacting directly with the cosmic code. The cost would be unimaginable. Without knowing the ‘Ritual’, he entered.

  He glanced back at his companions, their faces etched with fear and worry in the shifting schematic light. He looked at the well again, and his blood continued driving out but he wasn't feeling pain.

  He stepped into the room. The gates did not close behind him. They waited.

  Mo Fei reached for the Glaive, he knew that he could lose something again, like the last time or may not. But this is the path he chose. To not just suffer the rules, but to see them. And if he can see them… perhaps he can use them. His fingers close around the Glaive.

  The ritual has begun.