"And so Rayan helped improve the rule intended to restrict the killer. Either he’s innocent, or he wants us to remember that he did so," Sylvan said pointedly.
Contrary to Sylvan’s expectations, Ravian did not react. He merely turned to him calmly without even rising from his seat.
"By that logic, every objection you make to every proposal is either caution or an attempt by you, as the killer, to prevent us from devising a foolproof plan. We’ll never escape this circle if we continue with this nonsense," Ravian replied calmly, though he made sure to remember exactly what Sylvan had done.
This time, Kaiden gave a faint but genuine smile. Sylvan merely looked at Ravian before shifting his gaze back to the paper.
The meeting continued until the midday break ended. They agreed to carry small writing tablets on which they would record important interactions, and to avoid handing anything directly to one another whenever a table or a phantom servant could be used instead. None of them imagined that this would stop communication entirely, but it would reduce the chaos.
All they had to do was avoid receiving or handing over anything too late in the day.
Then everyone returned to work.
Ravian spent the second half of the day reviewing new messages, but he used every trip between the offices to construct a map of the mansion in his mind.
The western corridor connected to the main hall and the rear staircase. The staircase led to the floor containing the participants’ rooms, which were arranged around a square inner courtyard. Each room had a large window overlooking the courtyard, meaning that anyone standing at their window could see at least five other rooms, though the angles concealed the rest.
The copper pipes were more complicated. Some were used to summon servants, while others carried the ringing of bells, but most converged near a hollow shaft behind the main hall before branching out toward the wings.
At one point, a phantom servant raised its voice in the kitchen, and the sound reached Ravian’s office on the other side of the mansion, faint but audible.
Before he could pursue that line of thought any further, he set the possibility aside. Now was not the time to analyze the mansion. He needed a victim before nightfall, had yet to identify the person holding the Mage role with certainty, and had not tested what would happen if he refrained from killing. Using such an obvious method on the first night would squander an advantage whose value he did not yet understand.
As evening drew near, the flames in the chandeliers shifted from white to gray. Mirai’s voice came through the service bells, whose workings none of them yet understood, announcing that they were to gather in the main hall without calling any one of them by name.
It was simply a general announcement and did not count as communication.
Aldric placed the nine discs inside a box, then allowed Kaiden to mix them and draw three in front of everyone so that no one could manipulate the selection. This, too, had been Ravian’s idea.
The first name appeared.
Aldric.
Then Ravian.
And finally, Garrick.
Mirai remained outside the sequence, exactly as the plan required of whoever held the Mage role, but that proved nothing to anyone. The Mage could just as easily have been one of the other six.
The three selected participants stood before the rest.
Aldric began with Ravian.
The old man said,
"Did you understand the purpose of this arrangement?"
"To know whom we ought to suspect, rather than delude ourselves into believing we’ve found the killer while everyone still suspects everyone else, I suppose?" Ravian answered with a yawn.
A brief gleam of satisfaction appeared in Aldric’s eyes. He nodded, then stepped away.
Ravian then stood before Garrick.
The other seven watched them.
"You and I need to work together to eliminate that damned killer and get out of here, boy. You look intelligent," Garrick said.
’And you look stupid... You only look that way.’
"Don’t be hasty, Mr. Garrick. If you accuse the wrong person, you’ll die before you even have the chance to think about eliminating anyone," Ravian said. "Don’t confuse having the right to accuse with possessing the truth. The two are perilously close to one another."
Garrick looked as though Ravian’s words had enlightened him, while the others focused solely on searching for anything suspicious in either man.
The sequence then ended, and they dispersed without speaking, just as they had agreed beforehand.
No one had ordered them to enter their rooms, but the agreement was that each participant would isolate themselves before the third toll, denying the killer any opportunity to become someone’s final contact somewhere the others could not see.
Ravian entered his room and closed the door, then sat on the edge of the bed to await nightfall.
The room was simple compared to the guest rooms he had seen before: a bed, a small desk, a wardrobe, and a window overlooking the inner courtyard.
From where he sat, he saw curtains moving in the rooms opposite his own, then the faces vanished one after another.
Once the evening sequence had ended, all nine participants dispersed and returned to their rooms.
Aldric’s plan was clear: no more private communication, and no opportunity for the killer to create a new victim beyond the others’ sight.
But Ravian paid it no mind. He had many ways to communicate with people before the bells tolled.
Why had they assumed from the beginning that the killer would play by their rules? It was sheer foolishness, relying far too heavily on the killer’s caution rather than on a carefully designed plan. Had Ravian been in their place, he would simply have forced everyone to remain inside a single room, and by nightfall, the killer would have been easy to identify from his movements. There was no need for all this fearful caution.
And fear was always what led people to their ruin.
Silence gradually settled over the mansion until nothing remained but the wind brushing against the windows and the faint ringing coursing through the copper pipes running between the rooms.
Then Ravian heard something—faint, but perfectly clear to him.
Weak, broken sobs reached him through the copper cover fixed to the wall before him, the same fixture that could be found in nearly every room in the mansion.
’A tool to help the killer, I suppose?’ Ravian thought with a smile.
Ravian raised his head and looked toward the copper pipe in his room.
He approached it, unscrewed the cover, and placed his ear against the mouth of the pipe.
The sound was distant and distorted, tangled with echoes from several other branches, but Absolute Focus separated each layer from the others and traced the source of the crying through the differences in the echoes’ timing and direction.
He had heard that voice before.
Elena, the tall woman in the red robe—a target who had never entered his current calculations.
She appeared to be crying alone inside her room and was trying to keep her voice down, but broken fragments of her words reached him through the copper.
"I’m going to die... They’ll kill me..." Her crying stopped for a moment, then returned more intensely than before. "I have to survive... I have to survive."
Ravian remained silent, staring into the pipe with deadly calm.
Elena had no idea that her words were no longer confined to her room.
’...An opportunity.’
Ravian reconstructed in his mind the network of pipes he had inferred during the day. He calculated the length of the path, the positions of the branches, and the angles at which sound rebounded inside the copper, then adjusted the position of his mouth, the pitch of his voice, and the force of the air leaving his lungs.
He did not need to send his voice through the entire network.
He needed only one branch.
Elena’s branch.
Ravian took a deep breath.
Then he screamed into the pipe, concentrating on his vocal cords and the direction of the sound.
It did not sound human.
The scream twisted inside the copper and multiplied into layers until it sounded as though several throats were screaming at the same time. It emerged deep and distorted, resembling the roar of a creature that had lurked within the mansion’s walls for centuries.
Elena’s crying stopped at once.
For several seconds, Ravian could not even hear her breathing.
Then her voice came, barely audible and trembling.
"W-Who’s there?"
Ravian moved closer to the mouth of the pipe and altered his voice once again.
He spoke slowly in a harsh voice that carried no trace of his true tone.
"I am the killer."
Elena gasped.
Ravian’s lips curved into something that bore no resemblance to a genuine smile.
"Goodbye, Elena."
The moment he spoke her name, the first toll of the black bell thundered through the mansion.
The entire mansion trembled.
The white light went out, replaced by a purple glow seeping through the edges of the doors and windows.
A translucent black cloud appeared before Ravian.
{The first night has begun.}
{Choose one victim.}
The names of those who had fulfilled the communication condition appeared before him.
{Aldric.}
{Garrick.}
Elena’s name was among them.
Ravian did not hesitate as he made his choice.
{Elena.}
The remaining names dissolved, leaving hers alone within the cloud.
{The victim has been confirmed.}
The window vanished.
Ravian remained standing before the copper pipe, gazing at it without any discernible expression on his face, while no further sound came from the other end.
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