For that reason, Ravian had sent the message first and remained hidden outside the window, silently watching Kaiden’s reaction instead of making contact with him immediately.
If Kaiden had been the Mage, he would undoubtedly have placed himself among the three people under his protection. When an anonymous sheet of paper dropped onto his desk moments before the third toll, he would not have recoiled from it in terror; he would have known that the Killer could not kill him that night and would have treated the paper as an opportunity that might expose its sender, not as a trap threatening his life.
He would have approached it calmly and read it.
Ravian would then have allowed him to do so before returning to his room without tapping on the glass or revealing himself.
The following morning, had Kaiden confronted him about the message, he would have found nothing in it but an ordinary instruction concerning palace business. Ravian would have told him that he had placed it inside one of the timed cylinders, believing it would be delivered in the morning, and had not realized that he had chosen the compartment that activated immediately before nightfall.
Merely a mistake made while using a complex Correspondence Office that was new to all of them.
Kaiden would have been unable to prove otherwise. The message existed, its contents were ordinary, and most importantly, Kaiden would have based his judgment on one false assumption: that Rayan did not know he was the Mage and therefore had no reason to test him in such a way.
But Kaiden had not remained calm.
He had frozen the instant he heard the paper fall, then averted his eyes from it as though reading even a single line would tighten a noose around his neck. He had not approached it or attempted to take advantage of it, but had instead immediately begun thinking of escape and accusation.
That was all Ravian had needed to see.
Only then had he tapped on the glass and pointed to the number seven—the signal they had agreed upon earlier, one that required no words for Kaiden to understand its meaning.
Real communication.
Ravian had deliberately left a brief, calculated interval between that moment and the third toll: enough time for Kaiden to panic and run toward the door, but not enough for him to reach someone else and make that person his final contact.
Ravian had also needed Kaiden to open the door himself. Once the doors had been locked from the inside in preparation for the night, no participant could open the door to another participant’s room, and if Kaiden had remained inside, the message would have remained there with him and become unnecessary evidence in the morning.
But Kaiden had done exactly what Ravian had expected.
He had tried to flee the initial contact, thereby creating the very path Ravian needed to erase the last trace he had left behind.
By the time the door opened, it was already too late.
Ravian lay back on the bed and tucked one arm beneath his head as a faint smile appeared on his lips, only to vanish moments later.
There were no longer eight participants in the palace.
As for the rest of the work, he would take care of it in the morning.
...
The toll of the White Bell fell over Evernight Palace as the darkness and mirage mist receded.
White light returned to every lamp hanging throughout the corridors at once, and the violet shadows withdrew from the walls as though being pulled into some unseen place behind the palace.
Then words appeared before every participant.
{The second night has ended.}
{Number of survivors: 7}
{The third day has begun.}
{The accusation window has opened. It will remain open until the first toll of the Black Bell.}
Ravian opened his eyes immediately.
He had slept for only a short while, but it had been enough. He rose, put on his clothes now that they had dried, then inspected the floor, window, and door one final time. Nothing remained in his room to suggest that he had left during the night, and the seal over the copper tube was still intact, exactly as they had all left it.
He stepped into the corridor at almost the same moment the other doors began to open.
Mirai appeared first, followed by Bran, Garrick, Sylvan, and Aldric. Talia emerged shortly after them, her face as pale as everyone else’s, and spent the first few moments shifting her gaze between them just as she had in the hall the previous evening.
Her gaze suddenly stilled.
She counted again.
Then once more.
Arrogant Mirai.
Quiet Bran.
Blond Sylvan.
Herself—Talia.
Old Aldric.
Mysterious Rayan.
Savage Garrick.
Seven.
"Where is Kaiden?" Talia asked in a low voice.
No one answered her, but the silence itself was an answer.
Aldric looked toward the door to Kaiden’s room, then said sternly, "No one touches anything. Mirai, bring the room key."
They all moved toward the door, but the tension filling the corridor made their steps slower than they otherwise would have been.
Bran crouched before the copper cover mounted beside the door. He examined the thread, the thin paper, and the black wax from every angle, then pressed his ear close to the wall for several moments.
"The wax seal is completely intact," he finally said. "The tube was not opened, and the paper was not pierced."
Every room had two copper tubes, one on the inside and the other on the outside.
"Kaiden!" Aldric called from outside, even though he knew it was pointless. He did so anyway to keep Talia from breaking down too soon—which, by the look of her, she might do at any moment.
Garrick clenched his fists even tighter as he trembled with anxiety.
After Aldric called Kaiden’s name one final time and received no answer, Mirai unlocked the door with the spare key she carried.
The door swung open, and a cold draft swept out of the room and struck their faces, warning them of the sight they were about to witness.
Kaiden’s body lay inside near the door, sprawled across the floor with his eyes open. Not a single wound marked his skin, and there was not a drop of blood in the room, yet a pale gray film covered his pupils, and terror remained frozen across his features as though death had not even granted him the chance to change his expression.
Talia took a step back and covered her mouth with one hand.
Mirai, meanwhile, pulled out the black task ledger and opened it with frantic haste, rifling through the pages in search of his name.
Kaiden’s name had turned gray.
His death was no longer merely a possibility. In truth, it had never been one; they had simply refused to accept the truth when they first saw the notification. But now, the proof lay before their own eyes.
Aldric and Bran entered the room first, then allowed the others to approach the threshold without touching anything. Sylvan inspected the window lock and found it secured from the inside, while Garrick scrutinized the floor and walls for any trace of a break-in, a struggle, or a piece of broken wax.
They found nothing.
The window was locked. The inner copper tube was sealed.
The door bore no marks.
And the Killer had left no sign behind.
Even the floor had dried completely before they reached it.
"This is impossible," Bran said, staring at the seal he had already examined twice. "If anything had passed through the tube, the paper would have torn or the echo of the branch would have changed. Neither happened."
"But he died anyway," Garrick said, the confidence that had filled his voice the previous evening now gone. "Then our method did not prevent anything."
No one replied. Each of them was lost in a sea of their own thoughts.
They had locked the doors, prevented communication, sealed the copper tubes in every room, and even stopped the mirage servants from reaching them through those tubes as they had before...
And yet they were still dying.
They were dying one after another inside their rooms without a single piece of evidence or any trace of the Killer’s presence, as though they were confronting something that did not exist in the first place.
As though they were confronting a ghost.
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