Chapter 136: permission
Isabela arrived with her sword already drawn.
Hours of extra training since the rankings of the first test had been announced, not to climb the rankings, because Isabela Valtherion didn’t do things for rankings. She did them because there was something to be done, and she preferred to be good at it.
The information they had been given said: Knights. Each with a story. Each carrying an unresolved burden.
"I understand unresolved burdens." She had thought while reading. "I know how that works."
So she had trained to face them as if they were human, because they were, essentially, or had once been.
She found him in the eastern garden.
Sitting on a stone bench that must have been placed there centuries after his death, yet he fit into it as if it had been made for that exact moment.
Sewing.
Banners, large ones, made of dark cloth with golden embroidery that Isabela recognized as one of the original Eldrath insignias, three hundred years older than the current one. Torn in many places, every tear suggesting a different kind of damage.
He sewed with that particular concentration of manual work you have when you have too much time and very little else to do.
Isabela dashed in with a thin-line strike. Fast. Clean. Her best opening attack.
The sword passed through him as if he were mist.
The spirit kept sewing.
She stepped back. Breathed.
Attacked again, different angle, different technique.
Through him.
The spirit looked up from his work for the first time.
He looked at her sword. Then at her.
"A torn banner cannot lead soldiers." He said.
He went back to sewing.
Isabela stood there with her sword raised, letting that piece of information sink in as something that had to be processed before taking any action.
"Not everything will be solved through battle." The words from the briefing came back to her. "Some must be defeated. Others convinced. Others freed. Others need someone to fulfill the promise they left unfinished."
She had read that. She had understood it intellectually.
She had attacked anyway out of instinct.
She sighed. "Damn... it had to be one that doesn’t want to fight."
She sheathed her sword.
Sat down on the bench beside him.
She watched his work, the banner in his hands, the needle moving with a precision that didn’t depend on sight but on muscle memory so deep it had survived three hundred years of anchoring.
"How many have you sewn?" She asked.
The spirit didn’t answer immediately.
"All of them." He said.
"All of Eldrath’s banners?"
"The ones that went to war."
Isabela watched his work for another moment.
She still didn’t fully understand who he was, what bound him, or what needed to be resolved.
But she understood one thing: this would take time. It would require conversation instead of a sword. It would require the kind of patience she possessed but rarely chose to use because there was always another, more direct option.
"Patience." She remembered her father’s words. "It’s not weakness. It’s a different kind of strength."
She stayed on the bench.
And began to listen.
....
Two pillars stood in the middle of that garden courtyard.
Not a gate, just pillars. Enormous, made of stone that looked different from the rest of the academy, darker, denser, as if they had been placed there before the academy had been built around them.
The spirit stood between the two.
Motionless. Facing nothing. Like the guardian of an entrance that no longer existed... or perhaps had never existed in a way others could see.
Genius remained at a calculated distance, outside immediate striking range, close enough to observe the details.
The spirit turned.
"You came to defeat me." Not a question.
"I came to understand what you’re still doing here." Genius replied.
The spirit remained silent for a moment that Genius couldn’t measure. Time worked differently near entities like this. He had learned that over the past few days.
"I do what I’ve always done." The spirit said. "I guard the passage."
"What passage?"
"This one."
Genius looked at the two pillars. Looked at the space between them.
"There is no passage."
"There is." The spirit said with absolute patience. "You simply cannot see it."
Genius processed the answer.
"Either there is a passage I can’t see." He thought. "Which would imply my perception is limited."
"Or there is no passage, but he believes there is." He continued. "Which would imply the obvious: reality distortion caused by prolonged anchoring."
"Or there was a passage in the past that he still perceives through the memory of its existence." He finished. "Which would be the most interesting of the three scenarios."
"If I proved there is no passage..." Genius began.
"You cannot prove the absence of something that exists beyond your perception." The spirit said, and there was something in his voice that wasn’t arrogance but certainty born from knowing the difference. "You can only prove presence."
Genius stood still.
"Well... he’s right."
"Hmm... Proving absence requires complete knowledge. I don’t have complete knowledge."
"So how do I resolve someone guarding something I can’t even verify exists?"
"Give me a problem." The spirit suddenly said.
Genius raised an eyebrow.
"Give me a problem you cannot solve." The spirit repeated. "And I shall give you one in return."
Genius stared at him.
"This test is..." He thought. "...far more interesting than I expected."
He sat down directly on the courtyard floor, without ceremony, and began to think.
"A problem I can’t solve."
"Feelings."
"How do you deduce what another person is feeling?" He asked.
The spirit remained silent for a moment.
"You don’t deduce it." He said. "You recognize it."
"The difference?"
"Deduction uses what you know. Recognition uses what you’ve lived through." A pause. "You’ve never lost anyone. That’s why you don’t recognize loss when you see it."
Genius looked at the pillars.
"He gave me an answer. Not a problem in return."
"Which means the answer was the test."
"Your problem." He said. "The passage you’re guarding. Was it meant to let someone through?"
The spirit fell silent.
For the first time since Genius had arrived, his posture changed. Subtly. Almost imperceptibly. But it changed.
"He never thought about that question." Genius realized. "In three hundred years of guarding the passage, he never wondered what it was for."
"To let them leave." The spirit finally said. There was something different in his voice now.
"Who are they?"
A longer silence.
And Genius understood—not completely, not yet—that he was getting somewhere. That the spirit’s problem wasn’t that he guarded the passage. It was that he no longer remembered who he was waiting for on the other side.
Footsteps began echoing through the garden. Not one set, but several.
"We found him! The Sentinel!" shouted the most excited one.
Five students appeared in a hurry, as if they were fleeing from something even bigger.
The one in front smiled when he saw Genius.
"Damn... someone got here before us."
Another clicked his tongue, uninterested.
"We spent hours studying to find this spirit..."
He stopped in front of Genius.
"Move. You’re an outsider."
Genius didn’t even turn his head. "An outsider? Is being an external student offensive now?" he thought.
"And what if I don’t?" Genius said.
"Then you get hit."
The boy’s hand landed heavily on his shoulder.
Kimyo appeared.
Not completely.
Only two enormous arms emerged behind Genius, wrapping around his neck in a hug that looked strong enough to crush stone.
The boy froze.
No one dared draw a sword.
"What the hell... is that thing!?" one of them muttered.
Kimyo’s arms tightened slightly. Making it clear: Touch him and you die.
Just a little. Enough for everyone to understand.
Then...
"Enough." The Sentinel’s voice echoed through the garden.
Kimyo disappeared immediately.
The Sentinel remained motionless between the pillars.
"Come closer."
The students exchanged glances before stepping forward.
"All of you."
Without understanding why... they obeyed.
"Sit."
Even Genius obeyed.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
The wind passed between the two pillars.
The Sentinel observed each of them.
As if comparing those faces to others from a long-forgotten age.
Finally, the Sentinel spoke.
"The last time..."
He paused.
"...fifty-three came."
The students looked at one another.
"Before them came forty."
"Before those..."
"One hundred and twenty came."
Silence.
"They all wanted to pass."
The Sentinel slowly placed a hand on one of the pillars.
"Some tried to convince me."
"Others fought."
"Others cried."
"Others died."
He looked at Genius.
"And every one of them believed this was only a test."
Another pause.
"It wasn’t."
The students finally began to feel that something was wrong... deeply wrong.
The Sentinel took a deep breath.
"I remember every one of them."
His voice became strangely heavy.
"Because a Sentinel..."
"...never forgets."
He closed his eyes for a moment.
"But I..."
His hand tightened against the stone.
"...can no longer leave."
He opened his eyes again.
"So answer me."
He looked at each of them, one by one.
"Only one of you will answer correctly."
Absolute silence.
Then he asked the question.
"If the gate has already fulfilled its purpose... who should be freed first? Those waiting on the other side... or the guardian who was never given permission to leave?"
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