Harem Sync: Divine Edition

Chapter 138: A scale

She stood in front of him.

"Hey." She said.

The spirit stopped its repetitive movement.

Looked at her.

"What are you still trying to do?" She asked.

Silence.

Then the spirit showed her—not with words, but with a gesture. It raised its hand, pointing in a specific direction.

Blandina followed the direction with her eyes.

She saw: a wall. A corridor. And at the end of the corridor, a door that clearly hadn’t been used in a very long time, darkened wood, rusted hardware, but closed.

"He wants to get there."

"And he can’t because of the anchoring."

Seline arrived beside her in silence.

"He wants to go to that door." Blandina said.

"Then open the door." Seline replied.

"Just like that?"

"Not everything is complicated."

Blandina went to the door. She pushed, meeting the resistance of old wood that did not give easily—not because it was locked, but because of the weight of accumulated abandonment.

She pushed harder.

It opened.

The spirit passed through it without touching it, but Blandina felt its passage like a specific breeze that did not come from the wind.

And disappeared.

She stared at the open door.

"Three hundred years waiting for someone to open a door." She said.

"Sometimes that’s how it is." Seline replied.

-LIBRARY ROOFTOP-

The climb had taken longer than it looked from below.

Golden and the group reached the rooftop out of breath, not because of the distance, but because of the method. The library walls had sections that were not made to be climbed, and climbing with six people who had completely different mobility abilities was... a process.

The dragon in demi-human form turned his back when they arrived.

He had not moved since landing. He was staring at the horizon with the patience of something that had existed before haste existed.

"Hey." Golden said.

The dragon did not turn.

"Hey." He repeated, louder.

"I heard you." The dragon said. His voice was deep but calm, without the kind of authority that crushed. More the authority of something that did not need to demonstrate what it was.

"Are you one of the Twelve?" Golden asked.

"I am."

"And what are you still trying to do?"

The dragon was silent for a moment.

Then he turned.

Golden had not seen spirits up close before. Until he got there, he had spent the entire test coordinating the group, sending pairs toward different lesser Knights, gathering fragments of points that came from indirect resolutions.

But this one.

A demi-dragon, wearing armor that was not made of metal but scales over fabric, with eyes of a specific color he could not name because no human name existed for it.

"I’m waiting." The dragon said.

"For who?"

"I don’t know yet."

Golden stared at him.

"He doesn’t know who he’s waiting for." Golden thought. "But he keeps waiting."

"And he had spent three hundred years waiting on this rooftop."

Behind Golden, the group whispered:

"Attack."

"Don’t attack."

"Is Golden... talking to him?"

"That wasn’t the plan."

"The plan was to kill the dragon."

"Shut up."

Golden did not answer the group.

He kept looking at the dragon.

"Are you sure you don’t know?" He asked.

"I’m not." The dragon said. "But I know that when they appear, I’ll recognize them."

"How?"

"In the same way you recognize anything that should have always been there."

Golden fell silent.

He thought of his father. The mansion. Things he did not name because naming them made them real, and real things could hurt in ways that not naming them avoided.

"And if they don’t show up?" He said.

"Then I keep waiting."

"For how long?"

The dragon looked at the horizon again.

"As long as necessary."

Golden stared at the horizon beside the dragon for a moment that had no easy duration to measure.

Then he looked at the dragon.

"Then you’re not waiting for someone."

The dragon turned his head.

"I am."

"No." Golden said. "You’re waiting for someone to show up and give you permission to stop waiting."

The group behind Golden fell silent.

The dragon remained still for a moment, that specific stillness of something that processed things differently from a human, slower on the surface, deeper in what did not show.

His expression did not completely change.

Just enough.

"You speak like someone who knows a lot about waiting." He said.

Golden did not answer.

The dragon looked at the horizon again.

Then he turned, completely this time, his entire body, that attention of an entity that rarely decided to look at something with totality.

"Do you want to solve my problem?"

"Yes."

"Then make me leave this rooftop."

Golden looked at the edge.

Then at the dragon.

"Is that all?"

"No." The dragon paused, measured, deliberate. "You can’t push me."

Golden looked at the group.

"You can’t order me."

Golden looked at the dragon.

"You can’t convince me that the person I’m waiting for won’t come."

Final pause.

"And you can’t find out who I’m waiting for."

"Then what can I do?"

The dragon smiled, small, with that specific warmth of something that had found something rare.

"That is the test."

...

He tried to push him.

He placed both hands on the dragon’s shoulders and pushed with everything he had. It wasn’t anger; it was a test. To see what would happen.

The dragon did not move.

He did not actively resist. He did not push back. He simply did not move, like pushing against a wall that wasn’t a wall but functioned as one because it was exactly where it was supposed to be.

"Group." Golden turned. "Push him."

Six people did.

The dragon remained where he was.

Golden provoked him, choosing his words with the precision of someone who knew where it hurt, the kind of cruel comedy he sometimes used to make people act before thinking.

Nothing.

He challenged him, open posture, explicit invitation.

Nothing.

He offered to search for the person the dragon was waiting for, to go, investigate, and bring them back.

The dragon remained silent. It was not refusal, but it was not acceptance either.

He tried to destroy the rooftop. If the structure disappeared, the dragon would have to move. One of the group members with earth magic began working on the tiles.

The rooftop cracked.

The dragon remained where he was, the roof cracking beneath his feet, with the posture of someone who would remain there even if the entire building collapsed.

Golden stopped.

He stared at the dragon in the middle of the cracked, partially destroyed rooftop, with six people around him who had tried variations of force and none of them had worked.

"Golden." A voice behind him, the elf who had put his foot in the doorway hours earlier, who had followed anyway, who had run after the dragon shouting because Golden had run. "Why do you want him to leave so badly?"

"Because he needs to leave." Golden said automatically, the answer that seemed obvious.

"No." The elf said. "You need him to leave."

Silence.

Golden stared at the elf.

The elf stared at Golden with the expression of someone who had said something smarter than expected and was just as surprised as everyone else.

"He’s waiting for someone." Golden thought slowly. "And I’m waiting for him to do what I consider necessary."

"He’s trapped by waiting."

"I’m trapped by the need to control the outcome."

"They’re the same thing."

"With different names."

Golden turned toward the dragon.

The dragon stared at him, without judgment, without haste, with the patience he had possessed for three hundred years and that was not running out.

"I don’t know who you’re waiting for." Golden said.

The dragon did not answer.

"I don’t know if that person exists. I don’t know if they’ll show up. I don’t know if you’re right to keep waiting here."

He looked at the horizon, the academy below, the spirits visible through the blue cupla, the controlled chaos of a bunch of students trying to solve what he himself still had not solved.

"And I won’t pretend I know."

He remained silent for a moment.

"But I can stay here for a while."

"Why?" The dragon asked.

Golden shrugged.

"Because you’re here."

They both stared at the horizon.

Not for very long. Golden wasn’t the type, and he knew it. But long enough for the presence to be real and not a gesture.

Then Golden turned.

"So you’re going to wait with me?" The dragon asked.

"No." Golden said without hesitation.

The dragon remained still.

"I’m not that stupid. I’m going to look for another challenge."

Golden went to the rooftop access door, the group followed him, most of them not completely understanding what had happened but following anyway because that was what they did.

The dragon was left alone on the cracked rooftop.

For a moment, there was only the wind, the blue cupla, and three hundred years of waiting that had the specific texture of a choice that had never been recognized as a choice.

He looked at the horizon.

Looked at the access door.

Took a step.

Just one.

He did not leave the rooftop. He did not go anywhere. But the step was different from all the previous three hundred years because it was chosen, not executed by anchoring, not repeated out of habit.

"Chosen."

When Golden reached the building’s internal staircase, the group behind him, the elf still processing what had happened, he felt something.

Weight in his hand.

He looked.

A scale, the size of his palm, its color changing depending on the angle, warm with a heat that was not temperature but something else.

He did not know when it had appeared in his hand.