Chapter 751

Chapter 751: veil of night.

In the Future of Fire, the world had been burned out.

Flames were not eternal. Fuel inside the Sanctuary World also had a limit. Outside the reshaped land and ocean, that eternal Veil still bound the whole world. When everything inside the Veil turned to ash in the fire, the world ended in a long cooling.

It was said that this “cooling” lasted a full four hundred years. In the end, the age of Embers came. Cold ash covered the entire world. No new flames rose. No living thing cried or breathed. The world stopped in this pile of cold embers. No new things were born, and no old things faded away.

In a sense, this Sanctuary World, which had gone through the Great Annihilation, finally reached eternal peace. Embers were still Embers. Doomsday was frozen forever in this moment. No new suffering would ever fall upon this land again.

Duncan walked to a big stone and sat down without a care. He did not mind the ashes that were everywhere. He watched the city ruins on the plain that still kept crumbling and turning into ash. After a moment of thought, he suddenly spoke: “So this choice has no way back.”

“You can reshape everything,” Critt came to Duncan’s side. His thin, bent body stood in the cold wind like a crooked dead branch. “But there is one exception.”

“Myself,” Duncan understood and spoke softly. “I cannot redefine myself…”

Critt stayed silent. After a long time, he finally spoke: “If there truly were no other road, the Future of Flame would at least be a kind of continuation. But I hope you will think and think again. Time is like a river. Many of its branches can be changed. But the main stream that has already crossed the finish, once it has flowed past, can never turn back.”

“You do not have to worry about that. When I refused Navigator One’s plan, I had already thought through these things.” Duncan shook his head lightly. “What you have shown me only makes my earlier guesses more complete. Compared to that, my real gain is that I finally confirmed one thing…”

As he spoke, he raised his hand and slowly closed his fingers in the air. The ghostly green flame of the spirit form burned between his fingers at once. It swelled and jumped in the air like an illusion.

The world of ashes seemed to respond to this bit of flame. The wind on the mountaintop suddenly became restless, and even the nearby ashes showed strange waves. But it was only a momentary illusion. In the next second, the wind and the ashes went back to normal.

In this already ended History Branch, nothing could push it to move forward again.

Duncan quietly cast his gaze at the flame in his hand, then turned his palm over.

The spirit form fire went out at once. The silent, shattering flames turned into tiny sparks and flashed for a brief moment at his fingertips. For that instant, they looked like phantom starlight from a far-off place.

Duncan watched this scene with a grave look and seemed to be thinking: “These ‘fires’ really are only a surface.”

Then he turned his head and looked at Critt, who still stood quietly at his side: “You can see this History Branch. Can you see my other choices?”

“I am very sorry. I cannot.” Critt met Duncan’s gaze honestly. “We are ghosts trapped inside the time cycle of the Sanctuary World. We can only see everything inside this time loop. All your other choices lie outside the cycle. To us, they are like the huge Great Hollow in the veil of night, and my eyes cannot cross that vast darkness.”

“Outside the cycle… in other words, outside the Sanctuary World, this ‘Known World’?” Duncan reacted at once. “So in the end I still have to find a way to break through that eternal Veil?”

“I am sorry. I do not know.”

“Is that so.” Duncan nodded slowly and suddenly sounded a bit wistful. “Right now, I am actually a little jealous of Duncan Abnomar from a century ago. You showed him the future. It was an accident, but at least he knew where he should go.”

“Feeling around in the dark is suffering. Knowing your fate is also suffering. At the end of time, there is never any peace. I am sorry. We do not have good news. We did not have any from the day we set out.”

“It is fine. I was not expecting good news. As long as I gain some insight this time, that is enough.” Duncan got up from the big stone. No ash clung to him. “Time to leave.”

He gave the sky and land here one last look. His gaze swept over the faint sunlight behind the clouds and the tall-spired Cathedral in the city ruins. He did not ask Critt about anyone else’s future or where they were now. He simply turned away without any regret.

The History Branch behind him collapsed with a roar, like the great fire in Pland.

Light and shadow twisted and re-formed. Things went back to their places. The dim, closed cabin appeared again in Duncan’s sight. The door that led to Subspace still stood quietly at the bottom of the hold. It was as if nothing had happened here.

Critt was still standing by the door, his hand still raised as if he had just patted the doorframe.

Then he lowered his hand and bowed slightly to Duncan: “I hope this did not trouble you.”

“It is fine. I already have enough things to trouble me. One more does not make a difference.” Duncan spoke lightly. “At least now we have confirmed that one of the roads is very bad.”

“The Sanctuary World is broken beyond repair. There is no point in patching it up, though I should not say that.” Critt sighed. “Its destruction is already set. Doomsday has been chasing this world down the river of time since the Great Annihilation. Now it has finally caught up.”

“A Doomsday theory. That is the doctrine the Enders have always preached. People always thought it was just the raving of madmen after they went insane.”

“Madness and reason are only one step apart. ‘Truth’ never cares about the gap between them.” Critt’s expression was calm. “From another point of view, my companions have never truly gone mad. They were just… tired. So they chose to embrace all the truth and became madmen in everyone’s eyes.”

“Will you turn into that as well?” Duncan suddenly grew curious. “In some time branch, or in the near future…”

“I do not know.” Critt hesitated, then slowly shook his head. “dusk has come, but this world will not go dark all at once. I still have a little way left on my journey. To speak with you within this Window Interval, I had to cut out the most stable ‘part’ of myself to come here. So now I do not know what the self at the end of my journey has seen. Maybe…”

He paused briefly and then went on: “Maybe one day in the future, we will meet again. The one who stands before you then might be a crazed, broken madman or a twisted, formless monster. That will mean I have reached the end and wandered too long in the dark. It is also possible…”

Critt suddenly stopped.

Then his eyes changed a little, as if he had suddenly seen a direction after a long time in darkness, as if he had just thought of something. The deep wrinkles on his face eased, and he looked at Duncan: “Right… I will do everything I can to meet you again, whether I am clear-headed or mad. I will show up before you. At that time, there will likely be no suitable Window Interval, so I probably will not be able to talk with you directly like I do now. You might not even be able to see me… but I will surely find a way to leave something behind. You can…”

The old man’s voice cut off.

In the dim, empty cabin, only Duncan’s lone figure stood quietly before the Subspace door.

He stood there like a statue for a long time. At last, he turned, picked up the brass consecrated lantern hanging not far away, and slowly walked toward the exit of the lower deck.

…

Now it was twelve hours after nightfall.

Just as the scholars had warned, the Sun had not risen. No dawn light appeared on the sea’s horizon.

If some people had still held onto hope before this, still praying that the seventy-two-hour dusk earlier had only been a “single abnormal event” and that the next morning the sun would rise on time, then that hope had now gone out completely.

The endless Long Night had become a fact.

Near Lightwind Harbor, the four great ark-ships still lay moored close to the shore. On the eastern offshore waters, the “glowing geometric body” continued to shed soft pale gold “sunlight,” so the city-state did not fall into full darkness.

The Academy Ark was lit up from end to end.

Short and stout Rune stood in the “Temple of Knowledge” at the very top of the ark, praying devoutly before the holy statue of Rahm, the God of Wisdom.

A chant made of “0” and “1,” with a very strange rhythm and sound, was slowly reaching its end.

Incense smoke rose through the temple. Rahm’s statue stood silent in the haze. The statue did not have a human form. It was a black rectangular stone stele. On its top was carved the rune of the Eye of Wisdom, and the whole stele was covered in dense symbols and fine lines.

As Rune’s benediction went on, those symbols and lines showed faint, slow flickers, as if they had been given life for a moment.

But as the benediction ended, the stele’s brief “life” faded with it.

Rune turned his head and looked at a Truth priest who had been waiting at his side the whole time: “How are things now?”

“The bad news is that the Sun still has not risen. The veil of night really seems likely to last a long time. The good news is that, based on data from all the city-states, the drop in temperature is slowing down. Going by the current cooling curve, it seems the lowest temperatures each city-state will reach during this veil of night will not go below the record lows in history. The world will not freeze solid in this Long Night the way you feared… the ‘Cold calamity’ will not happen.”

As the priest gave his report, some tension left Rune’s face at last. But soon he frowned again: “…Is that really good news?”