The Insane Regressor: Throne of Pride

A small alliance between two people who did not trust each other.

Kaiden was not offering protection or loyalty. He was offering an exchange of benefits, believing that being transparent about his selfishness would make him more honest.

For that, he was willing to violate the first rule they had agreed upon that morning and create a private meaning known only to the two of them.

Ravian smiled as he looked at Kaiden.

”If a message from me reaches you, how will you distinguish it from an order written by someone else and delivered by a mirage servant?”

Kaiden looked at the account sheet for the seventh table, then drew a small circle around the number seven with his pen.

”Circle the seven. If I see it, I’ll know the order came from you. No name, no signature someone could imitate, and no need for us to meet every time.”

Ravian stopped writing.

”That’s a private signal between us. If you read it, the Nightmare World will count it as communication even if the message doesn’t bear my name.”

”I know,” Kaiden said. ”That’s why you mustn’t send anything as evening approaches. We only use it during working hours.”

The rule he had established was logical.

It was also worthless as long as the other person could break it whenever he wished.

Ravian looked at the circle around the number seven, then nodded.

”All right. That sounds good to me.”

A faint relief appeared in Kaiden’s eyes. He took the corrected copy of the account sheet, then left the office after opening the door and making sure the corridor was empty.

Ravian remained seated.

He replayed Kaiden’s words in his mind, along with his tone and the way he had waited for approval before taking the paper.

The man belonged to no fixed camp. He would approach Ravian today, Aldric tomorrow, and perhaps Sylvan the following night if he saw the balance of suspicion beginning to tilt toward him. With every piece of information he gathered, he would become more willing to risk making a formal accusation once he believed the odds of his own elimination had risen above fifty percent.

A man like him did not need certainty.

He only needed to become convinced that the risk of waiting had grown greater than the risk of making an accusation.

That made him more dangerous than Talia, a more pressing concern than Aldric, and less useful than Garrick.

Ravian opened another drawer and took out a small service slip bearing neither an emblem nor a signature.

He wrote a single line whose purpose was known only to him.

{Keep the table ledger in your room, and do not hand it to anyone before the White Bell.}

Then he drew a precise circle around the number seven.

He folded the paper, wrote Kaiden’s position on the outside instead of his name, then placed it inside the slot marked with the third Black Bell symbol.

The internal barrier swallowed the message, and the slot closed on its own.

The paper remained inside a timing chamber, separated from the transport network until the third toll drew near, and it could no longer be reached from the outside without smashing the cylinder and disrupting the Correspondence Office’s operations.

As far as the participants were concerned, no communication had taken place.

The act of writing alone was not enough.

Meaning was conveyed only when the intended recipient read it.

Ravian closed the cylinder’s lid, then returned to the paper he intended to show Aldric when he came to inspect the office.

Less than ten minutes later, Aldric arrived with Sylvan.

They inspected the pipe first, then opened the correspondence box and peered into the immediate-delivery slots. The visible slots in the timing cylinder were empty, while its internal chambers remained sealed within the palace’s mechanism and could not be opened without breaking them—an act that might be judged deliberate sabotage of palace operations. Ravian’s log likewise showed nothing except the routine noon message he had inserted before Kaiden arrived.

Sylvan fixed his eyes on Ravian.

”You knew from the first day that these pipes branched out.”

”Not really...” Ravian replied casually.

”I knew they carried the servants’ voices,” Ravian said. ”I didn’t know they could carry a voice to one specific room until we saw the result today.”

”That’s what you claim. We don’t know what happened,” Sylvan insisted.

”And you claim that you didn’t know. None of us has any way to prove either statement, and I couldn’t care less what you think. If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can go fuck yourself,” Ravian replied coldly.

Aldric intervened to stop them before the argument returned to where it had begun.

He stuffed the pipe opening with cloth and placed the thin paper over it, then Sylvan poured black wax around its edges. Aldric pressed his seal into the upper side, while Sylvan placed the storeroom mark on the lower side.

They then assigned the copper pipe before them a number and recorded it, as they did with every pipe they sealed.

After that, they moved through the participants’ rooms one after another.

By midday, all the pipes near them had been sealed, and the central column behind the main hall was covered with four bands of paper and black wax bearing the eight participants’ signatures and respective numbers.

They found no lead, clue, or trace that could tell them which branch had carried the voice that reached Elena.

That left everyone deeply suspicious even of their own shadows.

Suspicion toward Ravian grew because of his office and Sylvan’s chatter, but not enough for anyone to seriously regard him as the culprit; Mirai drew suspicion because she held the keys to every room and could reach every part of the palace, Bran because he had been the first to recognize the echo in Elena’s room, and Aldric because he was the only person capable of opening most of the servants’ rooms.

Even Sylvan did not escape those looks, since the storeroom and cellar connected to the corridors through which the pipes ran.

Ravian had pointed out the pipe to them earlier because he no longer needed it and did not want to risk someone else discovering the method, keeping it secret, and then accusing him outright. He had therefore decided to bolster his credibility by revealing the cause first and allowing them to uncover the rest of the evidence themselves, but they would remember him as the first person who had helped with the investigation, which was why no one had paid much attention to Sylvan’s earlier claims.

The killer remained as unknown as he had been the day before.

However, they were no longer merely a group afraid that he might be among them, because that much was now certain. Yet the ease with which he had killed one of their number without anyone noticing forced them to grasp how dangerous their situation truly was and how any one of them could take Elena’s place at any moment—alone in their room and preparing to sleep.