Chapter 12 — The One Who Witnessed

He began to twirl his staff. Then he spun it around himself, his form blurring as the staff cut the air with a chilling whistle, each movement precise and powerful. The wind from his spinning weapon morphed into wind blades, sharp and lethal, flying in multiple directions at the two boys. JB and Basim were barely able to evade them, their exhaustion making their movements clumsy.

For the briefest instant, they glimpsed their own deaths—not as metaphor, but in vivid, surgical clarity:

—Basim, skewered mid-sprint—his body lifted into the air, impaled on the ancient weapon’s staff, like a warning to all who run toward hope.

—Jean-Baptiste, hanging from a gallery wall—nails through his palms, blood seeping down a fractured frame. A failed masterpiece no longer deemed worthy of preservation.

Wherever the staff struck, a new reality was born—one where bodies were no longer temples of the soul but graveyards of failure.

Basim rolled left. A wind blade grazed his shoulder, slicing his shirt like paper. The cut was shallow, a thin bloom of red—enough to warn: Next time, you die.

JB leaped to his feet, throwing his arms wide to avoid another slash of wind, only to catch a boot to his face. His teeth clacked together as he was sent stumbling backwards. His head rang, his nose bled. And still the man didn’t let up. Another kick, and another, and another, each connecting with his torso. Ribs creaked. Something in him broke. When JB hit the ground, he did not rise again.

The masked figure loomed over him, his expression inscrutable behind his mask, but the weight of his judgement was palpable. As he brought his staff down upon Jean-Baptiste, Basim lunged forward with a desperate yell. "NOOOO!"

…Basim’s cry tore through the tomb as the staff fell.

He caught the blow on crossed forearms—bone against ironwood—and stopped it an inch above Jean-Baptiste’s skull. Shock numbed his hands. Something cracked—staff or ulna, he couldn’t tell. He shoved with what strength remained, and for the first time the Witness stepped back.

Only a step. Yet the distance felt like a miracle.

Pain screaming at a distance, Basim’s gaze snagged on the symbol on the old man’s robe: an ouroboros entwined with a cross—the same design etched into a museum sarcophagus just yesterday. Or a lifetime ago. The mark seemed to pulse with its own light. Magic—or fatigue’s trick?

‘Think, Basim.’ What did it mean? ‘Not the Leviathan’s Cross or Brimstone… close, but not.’

An answer, a breakthrough, teetered on the edge of his understanding, promising to tip the scale of power in the room. But just as the revelation threatened to burst forth, a swift and decisive blow to his jaw from the Witness's elbow dashed his thoughts, scattering them to the winds of his fading consciousness.

"Think about it." The masked man muttered. "How far are you willing to go?"

"I..." Basim rasped. "I'll do whatever it takes."

In a heartbeat, the man was in front of him. Basim could see the wear on his robes, the slight splatter of mud near the hem. Could hear the rustle of the cloth in the silence of the chamber. Felt the grip of a hand on the scruff of his jacket.

His knees buckled, and the next moment, his face kissed the floor, his cheek scraping against the grit. Blood filled his mouth. His vision blurred, and a high-pitched ringing noise drilled into his ears. The edges of his perception were beginning to fray, darkness creeping in from the corners, threatening to engulf him.

"This is a battle, not a brawl." the masked figure stated. "If you wish to learn the truth of your situation and the nature of the world you inhabit, stand up."

'I'm trying, damn it.' He tried to move his lips to speak the words, but the connection between his brain and his muscles was severed. Only the thumping of his heart and the rasping of his breath filled his ears. After several excruciating seconds, he managed to push his elbows underneath him and slowly lift his head.

Jean-Baptiste stirred, coughing up blood and groaning. He dragged himself to a seated position, leaning against a column. He was clutching his chest, and his face was contorted in agony. Despite the obvious pain, he still managed to shoot a defiant look at their opponent.

"Any last words?" the Witness asked—not with cruelty, but ceremony. As though offering them the last breath before revelation. A choice: to concede, to surrender… or to refuse the script entirely.

Jean-Baptiste wiped blood from his lip. He didn’t speak, but the look in his eye said it all—Not yet.

Basim’s fingers clawed against the stone floor, dragging himself upright by inches.

They had no chances to win. They had no plans, no tricks, not even the strength to stand. Two highschoolers from Paris versus…whatever the fuck he was. An unfair match, from the start. But the problem was…

They hadn't found their friend yet. Hadn't even come close to finding any clues. To quit here meant that Nameless was lost. It wasn't a matter of whether they could do it. Whether or not they would was an irrelevant thought. The fact was, they had no other choice.

They hadn’t earned the right to fall.

They hadn’t earned their fall yet—not when their friend was still missing, not when every question still hung unanswered. And the idea of staying down? That was the real joke. A cosmic farce. Because if this was the end, it meant they’d danced, bled, and suffered for nothing.

If they didn't keep going—

So, they rose. Inch. By. Inch.

—and stood on shaking legs. Ready to continue the losing battle. Not because their bodies allowed it. But because their spirits screamed louder. Because despite everything, no, in spite of everything, they wanted to understand. Why did this happen? Who was to blame?

——"Even when the world is a lie, the effort still matters."

A light pulsed in their veins. Soft, subtle. Warm. It wasn’t the adrenaline of the fight-or-flight response. Nor the cold burn of fear or anger. In essence, it resembled a star being born—an incandescence that defied logic.

For they finally earned it.

For their eyes were now open to the mysteries of life and the world—Insight.

The right to witness. 

Insight came at a cost no sane mind would willingly pay. As their eyes opened, Basim and Jean-Baptiste began to see invisible layers of reality—like seeing an image through an optical illusion, only to have that illusion dissolve, revealing another, and another, and another, ad infinitum.

"What is happening to us?" Basim murmured, his voice wavering as he grappled with the newfound depth of his sight.

JB's breathing hitched. He didn't respond. Instead, his attention focused on their opponent, the old man. The scene around him had changed, or perhaps more accurately, expanded. Beyond the visible figure in the centre of the room, JB could see a thousand iterations of the man in different postures, different angles, some sitting, some pacing, others simply observing. All silent. All watchful. Like a kaleidoscope of his existence.

"I'm watching a hundred of him at once," JB muttered, his tone laced with an unsettling mixture of wonder and dread.

Meanwhile, Basim was witnessing something altogether different. His eyes locked onto a single version of the old man that sat cross-legged in a pool of sunlight. A golden apple levitated above his open palm, radiating an ethereal, pulsating light.

"An apple..." he murmured, his brow furrowed in confusion and disbelief. "You have an apple..."

The old man's mask seemed to smirk. The symbol of the ouroboros and the cross glinted, a sly acknowledgment. Or was that too, an illusion?

The wind blades that had so easily sliced the air and their skin were now clearly visible, not as physical entities but as lines of intent, carving paths of future violence through space and time. Each sweep of the staff traced a line of fate, and to follow them was to walk a path where survival became an improbable fantasy.

Yet for all the revelations, one truth cut through: they couldn’t pretend anymore. They hadn’t swung at a man—they’d swung at the period at the end of a story. He was what came after the endings. Not a test. A lesson: futility, defeat, the cosmos’ habit of grinding what reaches for it. He wasn’t their enemy so much as a rule of the world.

He was what came after the story ended.

And the punchline of that story was that no one was supposed to survive a confrontation with him. He was the final word of a story that never repeated itself.

This wasn't a test of their skill. Or an examination of their character.

It was a lesson.

In the art of futility.

In the inevitability of defeat.

In the cruelty of the cosmos and its tendency to break, and break, and break.

But the most brutal realisation? It was the simplest one: He wasn't their enemy—he was beyond that. Beyond the petty distinctions of good and evil, ally or adversary. Since the dawn of their species, the human race had sought answers, and here, before them, stood one. One of the oldest, deepest truths of the universe: that there were powers in existence that cared nothing for morality or compassion.

There were beings who could crush a person, an entire world, a universe...just because it pleased them to do so. Because, in the face of the vastness of time and space, it didn't matter. The end was always the same.

Even if that man was a puppet of the Author…

Even if some hand beyond reality moved his strings...

What could they do about it?

After all—

—Who would dare write him into their story?

— ✧ —

"Checkmate." The Author muttered, not in a smug whisper or in the hushed reverence one would expect. No. Instead, his attention was fully on the Queen of a Thousand Broken Mirrors.

"Checkmate?" She repeated. "How amusing."

She leaned forward. The movement was casual, but her eyes glowed with a fervour, like she'd seen something important. Something he didn't.

"It is, indeed, a checkmate...for The Witness of Witness…"