Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Chapter 308: No Certainty

The high temple of Iondora had occasionally held so many in its inner sanctum every time the prophecy was revealed.

Nobles in velvet and mail pressed against merchants in trade leathers, temple guards in polished bronze stood shoulder to shoulder with kitchen servants who had abandoned their hearths for this.

Everywhere, incense, sweat, the musk of fear that no amount of myrrh could mask.

Ruby stood upon the dais, her simple white robes blending in the gilded backdrop of a thousand years of accumulated glory.

She had not slept. The circles beneath her eyes were purple as bruises, her lips cracked from dehydration, yet her voice carried without strain, amplified by something that was not acoustics.

"The waters of fate run clear in these coming months," she began, and the crowd exhaled as one, relieved by the familiar cadence of blessing. A young mother clutched her infant tighter. An old soldier touched the amulet at his throat.

Arzhen stood at the back, leaning against a pillar he had no right to lean against, his body still weak from the fever that had nearly taken him. He had dressed in haste, his tunic misbuttoned, his hair unstyled.

He did not care. When the boy Bimo had found him in the corridor, breathless with news that the Saintess had emerged, had called for the city to hear her, he had moved before thought.

Now he watched her and felt the old pull, the certainty that had defined his adolescence, that she was the axis upon which his world turned.

"The harvests shall be abundant," Ruby continued, and a farmer in the crowd dared to smile. "The treaties shall hold." A diplomat’s shoulders dropped an inch. "The northern passes will remain open until the first snows." A merchant with a caravan waiting made the sign of fortune against his chest.

"Remember to bless your thresholds with salt before the new moon," she said, and the crowd murmured assent, the comfortable ritual of prophecy, the domestic magic that made them feel involved in their own fate. "And do not neglect the old wells, for they shall run dry if left untended."

Father Rohan stood near the eastern doors, Bimo at his elbow playing the role of nervous acolyte with perfection. The boy’s hands trembled appropriately as he held a basin of water for ritual cleansing.

Neither looked at each other. Neither needed to. They had sent their report through the Princess’s channel three hours prior, when the Saintess had first emerged from her trance, when her screams had echoed through the sealed hall and the High Priest had ordered the doors barred.

They knew what was coming. Rohan’s tail curled tight against his leg beneath his robes, the only sign of his tension.

"—the Emperor of Iondora," Ruby said, and her voice shifted. The hollowness deepened, became cavernous, as if she spoke from a well that had no bottom.

Her eyes, which had been fixed upon the middle distance, suddenly focused upon nothing, upon everything, upon futures that layered atop each other like pages in a book no one else could read. "Blessed and guarded though he be, shall fall by the blade of treachery before the solstice turns."

Silence.

"His blood spilling upon the marble of his own throne room in my vision."

A noblewoman fainted. Her husband caught her, his own face grey. The old soldier’s hand had gone white around his amulet.

Ruby’s hands gripped the altar’s edge. Her knuckles were bone. Her whole body trembled.

"Therefore I call upon every loyal hand—" her voice rose, cracked, steadied, "—to raise arms in his defense! To stand watch at every gate and shadow! To make such a wall of guardians that the assassins themselves shall think better of their strike and turn from their course in fear!"

Arzhen had pushed himself upright. His legs shook. He did not notice. He saw only her, the desperation in her posture that her voice did not betray. As if she was trying to unmake the future by speaking it.

"The Emperor has heard these words from my own lips," Ruby said, and now her eyes cleared. "And has given his blessing for their spreading. Let none say they were not warned. Let none claim they could not act!"

She looked out at them, at the faces she had known in another life, at the faces she had never met, at Arzhen who stood too far back and none of them at all. "The future is written in water," she whispered, "and water may still be cupped before it runs through our fingers."

The crowd broke into sound. Prayer and weeping and the urgent murmur of those who must now decide what to do with knowledge they had not asked for.

The High Priest stepped forward to guide the ritual closing, his face professionally solemn, yet did not reach his eyes.

Rohan moved through the press of bodies. Bimo followed, the basin still in his hands. They would send another report tonight. They would note the faces in the crowd, the ones who had not wept, the ones who had calculated.

They would note that the Saintess had looked directly at Arzhen Vasiliev only once, at the very end, a glance that lasted less than a heartbeat and contained everything they had ever been to each other.

Arzhen remained where he was, the pillar holding him up, watching as Ruby was guided away by temple hands, as her white robes disappeared through a door.

Finally, a distraction from the war.

He let his head fall back against the stone and the coolness of it through his hair. His thoughts had circled the same drain around his father’s displeasure, the throne that receded from him like a tide going out.

Now this. Prophecy as diversion.

Perhaps she was doing this for the sake of her mate, Nikolas. After all, any kind of accurate prophecy would do.

But this...

Was the Emperor actually going to be assassinated?

Knowing Ruby’s prophecy about death had been inaccurate these days, like his uncle, and then the Dragon Lord’s, perhaps this too...

The Dragon Lord. He had not told anyone what he saw in that ditch in detail. Not even to Ruby. He was not certain he could shape the words.

No. Let’s believe.

"More news," he said to his aide who appeared behind him.

"Sir, are you going to attend Lord Dawnoro’s wedding?"

Arzhen’s jaw tightened. The wedding. Arkai Dawnoro, Wolf King, binding himself to that woman from nowhere. The Dragon’s physician...

It should have been ridiculous. It was ridiculous.

"I have not been invited," he said, which was not an answer. "There’s no news?" Arzhen didn’t want to think about that yet. He still needed to find a way to return to his position again. The wedding was a social event. Social events required standing. He had none.

"Sir?" his aide sounded confused.

"My father. Anything." Arzhen turned, finally, pushing off from his pillar. His legs held. Barely. "Is there any sign that he—"

"No sir." The aide’s voice dropped, becoming the tone used for bad news that was not surprising. "There’s no sign that your father wants to change his mind. The decree stands. You are still... unacknowledged."

Of course.

He couldn’t find Cecilia’s body, nor could he use the Dragon Lord’s body.

Two vessels. Two bridges. Both collapsed.

He needed something else. A new source of power.

But what?

The temple’s high windows cast long rectangles of light upon the floor, moving slowly as the sun descended. Arzhen watched them shift, measuring time he could not afford to lose.

The Emperor would die, or would not. The assassins would strike, or would be deterred by Ruby’s very announcement. The future was water, she had said. Cuppable. Malleable.

"Find me," he said slowly, "every record the temple has of past prophecies."

"Past prophecies, Sir?" His aide asked. "You mean, the fake—"

"Yes. Cecilia Araceli’s prophecies," Arzhen said. "The ones that got intercepted and were gone."

Perhaps there were clues.

And he’d find it.