CHAPTER 3: ACE OF SPADES.

There was a book.

It wasn't old. Not in the way ancient tomes are sealed with wax and covered in centuries of dust.

This one was thin, maintained shape and color. It did smell of dust and orange peel as far as Rowel can remember. Left behind on a train in one of the realms he visited. The first he had read there after performing one of his magic shows.

Rowel didn't remember the station. Only the name on the spine:

Agni Jam.

A curious author he seemed. Either genius, fraud, or someone who'd accidentally seen too far and just wrote it all down.

There was one chapter he'd bookmarked.

Titled: Ace of Spades.

At first, it read like philosophy. Then he got more intrigued by the fact that the book had visuals of various items and scientific formulas being applied, but the more Rowel turned the page, the more it began to seem more confusing to him. Because Agni's theories seemed quite impossible, so to speak.

It read…

"When something ends," Agni wrote, "another begins. Either under different conditions, or the same. But as long as continuity exists… the ending never fully comes. It just stays delayed."

"You know when magicians call their most profound trick the ace of spades? It's because, in a full deck. This card always stands out as a powerful symbol of luck and strategy."

He stated, before linking the idea to time and the sandglass, with drawings of a strange sandglass at the right corner of the page. 

"Imagine a sandglass," Agni continued. "The kind that marks a countdown. If all grains fall, the event ends. Simple right?"

"But if even one grain remains suspended at the top… then the time has not ended."

"That single grain becomes 'the' anomaly. It halts the conclusion. It holds the moment stagnant. Indefinitely." A picture of a miniature grain hanging to the edge of the glass glide appeared vividly in a close section of the sandglass drawing on the page. 

"And that anomaly—is the Ace of Spades."

Rowel hadn't understood it when he read it back then. He'd closed the book, raised a brow, and muttered something sarcastic about Agni, thinking the man was either mad, or a magician with no tricks to play.

But now?

Now, as he stood in the void, under a sky with no stars and a silence that didn't quite settle well in his mind, the theory made so much sense. To a certain extent…

Because everything should have ended by now, and yet… It hadn't.

She hadn't moved, neither did her start orbs blinked, however, the void around her felt… observant. Tighter. Like the space itself was holding its breath to see how the next scene would unfold.

She knew it all. She'd read his thoughts, skimmed his fears like a book and saw only the surrender to his fate.

But this—This choice—she hadn't seen coming. This wasn't magic, or a desperate flourish from a fading man with no more tricks.

It was a gamble, and like all gamblers, he had saved one card.

Rowel let the air settle in his lungs. Let it press against his spine and hold him upright, before he spoke again. This time, in a strange firmness like a tree refusing to be plucked away by an angry storm.

"I want to see you."

Her shape remained fixed as she listened, yet not an ounce of change in her strange concept of a face. However, something in the fabric behind her shifted—like an eye opening in the void behind. Looking down on Rowel as he spoke.

"And the world you see."

His voice didn't tremble. It almost should've.

"I want to stand in it. I want to understand it." 

He inhaled as he neared her, taking careful steps forward after getting off his chair, and standing before her while she didn't budge by his bold move. She stared at the void, at the seat where he sat and didn't even roll a look to him as he stood.

"And I want it to last… for as long as my mind can take it."

As soon as he said those lines, her eyes widened, with a strange tingle inside her being. It's true that she does not 'feel' like other sentients do, but this was one in a galaxy chance. It was as if somehow… she heard those words before. Somewhere. She didn't know when or where, past or future, but it surely happened now and that was enough to make her turn to him.

He was familiar.

His fingers curled slightly at his sides as he continued once again.

"So make it possible. It's my choice to see now."

The world didn't answer, but the moment froze, much like the ace of spades phenomenon.

Then without any sound or warning, the red timer above his head vanished, blipped out of existence. Causing Rowel to blink.

There was no countdown. No ticking threat. Just black. To that, he gulped, water ran to his system again and blood continued to flow through his heart that was now beating with no more fear to restrict it.

He knew, somehow he succeeded. But it wasn't time to celebrate a win that is still far from certain.

From across the table, her presence moved, and she made sure that her face when he saw it, remained unearthly with no signs of shock or surprise. 

Her lips… shifted into the concept of a smile, just slightly off from what a human face should be capable of. Her lips didn't stretch far when she tilted her head.

Slowly. Too slowly.

❝You speak as if what you see… is yours to survive.❞ Her words landed softly onto his ears. Softly enough to drown in.

She leaned in again, just enough that her hair—if it was hair—drifted into view, moving with no source of air, as if it was alive.

❝But I will give you what you asked, magician.❞

Her fingers traced an absent shape on the table, and the space beneath it seemed to recoil.

❝This is not mercy. Not a reward.❞

She said, as the surface trembled slightly. Not visibly. But Rowel felt it in his teeth.

❝This… is indulgence.❞

Behind her, something began to stir.

She stepped aside, just enough for Rowel to see what had always been there. Two massive hands—blacker than shadow, forged from the void itself—stood upright like gates. Not entirely human in form, but unmistakably shaped that way.

They were enormous like two monolithic towers somehow.

With deliberate slowness, they opened up. With a creak that wasn't a sound but a feeling down Rowel's spine.

She turned, walking between them, as the space between them parted. He followed, knowing too well that if there was something to be done, was to see and not think.

They walked on, almost hard to be vitalized. The gravity there felt much more than in the normal void. The darkness in this place was alive. Rowel could clearly hear it breathe.

No words were spoken for a while until things began to take shape, Rowel felt that there was no point talking now after what he was seeing.

Structures emerged on either side of their path. Monolithic, and rusted swinging bells hung from chains that vanished into nothing above. The chains groaned with each slow swing, the weight of the forms attached to them dragging the void downward. What felt mostly abnormal was the fact that the bells didn't toll, they were muted.

They weren't just for display. There had to be a reason for them to exist there, or so he thought to himself.

"Well you don't see creepy stuff everyday huh?" He noted down in a notebook he conjured, along with a small lamp levitating on top of his head to light up for him to write what he was seeing. 

Hopeless Rowel…

Each swing moved with the same rhythm. Back and forth. Back and forth, the longer he started, the more he felt unsettled by this strange synchronicity.

Rowel's steps slowed.

Ahead, the path narrowed into stone. There was a rocky plateau that jutted out like the tongue of a cliff. And there, in the center of it, was an eye.

Rowel finally halts as he looks at it. Eyeing it carefully.

Small… Human… and fleshy.

It pulsed faintly where it lay, embedded into the stone like a parasite.

A single black chain stretched from the eye's backside into the dark, vanishing somewhere behind.

The eye didn't blink, but Rowel felt that it actually wanted to. Then she stopped beside it.

❝Meet him,❞

"Him…? HIM?!"

Rowel stared, blinked twice before gulping. 

❝This, is Tin Magi,❞ she said, with her gaze unfixed and her voice almost contemplative. ❝He was once a man. A magician. Like you. Ancient by your terms.❞

She took a step back, making her own presence almost receding ❝He sacrificed his people. Thousands, if not more. All to have an audience with the void. To see what you asked to see.❞

Her voice did not change, but it felt much colder when she spoke about Tin Magi.

❝And this… is how he ended.❞

Rowel didn't speak. He realized much more as he stared at it. This was no warning, It was a mirror.

Reflecting 'what could possibly be him.'