Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 239: Ch237. Through the gate of glass and salt

Chapter 239: Ch237. Through the gate of glass and salt

Miles exhaled slowly, shifting his weight. Sarissa remained perfectly still beside him, her eyes scanning the guards, the walls, the sky.

Dee gave a low rumble, halfway between a growl and a purr, as if the little drake couldn’t decide whether to fight or nap.

The sentinel with the glass-covered eyes stepped forward, her half-mask catching the light. Her movements were smooth, precise, more ritual than reflex.

"You come bearing silence, yet the forest behind you speaks your names. You are unanchored, unknown, yet you are acknowledged. Because of that, you must pass the Ceremony of First Recognition."

"We just want to enter the city. We’re not looking for—" Sarissa blinked.

"Entry without acknowledgment from the regent is blasphemy," The male sentinel interrupted. His voice was deeper, slower, as if he were reciting from memory. "To pass the gate of Vel’Serath, you must offer a truth."

"What kind of truth?" Miles stepped forward.

The two sentinels turned inward, mirroring each other. The female one raised her hand, and a circle of faint blue light shimmered between them. Inside it, threads of memory flickered.

Faces, voices, impossible shapes drifting in a liquid that wasn’t a liquid at all.

"A memory, a personal truth. Something you would not part with lightly."

Miles stared into the circle. The light tugged at him, gently, insistently.

He looked at Sarissa, and she looked back at him. They exchanged no words, knowing fully what they’d do.

Sarissa stepped forward first. She reached out, her fingertips brushing the edge of the light, and the circle pulsed.

Sarissa inhaled sharply.

A flicker, visible even to Miles. A girl standing beneath a rain-slick awning, a man in a white coat arguing with a woman behind glass, and a child—Sarissa—curled on the floor of a sterile room, clutching something that wasn’t there anymore.

The light dimmed, and the memory was gone.

Sarissa stumbled slightly but caught herself before Miles could move, her arms falling to her sides. She clenched her jaw and tightened her fists, whispering.

"It took a piece."

Miles nodded and stepped forward.

He felt like the light was welcoming him, and then, it was evening again.

A quiet night on the roof of a building long since gone, stars barely visible above a canopy of artificial light. A blanket, a thermos of cheap coffee, and Dee, wrapped in three layers of clothing, laughing at something he couldn’t hear anymore. Just his smile. Just the warmth of the coffee, the silvery wrappings of [Novice ration Packs] scattered on their laps, and the illusory feeling that they were safe from the monsters for once.

He let it go, and the memory slipped from him like a breath condensing into winter air.

When he opened his eyes, the circle was gone.

"You may enter." The male sentinel lowered his spear.

"You are known now." The female one inclined her head, and they stepped aside.

The gate was a garden of crystal vines and polished stone, etched with lines that seemed to shift when not directly observed. As they crossed beneath it, Dee paused to sniff the threshold.

The moment its paw crossed the border, the air changed, becoming warmer.

Quieter.

The city inside was alive, but not loud with it.

It breathed, the streets were paved with smooth stone that shimmered faintly underfoot. Moss glowed along the edges, casting soft light upward like inverted moonlight.

The buildings, spires and towers, archways and homes, were not built.

It was more like they had grown from the pavement up. Living crystal twisting into shape around bone-like scaffolds, glass walls pulsing with slow color, reacting to the people within.

Here, children ran barefoot, smiling and laughing. There, merchants haggled in a language Miles couldn’t quite understand.

Everyone moved with purpose, but not urgency.

It was like walking through a dream made real.

Like walking through a world without the System Miles and Sarissa had gotten so used to.

Yet as they walked, Miles couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched.

Not by the guards, though, and not even by the citizens.

But by the city itself.

"Do you see them?" Sarissa asked quietly.

Miles looked up. Atop a nearby spire, a statue of a woman cloaked in feathers and thorns turned its head ever so slightly as they passed.

Miles blinked towards it, as if to check if it was just a trick of the light, and the statue didn’t move again.

"Yeah... I guess so."

More statues lined the roofs and towers, all different. Men, women, creatures with wings or extra limbs, but all of them had eyes that shimmered faintly, facing the streets, as if watching.

Waiting.

They passed beneath a low bridge, its underside carved with a spiral pattern that made Miles dizzy when he stared too long. The air smelled faintly of salt and lavender. A street musician played a stringed instrument that had no strings.

The sound was haunting.

Eventually, they arrived at a small courtyard. A circular fountain stood in its center, water flowing upward before cascading down in a perfect dome. Around it, there were benches made of coiled crystal, and flowers that pulsed faintly in rhythm with the fountain’s rise and fall.

"We need to find a place to stay." Sarissa said.

"We also need currency." Miles added. "Whatever they use here, I doubt we’ve got it."

"Newcomers from the root path. That’s rare." A voice interrupted them.

They turned. A young woman stood nearby, wearing a coat made of stitched leaves and fibers that shimmered like beetle shells. Her eyes were dark, but kind.

"You’re not the first to walk through the forest and make it here, but it hasn’t happened in decades." She said, her lips curling up in a warm smile. "Name’s Keir. I help run one of the hunter lodges. You two looking for a place to earn your keep?"

Miles exchanged a glance with Sarissa, and both of them nodded quietly.

"Come on, then. I’ll show you the way." Keir smiled.

As they walked, the whispering started again. But this time, it wasn’t the forest.

It was the statues, the guardians above. And they whispered not in words, but in possibility.

Atop the tallest tower, a banner with the crest of the Queen Regent caught the wind. A crown pierced by a sword that had playing cards on its crossguard, and in the crown’s center, there was an open eye.