The Last Godfall: Transmigrated as the Young Master-Chapter 167: Fixed to the Board

The letter lay folded on the table beside the bed, its edge squared with the wood. Vencian stayed where he was, one hand resting against the sheet, his breath moving slow enough to lift the fabric and let it fall.

For a moment he'd thought the room had changed. But it didn't. The chair sat angled toward the window, the ceiling beam above him held the same hairline split it always had, and the latch on the shutters held fast against the morning air. Light crept in along the floorboards and stopped at the bedframe.

He shifted his wrist and felt the paper through the table grain. He didn't reach for it.

So much for being all so mysterious and shit…

He let the thought fade unfinished when his chest tightened, a brief squeeze he could not tell was physical or something else.

Rolling to the side he planted his palm against the mattress. The fabric bunched under his fingers as he drew his legs over the edge, letting their weight settle before the rest followed.

From the mattress, his body rose in stages. A knee lagged a fraction behind the lift, and the shoulder balked at the first pull until a firmer grip caught the bedframe.

A pause followed.

Quenya moved closer. Her glow thinned but stayed steady, eyes locked on his hands. She shifted as if to speak, then stopped, recalibrated, and pulled back to an earlier distance.

The window curtain stirred once against the frame, then settled.

With the letter lifted from the table, a straight path carried him across the room. A hand caught the curtain edge that separated the room, half to draw it aside by a span and half to steady himself. The action exposed the pins along the frame and, beneath them, the cards bound with string.

The board filled the wall. Notes clustered thick at the center, dates layered over routes, ink arrows crossing with purpose. The left quarter thinned into open cork where a few tags hung without lines. That section stayed unfinished.

A step brought him closer to the board. Sound from the window fell away as the frame filled his view. Fingers pulled one slack line taut and slid the card until its edge met the mark.

He chose a thin pin from the lower tray, checked the tip against the cork, then squared the letter so its fold ran level with the string line beneath it. The pin went through the corner with steady pressure, deep enough to hold, shallow enough to leave the parchment intact.

It took its place among dates and routes. A timeline card sat below it, a map edge brushed its side, and a consequence tag rested close enough to share a string. No names bordered it.

Only after his hand left the paper did he reach for the chalk. He wrote the words That day beside the cluster, the strokes tight while his fingers trembled, then drew a circle around the words. A question mark followed, set just off the curve.

Taking a step back he lifted his eyes and observed the whole wall at once.

She acted on something placed here. The chalk dust clung to his fingertip when he lowered his hand.

The empty space beside the circle held its shape. Too many lines leaned toward it, too many outcomes bent away. It was not something to endure. It was something that now controlled the board.

His hand stayed against the cork until the pressure in his fingers eased.

He could trace the outline of the person the letter addressed through schedules, choices, and repeated habits, yet the space behind that outline stayed empty.

It keeps happening. No matter how carefully I line the pieces up, something will not settle. I can follow his thinking, retrace his steps, even stand in the place he chose, but the version of myself who could have answered this letter stays out of reach.

It was not a doubt about who he was, and it was not a wish to return to anything he had lost. The letter had been written from a position that no longer existed for him, and whatever response it once allowed had already been spent.

His attention shifted back to the board. The letter held its position, unchanged by what he could or could not supply. He pressed the string beneath the letter with his thumb and felt the tension pull sideways.

A voice spoke from behind him, close enough to skip the room. "That's the first time I've seen a language like—"

Vencian turned instantly as a dagger formed in his grip and threw it with full force, his shoulder flaring hard enough to drag his stance sideways as he followed through. The blade cut the air where the voice had been.

The figure came into view as the dagger passed his head by a narrow shift. It struck the wall and sank to the hilt. The man glanced at it, then back at Vencian, and raised both hands.

The man stood where the voice had been. He was old enough that his hair had thinned to gray, his frame narrow under a plain coat. His eyes moved from the embedded dagger to Vencian without hurry, and both of his hands came up, empty and visible.

Another dagger rested in Vencian's grip. He had not noticed the summoning, only the balance settling into his palm.

"Hey, I'm not here to hurt you," the old man said. His tone carried no edge and no rush, shaped instead as something meant to be accepted rather than enforced.

Vencian shifted his angle, opening the distance and putting the board at his side. "Commonly the people who meant no harm don't come so unannounced."

The old man exhaled through his nose and let his hands stay raised. "I would have," he replied, "if curiosity hadn't won." His gaze slid back to the wall. "No, seriously. I know most of the languages in the world. But I don't know what's written there."

"I am absolutely pissed off about and feeling shit about a whole lot of stuff," Vencian said. "That's why you get one sentence before I decide whether you get a second."

The old man rolled his eyes. He looked around the room, at the bed, the curtain, the board with its lines converging where they should not. "Fine," he said. "I know why they are after you, what they want from you, and why they want it."