On the day of judgment, the sky was so gray it barely counted as daytime.
The Temple clocktower hadn't yet chimed, but a faint halo was already hanging over Skycast City, spreading outward layer by layer from the tops of the high towers—like someone had tied a string around the world's forehead, reminding everyone there was something they had to "remember" today.
The kids in Rust Street, for once, weren't chasing after the garbage cart.
They crowded at the mouth of the alley, staring at the thick chain hanging down from the upper tier.
It wasn't one of those thin little message chains that carried ordinary clauses, but a "escort chain" that led straight up to the Temple. Its links were carved full of stiff, official wording that felt like it might drip:
[Covenant Council Escort Writ]
[Target: Qi Luo.]
[Charge: Suspected World Traitor.]
[Status: Pending trial.]
A ring-shaped shackle dragged at the end of the chain.
Qi Luo stood in the doorway of the Nameless Firm, watching that ring slowly descend in front of him.
"Fancy," Luo Xiu muttered. "Even the shackles come with clauses."
"That's called 'execution guidelines,'" Qi Luo said.
He raised his hand and, of his own accord, closed the ring around his wrist.
The ring was cold, like it had just been fished out of the abyssal mist-sea.
The instant the metal locked shut, a line of fine print flickered into existence in the world of Chains:
[Restrictions: May not arbitrarily rewrite escort route. May not insert other parties' name-covenants during transit. May not destroy this escort clause en route.]
"So I can't even change a road sign on the way," Qi Luo murmured with a small laugh.
"You can still laugh?" Sanya's grip on her knife tightened, veins standing out on the back of her hand.
"I just noticed—it doesn't say 'may not observe,'" Qi Luo said, lifting his head. "Doesn't say 'may not record.'"
"Every chain on the way, I can still look at."
Garth stepped forward, tugged his collar straight, then pressed his coat in a little, making sure that Hunter badge was firmly pinned against skin and flesh.
"Keep it tight," Garth said under his breath. "Don't lose it."
"If it falls off maybe the world will knock a day off your sentence," Luo Xiu tried to joke. "Improper wearing of 'World Traitor' insignia, fined three coppers."
Qi Luo shot him a glare, but the corner of his mouth still twitched.
Cen Duo didn't come.
Old Cen had said he was going to "make preparations." Qi Luo more or less already knew what that meant—that chain for the Fallen Knights' buffer layer had been trembling in the depths of the world all night.
"Let's go," Qi Luo said to the chain at his side.
The escort chain didn't answer. It merely tightened, then began to haul him upward.
The crowd of Rust Street parted on its own, opening a path.
No one shouted. No one threw anything.
There were just eyes. Heavy, pressing stares from both sides of the road.
"Qi Luo."
Someone in the crowd at the edge of the procession called his name, low.
Qi Luo turned.
It was the priest from the little church, squeezed into the doorway, clutching an old covenant book so hard his knuckles had gone white.
His lips moved. He didn't speak a blessing, didn't say "may the gods have mercy on you."
In the end, he just nodded. Hard.
That one nod weighed more than any words.
Qi Luo nodded back.
Then his feet left the ground, and the escort chain pulled him up.
The broken rooftops of Rust Street skimmed by beneath him, rusted iron sheets shrinking into small gray patches in his vision.
Above them lay the workshops and academy towers of the middle tier.
In the distance, one spire of Star-Signet Academy rose into view, its sigil still faintly glowing even in daylight—only this time, the light was colder than usual.
Qi Luo saw figures looking up from the academy square.
The students who'd shared classrooms with him, who'd signed wagers on trial clauses against him.
They were too far; he couldn't make out individual faces. Only a dense mass of silhouettes.
"You've become a teaching case," the escort chain gave a mechanical notification beside his ear.
[Notice: Star-Signet Academy has listed this trial as required viewing for the Covenant Department's "World-Scale Clauses Case Seminar."]
"At least they don't charge tuition for this one," Qi Luo thought to himself.
The chain kept rising.
The air shifted—from the damp, rusty tang of Rust Street, to the oil and smoke of the workshops, then to the perfumes and flower pollen of the noble towers.
Finally, a smell of cold lime dust and incense rolled in—
The smell of the Temple.
The Temple square opened slowly beneath his feet.
Colder, tidier than the night of the plague.
At the four corners of the square, huge observation stones loomed, each bearing the same lines:
[Public Trial · Qi Luo]
[Status: In progress (preparation stage).]
The steps around the square were already filled—upper-tier nobles, clergy, middle-tier delegates, and a selected portion of Rust Street "witnesses."
More people watched from prayer points all across the city, the picture relayed through Chains.
Qi Luo could feel those gazes—coming from every direction, converging on him through the links.
The escort chain lowered him to the edge of a circular array carved with intricate patterns in the center of the square.
This circle was the outer ring of the trial platform.
Further in, a gate led into the Great Hall of the Covenant Council.
It wasn't a physical door, but a vertical curtain of light hanging in the air, dense with text:
[Entry Clauses of the Covenant Council Great Hall]
[Only councilors, designated deities, execution Hunters, and the accused may enter.]
[Upon entry, personal defensive covenants shall be temporarily suspended, and records synced to the World Base-Covenant.]
[All speech and action within shall be deemed "statements to the world" and cannot be revoked.]
The last line was especially glaring.
—Everything you say or do here will be treated as a statement to the world.
"Pretty fair," Qi Luo thought. "They insult me once, I can write that into the world's ledger too."
The escort chain paused in front of the gate.
Two Hunters stepped up, left and right, hands resting on their hilts.
Ruan Ji was there as well.
She wore full Hunter gear, mask pulled up to the bridge of her nose, only her eyes exposed.
Those eyes fixed on Qi Luo with no hint of wavering.
"Accused Qi Luo," she said, intercepting the escort chain. "Escort now under the Hunter system."
In the world of Chains, a line flashed:
[Escort authority: Temple execution chain → Hunter system.]
[Co-hunter: Pending confirmation.]
Ruan Ji lifted a hand and tapped her Hunter chain.
[Confirm co-hunter: Qi Luo.]
[Role: Accused and temporary co-hunter (clauses cross-check only; speech unrestricted).]
The moment that line appeared, all the Chains above the Temple gave a faint shudder—
Like someone had jammed a fresh wedge into a pile of old boards, forcing them to grudgingly shift.
"The Hunter system petitions for a co-hunter?" a voice from one of the high seats said sharply in the distance.
A councilor's voice—annoyed and surprised.
"Accused and co-hunter at once is against convention," another voice, colder, said.
Ruan Ji raised her head. Her gaze cut through dozens of Chains and settled on one of the high-seat phantoms.
"The trial involves world-level stripes," she said evenly. "According to the revised Hunter Covenant—"
She paused, deliberately stressing a few words.
"—we must assign a co-hunter responsible for cross-checking and observing."
"Though the accused Qi Luo is a violator, he has unique experience understanding and intervening in clauses."
"Appointing him as co-hunter is more conducive to establishing the facts."
"...She's using you as a tool," the escort chain remarked coldly by Qi Luo's ear.
"Mutual tools," Qi Luo replied with a quiet smile. "That's more balanced."
In the chain-vision, the world's self-check module popped up a line of assessment:
[Assessment: Co-hunter participation in world-level clause trials reduces risk of "biased execution."]
[Inclination: Approve.]
The phantoms on the high seats received that hint as well.
After a brief silence, a figure wreathed in a chief god's sigil spoke in a cold voice:
"The World Base-Covenant inclines to consent," he said. "We will not oppose a co-hunter."
"But should the co-hunter disrupt order in any way, their guilt will be tallied with the accused."
"Put it on the record then," Ruan Ji thought.
She stepped aside and made the barest "go on in" gesture.
Qi Luo lifted his foot and stepped through the vertical curtain of light.
The light poured over him like cold water.
For a heartbeat, he felt every minor covenant on his body, every Forbidden Sigil on his chest, every illicit signature he'd ever scrawled in the black-market clause-rooms being scanned by something huge and freezing.
[Record: Accused Qi Luo has entered the Covenant Council Great Hall.]
[Record: Temporary co-hunter permissions active.]
[Record: Key-Sigil reaction abnormal; world-level monitoring engaged.]
That last line tightened his chest.
He knew what it meant—the World Base-Covenant was saying: "The Key is here."
The Great Hall of the Covenant Council was even bigger than Qi Luo had imagined.
Not in physical space, but in scale.
The instant he stepped through the curtain, the sense of reality twisted—
The area behind the Temple that should only be so large was stretched, in his perception, into a vast circular hall.
The dome overhead rose so high its end vanished in the dark. Somewhere up there, strokes of text flickered like stars.
The surrounding "walls" weren't stone, but rings upon rings of floating scrolls and Chains, each one inscribed with content solid enough to make your scalp crawl:
[General Taxation Clauses]
[Conscription and Defense Covenants]
[Prayer and Blessing Reciprocity Clauses]
[Deity Duties and Removal条款]
Each scroll was only a projection. The true originals lay buried even deeper in the World Base-Covenant.
Under the dome, circles of seating hung suspended.
The very inner ring held the high seats of the Covenant Council—
Phantoms sat on tall stone chairs, and behind each phantom knotted a cluster of god-chains and mortal faith-chains, like trees heavy with fruit made of power.
Further out stood the incarnations of various gods—some fully present, some too afraid to project more than a blurred shadow.
The outermost ring was for mortal delegates and the Hunter ranks.
The mortal seats looked the humblest, just low stone chairs, yet a fine line extended from each of them toward observation stones all across the city.
—Whatever they said from those chairs would be transmitted directly to every prayer point.
Qi Luo stood in the very center of the hall.
The floor beneath him was a huge circular array, lines so complicated even he needed a few breaths to parse them.
At the center, several characters had been carved:
[Trial Array for World Traitor]
"Look at that," Qi Luo thought. "They can't even be bothered to come up with a fresher insult."
The escort chain slipped off his wrist and left him in the middle of the array.
The shackle vanished, but he could feel a faint constraint underfoot—
A special set of bindings the World Base-Covenant held for the accused:
[May not initiate attacks against any seated party.]
[May not leave the array at will.]
Beyond that, nothing more.
—They needed him to speak freely, so they could write "the traitor's confession" neatly onto the world's paper.
Around the circle, the Hunters split into two ranks, blades angled inwards.
Ruan Ji took her place on one side, hand on her hilt, badge warm beneath her cloak.
From above, one of the phantoms spoke.
"Qi Luo."
It was the voice of the Council's chief recorder—thin and cutting, eyes like polished stones that only ever looked at Chains.
"Resident of Rust Street. Former Covenant Department apprentice of Star-Signet Academy," he intoned. "Now charged with multiple counts of unauthorized interference with clauses."
"Do you understand where you stand?"
"I'm standing where the world likes to sermonize the most," Qi Luo said.
His voice echoed through the hall, then down the Chains, into every observation point in the city.
"This is the lecture hall you built for yourselves—and the pit you dug for everyone else."
There was a small stir in the Hunter ranks.
Several hilts tightened reflexively.
A phantom on a high seat let out a cold snort.
"Sharp tongue."
"We did not convene today to listen to your quips."
"Today's trial is to clarify whether the world has been polluted by a 'Key' like you."
"A Key written by the world itself," Qi Luo corrected. "Not by me."
He hadn't finished when the Forbidden Sigil on his chest suddenly throbbed violently.
—Something etched into it was answering.
Qi Luo lifted his head.
At first it was just reflex—a habit of checking the dome for any world-level Chains. But once he looked up, he froze.
In the darkness of the dome, a Chain hung there.
A Chain he'd never seen anywhere else.
Calling it a "Chain" felt generous. It looked more like a deep crack.
It wasn't bright silver, nor the pale gold of normal clauses, but a solid smear of black.
Black like someone had taken a blade and opened a long gash in the sky of the world, and black mist kept seeping out of the cut.
The Chain hadn't fully manifested.
Its outline pulsed in and out of focus in the mist, like a massive, suppressed serpent coiled over the dome.
Ordinary people's eyes couldn't pierce that layer of dark—they'd only think "that part of the ceiling seems... a bit dim."
Some of the gods' projections glanced that way every so often, but always looked away quickly—
Stare too long, and it felt like your eyes were being stabbed with needles.
Only Qi Luo saw the details.
—That Chain didn't just dangle from some point in the dome.
—Its other end ran down along the seams of air and rules, all the way into his chest, right into the center of his Forbidden Sigil.
The Key-Sigil flared hot.
The pain wasn't like a burn on skin—it felt like two sets of lines locking into place, an electric surge.
He could almost feel that black Chain running along his bones, nerves, and personal Chains, down through the array under his feet, into the World Base-Covenant itself.
[Detected: World Rollback Covenant main chain synchronized with Key-Sigil.]
[Monitoring level: Maximum.]
Two lines flashed at the deepest edge of his chain-vision.
"...You hung it here," Qi Luo thought, staring up, a surge of emotion rising in him that he couldn't name.
Anger. Bitter humor. And a cold, razor-edged clarity.
—The main chain of the World Rollback Covenant was wrapped over the Covenant Council's head in plain sight.
—Every trial, every charge, every god and mortal here were just adjustable parameters on that Chain.
One of the phantoms seemed to notice where his gaze had gone.
"You see it?" a voice asked.
The tone carried an odd curiosity and probing edge.
Qi Luo lowered his eyes to the speaker.
He couldn't make out exactly which god this phantom was, only that more than a dozen thick god-chains twisted behind him—this one probably had many names in mortal prayers.
"See what?" Qi Luo said blandly.
He didn't acknowledge anything.
Admitting that he "saw" was admitting he could look straight at world-level stripes.
The phantom wasn't in a hurry.
"Mortals, when they behold the Great Hall, only feel its height," he said. "Hunters see it as a battlefield."
"If you only feel it's high, we can take you for nothing more than a noisy clause-smith."
"If you see something you shouldn't..." his voice chilled, "then your crimes are more than mere treason."
Qi Luo smiled.
"You're the ones who hung a black Chain over your own heads," he said. "And no one's allowed to look? Might as well turn the lights off."
"Qi Luo."
Another, even colder phantom cut in, cutting off the rising undercurrent.
"You stand here," he said slowly, "because you bear, on your chest, a stripe the world does not wish to expose."
"This stripe is related to the Chain on the dome."
"We must determine whether you are a Key chosen by the world—or a thief who has stolen the world's authority."
"From the world's perspective, does it matter?" Qi Luo asked.
"When a Key breaks, it swaps it out."
"When a thief breaks, it just hangs an extra corpse."
The instant those words left his mouth, every Hunter chain around the circle flared.
Qi Luo could feel several hilts itch—the clauses reminding them: "This one is challenging the order."
In the Hunter ranks, Ruan Ji didn't look at Qi Luo. Her gaze had drifted slightly upwards, to a particular node on that black Chain.
She couldn't see the whole thing, just one detail:
Qi Luo's Key-Sigil wasn't the only mark hanging on that Chain.
Farther along, she glimpsed the faded remnants of other names.
Names long since erased from the mortal roster, now surviving only as "former Key candidates" inside the hidden records of the Rollback Covenant.
—The world had never made just one Key.
It had tested many people.
In the end it chose this Rust Street boy simply because his structure felt most convenient.
"Ruan Ji."
The Hunter system nudged her in her ear. "Maintain formation."
She forced the distraction down and pressed her hand firmly to her hilt.
Her Hunter badge warmed against her chest.
She could feel the presence of the badge under Qi Luo's coat as well—his badge was opening a thin, delicate conduit between their permission chains.
[Temporary co-hunter channel established.]
[The co-hunted may request clause cross-check during trial.]
[Current status: None requested.]
In her heart, Ruan Ji thought:
—You've seen it.
—Then don't just look.
—Use it.
On the high seat, the chief recorder tapped the stone slab in front of him.
"Qi Luo," he said. "If you dare stand here, do not pretend you know nothing."
"The stripe on your chest," his gaze sharpened, "overlaps at a very high degree with the carrier stripes in the World Recovery Contingency as recorded for the Key."
"Do you admit that you were engraved, from birth, for that contingency?"
The scrolls around the hall gave a faint rustle.
That was the Chains of minor gods and mortal delegates reacting to the question.
"From birth," Qi Luo repeated silently.
He thought of Cen Duo's line: "From the beginning, they never allowed you to be a whole person."
He lifted his head, voice steady:
"I admit it."
"I admit," Qi Luo said, "that I was born treated as a covenant container."
"That night, when the Night Bell rang three times, you planned to push me, as a 'Key,' in the Temple."
"It was only because a few of your God's Blades suddenly found themselves disgusted for once that you didn't."
"Stop smearing the Knight Order," a phantom snapped.
"I'm stating facts," Qi Luo said.
"If you had the nerve to leave the initial draft of the Rollback Contingency in the Clocktower Transcription Room, then if I can read it, I can talk about it."
The chief recorder narrowed his eyes.
"You've been inside the clocktower secret archives?" he said coldly.
"You see it more clearly than anyone," Qi Luo pointed up at one flickering chain above his forehead. "That 'unauthorized reading of remnant pages' warning is still sitting in your logs."
His Hunter badge trembled faintly.
Ruan Ji knew Qi Luo was deliberately dragging their "mistake" into the open.
He was forcing the world to admit that those Rollback remnants existed—that they were written, sealed away, and now read.
High above, the black Chain seemed to stir in response.
Heat lanced through Qi Luo's chest again.
He could almost feel the Chain marking his every line:
["Admits born as covenant container" — recorded.]
["Night Bell three-chime" incident — recorded.]
["Rollback Contingency initial draft existed and was sealed" — recorded.]
Standing in the center of the array, he was struck by a sense of absurdity.
—He stood here as a "criminal."
—But he was painstakingly helping the world fill in its own blacked-out history.
A voice from the high seats spoke again.
"Since you admit you're the 'Key,'" the phantom said icily, "by what standing do you now call yourself 'traitor'?"
"Are you betraying the world—or betraying us, its guardians of order?"
Qi Luo laughed once.
There was no mockery in it, only a trace of grief.
"Betraying you, of course," he said, head lifted. "Not the world."
"The first line in the world's initial draft was: 'All names under heaven may be rewritten.'"
"You were the ones who sealed that line away."
"You were the ones who turned mortals—from co-authors who could talk with the world—into kneeling 'signature tools' who can only listen to clauses."
His voice reverberated through the dome.
In the little church of Rust Street, many people looked up, hearing someone, for the first time, say such things to the Temple's face.
In a narrow workshop street prayer pavilion in the middle tier, a group of craftsmen clenched their fists.
In an upper-tier viewing chamber, some faces went pale, others cursed "lunatic" under their breath.
And beneath the dome of the Great Hall, the black main chain of the Rollback Covenant gave a sound so faint it was almost nothing.
Like something deep, deep down had been lightly poked by his words.
"—You're not betraying the world."
In the Hunter ranks, Ruan Ji repeated silently, "You're betraying the Old Covenant."
Qi Luo lifted his eyes.
He could feel the "clause cross-check request" hidden on the back of the Hunter badge heating up.
—The world was listening.
—The master covenant was turning pages.
—The black Chain on the dome was coiling tighter.
In the next moment, as long as he dared to reach, he could run his hand along that black Chain—
And touch the edge of the "master covenant" itself.
He drew a slow breath.
"Since you're asking which side I stand on," Qi Luo said, his voice low but every word clear, "then I'll make it plain here."
"I stand on the line before the world wrote itself wrong."
"On that line, a name could be rewritten."
"So—"
His gaze cut through ring after ring of scrolls, phantoms, and Hunters and landed on a faintly glowing "blank" point where the black Chain met the dome.
There, a patch shone slightly brighter than the surrounding dark—
Like a wound left behind when the first line of the initial draft had been ripped away.
"Today my crime is 'World Traitor,'" Qi Luo said. "Then I'll use that title to ask the world its first question."
The Key-Sigil on his chest burned like a brand.
"—Are you still willing to admit," Qi Luo said, "that you once wrote the line: 'All names under heaven may be rewritten'?"
The instant the sentence fell, the black Chain on the dome bucked.
Sparks skittered between its links.
Before anyone could react, the world's self-check module threw up a line of red text:
[Detected: Accused has touched "Initial Draft · First Line" residual scar.]
[World self-check query: Acknowledge existence of said clause?]
From somewhere deep above the dome came a sound—so far away it was impossible to tell if it was a sigh or a cracked, bitter laugh.
—The world was being forced,
For the first time in its own great hall,
To look at the wound left by its Old Covenant.