The white space fell dead silent.
Across the table, Zero's hand hovered with unnerving calm.
Zekai felt a tremor run through him—not fear, but the sudden, suffocating weight of what this moment actually was. This wasn't a childish game of chance anymore. This was the hinge point. Whatever happened next would decide everything that came after it.
For a moment, neither of them moved. Even the white space seemed to wait.
Zero looked completely at ease, like the outcome meant nothing to him either way.
That detachment unsettled Zekai more than any physical pressure this place had thrown at him.
He exhaled slowly, forcing the hesitation out of his lungs.
Trust your instinct.
"Rock. Paper. Scissors."
Thud.
Both hands hit the table at once.
[ ZEKAI: SCISSORS ]
[ ZERO: PAPER ]
Paper.
Light exploded between their palms, bright enough to fracture the gravity around them.
[ CURRENT SCORE — ZEKAI: 2 | ZERO: 1 ]
[ THE WINNER OF THE CONTRACT IS CONFIRMED. ]
The table split down the center with a crack like a gunshot, one half sinking into the white as if the space no longer needed it to exist.
For a second, Zekai sagged back into his chair and let out a long, ragged breath. He'd actually won. Against something that wrote its own rules for reality, he'd walked away the winner.
"...I actually won."
The words felt strange in his mouth, heavier than they should have been. He looked across the table, a sharp grin cutting across his face.
"Guess you're the real fool here."
The triumph didn't last a full second. Something felt wrong underneath it.
Zero was still smiling—no irritation, no shock, nothing that looked like defeat. If anything, he looked entertained, like this exact outcome had been written into the script long before either of them sat down.
His hand hadn't even twitched.
"A deal's a deal." Zero's voice carried absolute certainty. "Speak your wish."
Zekai didn't answer right away. Cold sweat crawled down his neck. There was no version of this where something like Zero lost that easily. Zekai was human. Nothing more. Zero existed somewhere past that line entirely, in territory no human logic could map.
Did I just make a mistake?
The thought crawled through him slowly, colder than the white air around his skin.
If I ask for the wrong thing now, there's no second try.
He leaned forward, eyes cold and locked on the entity across from him.
"Wait."
"I'm changing it."
Zero arched a pale eyebrow. "Changing what?"
"My wish."
His mind raced ahead, sorting through every angle at once. Walking out of here with Aron, safe, would've been the easy choice. The obvious one. But that only patched the surface.
Guilt cut through the calculation for half a second—Aron was still out there, bleeding, alone with whatever this place had left to send. He buried the thought before it could slow him down. A small mercy wouldn't stop this from happening again.
If things like Arcana were real, if this whole nightmare was just the tip of something enormous, then asking for temporary safety was a joke.
If I choose wrong, there won't be anything left of me to fix afterward.
No. Escape wasn't enough. He didn't need a cheap way out of one dimension. He needed the power to keep asking the questions that mattered. He studied Zero again—not the smile, but the certainty underneath it. The kind of presence that didn't ask reality for permission to exist.
He looked straight into the abyss behind Zero's eyes and didn't blink.
His fingers loosened on the edge of the table. The decision had already settled somewhere deeper than thought.
"I want you."
Zero's smile cracked into something closer to a frown. "Meaning?"
"You. And everything tied to you."
Silence.
For the first time, Zero's smile stopped looking effortless.
BOMMMM—
The white space convulsed around the words the instant they left his mouth. Only then did the actual size of what he'd just demanded hit him.
Zero gestured lazily behind himself. The endless white world shuddered, rearranging its architecture around them. The twenty-one unfinished statues began to change.
Rough, incomplete stone sharpened into something whole. Features carved themselves out of nothing. Limbs completed themselves in real time. Gold lines split across their monolithic bodies like veins carrying liquid light instead of blood.
Twenty-one colossal figures now stood in a perfect ring around the table, each one radiating its own crushing, silent pressure. Watching.
Their shadows reached across the white floor and stopped at Zekai's feet. None crossed the final inch.
They'd always been here. Now they finally acknowledged him.
"I want all of you." His voice hardened. "Every Arcana."
For the first time, Zero didn't answer right away. Then he laughed—not mockery, something closer to real, dark amusement.
The sound echoed once. Then twice. On the third echo, it stopped belonging to the room.
"In every cycle before this one, not a single challenger has ever asked for that." He leaned in, pale eyes drilling straight through Zekai's skull. "Are you certain?"
"Is that a problem?" Zekai shot back.
Zero paused a beat. Then nodded, slow.
"No problem at all."
The agreement came too easily. Some old instinct in the back of Zekai's mind screamed a warning—nothing that grants a wish without hesitation is ever simple. He didn't take it back anyway.
Zero rose from his seat, stepping straight through the wreckage of the shattered table like it wasn't there.
"I grant you myself." His voice stayed calm, almost gentle. "And the Arcana." He leaned in close, his whisper cold enough to freeze blood in Zekai's veins.
"But the outcome—that's yours to carry."
The words dropped into place like an iron mechanism locking shut somewhere deep in the universe. Something twisted sharp in Zekai's chest, like an ancient key had just been turned inside his own soul.
Zzzzsup!
[ AN ABSOLUTE CONTRACT HAS BEEN INKED. ]
Zero pressed two fingers to Zekai's temple.
"From now on—"
"You are the Fool."
Something buried in the fabric of the white space accepted that title before Zekai's mind even had a chance to process it. The word didn't echo. It settled, heavy, like a card slammed face-down onto a table that could never be turned back over.
The twenty-one statues moved as one. Massive golden heads lowered—not a bow exactly, more like the geometry of the entire space folded itself around them in total submission.
Something had just begun. Silent. Undeniable.
The moment the title settled into him, something inside Zekai's core buckled inward.
His heartbeat missed once. Then everything broke apart.
CRACK—!
His vision blurred instantly. Every muscle in his body locked a half-second too late, bracing for pain that hadn't arrived yet—and then it hit, tearing through him like liquid fire poured straight into his veins.
His body seized. His eyes rolled back, white flooding his vision. Pressure ripped down his spine, cataclysmic, shattering the human limits he'd always lived inside of.
Something ancient flooded into his chest—vast, cold, and far too large for a human body to hold without cracking.
His body lifted from the floor. Bones, nerves, blood—everything inside him seemed to fall out of sequence, breaking apart and rebuilding itself before the pain could even decide where to begin.
"Without this," Zero's voice echoed straight inside his skull, bypassing his ears completely, "you don't exist outside this place."
Not a warning. A rule, stated flat.
Weight settled into him—crushing, permanent, an inheritance he'd never asked for and had no say in refusing. Something vast had just moved in, whether Zekai understood the terms or not.
The Arcana statues stayed silent. Watching. Like they were confirming a decision that had already been made somewhere far above either of them.
Thud.
His body convulsed one last time, heart slamming back into rhythm like a piston kicking to life. He hit the floor.
The impact drove every ounce of air from his lungs. His breath came in broken, ragged pulls, fingers clawing at the smooth surface beneath him.
Slowly, he forced his head up.
Zero stood above him. Not on the floor. On the ceiling. Like gravity itself had picked a new master and didn't need Zekai's opinion on the matter.
"...What the hell—" He coughed, static scraping the inside of his throat.
"—did you do to me?"
His heartbeat felt different. Heavier. Like it was counting toward something he didn't understand yet.
"Nothing," Zero said, calm as ever. "Just a correction."
He clapped once.
Zzzzsup!
Blood-red words burned into the air above Zekai's head.
[ WARNING: ONE YEAR OF YOUR LIFESPAN HAS BEEN REDUCED. ]
His breath stopped cold. His chest tightened, like something had been quietly lifted out of him without asking. He went completely still.
"...What?"
His body understood before his mind caught up. Something deep in his altered soul had already started counting.
One year. I don't even know what that costs me yet.
But his body knew. His pulse skipped—not a beat, a number. Something recalculated inside him, silent, automatic, like he'd been carrying a ledger his whole life without ever being told it existed.
"Just a token in advance," Zero said, smile returning. This time, there was nothing human in it.
"For what?" Zekai forced himself up onto his elbows, teeth gritted.
The answer landed in his mind a full second before the fear did.
"Being me costs your life," Zero said quietly, eyes glowing with something ancient and unbothered. "There's no way out for you anymore, Fool."
Zekai's mind went quiet—not the silence of fear, but something colder. Clinical. This wasn't just about one lost year. Some instinct buried deep told him the next time he touched this power, the price would look nothing like the first.
"What happens now?"
Zero raised a hand.
Fwump.
The white space folded inward from the edges, collapsing like paper caught in an invisible hand.
The twenty-one Arcana vanished first. Their golden outlines stretched into threads of light before snapping into darkness.
Reality rushed back at him all at once, a wave crashing through a broken dam. Before the dark could swallow him whole, Zero leaned in close to his ear.
"Sleep well."
"Soon, you'll break."
"Wait—!"
Darkness cut him off. The white space shattered into a million pixelated fragments around him.
And as his consciousness sank into the black, one truth settled into him, undeniable and absolute.
Something monstrous had just woken up inside him.
And something else had already started taking pieces of him in return.
There was no walking this back now.
Deep beneath the new weight inside his chest, something clicked.
Once. Twice.
Then it began to count.
Somewhere deep in his soul, a clock had already started counting down to zero.
✦ End of Chapter 17 — The Wish ✦