Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 870: The One Who Went First

They walked back to the wall between the Lull’s body and the white stones. Nobody spoke. Almond kept one eye on the man at the front of the tide the whole way.

The man did not move. He stood with his hands at his sides and watched them go.

Lily was waiting at the north gate. She had let go of Silvester’s arm. She did not say anything when Almond came through the stones. She put both hands on his face and looked at him, as if she were counting him.

"I came back," he said.

"I saw." Her voice was rough. "Don’t do that again for at least a week."

They went up onto the wall.

John was still standing where he had been. He had not moved since the Lull screamed. The old woman stood a few steps behind him with her hands folded over her empty bag.

The man in the field walked forward.

He came forward alone. Behind him, the tide did not follow. He walked past the dead Lull, past its great open eye, and he did not look at it.

He walked across the north field toward the white stones at the pace of a man crossing his own garden.

Up close, Almond could see him.

He was tall, and thin, and gray, the way the old woman had been gray when they found her. But his edges did not blur softly. They moved.

They shifted and crawled at the corners, like the edge of a shadow in firelight. His face was a man’s face, long and tired, and there was nothing cruel in it at all.

He stopped ten steps from the line.

"Walker," he said.

His voice was deep and warm. It was a kind voice. Almond understood all at once why the old woman had believed it for so long.

John put his hands on the parapet.

"Hello," he said.

"You came down the road for her." The man smiled. It was a sad smile, and it looked real. "I told her you would. I told her a hundred times. She didn’t believe me."

"I believed you," said the old woman from behind John. Her voice was small. "I only didn’t think he’d find me."

The man looked past John at her. Something moved in his face.

"You left the edge," he said gently.

"Johnny brought bread."

"I know. I felt it." He did not sound angry. "I never had any bread to give you. I’m sorry for that."

The old woman did not answer.

Big D had come up beside John. He had the book under his arm. He looked at the man in the field the way he looked at a new name before he wrote it down.

"Who are you?" Big D said.

The man looked at him with interest.

"Ask the Walker," he said.

Everyone on the wall looked at John.

John did not take his eyes off the man in the field. When he spoke, his voice was quiet.

"There were a few of us," he said. "I’ve told you that. We climbed together. She carried the bread." He nodded back at the old woman without looking.

"And he went first. Always. Every gate, every door, every bridge. He went across first, so the rest of us would know it was safe."

"Somebody had to," said the man.

"He told us we’d all make it," John said. "Every night. He said it so many times we stopped hearing it." His hands tightened on the stone. "On the road, at the end, he went first. Like always. And he was the first one to fall."

The man in the field nodded slowly.

"I was," he said. "I went off the edge in the dark, and I fell for a long time. Longer than you looked for me, Johnny." He turned his hands over and looked at them, at the crawling gray edges of his fingers.

"And then I stopped falling. I landed at the bottom of the nothing, where it ends. Nobody had ever been there before. There was nobody there to tell me what I was supposed to be."

"So you decided," said John.

"So I decided."

"I copied the way you walked," John said. "Did you know that? When I was small. Hands in my pockets. I thought it made me look like you."

"I knew," the man said. He smiled again, and this time it was almost fond. "You were terrible at it. You kept tripping."

Nobody laughed.

Almond stepped up to the parapet.

"The old woman says you told her you were the first thing that ever ended anything," he said.

The man looked at him. It was a long, calm look, and there was no anger in it. Almond felt it all the way down to his boots.

"Almond Emberthrone Requiem," the man said. "You killed my first Lull. And now you’ve cut my second one’s eyes open." He tilted his head. "That was clever. I didn’t know it could stay awake."

"What do you end?" Almond asked.

The man was quiet for a moment.

"Climbs," he said.

The wall went still.

"Every one of these things you’ve been killing ends one small piece of it," the man said. "Sleep. Sound. Breath. A road. A home. They’re all only pieces."

He looked past Brightwater, south, toward the far-off Door that none of them could see. "I end the whole thing. The climbing. The going up. The hoping that the next door will be the one where everyone makes it."

"Why?" said Lily.

The man looked at her. His eyes went to her hand, which had moved to her stomach without her noticing.

"Because nobody makes it," he said gently. "I said we would, every night, and then I fell first. She fell. The rest of them fell. Only Johnny walked out, and look at him. He’s been walking ever since."

He spread his gray hands. "That Door is the last one. If it closes, nobody else has to climb. Nobody else falls in the dark, calling for someone who can’t reach them."

"So you sent people east to die," said Big D.

The man did not look away from him.

"I sent them away from the Door," he said. "Some of them would have found a place to live out there. Some of them didn’t." For the first time, his warm voice went thin. "I didn’t say it was kind. I said it ends."

Nobody spoke.

"I’m not here for your town," the man said. He looked around at the white stones, at the young tree in the square beyond the houses, at the faces on the wall.

"It’s a good town. I’ll leave it alone. I’ll leave all your little homes alone, every one you’ve planted."

"In return for what?" asked Big D.

"Her," said the man. He nodded at the old woman. "She was mine to look after. She always was."

Then he looked at John.

"And you, Johnny," he said. "Come and help me close it. You can walk where I can’t. You can stand beside the road. I need someone who can reach the Door from the inside."

He held out his gray hand across the white stones, palm up, the way he must have held it out at a hundred gates. "Come with me, and nobody else ever has to fall."

John did not move.

The man in the field waited. He waited a long time, with his hand held out.

"Till morning," John said at last.

The man lowered his hand.

"Till morning," he agreed. "I’ve waited longer than that."

He turned and walked back across the field. As he went, the tide moved behind him. It did not come forward. It spread out.

It went east and west along the edge of the woods, and then it kept going, around the sides of the town, until Brightwater stood in the middle of a ring of Enders, miles wide, lying down in the grass on every side.

Nobody slept much that night.

Almond sat on the wall with Lily until late. Big D sat in the hall with the book open in front of him and did not write anything.

Ainen made soup, because Ainen always made soup, and carried bowls up and down the walls until his arms shook.

John sat alone in the square under the young tree.

The old woman went and sat beside him. Almond watched them from the wall. They did not talk for a long time.

Then the old woman leaned her head on John’s shoulder, and he put his arm around her, and they stayed like that until Almond could not keep his eyes open anymore.

Big D woke him an hour before dawn.

He did not say anything. He only held out his hand, and in it was something folded small. It was cloth, worn so thin that Almond could see his fingers through it.

It was the old woman’s bag.

"It was on her blanket," Big D said. "In the hall. She left it folded."

Almond was on his feet.

"Where is she?"

Hessa was already at the parapet with her hand over her eyes.

"North field," Hessa said. "Past the Lull. She’s walking." Her voice cracked. "She’s halfway to him, Almond. She’s walking by herself."

There was a sound behind them on the wall.

It was John. He had come up the stairs at a run. He looked at the bag in Almond’s hand, and then out at the gray dawn over the north field, where a small figure was walking slowly through the grass toward the waiting tide.

He did not say anything.

He put one hand on the parapet, and went over the wall.