29: It's Not Your Fault

The city of Geminus was alive in a way no other zone could match.

Two halves stretched across the river like mismatched twins: the gleaming spires of the North Ward, where guild halls and auction houses pulsed with commerce, and the shadowed warrens of the South Quarter of Nox, where alleys twisted into labyrinths and whispers carried more weight than gold.

Tanuki materialized at the teleport gate, the familiar hum of the spawn crystal fading behind him. His daggers rested at his sides, but he didn’t draw them. He wasn’t here to fight. Not yet.

The streets were crowded with players and NPCs alike, but something about the city felt… off. The glitches hadn’t spared Geminus. A few merchants’ stalls flickered between two states: overflowing with fruit one moment, barren the next. A bard NPC strummed his lute, but the notes came out backward, the melody unraveling in reverse. A patrol of guards marched past, their animations stuttering, one of them walking in place for several seconds before snapping forward to catch up.

Tanuki kept his hood up, slipping through the crowd. He hadn’t been here in months. Nox always felt like another world, one that was dangerous, unpredictable, alive with secrets. And now, with the “???” Tarot loose in the world, it felt even more unstable.

His HUD pinged. A message from Celeste.

“I’m waiting. The old clocktower.”

Tanuki’s chest tightened. The clocktower was deep in the Quarter, past the market stalls and into the maze of alleys where guild enforcers and rogue players made their own rules.

He typed a reply. “On my way.”

The deeper he went, the stranger the glitches became. A fountain in the square poured water upward, streams vanishing into the sky. A child NPC ran in circles, her dialogue box repeating the same line: “Have you seen my cat? Have you seen my cat? Have you seen my cat?”
A guild banner on the wall flickered between three different emblems, none of them belonging to the guild that controlled this district.

Players moved through it all with unease, some laughing nervously, others whispering about omens. Tanuki kept his eyes forward.

The clocktower loomed above the Quarter, its gears exposed, its hands frozen at midnight. Once, it had been a landmark for quests and events. Now, it was abandoned, its bells silent.

Celeste stood at the base, her avatar cloaked in silver and blue. She looked up as he approached, her expression unreadable.

“Tanuki,” she said softly.

He stopped a few paces away. “You said you had something important to tell me.”

Celeste glanced around, as if the shadows themselves might be listening. The glitches flickered across her model, her cloak stuttering, her hair shifting between styles.

“I do,” she said. “But not here. Not where the world can hear us.”

She motioned toward the tower’s entrance.

“Inside. Please.”

The door groaned as Celeste pushed it open, hinges grinding like something long forgotten. A draft of stale air rolled out, carrying the scent of dust and rusted iron. Tanuki hesitated at the threshold, his daggers heavy at his sides, before stepping in after her.

The interior was dim, lit only by fractured shafts of moonlight filtering through broken stained glass. Dust motes drifted in the beams, swirling like tiny galaxies. The walls were lined with gears taller than men, their teeth frozen mid‑turn, as if time itself had been caught in a glitch.

Their footsteps echoed on the stone floor, each sound swallowed by the cavernous silence. Somewhere above, a chain rattled faintly, though nothing moved.

Tanuki’s HUD flickered. His minimap blinked in and out, the compass needle spinning wildly before freezing, then spinning again. He clenched his jaw. Even here. Especially here.

Celeste walked ahead, her cloak stuttering in the glitchlight, sometimes silver, sometimes black, sometimes nothing at all. She didn’t look back.

The staircase spiraled upward, narrow and uneven. Tanuki followed, his hand brushing the cold stone wall for balance. The higher they climbed, the louder the tower seemed to breathe, the groan of wood, the creak of chains, the faint hum of gears that weren’t turning.

Halfway up, he glanced out a broken window. The city of Geminus sprawled below, its lights flickering like a dying constellation. In the distance, he saw the river ripple unnaturally, water flowing both upstream and down at once.

He swallowed hard and kept climbing.

At last, they reached the chamber beneath the frozen clock face. The great hands of the tower loomed above, stuck at midnight, their shadows cutting across the floor like blades.

The chamber was empty except for a single wooden chair, toppled on its side, and a scattering of feathers that looked too real to be part of the environment.

Celeste stopped in the center of the room. She turned slowly, her eyes meeting his. For a moment, the glitches around her froze, her cloak steady, her model whole.

“This is far enough,” she said quietly.

Tanuki’s throat tightened. The silence pressed in, broken only by the faint tick‑tick‑tick of a gear that wasn’t moving.

He realized he was holding his breath.

“This clock tower hasn’t shown the right time ever since you fought Arsenyx” she started saying, “everything’s changed. But… it’s not your fault, Tanuki. It’s mine.”

Before Tanuki could truly process what she was saying, she moved closer to him, deliberately close so that they were only less than a nose apart. Without warning, she wrapped her arms around him. Briefly, green angel wings appeared from her back embracing him much like her arms, but they glitched and disappeared. After his initial shock, he wrapped his arms around her too, and they stood, in tender silence, in agonizing comfort. Even if the world was falling apart, they felt immune in each other’s arms.

Celeste backed away.
“It’s all my fault.”
Tanuki finally spoke, “what do you mean?”

“That Tarot… the one that changed everything. The truth is, I can decipher it. I know what it means. I knew the entire time. If I had told you earlier… it wouldn’t have triggered all of this. But I was Arsenyx’s partner. I had to follow whatever he told me to do, and I couldn’t reveal what that Tarot meant to you. I never wanted to be his partner… all he ever did was use me for his own gain. And I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t. I didn’t understand why; why I constantly felt like I had no will of my own. But that changed too.”

Tanuki stared intently as Celeste reached into her cloak and pulled out a Tarot.

He was stunned. He stuttered out his words, “H-how did you get that?”

“I can only decipher the card if it’s in my inventory. Arsenyx transferred it to me. That was when… I did something I never thought was possible. I… I left. I left his partnership. I did so out of my own free will. Something I was never supposed to do.”

Tanuki was unable to speak, just listen.

“Now he’s unable to control me ever again. And the first thing I knew I had to do was tell you the truth. This card was never meant to be used in a battle. It’s a beacon. A ray of hope that shines toward the direction of the hidden dungeon.”

Tanuki suddenly received a party request. It was from Celeste.
“I can guide you. You’re the only one I want to partner with, by what I feel in my heart. So please… Will you please take me there?”

Tanuki’s cursor hovered over the glowing button. For a moment, the HUD stuttered, the request box splitting into fragments of code. Then it steadied, waiting for his choice.

He exhaled, the weight in his chest loosening just enough to let him move. He clicked “Accept”.

The system chimed, clear and unbroken. For the first time since the duel, the sound didn’t glitch.

A new party formed: Tanuki & Celeste