"It... it just opened?"
"Rover, what exactly are you..."
Jinhsi and Changli stared at the Court of Savantae mechanisms that had obediently unlocked at a single word. He'd walked through like he was coming home. Neither of them could find a response.
"We don't have time for puzzle-solving." He glanced at Changli with a quiet smile. "Besides, you already found the answer, didn't you?"
"...!"
The realization hit her like a thunderclap.
Yes. During her investigation of Mount Firmament, she'd uncovered records of the Court of Savantae collaborating with a mysterious figure, someone with dark hair and golden eyes, to study the Sentinel Jué and her hibernation chamber right here on the mountain.
That figure was the Rover standing in front of her.
So we do have clearance after all.
Rover gazed down the open corridor, turning the logic over in his mind. If the female Rover had partnered with the Court of Savantae here centuries ago, researching the Sentinel and attempting to treat her old wounds, then there was no way the mechanisms wouldn't have permissions set for her.
And he was, on a fundamental level, no different from her.
Baizhi had put it in memorably blunt terms during that checkup: even if the two Rovers ever developed that kind of relationship, it would technically qualify as self-stimulation.
Ahem. Anyway. Point being...
The clearance was his to use. No need for puzzles.
Though we are Rovers, wanderers by nature, the moment we know where we're going, the whole world steps aside to let us through. Lucky this place lets me skip ahead. Otherwise...
He calculated his current reserves. If speed had been the priority, he could have brute-forced every mechanism in his path. Smash through the lot of them and it wouldn't have taken long. When you carried a Rover's power, spending brainpower on puzzle mechanics when raw force would do felt like a waste.
"I thought I knew everything about Jinzhou." Jinhsi's voice was soft, almost to herself. "But this land still holds so many secrets."
"Don't sell yourself short." Changli rested a hand on her student's head. "What you know is Jinzhou's present. What this Rover represents is Jinzhou's past."
The past had always been fertile ground for buried secrets. And a woman's intuition told her the secrets woven through Rover's existence outnumbered the stars.
"Come on. The Sentinel's waiting below."
He beckoned them forward and led the way into the Mianloong Chamber, buried deep underground. Every mechanism they encountered disengaged the instant it sensed his presence, welcoming him through.
Seeing it all in person, Rover found himself impressed by the Court of Savantae's technological prowess. The sheer ingenuity of their creations was remarkable, worthy of their reputation as one of the world's most enigmatic organizations.
The Mianloong Chamber held traces of the past, too. Jinhsi and Changli discovered stacks of research reports left behind by Court of Savantae scholars, and what they read shook them to the core. Terms like "Second Awakening" and "the extraordinary one" appeared again and again.
Knowing now that the Rover of centuries past had cooperated with the Court of Savantae here, the picture became clear. He was almost certainly the "extraordinary one" referenced throughout these reports.
But what stunned them most was something else entirely.
According to the records, the Court of Savantae had only been permitted to study the Sentinel and the hibernation chamber because this extraordinary figure had authorized it. The Sentinel had cooperated with the researchers willingly, on his word alone.
Without that authorization, even the Court of Savantae's brilliance couldn't have produced something on the level of the Chronosorters. Jué had personally instructed the scholars, and only because permission had been given.
"I can understand the Court of Savantae treating the Rover with deference," Changli murmured. "But even the Sentinel seems to have regarded him with... reverence."
Her heart hammered. Nothing in the reports stated it outright, but between every line, she and Jinhsi could feel the weight of what this person had been. The singular position he'd occupied.
Then, passing a long table thick with dust, Changli noticed a document half-buried beneath the grime. She picked it up.
[Research Memorandum - #C501]
The extraordinary one spoke to me today of the outside world. Of how a new Civilization was built atop scarred and ruined earth. The account was calm, restrained, almost devoid of personal feeling, as though the speaker were an observer of these events rather than their architect.
It was in that moment I understood. The extraordinary one is fundamentally different from us. The humility, the goodwill... these are tools of integration and guidance, meant to lead us down a path already charted. And yet I remain grateful to have heard these things.
I want to see that new world with my own eyes.
Perhaps I have spent too long on Mount Firmament...
Notes from a Court of Savantae researcher.
Changli's breath came unsteady as the words sank in. An observer of Civilization? No. Its architect.
Everyone alive carries some burden. Ordinary people bear the weight of themselves and their families. Someone like Jinhsi, standing at the apex of worldly power as Magistrate, carries the flickering lights of ten thousand homes. But this Rover... what he carries seems to transcend all of that. As though the fate of the world itself rests on his shoulders.
She drew a long breath and forced herself to calm. Now wasn't the time for these thoughts. The three of them had reached the deepest chamber of the Mianloong Chamber, where the Sentinel waited.
"Fascinating."
Rover scanned the space. The hibernation chamber holding the Sentinel stood ahead, separated from them by an underground river. Or what had been a river. The Temporal Mandate had frozen it solid, not into ice but into stillness, every ripple and current locked in place.
They walked across the surface of arrested water, using it as a bridge.
The hibernation chamber itself resembled the massive glass tanks from the oceanariums of his previous life, stretching dozens of meters in every direction, some dimensions approaching a hundred. An entire sea, preserved in a single room.
"I can sense the Sentinel ahead, but I'm getting no response. The Mianloong Chamber is blocking her voice." Jinhsi stared at the chamber with growing worry. A vast draconic silhouette shifted within the blue-green water, but the tinted currents obscured any detail.
Across the chamber's surface, intricate golden patterns blazed to life, forming a seal that radiated impenetrable force.
"Leave it to me."
Rover stepped forward. Fractsidus had only managed to trap the Sentinel by exploiting the hibernation chamber's own functions. As a Rover, his connection to the Sentinel ran deep. He likely shared the same civilization of origin. If that was the case, the same authority that had bypassed every Court of Savantae mechanism might override this seal too.
He pressed his palm against the chamber wall.
Symbols flared across the surface, script from a civilization he couldn't decipher.
Can't read it, but...
"Disengage lock sequence. Open the hibernation chamber."
A shot in the dark. He had no idea if it would work.
The golden patterns dimmed and vanished. Jinhsi gasped as the link between her and the Sentinel surged back to life.
"It worked?!" All three voices at once.
The water inside the chamber churned into a vortex. The barrier shattered. A dragon erupted from the flood, ancient and sovereign, riding a tide that burst outward in a roar of spray.
Its body stretched hundreds of meters, scales of blue-grey and silver-white interlocking like armor harder than any forged weapon. Twin eyes blazed with piercing gold, radiating the absolute authority of something divine. Noble golden horns crowned its skull, and from its spine rose crests of white that cascaded like silver leaves from gilded branches. On either side of its great head, Tacet Marks pulsed with luminous golden tracery.
The murky water purified in the wake of the Temporal Mandate, crystalline and still. Though it surged outward with the dragon's emergence, not a single drop touched the Sentinel's body. Every bead hung suspended in midair, frozen in time.
A sight so majestic, so sacred, that any mortal witness would have dropped to their knees before a god.
"Sentinel." Both women spoke at once, left hands folded behind their backs, right hands raised with two fingers angled before them, bowing in reverence.
What they beheld was the faith of Jinzhou's Civilization made manifest. The divine being who had guided humanity through centuries.
Even broken, even on the edge of death, the Sentinel's presence eclipsed anything at the Calamity Class. Had she not been so grievously wounded, had Fractsidus not exploited a hibernation chamber born of the Sentinel's own civilization, those petty conspirators could never have touched her.
"Jinhsi. It has been too long." The voice resonated with the undertone of a dragon's cry. "And... Arbiter."
Anyone hearing Jué speak for the first time would have been startled. The Sentinel's voice was a woman's, gentle and clear, yet threaded with draconic power that transformed softness into something commanding. Less a mother's warmth than an empress' grace.
But at this moment, Jué's gaze fixed on Rover with visible confusion.
There was no question this was her Arbiter. She was a thousand percent certain of that. Every word, every gesture radiated an authority that dwarfed her own. And he'd opened her hibernation chamber as easily as lifting a latch.
That alone was proof beyond all doubt.
But... only... however...
In Jué's memory, the Arbiter's form was that of a breathtakingly beautiful young woman.
So why was there now a second Arbiter who matched the original in every conceivable trait, identical in all respects save one glaring, unmistakable difference: this one was unmistakably, handsomely, undeniably male?
Is... is this right?!
She'd sensed it on the day both Rovers had awakened, true. But seeing him in person, Jué couldn't help wondering if centuries of hibernation had rattled something loose.
Where are the other Sentinels? I think we need an emergency meeting. There's an extra Arbiter, and it's a man!
And next on the agenda was supposed to be the Second Awakening.