"That's what the bitterness was," he says. "Wasn't it?"

Eileen tilts her head gently toward Grommet, "All this time, I thought we weren't worthy. That Father and I had failed to understand the trial the Unifier left for us." His voice carries no bitterness, only an old ache wrapped in wonder.

Eileen for her part sets the teapot onto a simple burner that lights itself, "Let me guess. You thought being unable to brew this tea was proof you'd done something wrong?" she says, not accusing, just stating what feels like something they hold as truth. "That this misstep in preparation," she adds, glancing at the note above the table, its text still strolling by, "should somehow reflect how you see your accomplishments in this chamber?"

Grommet lowers his clipboard slightly, his other arm raised toward the note, "We tried so hard to follow the ritual" he says. "But each answer shifted just before resolution, as if the rite of this ceremony resisted being understood."

Eileen hums, a small sound, half empathy, half thought. "It is easy to let small insignificant things cause us so much pain Grommet. It is a very common thing, believe me." Eileen pats the kneecap of Grommet kindly in reassurance. "But we cannot let these problems lead to us punishing ourselves, this Unifier of yours, if they were here, they would understand the problem you faced and they would have fixed it. I'm sure of that."

Then, with the gentleness of someone placing one story beside another, she turns back to the tea. "So, tell me what you thought of the flavor. Would you say it was more sooty, like a campfire? Chalky, like powdered root? Or bitter, like over steeped bark?"

Grommet blinks and a frown begins to form, not in irritation, but in thought. He realizes she is trying to distract him and so he looks at his fingers, stained by eons of failed rituals. Slowly, tentatively, he places one of the inked fingers into his mouth, hesitating, and then tastes. Several seconds passing before the words come tumbling out around his finger, "Dark," he says. "Sharp and sooty."

"That's too bad then," Eileen replies, tapping her fingers lightly against the edge of the tea table. "Seems like ink makes for a terrible cup of comfort. Though I wonder, if food grade quality ink could be acquired, could it be used in place of a smoking essence? Maybe even give a burnt caramel profile to a dessert, that would be too sweet otherwise?"

For a moment, Grommet forgets to take his finger out of his mouth. He looks at her, not confused, not skeptical, just curious. Like a student hearing a question for the first time and realizing the answer might change everything about how they view the subject being discussed.

Meanwhile, across the room, Borosh remains unmoved, yet something within him is already beginning to soften. The scent of the steeping tea winding its way through the vaulted chamber, curling into the hollows of his armor. His shoulder twitch once, and a sigh escapes the ancient, whose welded form and moss covered joints shift with a harrowing creak.

"We tried many times to brew it," Grommet finally says, finger now out of his mouth. "When the gate first refused the White Quill, we made a pot. We thought it might help them with their ceremony. We waited seven days as prescribed."

There is a pause then and it stretches without force, like something breathing old air. "But the ink shattered the pot before it could cool on the eighth day."

Grommet closes his eyes and then in the quiet of the moment he finds himself unable to speak, pressed down by that scraping feeling of every era that watched him try and fail in the endless toil of the process. Once, long ago, he believed the right clause could undo his suffering here. Still even now he believed the rite could be solved. Yet now as he watches Eileen steep tea, he realizes that belief is not always hope. Sometimes it is a habit that forgets, it ever had a reason to belief in itself.

A thought that is broken moments later by the motion of speech.

It is not a voice though, nor a word, more a sound so old, it no longer belongs to vocabulary. Turning they all witness the gate begin to hum in a low resonance, as if coming from deep within its ribcage, too soft to echo, too ancient to describe. Not mechanical, nor magical, just more aware then anything else.

Eileen too looks up at it and narrows her eyes. She tilts her head as if catching a breeze that smells like dusty boot prints in the mudroom. Yet the gate does not open or make any more sound.

Until Xozo's voice carries softly, "What did it say?"

Eileen does not answer at once. She watches the steam rising in a curl above the pot. Silently she notes how quick the tea was able to breathe. "It didn't say anything," she replies. "But at least it stopped pretending it wasn't listening."

Eileen turns to Grommet, "What is it that your gate is guarding exactly?"

But to Eileen's surprise, it is Borosh who answers, his eyes opening fully for the first time in hours, or years, or eons. "We guard the gate," he says, like it is self evident. "We confirm the passage." Eileen nods, not as a cue to signal she'll move on but as an invitation to continue and when they do not, she reaches inside her shawl and unhooks the VIP pass, drawing it out like a carefully folded note from another time.

She offers it to Grommet, who takes it with both hands, his fingers hesitant at first, then reverent. He examines it closely, the seal catching the faintest glint from the soft chamber light.

"It's official," he says, almost reluctantly. "Stamped, sealed… but no one is left to wield this seal. The Quills have long since abandoned their post. There's no one who can authenticate it, not properly."

Xozo steps forward now, her voice is clear and steady despite her youth, despite the family tragedies she's had to deal with, "I can vouch for Eileen. The Quills recognize the authority of the VIP pass and its holder."

Eileen's gaze doesn't waver as she stares at Borosh. Her voice carries on calmly, her tone like warm water poured into a cold bowl. "What allows the gate to open? What allows passage to be confirmed?"

Borosh exhales slowly. When he speaks, it is less an answer than a confession. "A paradox. Only someone who is both Named and Unnamed Entrant can pass through."

Grommet steps in, his voice more strained. "But only a Named may open the gate. While only someone Unnamed could survive the rite."

"What then qualifies someone as a Named Entrant?" Eileen asks gently, her question causing the scroll at Borosh's hip to unfurl without his touch so that its length can pool on the floor, paper whispering against stone. But Borosh doesnt seem to mind for he barely even glances down at it as if the words are already burned into his thoughts.

"Only Named Entrants," Borosh recites, "those recorded at his Ascension on Orivath are eligible to access the gate."

Grommet's voice follows with a note of sorrow. "But the rites required after the entrance can only be self performed by an Entrant who is not listed, nor recognized. Therefore, only Unnamed interference can trigger the passage."

Borosh straightens. His voice no longer reciting, but repeating with conviction. "The rite is sacred. It requires an expected candidate but expectation itself prevents activation."

Eileen tilts her head, not to judge, more to make space for the contradiction to settle between them. "So… if you are not expected, the gate will not open."

"Correct," Borosh answers, not bitter, only certain.

Eileen lets the silence stretch, not as a tactic but as a kind of offering. Her question lingers gently in the space between them. "And if you are expected?" she asks, not pushing for a solution but turning the puzzle in her hands, the way one might rotate a stone, studying its worn edges.

Grommet answers without lifting his gaze. "Then the gate will open," he says as he leans forward to runs his hand along the pile of broken teapots, fingers trailing through remnants of porcelain. His breath catching just slightly before steadying again. "But the expected will be unable to progress, the ritual prevents them from moving through the open door.

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He picks up one of the fractured lids and holds it for a moment in his palm. Its smoothness has been worn away, leaving it dull, but not without dignity. He sets it down with care, as though it can still be used for something in the same way the one in front of him is acting.

"There is yet to be a candidate who can satisfy both conditions," Borosh says. He does not look to either of them but lets his voice travel into the air as if it already knows the path. There is no edge to his tone, only the quiet cadence of a long practiced tradition. "My son and I at least are in agreement on that..."

Grommet nods slightly, more sad then accepting. Yet his eyes do not drift from the broken pieces before him, "We've tested thousands of designations," Grommet says. "Mythic proxies, saints from long dead worlds, failed gods and chained demons even a few false prophets." Grommet breathes in slowly at that last one, hands resting now on his knees. "We even summoned metaphors, wrapped in flesh and form, Quill born vessels that unraveled in the gate's gaze."

"I will begrudgingly admit, that was one of my son and I's weaker attempts, still we are servants first and foremost to the Unifier."

Something like a smile flickers at the corner of Grommet's mouth. "We have tried repeatedly forever. Every possible entrant, every single one of them invalid. Every attempt either corrupting a Named Entrant or rendering the gate inert for a few centuries."

Eileen chooses then to turn her attention again towards the small tea station which she has arranged into a particular order. Taking her time she prepares the cups with measured ratios of sugar and water along with pinches of cardamom while watching the kettle begin its low rumble towards a boil.

Humming softly she selects a metal tea ball and scoops leaves with a practiced hand. When the whistle calls, she lifts the kettle and pours it into four waiting cups, each one receiving its share as if yearning for a little more. The steam curls upward too like a story just beginning to speak.

Borosh watches then without blinking. His helm tilting ever so slightly, as if unused to bearing witness to such deliberate, domestic rituals. Grommet shifts only when the scent reaches him, when the comfort of something real brushes against the ritual weight of everything he has ever known.

Then, she retrieves and unwraps two wax sandwiches from inside her basket, real ones. Slightly smushed from travel. The peanut butter and jam ones with a scoop of cinnamon, cut diagonally. She hands a slice out for each of them without fanfare along with a cup of tea.

Borosh receives his with reverence but he doesn't eat yet, just holds it. As if he's trying to make the memory last longer than the taste could ever be. Grommet receives it as well but with confusion, having not expected the sandwich. Xozo takes hers with a warm smile. "There now," Eileen says, settling herself back on her heels. "Always better to think with something warm in your hands."

"You know, outside this place, I'm not a Distinguished anything and I'm certainly not a VIP."

Grommet pauses, holding the last tine bit of sandwich just above his lap. His fingers have stilled, his eyes on Eileen, watching as she brushes a few crumbs from her skirt with the same care she uses for her words.

"Daniel and I were both marked once by a guild," she says. "He worked logistics, and I worked flora assessments and cookery. Nothing rare or dramatic. But we had good class stones, we even underwent a few evolutions. The evolutions giving us stability, it was good for us, just what we needed, it was enough for us to help others, enough at least that we felt useful."

"Eventually though we retired, to raise our son and when our son's placing ceremony came, we let it all go. Not just the house and the savings, but the very structure of our lives itself. We sold off the evolutions, the experience, the class tiers. Everything the system used to measure us."

She takes a sip of her tea. The cup is warm in her hands and she holds it not just for comfort but for rhythm. "But losing it all like that, even for a worth cause, was not graceful. It scraped us thin and it killed Daniel, in a way no illness could. But it gave our son a place that we never could have reached on our own. We thought it was the right thing. I still believe it was, even with the costs, I live with that consequence of losing the love of my life."

She looks down into the steam and her voice grows softer. "We did it because doors would open for him and they did, plenty of them. But no one told us that some of those doors would only open once and only from one side, a side that we were no longer on, even if our son was."

Everyone is listening now, even the chamber whose walls seem to breathe. Xozo does not fidget and Borosh does not move. Even the gate itself feels quieter, as if trying not to intrude.

"When you give up your class, you don't just give up your title. You give up being recognized. The systems of support you've come to rely on all your life, the one you've contributed all your life, they fail to support you when you need them the most."

"And not just the system either, people too, they stop seeing you in both the general and the specific sense. You become a gap in their world, a space where the rules stop working. No letters come and no invites carry your name. Even the most basic shop interfaces blink at your existence, confused, before they then inevitably move on, often without logging any error at all."

She turns her head slightly, not accusing, just including Grommet in the shape of the moment. "So yes. I'm classless but not because I was born outside the system, but because I left it of my own accord. And now I walk through places that have no mechanism for tracking me."

"But here?" she motions vaguely to the walls, to the chamber, to the unknowable architecture. "This place needed to file me somewhere. It couldn't accept a simple name I chose to use, so it slapped this 'Distinguished Delay' on me like a sticker, on a package no one remembers ordering."

Grommet stares down at his tea. His fingers twitching as if wanting to write something, but instead, he places his cup on the clipboard which is already on the ground so that he may continue Eileen's words for her, "In the same way even chaos finds a shelf, given enough time and someone willing to see its silence as a missing entry."

Borosh shifts with a motion that feel like an echo of an old ritual loosening at last. "Delay is not a designation in any schema. It's a provisional status the dungeon applies to anomalies it cannot dismiss but cannot define."

Eileen leans slightly into the quiet, her voice dry but not unkind. "After a while of not being read, it does something to you. You stop trying to be readable to everyone else. You stop reaching for roles. You learn to live sideways in a world that only moves in straight lines."

She glances at Xozo then with a kind smile, a silent callback to the story they've already shared. "And that's what makes this place so odd. It noticed me not because I mattered, but because its logic couldn't withstand the inconsistency of ignoring what it had already processed."

A silence settles, not hollow but whole. Eileen sets her tea down, her hand resting over the rim of the cup, not to shield it, but to feel its warmth.

"So yes," she says again, voice softer now, "I'm Named because it couldn't ignore me. But not because anyone intended it."

She lets the moment breathe. "Which means I'm both Named and Unnamed. Expected, because I wasn't. Filed, because I couldn't be ignored."

Across from her, Grommet's brow furrows not in doubt, but in dawning recognition. Fingers twitching slightly, he looks at her as though seeing a paradox wear a human face for the first time.

"The system labels you Distinguished Delay," he says at last, the words quiet and measured. And your pass is authentic and therefore real."

He exhales. "All hail the Great Unifier. You meet both the required conditions."

Eileen chooses the moment to take the final bite of her sandwhich, chewing, swallowing and then following it with a sip of tea. Grommet glances toward Borosh, who still has not touched his sandwich but holds it like a keepsake from some better age.

"Classlessness was never accounted for on any of the scrolls of eligibility nor is it a disqualified option in any of the provisional overlaps."

Eileen nods casually as if she fully understands the logic, she had a feeling these two wanted out, just as much as she wanted to know what lay past the gate. For she had a feeling in her stomach that told her that something of great importance was just beyond.

Still a little massaging of the message couldn't hurt, "My very presence disrupts the logic of the paperwork this gate relies on."

She lets the room absorb the words. She does not try to drive them home. She trusts the silence to carry them.

Grommet looks at her like she has rewritten not just the rules, but the shape of the question they have all been trying to answer. He breathes out slowly. "You don't just qualify. You are the contradiction."

He lifts his gaze toward the ceiling and sighs. "And that means the test, the paradox... was never meant to be passed for only a contradiction could have ever solved it."

Borosh, his father, finally smiles in what feels like longer then forever. "All these years, arguing. We were only painting more lines onto a door meant to remain locked forever..."

The chamber responds not with sound, but with an exhale. Something subtle shifts in the atmosphere, like old air exhaling through forgotten vents. Grommet looks toward Borosh, this time with hope in his eyes.

Borosh rises slightly, enough to draw from the stillness shaped like a decision. His voice is no louder than before, but it carries weight, the weight of something that has rested too long in a place and is now ready to find roots somewhere else. "If we do not let her pass, we would be enforcing another paradox and this whole thing repeats."

"It could be endless cycles father, endless contradictions, endless silences pretending to be purpose," Grommet says, his tone carrying no protest now, only the soft finality of unsaid agreement.

In a long pause that does not stall the moment, but honors it as they both turn to Eileen, "We would not be guardians. We would become the pause between contradictions."

Both close there eyes and then speak together, "Let it end instead with understanding."

Rumbling behind them, the gate opens with a grand exhale, the dust along its seams lifting upward in a soft column. A subtle glow drawing itself in a quiet outline. A sound like stone settling into truth echoes through the floor.

"It was always waiting." both of them say.

Eileen stands then and straightens her skirt, smoothing the front, then she shakes out the folded wax paper and tucks the used teapot back into her basket as a keepsake. Turning she then finds the father and son, "You've kept the long watch," she says. "You were steady when the rules weren't. That matters more then either of you are giving yourself credit for. You have to know that."

Borosh nods, the movement is slow, not ceremonial, more reverent. "You will tell the Unifier?"

Eileen tilts her head slightly. "Yes, that the two of you held the paradox without breaking."

And then stepping forward together they cross the threshold into the final unknown.

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