Fate's Choice: Livestream at the Start Summoning Billions of Ravens

Inside the Siberian Wall, the air, at a constant temperature of 21 degrees Celsius, is filled with the distinctive muddy smell of thawing permafrost.

Sergei crouched in the corner of the tent, a hardcover notebook filled with numbers spread out in front of him.

Andrei sat opposite him, his left hand unconsciously touching the 80% healed, penetrating scar on his abdomen, while his right hand held a pencil, recording the thermometer reading in another notebook.

The flame hovered three meters between the two, and the surface of the red orb would show a visible fluctuation in brightness at fixed intervals.

"Here we go again." Andrei drew a vertical line on the paper. "The forty-seventh time."

Sergei didn't look up. His gaze was fixed on the timeline on the latest page of his notebook, the tip of his pencil moving back and forth between two numbers.

He indirectly deduced the time of Furina's second dive by listening to radio broadcasts from the Moscow monitoring station outside the wall. No electronic equipment could function inside the wall, but sound waves could penetrate, and he would stand close to the edge of the wall at a fixed time each day to listen to the military broadcasts from outside.

Less than an hour after the dive, the signal from the deep sea was lost.

He deduced this information from the subtle changes in the wording of the Chinese government's official broadcast. No one would say "deep-sea pulse disappeared" on a public channel, but when the announcer's tone changed from "continuously monitoring" to "closely monitoring the situation," Sergei knew something was wrong.

Then the spark changed.

"Andrei".

"Um?"

"Show me the record of the past nineteen minutes."

Andrei handed over the notebook. Sergei took it, placed the two notebooks side by side on the ground, and compared them line by line with the tip of his pencil.

He had been recording the pulse pattern of the spark for three weeks, and the pattern was clear: alternating between steep and gentle pulses, pointing southeast to east, with a frequency fluctuating around 0.00002 Hz. It was a directional call, like someone repeatedly flashing a flashlight in a fixed direction.

But the new mode that started nineteen minutes ago is completely different.

"The direction has changed." Sergei drew two lines on the paper with a pencil. "Before, it was directional, only pointing southeast and slightly east. Now it's omnidirectional, radiating evenly over 360 degrees."

Andrei leaned closer to look. "Like a lighthouse?"

"More precise than a lighthouse." Sergei underlined the number. "Frequency locked at 0.14 Hz."

Andrei frowned. "0.14? Isn't that the value after the deep-sea signal has doubled?"

Sergei nodded and tapped the number 0.14 three times with the tip of his pencil.

"The deep sea has stopped calling out, and the spark has taken over the frequency and started broadcasting for it."

Andrei leaned back, his back resting against the tent frame. "How can you be sure it's a replacement? Maybe it's just a coincidence."

Sergei did not answer the question. He turned to the front of the notebook and found three timestamps that he had circled in red pencil.

"Look here." He turned the notebook towards Andrei. "First, the time corresponding to the public report on the anomalies in the Congo mining area. Second, the release of satellite images of water solidification in Dhaka. Third, the online release of the video of the green miracle in South Sudan."

Andrei stared at the three red circles. "Did the background noise of the spark shift at these three points in time?"

"Extremely faint; it would have been impossible to detect without recording it hourly for three consecutive weeks." Sergei closed his notebook. "I have no evidence that those three newly appeared items belong to the same system as the Spark. But the noise floor did indeed tremble at each of those three points in time."

Andrei was silent for a few seconds. "So you mean..."

"The Spark can sense them." Sergei stood up and walked to the spot where the Spark was suspended. The red light reflected on his face, cutting his features in two halves of light and shadow. "Regardless of who created those three new things, the Spark reacts to them."

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a pencil, and drew a circle on a new page of his notebook. In the center of the circle, he wrote the word: fish.

Then he marked the known points on the circumference: the Cairo Scales, the London Sword in the Stone, the New York Coin, the Qinling Tiger Tally, and the Siberian Fire. The five points were evenly distributed on the circumference.

"The deep sea has stopped calling out, but the outer nodes have been awakened and have started ringing the bell for it."

Andrei stared at the circle, his fingers unconsciously tracing the scar on his abdomen. "What do you think that fish is?"

Sergei's pencil tip remained at the center of the circle for a long time.

"I don't know. But there's one thing I'm sure of."

He drew a question mark next to the center of the circle.

"It's waiting for someone to close this circle."

The red light of the flame flickered for a second, its brightness nearly 20% higher than any peak in the past three weeks. Andrei withdrew his hand from his abdomen, and the two of them looked simultaneously at the floating sphere of light.

The pulse resumed a stable 0.14 Hz rhythm, broadcasting omnidirectionally and continuously.

Sergei lowered his head and jotted down the time of this unusual peak in his notebook, the pencil tip pausing on the paper for a moment.

He wrote four words next to the time: Someone is approaching.

Dawn breaks in the central Mediterranean.

Amir's teeth had been chattering for forty minutes.

His soaked clothes clung to his body, the sixteen-degree seawater slowly drawing away his body heat. He wrapped his arms around the three-year-old girl in his arms, using his own body to shield her from the wind seeping in through the gaps in the ship's gunwale.

The little girl is asleep.

Her breathing was even, her chest rising and falling rhythmically. Her face was buried in the front of Amir's soaked shirt, her small hands clutching the fabric of his collar, her knuckles turning slightly white from the force.

The rubber boat stopped sinking.

The airbags were still deflated, the damaged hull hadn't been repaired, and the seawater that had rushed in was still sloshing around at the bottom of the cabin. But the whole ship was being held up by something, floating steadily on the water, and even the rocking of the waves was reduced to almost imperceptible.

Amir looked down at the seawater beneath the boat.

The morning light seeped in from the eastern horizon, turning the sea a greyish-blue. Within this greyish-blue, the water within a half-meter radius of the rubber dinghy displayed a very faint aquamarine sheen. It wasn't dazzling, nor was it noticeable; if his face hadn't been only thirty centimeters above the water, he probably wouldn't have noticed it at all.

But he could sense it.

A force was lifting everyone up from the bottom of the ship. It was so gentle as to be almost nonexistent, yet absolutely stable.

The ship is moving.

There was no engine, no sails, and no visible source of thrust. Yet the rubber boat was gliding in one direction at an extremely gentle speed, its course perfectly straight and without deviation.

Seventy-three people were crammed into the half-sunken ship. Some were still crying, some had stopped crying, some were praying, and some were just staring blankly at the sea.

In the distance, an orange dot appeared on the horizon.

A speedboat belonging to the Italian Coast Guard. Its orange hull stands out prominently in the morning light as it approaches this direction.

A Somali woman nearby also saw it. She struggled to her feet from the cabin, raising her hands above her head and waving them frantically. She was shouting something, but the wind ripped her voice, and it didn't carry far.

Others started moving too. Some took off their soaking wet coats and waved them over their heads, while others slapped the gunwale with their hands to make noise.

Amir did not move.

He looked down at the little girl in his arms.

She wasn't his niece. She hadn't even told him her name yet. Fourteen months ago, his five-year-old niece had curled up in his arms in the same position before stopping breathing in the icy seawater. He dreamed every night of the feeling of that weight slipping from his arms.

Just now, the little girl's mother shoved her into his arms the instant the wave hit. She didn't even have time to say a word.

He hugged the little girl a little tighter.

Speaking in Tigrinia, his voice was so low that only he could hear it.

"This time I didn't let you fall."

The little girl stirred in her sleep, her little hands gripping his collar even tighter.

Amir used his thumb to brush her wet hair from the tip of her nose to make sure she was still breathing.

The orange speedboat was getting closer. The roar of its engine could already be faintly heard.

The aquamarine sheen on the hull gradually faded as the morning light brightened, until it was completely invisible to the naked eye. But the lifting force remained.

The rubber boat continued to glide smoothly toward the speedboat, its course so precise that no one needed to control it.

Amir closed his eyes and rested his chin on the little girl's head.

The sea breeze blows from the depths of the Mediterranean, carrying salt and the coolness of the morning.

He didn't know what that warm sensation underwater was. He didn't know why the ship hadn't sunk. He didn't know why the waves calmed down just half a meter away.

All he knew was that the child in his arms was still alive.

This is enough.