Of course... the answer had been in front of me the entire time.

Not only the answer about Duvilin, but about me. About the Codex. About why all those voices appeared at the Oathring as if they already knew me, before I even understood my own existence.

To reach the answer of how to summon him, I first had to understand a much more important question.

What does it mean to be a Drifter?

What does it mean to carry the symbol of a surfboard in an ocean-flooded world, drowned between ruins and corpses?

The small spark of understanding began when I thought again about the Codex itself. Codex Hope. Both the System and my own experiences pointed in the same direction: that was the first Codex. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

If it was the first, then others existed.

Probably seven in total, considering the empty altar in Lost Ark and the silent mark on my system indicating 1/7.

Everything started to align slowly inside my head.

Having an ability that allowed me to see the dead, and another that let me carry their memories as if they were my own, could only mean one thing. The System didn’t want me to talk to the dead, much less resurrect them.

It wanted me to learn from them.

In the cruelest way possible.

By living what they lived.

By feeling the weight of their decisions inside my own soul.

But something was still missing.

A connection.

I close my eyes and go deeper into my own thoughts, trying to find what stays hidden between the conclusions.

’Drifting.’

’Adrift.’

’Wandering without a course.’

Being someone displaced between worlds, unable to fully belong anywhere.

But that still doesn’t answer the main question.

’Why me?’

Being a returner isn’t enough. The System reads the soul of the user. It isn’t something that superficial.

’So what exactly did it see in me?’

’Could it be that, more than rage... more than vengeance... I carried hope?’

’A hope so absolute that it kept existing even after everything.’

I look inside myself, trying to understand my own feelings, like a man feeling around in the dark for his own origin.

’Why do I exist?’

The question echoes silently inside my mind.

More than vengeance, I always wanted to change the world. I spent eight Earth years chasing the Codex not because I wanted power for myself, but because I wanted to destroy everything I considered unjust. I wanted to save my family. I wanted to keep other people from losing their loved ones to Thirstfall and to the Deepwarden.

The Codex had already answered this to me before.

"I’ll give you what you need, not what you want."

It wouldn’t change the world for me.

It would only give me the chance to do it myself.

And then I finally understood why Hope carries that name.

’Hope is what remains when nothing more concrete is left.’

I thought it before.

What remains when everything physical disappears is the teaching. The memory. The lived experiences of those who came before.

Including my own.

Duvilin didn’t respond to my command at the Oathring.

He responded to the feeling.

He responded to the genuine hope of change when I saw Oliver’s fate being rewritten in front of me.

My heart picks up with the conclusion.

If Duvilin is an ancestor responding with the same feeling... then maybe he was a Drifter before me?

’Damn it... I can’t even ask him directly, because he’s lost his own memories. Even so... it doesn’t hurt to try.’

I slowly open my eyes.

"Drifter Duvilin..."

The words barely leave my mouth before a violent gust of wind detonates through the entire room. The curtains shoot upward instantly, papers fly off the desk, and ancestral runes identical to those of the Codex begin to form on the floor in a large luminous circle.

Duvilin emerges from inside it relatively fast this time.

But not as before.

Not as a translucent ghost.

He looks... real.

The white fire, the color of bone, still burns over his body, but now there’s form, depth, presence. His image resembles Chronia in a disturbing way, even though the features are different. What was once only bizarre has become beautiful in a wrong way, almost impossible to accept rationally.

My brain rejects the image even as my eyes insist on admiring it.

"Master..." he says calmly.

Duvilin offers a small, elegant bow, one hand resting in front of his stomach while the other stays behind his back.

I have so many questions piled up that my thoughts almost trample over my own reasoning, my own voice.

But I start with the most important one.

"Thank you for helping Oliver."

Leading with gratitude is never a bad decision. Duvilin is still an absolute unknown to me, and it’s clear he doesn’t obey simple commands like an ordinary summon. He’d already proven that the first time around.

He closes his eyes softly.

"I did not help the Master."

I frown immediately.

"What do you mean you didn’t help me? I had a problem and you solved it."

While I answer, I see my OXI begin to drop again.

Fast.

Duvilin consumes energy as if my soul itself were bleeding.

"Hope is the highest order."

The world seems to freeze for an instant.

A shiver runs down my entire spine.

I grab Eventide almost on reflex and stare at the black hilt with its white silk, trying to process what I just heard.

Those were the exact words the ghosts spoke before they helped me against Cassio.

Exactly the same.

I slowly raise my eyes to Duvilin.

"Are you a Drifter?"

He stays motionless.

"I do not remember."

The answer doesn’t surprise me.

It’s exactly what I expected to hear.

Even so, there’s something I need to confirm.

Something important.

I take a few slow steps around him.

"I need to check something... please, don’t move."

Duvilin only tilts his head slightly in agreement.

I circle his body until I stop behind him.

And then I see it.

The answer I had been searching for had been there the entire time.