Chapter 9: Gostoc the Gatekeeper
A wheezing laugh echoed through Stormveil's halls like the sound of hope dying slowly in a damp corner. The acoustics of the castle turned the noise into something larger than its source—amplifying desperation until it became a symphony of survival at any cost. Gara's hand moved instinctively to his weapon before logic reasserted itself. Laughter meant humanity. Humanity meant potential allies.
Or potential threats disguised as allies.
"Well, well," a voice called from the shadows, thick with the kind of obsequious cheer that fooled no one but persisted anyway. "Another Tarnished seeks audience with Lord Godrick. How... ambitious."
Gostoc emerged from darkness like something conjured by loneliness itself—hunched shoulders, graying hair, eyes that darted everywhere except direct contact. His clothes were fine once, before time and circumstance reduced them to elaborate rags. The kind of man who'd fallen far enough to remember what heights felt like.
Every gaming instinct Gara possessed screamed warnings. Helpful NPC appearing in dangerous location. Offers guidance too freely given. Obviously untrustworthy character design that might as well come with subtitles reading "I will betray you at the worst possible moment."
But he was also desperately, pathetically grateful to hear another human voice.
Seventy-seven deaths had taught him many lessons, but the most insidious was this: isolation ate away at sanity faster than violence ate away at flesh. He'd been talking to himself for hours, carrying on both sides of conversations with imaginary companions who understood video game references and didn't look at him like he'd crawled out of some fever dream.
"Guidance would be appreciated," Gara said carefully, not lowering his guard but not raising it either. "This place is... challenging to navigate."
Gostoc's laugh wheezed again, genuine this time. "Challenging. Yes, that's one word for it. Another would be 'designed by a madman to torture everyone who enters.' But who am I to judge Lord Godrick's architectural choices?"
The gatekeeper gestured toward a side passage Gara hadn't noticed—skillfully hidden behind decorative stonework that probably doubled as murder holes in more active times. "Safer route, that one. Avoids the main patrols, most of the grafted horrors. Course, it's longer, and there's no telling what new surprises his lordship's added since yesterday."
"You've been here long?" Gara asked, following Gostoc deeper into the castle's maze-like interior. The man moved with the confidence of someone who knew every secret passage, every hidden stair, every place where the ceiling might suddenly sprout arms intent on grabbing unwary travelers.
"Long enough to see warriors like yourself come and go. Mostly go." Gostoc's voice carried the weariness of someone who'd witnessed too many hopes die badly. "You're different, though. Most Tarnished who make it past the gate have the look of desperate men. You... you look like someone who's died before and didn't mind it much."
The observation hit closer to truth than Gara was comfortable with. "Family training. We study defeat, learn from failure. Makes us... persistent."
"Persistent." Gostoc tested the word like wine of uncertain vintage. "Useful trait in a place like this. Persistence and flexibility—that's what keeps people breathing when everything else wants them dead."
They paused at an intersection where three corridors met in architectural confusion. Gostoc pointed down each path in turn: "Left leads to the main courtyard—heavily guarded, but quick if you can fight through. Center goes through the servant passages—longer, darker, but fewer soldiers. Right..." He shrugged. "Right leads to the grafting workshops. Don't go right unless you've made peace with whatever gods you follow."
"What about you?" Gara asked. "How do you survive here? Gatekeeper seems like a dangerous job when the gate leads to this."
Gostoc's smile was sharp as winter wind. "Flexibility, like I said. Lord Godrick tolerates me because I'm useful—I know the castle, know the safe paths, know which rooms to avoid when the screaming gets too loud. And sometimes..." His eyes gleamed with something that might have been shame or might have been pride. "Sometimes I provide other services. Information. Guidance. Small favors for travelers who appreciate such things."
Warning bells. This is where he sets up the betrayal. 'Small favors' that cost more than they're worth.
But Gara found himself nodding anyway. The old man's companionship felt genuine despite every logical reason to distrust it. They talked as they moved—about the castle's horrors, about Godrick's madness, about the particular challenges of surviving in a world where death was common but resurrection wasn't guaranteed.
Gara shared carefully edited truths: his merchant contacts (Kale), his training methods (dying a lot), his goals (getting stronger to survive the road ahead). Nothing about transmigration, nothing about video game knowledge, nothing that would mark him as anything more unusual than a well-prepared warrior from distant lands.
Gostoc listened with the focused attention of someone who made his living by knowing things about people. When Gara mentioned his rune reserves—carefully vague numbers, nothing specific—the gatekeeper's eyes sharpened with unmistakable interest.
"Impressive accumulation for someone so early in their journey," Gostoc observed. "Most Tarnished barely scrape together enough runes to maintain their equipment. You must be quite skilled at... acquisition."
There it is. The setup. He's measuring my worth, calculating risk versus reward.
But knowledge of the trap didn't make it less effective. Gara wanted to trust someone, needed human connection badly enough to ignore obvious warning signs. So he kept talking, kept sharing, kept building the scaffolding of his own eventual betrayal.
They cleared a room of Godrick soldiers together—Gara doing the fighting while Gostoc provided tactical advice from safe distances. The old man's knowledge proved valuable: which soldiers carried crossbows, which corners hid ambushes, which rooms contained more enemies than they appeared to hold.
Two deaths refined Gara's approach to the soldiers' coordinated tactics. The first (Death #78) taught him that they communicated through hand signals, making stealth impossible once one spotted him. The second (Death #79) revealed their retreat patterns—they'd fall back to prepared positions rather than fight to the death, making pursuit dangerous.
The third attempt succeeded through applied stat manipulation and tactical patience. Gara shifted to maximum Dexterity for the initial approach, then transitioned to Strength for the killing blows. Efficient. Clinical. Educational.
The runes that flowed into him felt substantial—enough to justify the effort, enough to fuel further growth. But when he checked his totals afterward, the numbers seemed wrong.
I died twice, so two stat points lost to the resurrection penalty. But the rune total is lower than it should be, even accounting for those deaths. Something's missing.
"Everything alright?" Gostoc appeared beside him with the unsettling timing of someone who'd been watching closely. "You look concerned. Don't worry—I can help protect your gathered power, if you'd like. Ensure it stays safe while you rest."
The offer was smooth as oil and twice as suspicious. Gara's genre knowledge connected dots with painful clarity: missing runes, helpful guide offering protection, classic theft mechanic disguised as beneficial service.
"You're stealing from me," he said flatly.
Gostoc's smile never wavered. "Such accusations. Really, what would give you that impression?"
"My rune count. It's short."
"Runes dissipate if not properly contained. Everyone knows that. The Lands Between are hard on accumulated power—especially for those who haven't learned proper conservation techniques."
"Prove it."
"I'm sorry?"
"Prove that runes dissipate naturally. Show me the mechanism. Demonstrate the process."
Gostoc's smile gained a brittle edge. "You're asking me to prove a negative. Rather difficult, that."
"Prove you're not stealing from me."
"Equally difficult. After all, how does one prove the absence of an action that leaves no evidence?"
The circular logic was maddening, but Gara had to admit its effectiveness. Gostoc had constructed the perfect crime—theft that could always be explained as natural loss, betrayal that looked like bad luck, systematic exploitation disguised as helpful guidance.
He's been planning this since I mentioned my runes. Probably does this to every Tarnished who passes through—skims a little off the top, just enough to profit without triggering violent retaliation.
Drawing his sword felt natural, inevitable. The blade whispered against leather as it cleared the sheath, point rising to rest against Gostoc's throat with surgical precision. The old man's eyes widened, but his smile held.
"Just a few," Gostoc whispered, the words carrying decades of practiced justification. "Just what you wouldn't miss. You Tarnished collect so many... thousands upon thousands of runes, more than any normal person could spend in a lifetime. A few dozen here and there, what does it matter to someone like you?"
Something in his desperation mirrored Gara's own hunger for power. The same calculating greed that made him see NPCs as potential rune sources, the same cold mathematics that let him justify killing for marginal improvements. Gostoc was small-scale, petty, human in his acquisitiveness—but the underlying motivation was identical.
"He's just like me," Gara realized with uncomfortable clarity. "Trying to survive by taking whatever he can from whoever he can. The only difference is scale."
The sword lowered slowly. "One more theft and I kill you."
Gostoc nodded frantically, relief and terror painting his features in equal measure. "Yes, of course. Understood completely. No more... misunderstandings."
"Good."
Gara walked away knowing he'd made a mistake. Gostoc would steal again—it was what he was, what he'd been shaped into by decades of surviving in places that ground people into component parts. The only question was whether the next theft would be worth killing over.
But as he settled into a hidden alcove to rest, checking his stats obsessively while paranoia ate at his thoughts like acid, one truth crystallized: he was alone. Truly, completely alone. No allies, no friends, no one who could be trusted with knowledge of what he really was.
When he died—and he would die, again and again and again—there would be no witnesses except petty thieves and monsters. No one to remember his struggles, no one to mourn his failures, no one to celebrate his victories.
Just him, his notebook, and whatever fragments of humanity he could preserve while becoming something efficient enough to survive in a world that specialized in making survival impossible.
POV: Gostoc
The Tarnished walked away, and Gostoc exhaled shakily, his hand moving unconsciously to the small pouch of stolen runes hidden beneath his shirt. The weight felt heavier now, more dangerous, like carrying lit torches in a powder magazine.
Those eyes. That warrior's eyes had held something worse than rage—understanding. Perfect, terrible understanding of exactly what Gostoc was and what choices he would make when survival demanded compromise. Like he'd seen this exact betrayal before, had lived through it, had maybe even committed it himself.
Most Tarnished threaten death when they discover the theft, Gostoc thought, settling into shadows that had been his home for longer than he cared to remember. They rage, they bluster, they promise violence. This one just... knew. Knew I'd do it again. Knew mercy was just postponing the inevitable.
The stolen runes clinked softly as he counted them—forty-three small lights, each one representing a fragment of power that could mean the difference between eating and starving, between safety and exposure, between lasting another day and joining the corpses that decorated Stormveil's walls.
But was mercy just another trap? Did he spare me because kindness, or because he knows something I don't? Something about the future that makes my little thefts irrelevant?
The questions haunted him as night fell over the castle and distant screams echoed from Godrick's workshops. Tomorrow would bring new choices, new opportunities, new tests of whatever principles he still claimed to hold.
But tonight, he counted stolen runes and wondered if the Tarnished had left him alive out of compassion—or because death would have been too easy an escape from what was coming.
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