The ceremony itself is short, belying all the time needed to prepare, and before long Ciel is kneeling before Her Majesty herself, with a smile of triumph on his lips. Still, nothing becomes real until they have finally left to make their way down the halls and out into the streets once more.
Earl Phantomhive, Ciel thinks. That's me. The Queen said so. Earl Phantomhive, of Her Majesty's Men of Letters.
"Don't worry," Aunt Anne says. "You'll do fine."
Ciel makes a small, dismissive noise. He is not worrying, he wants to say, but fears that doing so will make him seem less confident. For at last he is about to be initiated into the Men of Letters, that esteemed and shadowy group of which his predecessor was a part.
There is a box in his hand with an aquarian star engraved upon it and watchful eyes upon each corner, and inside the box is a Key.
"Sebastian," he says. "Remember what we've discussed."
"Of course," Sebastian says, with a small bow.
The whole group has decided to come along to see him off, although no invitation was offered. Aunt Anne gives him a hug and even Grell Sutcliff gives him a small smile. "Good luck, kid," the butler says. "Give us the rundown when you come back, won't you? I'm dying to hear what a secret society is like."
The chapter-house of the Men of Letters looks from the outside like any other gentlemen's club, the door carved with a matching star. Ciel knocks twice, then once, then three times, and the door is opened toward him.
"Good evening," Ciel says. "I am Earl Phantomhive."
"Of course, we've been expecting you." The door-warden leads a winding way past the lounge to another door, small and unobtrusive, and Ciel opens the box and takes out the small silver key.
The door opens onto a series of curving stone steps that spiral their way into the earth, lit by sconces that cast only a meagre light; everything below the threshold is blackness. Still, he can make out wards, beyond the ones that decorate the door; they trail their way down the stone, some obviously built into the pattern, others gouged in later. He steps inside, pulls the door shut behind him, and then he walks.
At the bottom of the stairs is the dark room. It is lit by a single candle, and Ciel can see the rough-hewn walls about him. But it is the coffin at the center of the room that Ciel is drawn to.
A small coffin, he notices vaguely. A child's coffin. Inside it is a skeleton.
He had expected something of the sort, of course—he hadn't come here without preparing, by reading his predecessor's journal in which he detailed his own initiation. But somehow Ciel had expected the skeleton to be that of a full-grown man. He gazes down at it solemnly for a moment.
There are other things in the room as well. A table, a chair, a collection of items in the vanitas tradition. Mirror, hourglass and scythe, the image of a rooster, bread and water; as well as he elements of alchemy: salt, sulfur, and mercury. Ciel needs no reminder of mortality: he has been close enough to death. The cult, too, had been very fond of their rituals, had gathered around that black altar in their perverted surgical ampitheatre. They had fancied themselves moths around a pure flame; they had been enamoured by the idea of a sacrificial lamb. And so they died.
And Ciel still lives on.
Finally, Ciel moves to the chair and picks up the paper upon it. Here are three questions he is meant to reflect upon and answer. "What does a man owe to God? What does he owe to himself? What does he owe to his fellow men?"
The first two answers are quite clear to Ciel. To god, a man owes nothing. To himself, a man owes self-respect.
But what does a man owe to his fellow men?
To help, I suppose, Ciel thinks. To not stand idly aside when there is something he might do for others. Is that not the mark of a gentleman, of a noble house?
Is that not what he himself had wished for—so many times?
But the traditional answer to these questions is the same word, repeated three times.
Love. Love. Love.
So Ciel Phantomhive lies. Picking up his pen, he writes down "love" and passes into the society of his forefathers.
NOTE: "What does a man owe to God? What does he owe to himself? What does he owe to his fellow men?" — traditional questions asked during Freemasonry initiation in the chamber of reflection/dark room. Usually underground, lit by only one lamp, and it had items like the skull or skeleton in it (along with other vanitas items) as reminders of mortality.