Chapter 45

  The air within the inner city was different.

  Raime could feel it the moment he left his temporary resting place and rose above the broken streets again. The silence was thicker, charged — not empty, but listening. Every grain of dust seemed to remember something sacred. His passage stirred faint eddies of wind that rippled through the empty avenues, but no voice answered. The only sound was the faint hum of his hovering cube, the soft undertone of psionic energy coiling beneath his skin.

  Now that rest had sharpened his mind, he began to see the city for what it was.

  The outskirts had been dark — the stone there carried a smoky hue, veins of grey curling through its surface like fossilized roots. It had felt mournful, heavy with stillness. But as he glided inward, the tone shifted. The roads brightened with each district, until the pale stone ahead gleamed under the twin suns like bleached bone. The light refracted between glasslike surfaces and curved walls, making the air tremble faintly, as though the whole place was breathing.

  The architecture reminded him faintly of the liberty style from Earth — graceful, flowing, but with a preference for curves over symmetry. Buildings leaned into one another like waves caught in frozen motion. Doorways arched high, and windows rippled with shapes that suggested movement even in stillness. Vines of metal climbed the walls, twisted into patterns that seemed more biological than crafted — veins of a petrified organism. The closer he drew to the heart of the city, the taller everything became.

  Some towers reached impossible heights, their upper halves disappearing into the clouds. Even the tallest skyscrapers of Earth would have looked stunted beside them. Yet despite their majesty, most stood wounded — broken sections spilling rubble onto the streets, cracked domes open to the sky, entire spires leaning as if caught mid-fall. The city had not fallen quietly; it had bled, and the traces of its ruin still lingered in the air.

  He wanted to stop. Gods, he wanted to see more.

  Every corner whispered of lost lives, of civilizations that had not merely built but dreamed. He passed plazas where statues half-buried in the grass, stood watching over gardens now devoured by alien flora — blossoms shaped like glass filaments, vines that pulsed faintly as if alive with blood. In one square, an entire fountain had fossilized, its water frozen mid-splash in a crystalline sheet that caught the suns and refracted them into ghostly rainbows.

  There were no footsteps or voices here, not even the sound of animals. Only the plants.

  How long has it been like this?

  He felt his perception stretch beyond sight — the subtle hum of psionic residue that clung to walls and streets. The air itself seemed saturated with history, a faint afterimage of minds once so vast they left echoes in stone. When he closed his eyes for a moment, he could almost hear them — faint laughter, argument, the shifting rhythm of millions of thoughts overlapping in unity. Then it vanished, leaving only silence.

  He floated above the avenues at a brisk pace — faster than a car at times. Raime had leaned on not using the cube as a method of transportation after the long travel of the previous day, he felt like stretching his own body for a bit. The four hours that followed passed in near silence, his contemplation broken only by the sound of his steps pushing his speed up by a notch when he felt like he was going too slow.

  Along the way, curiosity turned to questions. The city was vast — some streets were wide enough for ten cars side by side — yet he saw no sign of vehicles, no rails, no tracks. No skeletons of machines. Instead, he found etchings.

  Lines of inscription carved directly into the roads, running parallel for kilometers. Symbols coiled up walls, intersected at doorways, and spiraled around lamp-like pillars that hadn’t lit for ages. All of it was dead, inactive — but not lifeless. Even now, he could sense the faint residue of psionic energy lingering like static after lightning. These glyphs hadn’t merely decorated the city. They had powered it.

  He imagined what it must have looked like in its prime — the air alive with light, the streets humming with motion. Maybe the Ithurians hadn’t needed vehicles at all. Maybe they had moved through these lines, flowing like current through a living circuit.

  And then he saw it.

  The palace.

  Even from kilometers away, it dominated the horizon. The city around it was grand, but this — this was something beyond architecture, beyond art.

  It was alive.

  Towers like ivory spires rose in countless layers, each crowned with a gleaming dome or arc, curving upward until they merged into a single colossal mass that pierced the sky. The stone was white — not merely pale, but radiant, reflecting the twin suns with a brilliance that forced him to narrow his eyes. Inscriptions flowed across every surface, rivers of purple light running through veins in the walls. The glow pulsed slowly, like the breath of a slumbering giant.

  As he approached, Raime realized what unsettled him most: the palace didn’t look built. The stone hadn’t been cut or assembled. It had grown.

  Each tower seemed to rise from the ground as if it had sprouted there, organic yet deliberate, shaped by an impossible balance of nature and will. It reminded him of the Sagrada Familia in this aspect. Other buildings nearby shared this quality, their foundations fused seamlessly into the bedrock, but none radiated the same gravity. The palace pulsed in quiet harmony with the world around it, as if resonating with the planet’s heartbeat itself.

  He stopped midair, staring.

  It feels… older than the city itself.

  The thought came unbidden, instinctive. He frowned, shaking it off. No — it had to be made. Grown through psionics, maybe, or by shaping the stone directly through thought. The enchantments still active might be what confused him.

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  Still, the doubt lingered.

  The wall surrounding the palace rose high — smooth, immaculate, unmarred by time. The gate awaited him there: two slabs of metal that shimmered like liquid mercury frozen mid-motion. Their surface depicted scenes of war and triumph, lines etched so finely they seemed to move when he shifted perspective. Legions of tall, slender Ithurians marched across the gate, wielding psychic weapons that cut through monsters of impossible scale.

  Raime slowed as he neared. The air grew heavy. The silence deepened until he could hear only his heartbeat and the faint vibration of his artifacts beside him.

  He expected the gate to be sealed, inert like the rest of the city. Instead, the moment he drew within ten meters, the gate stirred.

  No grinding of stone. No screech of metal. It simply opened, soundlessly, like silk parting in water.

  Raime tensed, scanning the walls with both eyes and mind. His psychic senses extended outward — thin, invisible threads brushing across the surface of the palace grounds. Something answered. Faintly. A presence vast and distant, observing him as one might watch an insect from the edge of perception.

  Of course it knows I’m here.

  He drifted forward through the threshold. The air inside the walls was cool and strangely clear, faintly tinged with the scent of rain even though the sky above was cloudless.

  Is it welcoming me? Or warning me?

  He forced the thought away. This wasn’t the time for fear. Whatever waited for him, he had come too far to turn back.

  The path ahead stretched toward the main structure — a long, straight road lined with statues and empty gardens. He hovered above it, unwilling to touch the ground. The grass within the courtyards was short, unnaturally so — too even to be wild, too precise to be neglected. The enchantments here still worked.

  At the far end, a staircase rose like a little mountain. He floated up slowly, feeling the pressure increase with every step. The palace loomed overhead, massive doors waiting at the top. They were made of the same mercury-like metal as the gate, etched with swirling designs that drew his gaze but refused to resolve into meaning.

  He touched down before them.

  For a moment he hesitated, resting his hand on Thunk’s handle. The weapon felt small here — everything did. The place radiated authority, a presence so vast it made his own existence feel inferior.

  He steadied his breathing. Focus.

  The doors opened and the hall beyond swallowed him whole.

  At first, it was the absence of color that struck him. The walls, floors, and ceiling were all pale stone veined with silver, polished to a mirror sheen. Massive columns rose in even intervals, their surfaces alive with faint glyphs that pulsed like veins of starlight. The air itself vibrated with psionic residue — so thick it brushed against his skin, humming faintly with every step he took.

  There was beauty, but not luxury. The grandeur came from scale, not ornamentation.

  Statues lined the sides — towering Ithurian figures carved from dark metal that drank the light. Between them stood vases and urns of alien make, their surfaces rippling faintly as if resisting definition. Reliefs stretched across the walls, depicting constellations and strange geometries his mind couldn’t hold for long. Every inch of the place whispered meaning, but none of it was human.

  No wood, no fabric or plastic. Nothing soft. Only permanence, immutability.

  It struck him how absolute that was. Everything here was stone, crystal, or metal — hard, enduring, incorruptible. Either the Ithurians had never used organic material for the palace, or time itself had devoured every trace of it.

  Raime moved forward, the faint tap of his boots echoing endlessly. His psychic sense ran ahead of him, probing the emptiness. There were no traps, no life signs — only vastness.

  Through another hall. Then another. The palace unfolded like a labyrinth built to contain only silence. He knew where he was going, this was the path to the throne room. He just didn’t knew how he knew.

  He had an idea of course, but he didn’t want to send his thoughts in that direction. Here his thoughts were not privates anymore.

  He continued a couple more minutes, and then, a change.

  A corridor unlike the others — lined with statues every twenty meters, each emanating faint psychic residue. He slowed, his Thread brushing each one. The inscriptions carved into their bases were familiar. The language learned in the thought-knots came alive before his eyes.

  Every statue bore a name. A title. And a phrase of reverence.

  Xyraen Voth - First Sovereign of the Rising Tides.

  Akerion Kaul - The Architect of Glass.

  Veylith Sar - Bearer of the Veil.

  Nhal’kuris - The Quiet Empress.

  Always followed by the same

  With every name, the air grew denser. The psychic weight pressed against his lungs, his heart, his very thoughts. By the time he reached the final statue, sweat clung to his palms and his pulse quickened despite his attributes.

  At the corridor’s end stood another door — double, like before, but taller and narrower. Its surface was alive with inscriptions burning faintly in a white light. Even without knowing the meaning of the glyphs, he knew instinctively that trying to force his way through these doors would be a terrible idea.

  Raime halted a few steps short. The psychic feedback he was getting from beyond that door was terrifyingly vast, cold, and deep, like standing on the edge of a mind that had forgotten what mortality was.

  He exhaled slowly, centering himself. His Threads stirred, tightening in response, aligning with his focus.

  “This is it,” he whispered.

  His voice sounded small in the palace air.

  He pressed both hands against the metal. It was cool — unnervingly smooth — no seams, no texture, just an expanse that breathed under his touch.

  Then he pushed.

  The doors parted like mist.

  A current of air rolled out, cold and faintly electric, brushing across his face. His psychic senses flared in alarm — the pressure that poured from beyond the threshold was immense, wrapping around his mind like the deep sea pressing against a submarine.

  Beyond lay a vast chamber. Shadowed. Silent. Alive.

  Raime steadied himself, forcing his hand to not tighten on his weapon. Every instinct screamed that whatever waited beyond was awake.

  He drew a slow breath, and stepped inside.

  His eyes adjusted in a moment after crossing the threshold into the throne room, it was vast and tall, its ceiling lost somewhere in a haze above. Empty seats lined the left side, each one carved with care, waiting for voices that would never speak again. A long, dark carpet of intewoven metal stretched from the entrance to the dais and up to a throne that rose directly from the stone itself — not built, but grown, as if the world had decided it belonged there.

  Even from afar, Raime saw the figure seated upon it. Straight-backed. Immobile.

  He advanced, each step heavier as the psychic pressure thickened around him — a storm made of thought and will. His lungs strained, his vision trembled, but he pressed forward until his boots touched the edge of the dais.

  The figure was ancient, garbed in ceremonial robes of silver and gold thread. White hair cascaded down from his scalp, spilling over the throne like a frozen waterfall. His face was bare — no beard, no ornament, no sign of vanity. The Ithurian’s eye was closed, as if in sleep, yet the weight of his presence filled the chamber completely.

  Raime straightened as best he could beneath the crushing force and spoke in his clearest Ithurian:

  “Greetings. I’ve come, as you asked.”

  The ancient man stirred. Slowly, he raised his head toward Raime — and when his single eye opened, silver light burst forth, searing through the air. The pupil was lost in its radiance. But Raime saw the smile that stretched on his wizened face.

  A voice filled the room, vast and resonant, not echoing but existing everywhere at once:

  “And so, at long last, the flame of hope lit once more.”