Chapter 46

  Raime stood in the vast silence of the throne room, the echo of that first sentence still hanging in the air.

  He frowned. “What does that mean?” His voice came out steady, though the weight pressing down on him made it feel like speaking underwater. “What does it mean for me to be your hope?”

  The being on the throne did not move at first. His silver eye remained half-lidded, its light pulsing faintly — slow, deliberate, as though it breathed through the very stones. When the response came, it was in perfect Italian, like before.

  “You ask because you do not yet understand your place in this design.”

  Raime’s breath caught. How does he know Italian? The realization struck with a cold clarity. The creature was speaking directly to his mind, bypassing speech entirely. But how—

  “Yes,” the voice answered, before the thought had even finished forming. “I can read your thoughts, and memories. I have done so since the moment you set foot upon Ithural, when you crossed the gate.”

  A shiver ran down Raime’s spine. His instincts screamed, every inch of him tensing under the weight of that calm confession. It wasn’t arrogance in the voice — it was certainty, the kind that came from someone who had long forgotten what it meant to be wrong, or to be defied.

  Then the Ithurian spoke again, and this time, there was something like ceremony in his tone.

  “Yet, before the current of meaning may flow freely between us, custom bids us offer greetings. It is the first courtesy — no matter their world or form. I have spoken first. Now, I will listen.”

  Raime blinked, caught off guard by the sudden shift. The pressure in the air eased slightly, just enough for him to breathe without strain. The figure’s gaze remained fixed upon him, patient, expectant.

  He hesitated a moment longer, then inclined his head. “My name is Raffaele Dalla Rovere,” he said finally. “From Earth. But I usually go by Raime. Though, I suppose you already know that.”

  A faint ripple of amusement passed through the psychic field, not laughter exactly, but an impression of it — like ink spreading through water.

  “Names have power,” the Ithurian replied. “They carry meaning. Even when spoken to one who already knows them.”

  “Then, Raime,” he said, his tone solemn yet strangely gentle, “know mine in return. I am Neimar Veyr’ith, last Sovereign of Ithural — Archon of the Hyerz’tah, Architect of the Tower, Bearer of the Burden and Echo Eternal.”

  Each title echoed through Raime’s mind like a ripple of thunder passing through water.

  “I ruled when this world still breathed,” Neimar continued, voice softening, almost wistful. “And when silence came for us all, I endured. Until now.”

  The hall fell quiet again — the twin suns outside casting their lavender light across cracked marble and shadow.

  Raime stood motionless, the enormity of what he faced sinking in even more than before. A being that survived longer than his own civilization, a mind that had outlived its own world — and now, somehow, saw hope in him.

  Is all of this another way of tricking me? It won’t be the first time. But a being this powerful, what kind of use could have of me? The Eye at least was chained, so it’s somewhat understandable… but… Raime cut off his train of thoughts as soon as he could, but his mind betrayed him, trying to stop himself to think about the current situation was more tìdifficult than expected, even more so because his high attributes made his thought processing much faster than a normal man.

  Raime’s jaw tightened, but before he could steady his thoughts again, a ripple of amusement brushed across his mind — like laughter carried through still water.

  “You will grow accustomed to it,” Neimar said, the faint smile in his voice undeniable. “Most new civilizations find the bridge between minds… disconcerting, at first. It is difficult to conceal what has always been unguarded. In time, the instinct to shield your thoughts will come naturally.”

  Raime frowned slightly. “So you can hear everything I think?”

  “Could,” the Ithurian corrected, tone light yet unyielding. “But will not. Against me, your barriers would mean little, so I will not insult you by pretending otherwise. Still—” he paused, and Raime felt the faint withdrawal of that foreign pressure from the edges of his consciousness, “—out of respect, I will refrain from prying.”

  Raime released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. The silence that followed felt almost sacred — as if the very air within the hall acknowledged the weight of what had been said. He didn’t know how but he felt the truth of those words.

  Then, Neimar’s tone shifted, the faint humor fading into something deeper — a solemnity that stretched across centuries.

  “Now you wonder why I have called you here. Why one who has reached the highest heights of his world would reach into the chaos and pluck a lone human from its wreck.” His eyes — twin shards of dim amethyst light — fixed upon Raime. “You are not the first outworlder to walk under Ithural’s skies. But you are the first to do it… after the Fall.”

  Raime’s brow furrowed. “You mean the fall of Ithural?”

  “Precisely.” The single word carried the weight of verdict, not explanation. The Sovereign’s tone grew colder — not unkind, but sharp, honed by centuries of reflection and loss. “When our world was bound to the System, we were not a fledgling race fumbling toward the stars, as your kind is. We were already ascendant — masters of matter, of thought, of form itself. And for such a world, the System shows no mercy.”

  He rose slightly upon his throne, the motion fluid, the aura of authority filling the hall like a rising tide. “To the weak, it offers guidance.” His words reverberated, resonating not only through the air but through Raime’s thoughts themselves. “For a civilization as advanced as Ithural, the challenge was scaled to match our reach.”

  Neimar’s gaze hardened, silver light burning brighter in his eyes. “In the end, it was our greatest — the mightiest among us — who brought a challenge that was impossible for the whole of Ithural to overcome. And thus, our world failed in the eye of the System, and it was repurposed as a challenge for other civilizations, broke into pieces we were scattered among the stars and made into these so called Rifts. A terrible destiny.

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  Raime felt the words of the Sovereign pressing against his mind like weighty stones. Ithural’s fall was decided by the failing of a challenge imposed. A verdict handed down by a cold, calculating intelligence—a system that measured potential, scaled threats, and dished punishment accordingly. And now he, a single human from an infantile world, was standing in the shadow of that same judgment.

  This is terrifying, he thought. Fingers tightening around Thunk. What if Earth—my home, my people—are measured in the same way? What if we, too, fail?

  “I don’t know what to say... but you have my condolence for what happened. I saw thanks to the items and the visions left in the Temple by Master Velthar, the greatness and flaws of your people. It shouldn’t have ended that way. But what of my world?” he asked aloud, his voice steadier than he felt. “If the System deems it… unworthy… will it fall as yours did? Will it be broken apart, recycled?”

  Neimar’s expression softened, though the glow in his eyes did not dim. “Your world is still young, Raime. Its people have yet to ascend, its structures are flexible. The System treats youth differently. It provides the time for growth, the space for adaptation. Failures are… instructive, not immediately fatal.”

  Raime frowned. “And me?” he pressed. “I—an anomaly. If the System decides my presence need to be taken in consideration, does it… make it worse? Do I face something scaled beyond what I can endure?”

  The Sovereign inclined his head slightly, considering. “An anomaly is a variable the System has not anticipated. It may indeed adjust the challenge to test you, to probe the boundaries of your potential. But it is not designed to break you outright. You are more like… an experiment, yes. But the experiment is in the measure of what can rise beyond expectation.”

  Raime’s chest tightened. The notion of being an experiment was not comforting. Yet the thought of being tested, rather than simply destroyed, allowed a flicker of resolve to spark within him. He had survived the Rift. He had adapted, learned, and grown.

  If the System wants to challenge me… let it.

  He met Neimar’s gaze. “So, I am to be the proof that my species can rise… or fall?”

  The Sovereign’s lips parted slightly in what could be described as a grin, his sharp teeth just barely showing, killing even the faintest suggestion of something humanlike in its shape. “Not proof. Possibility. The System measures potential and consequence alike. Your survival will be a lesson, but it may also be a beacon.”

  Raime absorbed that, the words settling like a seed in fertile soil. He could feel the weight of the information pressing him, shaping the outline of the choices before him. The System was impartial, relentless, and infinitely aware. But it was not omnipotent in his life, not yet. Here, in the Rift, he still had agency.

  “And the pieces of Ithural,” Raime murmured, voice lower now, reflective. “Scattered among the stars. Were they… aware? Did they survive as you did?”

  Neimar’s gaze drifted toward the far end of the chamber, silver light glinting along the edges of his robes. “Perhaps some fragments survived. But we are forbidden to leave the Rifts. And you saw what was left here, despite my efforts, in the end, all perished.”

  A full-toothed smile stretched on the Sovereing visage. “Well… they perished under the purview of the System.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Raime was feeling like finally, they were getting to the crux of the matter. “How is that related to me being your hope?”

  Neimar’s smile lingered — not warm, not cruel — but steeped in something far older than either. It was the expression of one who had seen the future coming from afar and had waited very long to see it happen.

  “Despite our fall, human, we were not without foresight.” His voice carried low, a deep resonance that seemed to draw the air tighter around them. “The System’s approach was not sudden. We knew what was coming — the patterns, the whispers in the Flow. It allowed us to prepare, though even preparation could not outmatch inevitability.”

  Raime listened in silence, the faint hum of psionic energy flickering along the edges of his awareness.

  “We built vaults,” Neimar continued, his silver eye distant now, as if he saw through the walls of the temple to the bones of the world beneath. “Hundreds of them, scattered across the continents of Ithural. Each one a fragment of our legacy. Knowledge, artifacts, histories — the very essence of who we were. Many among us chose to sacrifice what they knew — their own minds, their memories — to transcribe themselves into the very artifacts sitting in those vaults. They gave up individuality so our wisdom would not fade.”

  Raime’s throat tightened. That’s what the thought-knots were, he knew. The whispers, the memories I’ve absorbed… they were people. But being put in front of the harsh reality had a different effect.

  Neimar nodded slightly, as if hearing the unspoken thought. “You have already touched fragments of our preparation. The thought-knots, the relics you retrieved — each a piece of a greater design. But those were… surface measures. Lessons for the lost. What we truly intended lay deeper.”

  The Sovereign’s tone grew heavier, reverent. “Our greatest work — our magnus opus — was not the preservation of knowledge, but of life itself. We sought to defy the finality the System demanded.”

  He lifted a hand, and a faint psionic shimmer appeared between his fingers — a projection, a vision of a sarcophagus wrought of seamless black metal and pale sigils. “We forged these — The Kharun Sarai. To the System, they appear as coffins, as the resting place of the dead. It see them as items, and so it does not forbids their passing across the gate.”

  Raime leaned forward, drawn to the image, to the pulse of quiet power within it.

  “But they are not tombs,” Neimar said, the faintest ember of pride warming his otherwise solemn tone. “They are vessels. The body is made to die — every process halted in exact synchrony, every cell preserved in stasis. Yet the soul is bound within, held between cessation and continuity. Their minds sleep, untouched by decay or drift.”

  He turned his gaze back to Raime, and the silver within his eyes deepened to something almost molten. “We placed our brightest, our most gifted within them. We killed them ourselves — by ritual, by design — to fool the System into believing their end complete. It was a cruel mercy, one we took upon ourselves so that something of Ithural might one day awaken beyond its ruin.”

  Raime’s mind swam with the weight of it. Thousands — perhaps millions — willingly entombed, their souls waiting for release. A civilization that had refused to vanish quietly, that had turned death into a deception.

  “You’re telling me…” Raime began slowly, voice rough with disbelief, “that they’re still there? Dead and just… waiting?”

  “Waiting,” Neimar confirmed. “The coffins lie in the sacred vaults of our greatest cities, sealed beneath layers of psionic wards. They cannot awaken here — not within the Rift. The System would notice, would crush the flicker of life before it could grow. But beyond the gate — in another world, under another sky — they could live again.”

  Raime stared, his pulse a steady thunder in his ears. “And that’s why you called me your hope,” he murmured.

  Neimar inclined his head. “You are unbound by the Rift. You can go where even I cannot. Through you, a fragment of Ithural might yet pass beyond its prison. Through you, our civilization can rise again.”

  For a long moment, neither spoke. The air between them hummed with an almost sacred quiet, as if the walls themselves were listening.

  Raime’s thoughts swirled with the enormity of it — souls slumbering in coffins of black stone, an entire people sleeping beneath the ashes of their own world. Waiting for someone to awake them.

  His voice came out low, the words tasting like iron and inevitability. “You want me to carry your people out of the Rift.”

  Neimar’s smile returned — faint, almost sorrowful. “Not carry them, young human. Guide them. Give my people a chance of a better life. But the path — the chance — must begin with one who is not of the Rift, but suitable to the quest.”

  Raime exhaled slowly. A dead world’s last gamble… and I’m the variable they’re betting on.

  The projection between Neimar’s hands faded, leaving only the dim psionic glow of the chamber’s runes.

  Silence stretched between them — not empty, but heavy with the echo of countless souls waiting in the dark. Raime thought for a long time, countless possibilities flickered in and out of his mind, the sovereign just waited patiently, calmly. Like he already knew the answer.

  Raime bowed his head slightly, the weight of what he’d learned settling deep within him. “I want to help, but I have conditions though. I’m extremely grateful for the help I’ve received, both from you and from Master Velthar. I would probably be dead already without it — or worse. Still, I want to know what I’m going to face. And I want reassurance that Earth will not be compromised if I awaken your people on my world. I can’t allow the System to bring us to the same fate.”

  A quiet hum filled the hall — acknowledgment, approval, and something like mourning all at once.

  “Indeed,” the Sovereign whispered. “Let me enlighten you, then. We have much to discuss, Disciple.”