Chapter 731: Information

While the returning people knelt upon the grass and wept with joy, something else was happening within the passage behind them. It was faint, little more than a lingering trace of great power, but Elion felt his gaze drawn toward it.

The green hills faded, and once again he stood in that crowded chamber, watching the ancestor look upon the people gathered around him.

This time, Elion saw what he had missed.

The man had known what they intended before they ever laid their hands upon him. He had listened to their demands, watched their desperation become resentment, and understood that the little strength he had recovered was the last thing standing between them and their return.

He had not fought his own people. He would never do such a thing. Even when they approached him, he had remained still.

There had been enough power left within him to resist, to overpower them even, but he was tired, and somewhere beneath his grief, he knew that he was partly responsible for their suffering.

His battle had destroyed their home. Whatever reasons had driven him to fight, whatever hatred had sustained him through those final exchanges, the consequences had fallen upon people who had never possessed the strength to stop him.

He had tried to repair what he had broken.

For that, he had surrendered much of his power, endured wounds that would have taken millennia to heal, and spent centuries protecting what little remained of his people.

In the end, they had still decided that he was worth more to them dead.

Elion felt the bitterness of that realization as though it was his own.

The ancestor looked from face to face, searching for a hint of something in their expressions. Regret, perhaps. Hesitation, or some sign that, beneath their desperation, they still remembered the person who had gathered them from a dying world.

And while a few did look away, unable to meet his gaze, that didn’t stop them from doing what needed to be done.

His disappointment became a quiet anguish that endured even as his body failed him. He understood their suffering, but understanding did not make their betrayal hurt any less.

After everything, they had still discarded him.

His remaining strength poured into the formation beneath their feet. Light rose through the chamber, opening the passage home, and the people turned away from him to look upon the land awaiting them.

No one noticed what remained behind: A final vestige of his existence lingered within the radiance.

It held little power compared to what he had once possessed. Yet the formations binding their shattered world together were his creation, and even now, they recognized the will of their maker.

The ancestor reached for them one last time.

Elion’s surroundings expanded.

He saw the returning people pass through the opening, carrying their belongings toward the green hills. Beneath their feet, far beyond the reach of their senses, the immense formation stirred.

Lines that had lain dormant began to glow.

They spread through the depths in a slow, terrible awakening, passing beneath forests, ruins, and recovering plains. The chains anchoring the broken landmasses trembled, their colossal links briefly illuminated by patterns that had not been there before.

Above, the people continued celebrating.

Below, their world accepted a final command.

’Then remain.’

The thought reached Elion without a voice.

There was no triumph within it. Only grief, exhaustion, and a bitterness that the dying ancestor had been unable to surrender.

They had wanted this world enough to kill him for it, but now, they would truly belong to it.

Elion watched fine strands of light rise through the earth and pass into the returning inhabitants.

They offered no resistance and caused no pain. Their souls became bound to the world.

The same law would reach those born after them, passing through their descendants as surely as their bloodlines. No matter how powerful they became, and no matter how desperately they searched, the boundary would recognize them as belonging within it.

They would not leave again.

The joy upon their faces suddenly became unbearable to watch. They wandered through the grass, marveling at their restored home, wholly unaware of the chains their own actions had brought upon them.

Yet the ancestor left one possibility behind. Because despite his spite and bitterness, leaving them no way out was still a cruel thing to do.

Deep within the formation, nine structures of light unfolded.

Elion could scarcely follow their intricacy. Vast circles opened within one another, enclosing passages, inscriptions, and spaces whose contents remained concealed behind a brilliance that hurt to look upon.

Nine trials.

Each was woven into the world’s formation, bound to the power that held its broken remains together.

They were challenges so far beyond ordinary strength that Elion could not imagine what sort of person might survive even the glimpses he was permitted to see.

But somewhere among the people of this world, a worthy successor might one day arise. Someone capable of overcoming all nine.

Only that person would earn the right to inherit what the ancestor had left behind, release the bindings upon their people, and take responsibility for the world they had been so determined to reclaim.

Until then, the chains would hold.

The last trace of the ancestor’s will passed through the formation, and Elion felt another truth be revealed to him.

The fact that there was a limit.

The power sustaining those immense structures would not endure forever. Without a successor to overcome the trials and inherit their workings, time would gradually wear them down.

What held the land together would weaken, and the formation that guided its recovery would falter.

The returning people saw fertile soil and young forests, but beneath that fragile beauty lay wounds that had never truly healed. As the formation crumbled, those wounds would reopen, swallowing everything they had mistaken for a secure future.

And eventually, the last of it would fail.

Elion saw a fleeting image of the colossal chains breaking, their severed lengths descending through darkness as the lands above them drifted apart.

Then it was gone.

The ancestor’s final vestige faded with it, leaving no one behind to explain what had been done.

Upon the hills, his people began rebuilding their homes.

The vision faded, and with it, Elion’s wispy, spectral body began to fade as well. The green hills disappeared beneath a gathering darkness, but the understanding they had left behind remained, taking root within him until he felt a cold shiver run through his existence.

His vision swam, and a moment later he was standing before the mural again, yet Elion barely registered the sights around him.

He stood motionless, his mouth slightly agape as he struggled to comprehend what he had witnessed.

’So this is what the legacy world is?’

The thought had barely formed when a mind-shattering headache tore through him.

"Arrrgh!"

His knees buckled.

Kali and Althea reached for him simultaneously, their voices rising as he fell.

They had been calling out to him ever since he fell into a stupor before the mural a few seconds ago, but now, their words became little more than distant sounds beneath the agony consuming his head.

He couldn’t hear them properly; hell... he could barely think.

Elion caught himself with one hand against the floor, his other rising to grip his head. His fingers dug into his hair, but the pressure did nothing to ease the pain.

There was nothing upon the surface for him to soothe.

The agony reached somewhere deeper.

It felt as though something had pierced the very fabric of his mind, forcing its way into a place beyond flesh and bone. Every attempt to understand the sensation only seemed to drag him farther into it.

"Elion!"

A hand gripped his shoulder.

He couldn’t tell whose it was.

There had only been a handful of times when he had experienced pain this great, but even those memories offered little preparation for something concentrated so completely within his consciousness.

His vision fractured, the mural breaking into overlapping colors as a crushing pressure gathered behind his eyes.

A flood of information suddenly poured into his mind.

Images, meanings, and knowledge he had never possessed forced themselves into his awareness, arriving too quickly for him to distinguish one from another. Before he could grasp even a fragment, more followed, and so did the terrible pain.

"AHHHHH!"

His scream turned into a draconic roar.

The sound thundered through the chamber, reverberating between the columns and sending dust cascading from the ruined galleries.

No flames followed, but Althea felt the force of it strike her armor as she crouched beside him.