Chapter 434:Sovereign.

Chapter 434: 434:Sovereign.

Atheline closed his eyes and reached inward again. This time, he didn’t search for the fragment, he searched for the connections.

For several minutes, nothing happened, then Atheline remembered something he’d been avoiding because it made no sense.

Inside the memory, the Supreme Sovereign had looked at him.

His eyes opened. ℴ

"Lilith."

She immediately noticed his expression.

"What?"

"The first memory."

"Which one?"

"Doom Cave." His breathing changed slightly. "The Supreme Sovereign."

Lilith waited.

"He looked at me."

"You’ve mentioned that before."

"No." Atheline shook his head. "I said it felt like he looked toward me."

He remembered it clearly now. The Supreme Sovereign turning toward the point from which Atheline had been watching.

"Memories don’t do that."

Lilith’s expression changed.

"No, they shouldn’t."

Atheline turned toward the door.

"We need the orb."

"The orb is inside you."

"The records about it."

Understanding appeared.

They left immediately. The royal archives had become almost unrecognizable after days of investigation.

Ancient texts covered tables. Historians slept in side rooms. Several sections had been sealed after Klaith’s hidden chambers were discovered.

Atheline headed directly toward the documents recovered from the oldest portions of Klaith’s private collection.

He knew what he was looking for now. The Supreme Sovereign, the orb and anything concerning inheritance.

Hours passed but they found nothing.

Then Lilith found a sentence. It had been written in the margin of an ancient record concerning the final years before the Sovereign War.

She stared at it, trying to understand it.

"Atheline."

He immediately approached.

"What?"

She pointed.

The writing was almost completely faded. He couldn’t read the ancient dialect well enough.

They called the High Elven scholar again. The poor man looked increasingly as though he regretted ever being summoned to the Dark Elven Kingdom.

He bent over the text then frowned.

"That’s strange."

Atheline leaned against the table.

"Everything you say that about ruins my day."

The scholar ignored him.

"This isn’t part of the original record."

"We know."

"No." The scholar shook his head. "I mean the writing style."

He traced the faded characters.

"This is older than the copy it’s written on."

Atheline frowned.

"How can writing be older than the thing it’s written on?"

"I don’t know."

Lilith looked at him.

"Translate it."

The scholar hesitated then began.

"When the circle closes..."

He stopped.

Atheline’s heart tightened.

The scholar continued.

"...the world will seek the same answer and receive the same failure."

Atheline became still.

Lilith’s eyes moved toward him.

"The bound cannot escape the path that binds them."

He stepped closer.

"What does that mean?"

The scholar continued before answering.

"The child of this world carries its Laws within the soul." His expression changed. "The soul born beneath these heavens is recognized by these heavens."

Another line.

"It may rise." The scholar swallowed. "It may become Sovereign." A pause. "But what belongs to the world remains within the world’s design."

Silence filled the room.

Atheline stared at the words. Every soul born here belonged to the system governing this world, even Sovereigns.

They could step partially beyond the World Will’s direct control through Authority, but their foundations still originated here. Their souls had been shaped by this world’s Laws.

Atheline hadn’t.

His heart began beating faster.

"Keep reading."

The scholar looked toward the next line. It was badly damaged but he reconstructed what he could.

"If the circle is to be broken..."

Atheline felt the fragment inside him pulse.

"...the hand must come..."

Another pulse.

"...from beyond the circle."

He stumbled backward.

Lilith caught his arm.

The fragment erupted with recognition. The archive disappeared and Atheline found himself standing beneath the original World Tree.

He knew immediately that his physical body hadn’t moved.

This was another memory but it was different. There was no battle, Sovereigns and blood. The World Tree was alive, its enormous branches covering the sky.

A man with distinctive white hair stood beneath it. Atheline stopped breathing.

The Supreme Sovereign.

He was not obscured this time, not entirely. Atheline could see his shape more clearly, though his face remained strangely difficult to focus upon.

The man held a bow.

He wasn’t looking at Atheline, not yet. He was speaking to someone.

Atheline looked around.

Nobody stood nearby, then he realized; the World Tree. The Supreme Sovereign placed one hand against its trunk.

"I’ve seen enough."

The tree’s leaves moved even though no wind existed. The Supreme Sovereign closed his eyes.

"It always returns."

Atheline listened.

"The details change."

His voice was calm.

"Names change."

The leaves trembled.

"Choices change."

He opened his eyes.

"But the world corrects itself."

His stomach tightened.

Nirvana.

The Supreme Sovereign had known, perhaps not everything,but enough.

"The same souls remain bound to the same heavens." He looked upward. "They resist destiny and create another destiny."

His fingers tightened against the tree.

"They escape one path only to enter another."

Atheline thought about Lilith and the fate she had suffered.

The Supreme Sovereign exhaled.

"I cannot choose the one who breaks it."

Atheline frowned.

The man continued.

"If I choose them, they become part of the design."

That sentence struck harder than Atheline expected. The Supreme Sovereign couldn’t create the person capable of escaping the world’s destiny.

The moment the world created them for that purpose, they would still belong to its system. They would become another destined one, another protagonist and another piece.

"So I will leave the choice to somewhere this world cannot reach."

The Supreme Sovereign raised his hand and something appeared above his palm.

An orb.

Atheline’s eyes widened.

The same orb he’d found inside Doom Cave.

The Supreme Sovereign looked at it.

"I don’t know who you will be."

Atheline stopped.

"I don’t know your race."

The orb brightened.

"I don’t know your name."

Atheline’s heart began pounding.

"I don’t know whether you will be righteous."

The Supreme Sovereign smiled faintly.

"Perhaps you’ll be an insufferable bastard."

Atheline blinked before smiling.

"...I feel personally attacked."

The Supreme Sovereign obviously couldn’t hear him, probably. Atheline wasn’t completely certain anymore.

The man continued.

"I know only one thing." His expression became serious. "You will not belong to this world’s original destiny."

The orb pulsed.

"So what belongs to this world cannot completely define you."

Atheline felt cold.

The Supreme Sovereign placed the orb against the World Tree; roots of light spread around it.

"The souls born here are shaped by the Laws here."

Images of the ancient Sovereigns appeared around him. Each possessed something within their soul; one central Authority, different expressions and different Laws, but each Authority was rooted into the soul.

"To become Sovereign is to declare a truth so completely that the world recognizes your authority over it." The Supreme Sovereign looked toward the images. "But recognition is also limitation."

Atheline understood.

A normal soul could learn many kinds of magic, perhaps wield several elements but Sovereignty was different.

Authority wasn’t simply magic.

It rewrote the relationship between soul and Law. The moment a normal person established a true Sovereign Authority, their soul became defined by it.

A Sovereign of Fire could learn other techniques but Fire was the foundation.

The Authority.

The identity recognized by the world’s Laws.

Attempting to establish multiple independent Divine Authorities inside one ordinary soul would create conflict.

The Laws would compete for ownership and the soul would break or one Authority would consume the others.

The Supreme Sovereign looked toward the orb.

"But what happens when the soul was not written by these Laws?"

Atheline’s breath caught.

The man smiled faintly.

"I don’t know."

Atheline’s eyes widened.

"What?"

The Supreme Sovereign laughed.

"I cannot know."

Atheline almost felt offended.

"You left me something based on an experiment you didn’t know would work?"

The memory continued.

"But uncertainty is precisely why it may succeed." The Supreme Sovereign raised the orb. "It will reject every soul completely bound to this world."

Atheline understood immediately. That was why the orb had remained for so long; fairies protected it, people may have approached it and powerful beings might have touched it.

It hadn’t chosen them.

It wasn’t waiting for the Supreme Sovereign’s reincarnation, his descendant or someone with the same bloodline. It was waiting for someone who didn’t belong.

An outsider.

Atheline.

The Supreme Sovereign’s expression became solemn.

"If you are seeing this..."

For the first time, he turned directly toward Atheline.

He froze.

There was no uncertainty now. The Supreme Sovereign looked exactly where he stood. It was as though the memory itself had been made to change when the correct person entered it.

The orb recognized him.

The message activated.

"...then you came."

Atheline couldn’t speak.

"I am sorry."

That wasn’t what he’d expected.

The Supreme Sovereign lowered his bow.

"I don’t know what brought you here."

Atheline thought about Earth.

"I don’t know whether you came willingly."

He hadn’t.

"I don’t know what this world has taken from you."

More than Atheline wanted to count.

"But if the orb accepted you, then your soul originated beyond the closed destiny of this world." The Supreme Sovereign looked toward the World Tree. "That does not make you chosen."