Chapter 98: What Bulawan Wouldn’t Say

Chapter 98: Chapter 98: What Bulawan Wouldn’t Say

Volume 1: The First Civilization

Chapter 98: What Bulawan Wouldn’t Say

Aren decided over breakfast, with the particular quiet certainty of a man who’d spent a sleepless night arriving at the same conclusion from every possible angle.

"I want to call it," he said, to Rokan and Sable both, the three of them sharing the kind of hushed morning meal that had become ordinary over the past several weeks despite everything extraordinary crowding around the edges of it. "Bulawan. Not wait for it to appear on its own terms. Ask directly about the scholar."

Sable set down their cup slowly. "That’s not something I’d advise."

"Why not?"

"Because entities like that reveal what they choose to reveal, on the timeline they choose to reveal it. Forcing the question rarely goes the way the one asking hopes it will." Sable’s expression carried real concern now, not the guarded caution from earlier conversations. "You’re already remembering faster than any of us anticipated. Pushing harder risks breaking something rather than simply opening it."

---

"I appreciate the warning," Aren said. "I still intend to try."

Rokan studied him a long moment, rubbing his jaw slowly. "You’ve never been reckless before. Why start now?"

"Because the Seeker said something specific. Told me to ask Bulawan about the scholar and watch how carefully it chooses its next words. That’s not a threat. That’s an invitation to test something." Aren turned the crown-circle stone over in his hands, the same one Sela’s story had first cracked open weeks ago. "If Bulawan lies to me, or evades, that tells me something important about how much I can actually trust it going forward. If it doesn’t—"

"Then you’ve learned something too," Rokan finished. "Either way, you walk away with information instead of guesswork."

"That’s the hope."

---

He went alone, despite Rokan’s insistence on at least posting hunters within earshot, choosing the same stretch of path near the healer’s hut where the first encounter had happened — some instinct telling him the location mattered, that whatever connected him to Bulawan responded better to familiar ground than force of will alone.

He held the stone the way Sela had first held it, thumb tracing the crown inside its circle, and spoke the name aloud into the quiet morning air.

"Bulawan."

Nothing happened at first. He stood there long enough that doubt began creeping in, the practical part of him wondering if entities of this kind simply didn’t answer summons, only chose their own moments regardless of what anyone else wanted from them.

Then the stillness came, the same unnatural quiet that had swallowed sound the first time, and the gold eyes opened somewhere in the shadow between two nearby trees.

---

You called.The voice carried genuine surprise this time, threaded with something wary beneath it. Nobody has done that in longer than you’d believe possible, heir. Not since long before the seal closed.

"I have a question. About a scholar. Marlon, or Bagwis, depending on the tradition. The Seekers mentioned him last night."

The gold eyes narrowed slightly, the wariness sharpening into something closer to alarm. *They spoke to you directly.*

"They did."

Then this conversation is happening faster than I would have chosen, on terms I did not select. Bulawan’s shape shifted, something almost like discomfort visible in how it held itself now. You are asking about a man who died believing he had failed you.

---

"Did he?"

He argued against the sealing. Said the danger in the lower chamber could be contained, studied, eventually understood rather than buried beyond anyone’s reach.* Bulawan’s voice grew heavier with each word, the careful composure it usually carried fraying at the edges. He was not entirely wrong. Understanding might have been possible, given enough time. Time was the one resource none of us had, in the final days before the seal.

"So you sealed the chamber against his objection."

You sealed the chamber, heir. I only carried out what you asked of me.Something sharp entered the voice now, old grief wearing the shape of defensiveness. I do not enjoy being asked to relive the moment I watched a man who trusted you plead for more time, and watched you deny him that time because the alternative risked everyone else who remained.

---

Aren felt something cold settle through him, the accusation landing with more weight than he’d braced for. "I chose to seal it. Against his advice."

Yes.

"And he died believing I’d betrayed his trust."

He died,Bulawan said, quieter now, believing many things. Some true. Some shaped by fear and grief in his final hours, the way most people’s final beliefs often are. I cannot tell you which parts of his despair were fair judgment and which were simply the words of a frightened man watching everything he’d built collapse around him.

---

"The Seekers think he was right."

The Seekers were not there. Something almost bitter colored Bulawan’s voice now. They inherited grief without inheriting the weight of the choice itself. Easy to condemn a decision from a distance of centuries, heir, when you never had to stand where you stood and watch the chamber below your city stir with something that had already claimed lives before the sealing ever began.

The memory arrived without warning this time, sharper and more violent than anything before it.

---

Screaming, distant, muffled by stone. A hand — Marlon’s hand, he understood suddenly, though he’d never consciously pictured the man’s face before this moment — gripping his robe, pleading. Give me until morning. Just until morning. I can find another way. And his own voice, steady despite everything breaking around him, saying the words he’d apparently carried the weight of for however many centuries had passed since: There is no morning left to give you.

Aren came back to himself on his knees, the stone still gripped tight in one hand, breath ragged in a way that had nothing to do with exertion.

---

You remember now, Bulawan said, something almost gentle threading through the words despite everything that had come before. I did not intend for it to surface that violently. I apologize for that much, if nothing else.

"I told him there was no time left," Aren said, voice unsteady. "I denied a dying man’s request for one more morning."

You made a choice that saved everyone else who remained,Bulawan said. That does not make the choice painless. It never did, even then. I watched you carry that weight for the remainder of your life in that city, however brief the time between that morning and the sealing itself turned out to be.

---

"Why didn’t you tell me this yourself? Before the Seekers forced the question?"

Because some wounds heal better opened slowly, by someone who cares whether they close properly afterward.Bulawan’s shape drew back slightly, the conversation clearly costing more than it had at their first meeting. The Seekers do not care whether you heal, heir. They care only that you carry enough guilt to doubt everything the Keepers tell you, and enough doubt to eventually open what I have spent this entire age trying to keep closed.

"That’s a convenient answer, coming from the one asking me to trust only your version of events."

It is,Bulawan agreed, without hesitation. I will not pretend otherwise. Judge my honesty by this, if nothing else — I could have told you Marlon died peacefully, believing in your choice fully. It would have been a kinder lie. I chose the truth instead, however much it cost both of us to hear it.

---

The stillness broke soon after, the ordinary morning sounds of the village creeping back around him, and Aren remained kneeling there a long while, the weight of a centuries-old guilt sitting strangely alongside his own present grief — grief for a man he couldn’t fully picture, whose face he’d only just glimpsed in a memory that felt more like an old wound reopening than a story being told.

Rokan found him there eventually, having grown concerned when the promised brief conversation stretched well past what anyone had expected.

"You look like you’ve been struck," Rokan said, crouching beside him with real alarm.

"I have been. Just not the way you’re imagining." Aren accepted the hand Rokan offered, rising unsteadily. "Bulawan told me the truth. I think. About the scholar. About a choice I made that I don’t think I’ve ever forgiven myself for, even now, lifetimes removed from making it."

---

"Do you regret asking?"

Aren considered the question honestly, the memory still raw enough to ache behind his eyes. "No. I needed to know. Even the ugly parts. Especially the ugly parts, maybe — this feels more real than anything Bulawan’s told me so far, precisely because it doesn’t make me look good."

Rokan absorbed that slowly, some old understanding of grief and guilt surfacing in his careful expression. "That’s usually how you can tell truth from flattery, in my experience. Truth rarely flatters anyone completely."

---

The blue light rose as they walked back together, Aren still unsteady on his feet, the weight of the morning settling into something he suspected would take considerably longer than a single conversation to properly carry.

[Village Development Update]

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Memory Fragment Recovered: The Scholar’s Final Request

Memory Synchronization: 48% → 52%

══════════════════════

Four percent, the largest single movement yet, torn loose by a truth neither faction had wanted him to hear cleanly. Aren closed the panel without examining the number further, more interested in simply reaching somewhere he could sit quietly and let the morning’s weight settle properly before the village demanded anything further of him.

End of Chapter 98