The world noticed the changes in Alatar.
It began with the ash.
For millennia it had fallen silently, blanketing mountains and valleys, piling high against the walls of the Sanctum of the Malakors. Now it swirled faintly, as if stirred by invisible hands. It no longer fell randomly, but in patterns—spirals, circles, shapes that lingered for a breath before dissolving.
The sky brightened, though no sun rose. Instead, the dim gray above shimmered with pale streaks of light like veins of silver running through the firmament. They pulsed faintly, almost in time with the glow of the script along Alatar's spine.
The mountains, too, responded. They groaned with a low, tectonic rumble, shaking loose centuries of ash from their slopes. The sound was distant, but in the dead stillness of this world it was deafening, a hymn of shifting stone.
Alatar did not move.
He sat against the pillar, eyes half-lidded, breathing evenly as if he had expected this. Inside his chest, the soot that had merged with his being pulsed like a second heart, beating in rhythm with something deeper—something vast.
The temple shuddered.
Faint cracks of light ran along its seams, tracing patterns up its obsidian walls like veins of molten gold. The symbols etched into its surface flared for the first time since Alatar had arrived, bathing the ashen plain in a dull, otherworldly radiance.
And then, after ten thousand years of silence—
The doors moved.
It was not a sudden thing, but slow, deliberate, as though the weight of eternity were being shifted. Dust and ash cascaded from the towering slabs of black stone as they groaned open, the sound so deep it reverberated through the mountains like the tolling of a cosmic bell.
A rush of stale, icy air poured from the opening, carrying with it the scent of stone and something older—something that had not seen the outside world since before the first star had burned.
Alatar's third eye opened fully.
The spiral rings within it spun faster, catching the light of the opening doors, reflecting it back in crimson, gold, and void-black.
He did not rise. He did not flinch.
He merely watched as the gateway yawned wider, revealing only darkness within—an endless night that seemed to beckon him, promising answers, or perhaps more suffering.
The ash no longer fell.
The wind no longer blew.
Even the mountains went silent.
The world waiting.
Alatar felt the shift ripple through the atmosphere—not as a sudden shock, but as something inevitable, as though the world itself had been waiting for this moment. He did not tremble, nor did he cower. His calm bore the gravity of stone, not born of ignorance but of acceptance. With each breath he drew, the air seemed to bend to him, flowing through his chest like a river returning to its source.
His eyes lingered on the words carved into the door, those ancient etchings etched in Etymon-script. Once, they had been an enigma that mocked his weakness; now, they were no longer foreign. With the certainty of one stepping into his rightful inheritance, Alatar spoke them aloud. His voice resonated in tongues long forgotten, syllables that belonged not to men but to the bones of the world itself. It was not mere sound—it was The Syntax, the primordial axiom, the lattice upon which reality was first spun.
This time, there was no pain. No tearing of flesh or burning of marrow. The words flowed like water through the channel of his being, as if his body had at last become a vessel worthy of their weight. He could wield them now—the words of the First Language.
And so, with a voice neither trembling nor proud, but steady as the tide, he named the place:
"The Sanctum of the Malakors."
"Barachas's Spire."
At once, the air thrummed with a resonance too vast for mortal ears. The sky stilled, clouds pausing as if to listen, while the earth itself seemed to hold its breath. A low hum reverberated through the stone of the temple, through the marrow of the land, through the silence of the watching heavens.
Alatar did not falter. He moved forward, each step measured, as though his body had always known this path. And with that, he crossed the threshold, entering the temple whose name he had awakened.
The great doors boomed shut the instant Alatar crossed the threshold, sealing him within. The sound reverberated like the toll of a colossal bell, final and absolute. Darkness swallowed him whole. It was a darkness too complete, too intentional—one that seemed less absence of light and more a presence in itself, heavy and smothering.
Just as the thought brushed Alatar's mind, the temple stirred. A soft glow bloomed, one light, then another, until the entire corridor shimmered to life. Luminescent gems, embedded in the pillars that flanked the walls, pulsed with slow, steady radiance, like veins of captured starlight awakening after millennia of silence.
The hall stretched before him, vast and unending, its silence alive with the echo of forgotten ages. Towering statues lined the path—Malakors, the Four-Armed Titans. Each figure was carved with impossible precision, their stone faces caught between wrath and divinity. Their arms bore weapons and relics whose forms seemed to shift when stared at too long, as though memory itself had been forged into their shapes.
Murals sprawled across the walls between the pillars, breathtaking in their detail. The artistry was not mere paint or carving but divine imprint—each image alive with faint movement, each scene whispering truths to those who dared look too deeply. They spoke of wars beyond imagining: Malakors locked in battle with colossal beasts whose scales blotted out the horizon; rituals wrought in fire and blood beneath skies torn open by void-light; endless hosts of smaller beings kneeling in worship, their faces erased by reverence, their forms diminished beside the towering titans they adored.
Alatar's steps slowed as his gaze wandered, but it was the mural at the far end that bound him still. Unlike the others, its presence seemed to command the hall itself.
It depicted the Malakors not as rulers, not as gods above lesser creatures—but bowing. Four-armed colossi, the conquerors of beasts and lords of worship, bent their knees to one among them.
That figure sat upon a throne wrought from ash and bone, its regality undeniable. Though its form mirrored the others, it was something more: its posture fierce, its bearing inexorable, its presence painted with strokes of divinity sharper and more absolute than all who knelt before it. The throne itself seemed alive with memory—whispers of slaughter, the echo of countless deaths compressed into silent reverence.
Alatar stopped before it. His breath lingered on the edge of silence. He stared, and the mural stared back.