Alatar stepped into the now opened passage, and at once the world betrayed him.
Time unspooled like a fraying thread. Each stride was a contradiction: one heartbeat he felt himself rushing forward, the ground swallowed beneath his boots in long, hungry gulps; the next, his legs churned yet carried him nowhere, as if the corridor were an endless loop. Stone bent into shapes that made no sense—arches became walls, then melted into floors, then unfurled again above him like inverted skies. At times, he felt a hundred paces from the exit; at others, the same stretch of wall mocked him, appearing again and again, as though he were walking the inside of a circle.
And yet—he knew he was moving forward. Not by sight, not by reason, but by something deeper, a certainty seated in his marrow. His steps carried no panic. They carried calm. The old tremors that once plagued him—the fear, the resistance, the naive yearning for escape—were gone. This was his road. Broken time, bent space, whispered phantoms of distance—it mattered little. He no longer fought the unreality. He let it seep into him, steady, inevitable.
In that warped eternity, peace bloomed. His mind stilled. His heartbeat no longer raced. He realized he was not merely walking the temple; the temple was walking through him. And still, his pace never wavered.
At last, after what felt like a thousand lifetimes compressed into a single breath, the passage widened. His final step brought him into a vast chamber that dwarfed all he had seen before.
And there—looming, bound, eternal—was Barachas.
The chained Malakor was colossal beyond reason, its four arms like petrified mountains, its frame a ruin of ancient power. Chains the size of towers bit deep into its flesh, pulsing with veins of molten light. They throbbed not only with containment but with purpose, each link etched in runes that shimmered faintly, as though alive. The creature's face, half-hidden in shadow, bore fangs like carved obsidian and eyes sealed shut by bands of silver fire. Even restrained, even silenced, it radiated a ferocity so raw that the very stone beneath Alatar's feet vibrated.
The chamber itself bowed around Barachas. Walls leaned inward, arches curved like ribs, all architecture oriented toward the imprisoned titan as though acknowledging him as the sanctum's true heart. Dust did not touch him. Time did not weather him. His presence was both ruin and reverence.
Alatar's ember pulsed in his hand, its glow reflected in the chains, and for the first time he understood: this was no mere sanctum. It was a tomb, a prison, a shrine—all built for this being.
The air thickened, as if waiting for him to speak, to step closer, to claim or to kneel.
Alatar froze when his eyes fell upon the chained titan.
Barachas was a ruin of majesty. The mural had shown him fierce and indomitable, striding across worlds with crowns and kingdoms clattering behind him. Here, he was something else—diminished but not destroyed. His four arms, once weapons in their own right, hung slack, pinned by vast chains that drank his strength. Each link was wide enough for Alatar to step through, forged of some alloy that shimmered like frozen lightning. They weren't merely metal; they pulsed, alive with runes that writhed faintly whenever Barachas shifted, their glow flaring to tighten the bonds.
His skin bore the paleness of a fallen star—grey, cracked, no longer burnished with the lustre of life. Here and there it flaked, like stone weathered by a thousand storms, revealing veins of dim blue light struggling beneath. His chest rose and fell with agonizing slowness, each breath like the groan of mountains. Time had gnawed him, but had not erased him. The years had scoured his body, yet the weight of his presence remained unbroken, pressing down on Alatar as if he stood before an ancient sea held back by a thin, breaking dam.
Alatar's eyes traced every detail: the silver fire branding across Barachas's shut eyelids; the hollowness in his cheeks that did nothing to dim the sharpness of his fangs; the way the chains burrowed into his flesh as though they were part of him now, flesh and iron fused into a single prison. This was no mural's glory. This was a titan brought low.
He stepped forward until he stood at the very edge of the carved altar—the ground etched with spirals and runes like rivers, all converging beneath Barachas's massive frame. He stared at the titan's face, worn yet unyielding, and for a brief moment, the same thought he'd had when he first laid eyes upon the impossible flora of Polaris Prime rose again, unbidden: What if my blood could wake what was forgotten?
The thought moved him before doubt could.
With deliberate calm, Alatar cut a wound across his palm, and a line of crimson welled forth. He let it drip. One drop, then another, then another, onto the etched lines beneath him.
The blood did not stain. It moved.
Like serpents, the drops slithered into the carvings, racing outward in streams of scarlet, spreading through the circular design as if the altar had been waiting, thirsty, for this offering. The lines drank deeply, glowing faintly, until the red rivers reached the base of Barachas's form. Then—impossibly—they climbed.
The blood coiled up the chains, crawled along his skin, twisting upward, alive with some ancient recognition. It moved across his chest, his throat, until at last it reached his mouth.
Barachas stirred.
His lips parted, and the blood vanished between his fangs.
The titan's chest expanded, a sound like the cracking of glaciers rolling through the tomb. Slowly, impossibly, the bands of silver fire sealing his eyes trembled. Then—with a force that seemed to split the silence of the world itself—his eyelids peeled open.
Two eyes blazed into being, vast and predatory, burning with a hunger and intelligence that should have been impossible for something bound. They locked onto Alatar.
The air in the chamber thickened to breaking, charged with a paradoxical blend of awe and transgression. Curiosity and taboo coiled together, clashing and embracing in equal measure. The very stones seemed to hold their breath.
Alatar did not flinch. He stared back into the abyssal gaze of Barachas.
And Barachas…stared into him.
The silence stretched, long enough for the dust in the chamber to drift in visible spirals, long enough for the chains of Barachas to pulse twice more with their binding rhythm. Their gazes did not falter—Alatar's mortal frame standing impossibly firm before the immensity of a fallen titan, and Barachas's abyssal eyes searching, dissecting, measuring.
At last, Alatar's voice cut through the stillness. It was steady, resonant, as though the temple itself lent weight to his words.
Alatar: "You're alive."
A low thunder rolled from Barachas's chest, neither laugh nor growl but something vast in between. His lips moved slowly, each word scraping against centuries of silence, yet his tone carried a terrible regality.
Barachas: "Alive? Temporarily. It is your blood that woke me. Blood that does not belong to one man. Blood that is older, deeper. You reek of the Primordial line…but you smell different."
Alatar felt the ember in his chest stir faintly, pulsing against his ribs. He lifted his chin.
Alatar: "I am no titan. No Malakor. No beast. What you sense is not inheritance—it is choice. I stepped into the sanctum. I spoke the tongue long buried. I bled upon your altar. That is what I am."
Barachas's chains rattled, a sound like falling mountains. His head tilted, studying Alatar as one might examine an uncut stone that glittered with impossible promise.
Barachas: "Choice? Words wielded as weapons, blood spilled as currency. You speak with the arrogance of those who came before, yet your flesh is still soft. Tell me, little interloper—what are you? A vessel? A thief? Or a seed that dares to think itself a star?"
The titan's eyes narrowed, flames of buried divinity flickering within.
Alatar did not retreat. His voice lowered, calm, carrying an authority that felt new even to himself.
Alatar: "Perhaps I am all three. Vessel of what I cannot yet name. Thief of truths I should not hold. And seed—yes. But a seed that knows it will one day split stone."
A silence fell again, this time sharper. The air vibrated with the clash of two regalities: the weary grandeur of a chained titan, and the rising defiance of a man no longer bound by fear.
Barachas's lips curled back, revealing obsidian fangs in something almost like a smile, though its weight was darker, heavier.
Barachas: "Bold. Dangerous. Your kind bow before the murals. They pray, they kneel, they dissolve into ash and worship. Yet you stand before me and claim parity."
Alatar: "I claim nothing. I only am."
The titan's laugh thundered, shaking the chamber, scattering dust like stars.
Barachas: "Then you are further along the path than most who enter my sanctum. But know this, mortal seed: your blood binds you now to chains older than empires. In waking me, you have taken a step that cannot be undone."
Alatar felt those words like iron wrapping around his bones, but he did not waver. His voice sharpened, regal not by heritage but by conviction.
Alatar: "So be it. If chains await me, let them break under my stride. If blood binds me, let it carve my path. I will not kneel—not to you, not to your kind, not to the memory of what was. I stand."
The silence that followed was not empty. It was a silence thick with recognition, the kind exchanged only between beings who see themselves—fragments, echoes—within the other.
Barachas lowered his head a fraction, a gesture both mocking and regal, as if acknowledging that this mortal had earned, at least, the dignity of his regard.
Barachas: "Then stand, Alatar. But remember—every throne is built atop bones. Even yours."