The silence pressed heavier now, a silence stitched with revelations. Barachas's words lingered in the chamber like thunder refusing to fade. Alatar did not break eye contact, though a single question gnawed at him, a puzzle that should have been impossible.
Alatar: "You spoke my name."
His tone was firm, but within it burned genuine wonder. He had not spoken it aloud, not once in the temple.
Alatar: "How did you know it?"
Barachas's eyes flared, twin suns straining against chains of shadow. His voice came low, yet resonant enough to crawl along the carved stone of the tomb.
Barachas: "Names are not yours alone. They are carved into you, long before your first breath. To speak them is to taste the echo of what you are, and what you may yet become. I see yours, mortal seed, as easily as I see the cracks in these chains."
Alatar's mind sharpened, probing deeper.
Alatar: "You said I carry the blood of all Primordials. What are they? Who are they?"
The titan exhaled—a sound like wind over broken mountains.
Barachas: "The Primordials were the first sparks that lit after the Design, the bones and breath of the Starryverse itself. We were the shaping hands and the roaring hungers, the architects and the predators, the first to give name to existence."
Alatar's pulse quickened. The murals had shown conquest, worship, sacrifice. Yet this—this was older, wider, vaster than the temple had hinted.
Alatar: "So the Primordials were Malakors?"
The titan's chains rattled as his head tilted, as if insulted by the simplicity.
Barachas: "No. The Malakors are but one strand in that tapestry. There are others—the kindling flesh of fire-born giants, the winged void-kin who feasted on silence, the veiled song-weavers who bound galaxies with sound. Each origin, each species, bore its own throne within the dawn. Together, we were the first chorus of being."
Alatar leaned forward slightly, his voice quiet but burning with conviction.
Alatar: "And you…you were one of them?"
Barachas's jaw tightened. His fangs glistened faintly in the gloom, obsidian carved with the weight of confession.
Barachas: "Once."
The word was thunder strangled into a whisper.
Barachas: "I bore the name of Primordial, yes. I strode among them, I drank from the same fires that birthed the first language, I wielded the strength to command worship and war alike. But I squandered it. I fell into chains, and with chains came silence. A Primordial who can be bound is no Primordial at all. That name…is lost to me."
For the first time, Alatar saw not just power and ruin in Barachas's face, but something colder—regret.
He let the silence stretch, feeling its weight, before speaking again.
Alatar: "If even a Primordial can fall…what does that mean for me?"
Barachas's eyes smoldered.
Barachas: "It means you are not yet what you think you are. It means your blood burns with borrowed echoes, but not with understanding. The path ahead will teach you whether you rise to become fire—or are extinguished like ash."
The words hung between them, heavy with both warning and recognition.
The silence between Alatar and Barachas thickened, as if the chamber itself leaned in to listen. Alatar broke it, his voice not trembling, but carrying the weight of genuine demand.
Alatar: A question if i may;
"Do you know of the void? I woke there. A place of pitch darkness, where nothing lived, nothing breathed—a dead zone where even concepts felt…hollow. I devoured drifting orbs, soul-lights that gave me memories. One drew me to a world called Polaris Prime. Another, here. Yet I was alone—utterly alone. Where is this place?"
For a moment, Barachas did not answer. His chains pulsed once, light rippling through the etched bindings like veins of lightning. His gaze deepened, as though searching behind Alatar's words, behind his very marrow. When he spoke, it was with the cadence of one recalling something too ancient for time.
Barachas: "You name it void. But void is absence, and that realm is not absence. It is the Expanse of Asphodel."
The name shuddered through the chamber, reverberating against stone and memory alike.
Barachas: "It was carved by Asphodel, one of the first. A Primordial—not of life, not of hunger, not of war, but of finality. While the rest of us sculpted stars and seeded worlds, Asphodel saw the flaw beneath all creation—entropy. What is made will unravel. What is born will perish. Memories fade, timelines collapse. So Asphodel wrought a realm of silence, where nothing is lost to true destruction. Not life. Not death. Not even failure."
He shifted slightly, and the chains groaned as if resenting his speech.
Barachas: "What you devoured were soul-shards, echoes of the destroyed, stripped of consciousness but still heavy with imprint. Those motes you claim—they are remnants that should have lain still, preserved in eternity. And the orbs of memory? Fragments of truths erased, gathered into that silent plain. You trespassed in the grave of uncorrected knowledge."
Alatar's brow furrowed. The words grave of knowledge resounded like a bell in his skull.
Alatar: "If all is silence there, why was I awake? Why did I hunger in a place made for stillness?"
Barachas's gaze narrowed, the fire in his eyes dimming to embers.
Barachas: "That, mortal seed, is the greater taboo. No one wakes in the Expanse. No one hungers there. The Quieting claims all things in time, bleeding memory into the plain until even will dissolves. You should have vanished into that hush, as countless titans and gods have before. Yet you…fed. You stole from the grave. You broke its law."
The air pressed colder around them, though Barachas's voice carried no accusation—only intrigue.
Barachas: "Do you not understand what this means? You have not merely walked into forgotten halls. You have drawn from the hand of Asphodel itself. You stand touched by finality—and finality does not grant gifts lightly."
Alatar swallowed the weight of those words, but his voice remained calm.
Alatar: "Then tell me, titan. If the Expanse is the grave, what lies beyond? I have seen visions of a throne, shelves without end—a library stretching forever. Is it illusion, or something more?"
Barachas stilled, and for the first time his gaze flickered—not with weakness, but with restraint.
Barachas: "You have glimpsed what few dare even whisper. Aeonaria. The opposite of the Expanse. If Asphodel keeps what is lost, Aeonaria keeps what is true. To see it, you must walk through every fracture, every corpse of history, every silence of oblivion. And to do so without being broken…"
He leaned forward, the chains searing with radiant heat, his voice a whisper that shook stone.
Barachas: "…is a task even the Primordials feared."
The words fell like a decree.