Barachas's form settled against the shifting stone of the temple, his voice like distant thunder muffled by aeons. The blue light within his chest pulsed, slow and deliberate, as he spoke.
"You wish to hear it, child? Then hear it true. I did not merely behold Seythurion—I conversed with him. Strange, yes? For beings such as we have little need of words. Yet we spoke, as kings speak, acknowledging one another's crowns."
The temple trembled faintly, not from force but from the weight of remembrance.
"He came to me not in fury, but in form befitting dialogue: vast, featureless helm, obsidian crown, armor alive with dominion. He stood not in Malectdil, nor in my domain, but in a space-between—where realities thin, and the cosmos permits brief encounters of inevitabilities."
Barachas's claws curled inward, scraping lightly against the stone.
"He regarded me first. Not as prey. Not as rival. Simply… as another who endures."
The deep voice of the Primarch seemed to echo in Barachas's retelling, not recalled but replayed.
'Barachas,' Seythurion said, his words not sound but command etched into existence. 'Stone that remembers. Lord of Malakors. You bear the stillness of a god and the weight of chains not yet broken. I recognize you.'
Barachas's many eyes dimmed, reflecting the memory of that gaze.
"I answered him simply: 'And I recognize you, Seythurion, Crown of Tyranny. You are no beast, nor ravening hunger—you are law sharpened into empire.'"
There was silence, but it was the silence of recognition—two beings who did not need to measure one another with battle.
Then Seythurion inclined his vast helm, thorns glimmering faintly.
'Strange, is it not?' he said. 'To exist as inevitability, yet still choose speech. You and I are less different than the cosmos believes. You rule Malakors, I rule Malakhim. We are shepherds of corruption, though our flocks are not the same.'
Barachas's chest flared, the memory still bitter.
"I told him, 'Your corruption is conquest. Mine is survival. Do not confuse them.'"
And Seythurion laughed—or rather, reality itself twisted, the sound of surrender made before it is even conceived.
'Survival becomes conquest when eternity is long enough,' he said. 'Even still stone erodes, Barachas. Even Malakors kneel when the weight becomes unbearable.'
The temple grew colder as Barachas recalled the final words.
'You will know this, Lord of Stone,' Seythurion intoned, helm lowering slightly. 'Your faith will shackle you. You will remain unbroken in form, yet bound in fate. The day will come when you will cry out, not from defeat, but from the chains of your own endurance.'
Barachas fell silent, his chest-light flickering dim, as though the echo of that prophecy still lingered.
"He departed as he came—not with battle, not with triumph, but with inevitability. I was left standing, unbowed… yet ever since, I have carried the weight of his words. For in them, I felt no lie. Only certainty."
He turned his gaze fully upon Alatar, eyes gleaming faintly.
"Now, child, you see why I warned you. Some bonds are not of iron, but of faith itself. And even I… even Barachas… am shackled."
Alatar sat in stillness, his fingers curled against the temple floor, tracing faint grooves in the stone as though searching for meaning there. The silence after Barachas's words pressed down like a tide, heavy yet clarifying.
His lips parted, voice quieter than usual, tinged with awe.
"Shackled… you? A being who commands stone as if it were thought, who has endured since before I could imagine? You speak of Seythurion as if he were your equal—yet even he binds himself with his own law. How… how can such vast powers still be tethered? What fetters could reach that high?"
He leaned forward, blue light flickering faintly in his chest as though mirroring his pulse.
"It unsettles me," he admitted, words slow, heavy with thought. "To know that even you—who I had thought untouchable—bear chains invisible. If the lords of worlds are not free, then what is freedom to those beneath them? To me? To mortals who are crushed like dust beneath their conquests?"
His gaze lifted to the ceiling of the temple, where faint veins of light pulsed through the reshaping stone.
"Perhaps freedom is a lie. Perhaps even those who rule galaxies walk inside cages, only their bars are made of eternity instead of iron."
The thought seemed to cling to him, circling in his mind. He pressed his palm to his chest where the light burned, contemplative.
"And yet… I feel this." He tapped his chest lightly. "My blood. My light. If it too is bound, then by what? By fate? By faith? By truths I cannot yet name? What if even this strength is only another kind of chain?"
His eyes narrowed, a strange mixture of unease and fascination flickering across his face.
"Tell me, Barachas—if such beings as you and Seythurion can be shackled, then perhaps the question is not who is free… but who dares to break the chains, knowing the world itself may shatter for it."
Alatar fell silent after that, but the weight of his words lingered in the chamber. For the first time, his curiosity carried the edge of something else—something sharper, something dangerous: the quiet seed of defiance.
Barachas's many-voiced tone rolled through the temple like a tide, calm yet edged with iron.
"Ah, little star-born…" he murmured, stone lips curling faintly as though with the ghost of a smile. "Your questions cut well. You taste the marrow of truth, even if it splinters your teeth."
He leaned forward, vast shape shifting so the temple's veins of light bent toward him, as if the chamber itself bowed.
"Chains are not always forged by others. Some we fashion with our own hands. Ambition, loyalty, memory, the very dream of freedom—each is a link, invisible but unyielding. Even Seythurion, Primarch of Ruin, bearer of suns undone, speaks not as a sovereign without bonds, but as one who kneels to the weight of what he has chosen to be."
Barachas paused, his gaze falling heavy on Alatar, the blue light within the youth reflecting in his faceted stone eyes.
"And if you—" his voice deepened, resonant like rock groaning in the deep, "—dare to break chains? You may find you are no freer than before. You may only find yourself lord of new chains, crueler and colder, made of your own will sharpened to tyranny. Freedom and damnation are close kin, boy. One breath apart."
The chamber shifted subtly as he spoke, the walls curving wider, the air growing denser with his authority.
"Do not mistake me—I do not say do not seek. To seek is your nature, it gnaws you even now. But I warn you, Alatar: those who rip at chains must be prepared for the silence that follows when they all fall away. That silence is vast, devouring, and many who reach it pray for the weight of shackles again."
He leaned back, his tone softening like worn granite smoothed by rivers.
"You ask if even your blood may be a cage. It may. Or it may be a key. You will not know until you dare turn it. But hear this, child of light: not every cage should be broken, and not every key should be used."
A pause, long and heavy, before his final words rang like a tolling bell:
"What matters is not whether you wear chains, but whether you choose the chains you wear—or let them be chosen for you."