The chamber was sealed once more, stone doors shutting with a sound that echoed like finality. Silence crept in after Barachas' departure, a silence that belonged wholly to Alatar now. He lowered himself to the floor, folding his legs beneath him, palms resting lightly against his knees.
His mind swam with thoughts of what might be done with his ash—paths of form, intention, utility—but as soon as those thoughts rose, he released them. He summoned the ash instead, letting it seep from him in muted streams until the chamber filled with its muted drift. It hung like mist, falling in small flakes that never touched the ground, suspended by his will and presence. The air shimmered faintly with it, turning the stone walls into a muted gray haze.
Alatar closed his eyes. Then came nothing.
No words, no movements, no indulgence in restless thought. He sat within himself, still as stone, letting the ash circle him freely. What began as drifting flakes became patterns invisible to the eye—currents guided by the slow pulse of his breathing, their rhythm settling into the rhythm of his very being.
Time began to slip.
At first it was days. Then weeks. Then months. Each measure of passing blurred into sameness. The braziers outside the chamber burned and dimmed with the cycles of the sanctum, but Alatar did not rise to mark them. He ate rarely, and only when his body demanded it, often losing the line between hunger and emptiness. Sleep, too, thinned, becoming something caught between waking and meditation, a half-slumber sustained by stillness itself.
The ash obeyed him without command. It swirled gently when he breathed deeper, thinned when his mind grew quieter, thickened when his will unconsciously pressed upon it. He did not need to watch—it simply moved as though it had learned to follow the unseen contours of his silence.
Five years slipped by. Alatar remained as though a figure carved in stone, the ash drifting about him in ceaseless motion.
Ten years. The ash no longer felt summoned. It was simply there, part of the chamber, part of him. His will sustained it like blood sustained flesh, and the line between body and manifestation blurred.
Fifteen years. His sense of self thinned until it was not Alatar sitting in the chamber, but the chamber itself breathing through him. Stone, silence, ash—these became indistinguishable.
The twentieth year arrived unnoticed. Alatar sat as he always had, the ash flowing like snow that would never melt. His control never faltered despite the decades. He did not tremble, did not lose his hold. The years rolled like rivers under ice, unseen, unfelt, yet moving all the same.
In that silence, he became something beyond mere man—at least in patience, if not yet in power.
The twenty-fifth year arrived, and with it, something stirred. It was not sudden. It was not thunderous. It was a thought, faint at first, then steady as it took root.
For decades, he had practiced without intent—letting the ash exist, move, remain. He had given it no shape, no command beyond continuity. But as his eyes opened at last, breaking the long stillness, the idea unfolded.
Application.
The years of silence had mapped it in him, drawn without words or images, only through presence. He did not yet test it, did not yet force it into being. But he knew. He knew now what must be done, what could be done. The ash was no longer a drifting veil around him—it was possibility waiting for direction.
He breathed, slow and deep, the ash swelling faintly in response. His gaze, long unused, fixed upon the chamber walls with quiet clarity. The weight of twenty-five years sat behind his eyes, not weariness but certainty.
He had learned the silence. He had learned the flow. Now he would learn the purpose.
But for that, tomorrow would come.
And so Alatar sat once more, ash moving gently through the chamber, his thoughts not on what had been, but on what was to be shaped.
The silence of twenty-five years finally broke.
Alatar stirred, his body not stiff though it had been rooted in the same position longer than entire kingdoms had reigned and fallen. The chamber was exactly as it had been when the doors closed—gray, cold, dustless. The ash still floated, soft as snow, ceaseless as breath.
But for the first time, Alatar opened his lips.
"My ash is no longer ash," he said quietly, his voice like something rediscovered. "It is a language I have not yet spoken, a tool I have not yet named. And now…" His eyes sharpened, tracing the endless flakes spiraling in silence, "…I see what it must become."
He lifted his hand, a stream of ash trailing upward, curling into shapes without command, as though eager to hear.
---
| Evolution of Ash: Soul Ash & Spatial Anchoring |
For years he had wondered why the gates—those strange, hollow doors of ash—led nowhere. They were beautiful but useless, illusions of possibility. Now the truth was clear: ash was not enough.
"Anchors," Alatar murmured. "Every path requires a destination. I tried to carve roads with no beginning, no end."
He envisioned it: compressing his ash into a dense orb, layering it with will, saturating it with intent. A piece of himself—not alive, but programmable. A beacon. This orb, left in a place, would root the ash there like a planted seed. When another gate was summoned, the two points could join, ash forming the bridge but the will-bound orb securing the destination.
"Without the anchor, the gate collapses. With it…" He smiled faintly. "The void opens."
The gate would not be stable forever. The further the anchor, the more the strain. At first, only a few dozen meters, then perhaps hundreds. Still, it was no longer a dream but a mechanism. His failure had been ignorance, not incapacity.
But anchoring was only one part of the revelation.
The ash itself could evolve. Until now, it had been weapon, shield, construct—mere matter. What if it became something finer, something touched by essence?
He focused, condensing a mote between his fingers, willing more than form into it. His thoughts brushed it, not commanding, but imprinting: a simple intent, follow the hand that bore me.
The mote flickered. His hand drifted, and the mote drifted after it without command. Not obedience—but programming.
Alatar's breath deepened.
"This is Soul Ash," he whispered.
---
| Properties of Soul Ash |
It was not alive, not conscious, yet no longer inert. His will became code written into its grain.
Tracking Ash. A speck clung to his skin. He closed his eyes, walked across the chamber, then turned his back to it. Still he felt it, a faint tug at the edge of perception, like a compass needle. He could follow it. If cast upon another, he could track them even if they fled across mountains. The ash would drift subtly toward its mark, drawn not by air, but by intention.
Memory Ash. He formed a sculpture—a hollow sphere of ash, thin and delicate. Into it he wove not command, but recollection: the feel of Polaris Prime's frozen wind against his cheek. When he pressed his palm to the sphere, it pulsed and replayed the sensation, cold whispering across his skin. His lips curved. Anyone could touch it and taste the same memory. Communication beyond words. A message that could not lie. Or a terror that could not be denied.
Soul-Smoke Constructs. He let the ash swell, interwoven with fragments he had devoured: the memory of a warrior's relentless stride, the will of a beast's hunger. From the haze emerged a hound, gray and smoky, its eyes hollow yet burning faintly with borrowed intent. It growled softly, awaiting command. A tool, not a mind—but more than mere shape. He dismissed it, the ash scattering like dust. In time, he could call hawks to scout, wolves to hunt, shadows to stand sentinel. His arsenal would not merely defend, but extend him.
Alatar's heart pounded as he shaped and dismissed each form. What had once been ash was now a canvas for will. He was no longer limited to force; he was writing laws into smoke.
---
| Refinement of Gates: Void Anchoring |
The thought of gates returned, clearer now. With an anchor left behind—dense, soul-ash imbued with place—he could not only open doors but stabilize them.
He extended his hands, ash swirling between them, framing an oval. Inside, instead of empty blackness, there was turbulence, a grainy spiral like ground glass in a storm. It did not lead anywhere yet—but it held.
"Void Anchoring," he said aloud. "The door to nowhere finally finds its road."
The costs were steep. Each anchor would drain him, require will and concentration, and distance would tear at his strength like claws. He would begin small—across the chamber, perhaps to the Sanctum's halls. But step by step, the gates would reach further.
And one day, the mystery of Polaris Prime's vanishing corridors—the gates with no end—would be solved.
---
| Sublimation and Phase Control |
Alatar released the gate, shifting back to the ash itself. A thought pressed against him: It has only been solid. But ash is more than matter—it is transition.
He willed it lighter. The flakes thinned, dispersed, until they became dust finer than breath. A breeze stirred without breeze, a faint haze that drifted into his lungs. His eyes widened—not pain, but awareness.
Ash Gas. Inhalable, suffocating, blinding. He exhaled, and the haze spread like smoke, filling the chamber in seconds. An enemy engulfed would cough, choke, their senses stripped away. He inhaled sharply, recalling it back, and it condensed once more.
Then he forced the opposite: compression, density, pressure. The flakes fused, darkened, hardened until a shard of black glass gleamed in his palm—smooth, sharp, unyielding. He tapped it against the stone floor. It did not break.
"Obsidian Ash." A weapon that could cut like steel, shield like iron. More durable than anything he had conjured before.
He flexed his hand, dismissing the shard. Phase control meant not only tools, but versatility. Smokescreen, poison, blades, armor—all within the same essence.
---
| Mass Production and Conceptual Seeding |
His mind returned to limitation. For years he had counted—five orbs, ten, twenty. Each demanded direct will, each multiplied by conscious effort. But ash was no longer bound to momentary command. If will could be seeded, then multiplication could be… autonomous.
He shaped a sphere and imbued it with a single concept: become barrier. The orb pulsed, split, reformed. Another joined it. Then another. The air filled with slow-growing fragments, drifting outward until they formed a lattice of dust, dense and tall, walling off half the chamber.
Alatar stood and pressed his palm to the new wall. It resisted like stone. He had not commanded each mote, not strained to guide each fragment—they had simply grown, obeying the seed.
He laughed, the sound raw from disuse. "No more counting."
It was not infinite; his will still fed them, his strength still capped their span. But efficiency was no longer shackled to focus. His ash could act as system, not swarm. A single orb could bloom into a storm, filling fields, sealing corridors, choking entire armies.
The thought burned in his chest. He no longer fought with scraps. He fought with worlds.
---
| Practical Visions |
He began to pace, for the first time in decades.
Tracking ash on enemies, subtle and unseen, to stalk them beyond mountains.
Memory ash left behind, haunting those who touched it with visions of their own weakness.
Soul constructs patrolling while he slept, forming sentinels and scouts.
Void gates no longer collapsing, but leading across battlefields, between fortresses, into enemy strongholds.
Ash gas smothering rooms, suffocating armies, drifting like plague.
Obsidian ash forming blades sharper than forged steel, armor harder than chain.
Seeding an orb to multiply into storms, blotting out the sky, walls, fortresses crumbling beneath ash's weight.
It was all theory now, fragile dreams on the cusp of testing. But for the first time, the path ahead was not fog. It was mapped.
He turned to the floating haze, raising his hand. "You are not ash," he said softly, almost reverently. "You are my will, given form. You are my language. And I…" His eyes narrowed, sharp as the black shard he had formed, "…I am finally learning to speak."
The ash stirred, as if acknowledging him, filling the chamber in soft eddies of gray.
Alatar sank once more into stillness, the realization firm within him. The years had not been wasted. The silence had not been vain. His ash was no longer the tool of a novice but the weapon of a sovereign.
Now came the testing.
Now came reality.