Kael stood with his arms crossed, surveying his inner realm.
"This is troublesome…"
The words slipped out in a low, troubled murmur.
'If my Thought production is truly in decline, then all I have left are my reserves… How long will those even last?'
His gaze drifted to the colossal river of Will coiling through the air before him as his thoughts sank deeper.
'At around fifty thousand Thoughts, bystanders might notice you seem aloof…' Tap, tap, tap, his finger drummed against his arm. 'So why is mine so extremely obvious?'
The moment Kael realized what was happening, more and more of his mistakes surfaced, each one gnawing at him. That was what truly bothered him.
'Is it because my soul is slowly cracking as the motes leech away from it?'
sigh…
"Am I missing something?"
His arms fell limp to his sides.
"Well, no matter. It won't pose a problem for now, so long as everything goes according to plan."
He was only moments away from retracting his consciousness from his inner realm when he was interrupted by a rhythmic sound.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Kael's gaze shifted toward the white void beside him, only to see a Point Aegis mote slowly rolling past, as if it had a will of its own.
Kael raised a brow at the sight.
"Hmm? Now what's this?"
He hunched down for a closer look, but the cube just kept rolling forward with great efforts, oblivious to his presence.
"Interesting… I've never seen a mote behave like this, nor leave the river of Will."
"Well… I've also never seen one appear in my inner realm without summoning it."
He knew, at least in theory, that one could wander through their inner realm to seek out the motes they possessed. But in practice, such a thing was impossible.
The inner realm was vast, so vast in fact that no known luminaire had ever managed to reach its end. It was often called the White Ocean or the Endless Void, names that spoke to humanity's inability to truly grasp its scale.
For millions of years, people had tried to unravel the truth of the inner realm. And although understanding had deepened across the ages, the more progress humanity made, the more they realized how little they actually knew.
'Fascinating how something that has existed since the beginning remains too complex for us to comprehend, let alone replicate…'
Kael's eyes lost focus as his thoughts sank deeper. He caught himself and forced his mind back to the moment.
He reached out and tapped Point Aegis a few times, only for it to continue rolling away.
'When Luminaires refine a mote, they replace its will with their own. However…' Kael paused, sorting through his thoughts. 'Even if a Luminaire has full control, the mote's instinct remains. It runs deeper than any will.'
"It is almost as if a mote's instincts are hardwired by the heavens themselves, something that can never be altered."
This was why Kael found Point Aegis so intriguing. Not only was it moving freely outside the river, but it rolled past him without hesitation. Mote instincts naturally made them afraid of humans, and why wouldn't they be? Humans were the only creatures capable of controlling them. That was also why the idea of walking around one's inner realm to find motes was unrealistic, the motes actively avoided humans, even within their own realms.
But Point Aegis was different. It was as though it lacked the very instinct to flee from Kael.
"Are you intelligent… or simply foolish?"
Kael narrowed his eyes at the mote.
"I suppose any attempt at reason or normality becomes meaningless once Paragons are involved."
He raised his foot and casually kicked the mote, watching as it soared through the white void, landed in the river of Will, and drifted away against its own nature.
He sighed softly before retracting his consciousness and returning to the present.
The moment he did, a strong wind brushed past him, tossing his hair about.
"Right… the mountain."
Kael uncrossed his legs and jumped down from the rock. He turned his gaze toward the river and started walking.
He reached up and grabbed the golden rod. With a swift swipe of his fingers he began moving across the river.
His coat thrashed in the strong winds, and the rushing air past his ears made it almost impossible to hear anything around him.
"I really need a sensory mod."
He released his grip on the rod and dropped to the ground.
Half an hour passed before the mountain suddenly vanished from sight. If one didn't know better, they might think it was the end of the world.
But it wasn't.
Kael walked to the edge and looked down. Instantly, powerful gusts crashed against his face, whipping his hair upward as they surged along the mountain wall.
"So this is the famous sanctum, Threnfall."
He sat down, dangling his feet over the cliff.
"The same place where hundreds of thousands of people have been sacrificed over millions of years."
Hundreds of millions of years ago, before humans became the apex predators of the world, it was ruled by feral beasts and Dreadborne creatures.
And when humans lacked the strength to claim that role, the second-smartest species took their place: the Dreadbornes. While their intelligence and dominance never matched that of modern humans, they still stood at the top.
'Smolten, was it? Smolten Dreadbornes.' Kael leaned back, resting on his hands.
"Yeah, that sounds about right."
Around 300 million years ago, the Smolten Dreadbornes still reigned at the top, slaughtering freely and forming small societies. Some among them even reached a level of intelligence that rivaled humans.
And with intelligence came religion.
To control the more primitive species, the gifted among them began creating rules. Over time, these rules became beliefs, traditions, and eventually the first organized religion: the worship of a god called Heimith.
"And of course, with all old-school religions, they had to hold rituals…" Kael reached for a rock nearby and tossed it over the edge, watching it vanish into the thick clouds below. "I wonder why that is?"
The Smolten used humans as sacrifices, carving open their backs, folding their ribs outward, then casting them from the cliffs.
"Blood angels…"
Kael leaned back, resting on his arms.
The descendants of those countless ritual victims had never forgotten their ancestors, often referring to them as Blood Angels. It was not only an act of respect but also a way to remember the pain and suffering the Smolten Dreadbornes had inflicted upon humanity.
"Thankfully this was long before my time…"
When humans began to awaken and become Luminaires, they gained an advantage unlike anything seen before, slaughtering everything that was not human. Thus began a cleansing period lasting fifty thousand years, remembered as the Golden Eradication.
Kael lingered for a moment longer before rising to his feet. He walked along the cliff's edge, eyes scanning the void below.
"Not here… not here…"
At steady intervals he cast his gaze downward, patient and methodical. Then, at last, something took shape within the endless white clouds: a faint silhouette, barely visible, yet undeniable if you knew what to look for.
"There."
Kael veered sharply to the right and stepped off the cliff. He plummeted through the air and landed in a burst of powdered snow, the impact sending a chill through his legs.
When he raised his head, he was met with the sight of a vast, ominous opening in the mountain wall. The cave yawned before him like the maw of some ancient beast waiting to swallow him whole.
The moment he crossed its threshold, the screaming winds vanished. In their place came the soft, hollow rhythm of water droplets striking the stone floor, echoing through the darkness.
"This is definitely it."
He pressed on without hesitation. As he moved deeper, the cave walls grew thick with a layer of fine dust, and the gentle dripping gave way to a suffocating silence that seemed to close in on him with every step.
Kael had no doubt. This cave was known to very few. He himself had only discovered it by chance while studying old maps of the region.
'According to the map, this place was once home to a mountain troll.' He drew in a slow breath, steadying himself. 'But that was more than five hundred years ago. Nearly their entire lifespan. I doubt it could have survived until now.'
Ten minutes passed, then twenty, then thirty, and soon an hour had gone by.
A soft sound echoed between the cave walls as Kael struck his final match.
'It's a lot deeper than I initially thought.'
He turned his head to look behind him, only to be met by the unbearable darkness. Only when the flame began to burn his fingertips did he pull his gaze away.
Releasing the match, he watched the flame fall to the ground and fade the moment it touched the thin layer of water flowing along the cave floor.
He sighed quietly in the dark and snapped his fingers. The golden rod appeared beside him, casting a dim golden light over the stone walls.
"Guess it can't be helped."
From the moment he had entered the cave, Kael had done his best to avoid using any kind of mote as a light source. Normally that would not have been a problem, but once he realized he was exhausting his soul, causing his Thoughts to decline, what had once been his greatest survival tool had now become a finite resource.
'If it comes down to it, I'll just have to destroy one of my motes…'
The thought left a sour taste in his mouth. He had considered it before, and the truth was obvious.
His soul had begun to crack because it could no longer regenerate as quickly as the motes drained it. The solution, at least in theory, was simple. Destroy or remove one of his motes, or, as he had also theorized, advance to Rank Three.
Yet while the solution was simple, the price of it was not.