When Barachas opened his eyes, the air tasted of stillness—the kind that lingered after long ages of silence. For a moment, he did not remember when he had last drawn breath. Only that the world had continued turning without him.
The Sanctum was quiet, colder than memory. The great pillars that once held the sigils of the Malakors were dulled, their inscriptions nearly eroded. Dust—no, not dust, but the faint residue of time itself—hung unmoving in the air. And deep within the stone beneath his feet, he could still feel the echo of Alatar's presence, the faint vibration that had stirred him from that long half-sleep.
He had not expected to awaken again.
Not after the last of his kind had vanished into the endless distance of history.
He stood slowly, feeling the weight of his bones adjust to the stillness. A faint light filtered through the cracks in the vaulted ceiling above, painting thin white lines across the floor. The Sanctum's heart—the old crystal spire that once pulsed with vitality—was nothing now but a fragment of glass half-buried in ash.
And yet, he smiled faintly. "So… the world still remembers to breathe."
His voice carried softly across the chamber, swallowed by its vast emptiness.
He took a step forward, and then another, his bare feet whispering across the cold stone. With each motion, the air began to shift—recognizing him, perhaps, or remembering. Light seeped into the cracks, threads of dormant energy reawakening along the walls. Symbols flickered to life for the briefest of moments before fading again, as if unsure whether to believe their own sight.
Barachas reached the edge of the chamber and rested a hand against one of the tall, arched windows. Beyond it stretched only clouds—endless and luminous, covering everything below in a rolling shroud of silver. The world beneath the Sanctum was invisible, lost to time and fog.
He exhaled, the breath fogging the ancient glass. "So much time… and yet the silence feels the same."
He remembered when the Sanctum was alive—when its halls sang with voices, when the Malakors stood at its terraces debating the movements of stars and the weight of power. He had watched those days end one by one, until the laughter became whispers, then echoes, and finally—nothing.
He had remained. Watching, waiting, teaching. Until even the purpose to teach had faded.
And then came Alatar. The first true silence-breaker in centuries.
That boy—no, not a boy any longer—had shaken the still air of the Sanctum in ways even the old masters could not have foreseen. His persistence, his stillness, his unwillingness to yield even to time itself—these had awakened something that had been dormant not just in the halls, but in Barachas himself.
And now, after so many years of sleep, he felt that same pulse again.
The world below called to him—not in words or visions, but in quiet insistence.
He turned from the window and walked to the great gate at the chamber's end. The gate had not been opened since before the last of the Malakors vanished, when storms and myth began to claim the Spire as something beyond mortal reach.
He placed a hand upon its surface. The ancient metal was cold and rough, etched with the same runes that had once glowed like fire. He closed his eyes, whispering a single phrase in the old tongue. The runes stirred faintly, then settled into a dim hum, the mechanisms shuddering under centuries of stillness.
With a slow groan, the doors parted.
Light flooded in—pale, almost colorless, yet blinding after such stillness. Barachas stepped into it without hesitation.
The air outside was thinner than he remembered, sharp and biting against his skin. The Spire's summit stretched into the sky like the crown of a dead god, wrapped in clouds that roiled endlessly around its base. Below that veil of mist, the world lay hidden, silent and unreachable.
He walked forward until his feet met the edge of the mountain, where stone gave way to air. There, he sat.
The wind tore through his robes, carrying with it faint fragments of voices—perhaps real, perhaps echoes. The sound of his own heartbeat was the only thing steady.
For a long while, he simply listened.
He did not know what age it was now. How long it had been since the world below had last seen the Spire. Perhaps generations had passed. Perhaps epochs. The name Malakor might mean nothing now—just a whisper in some historian's archive, a ghostly legend about beings who once shaped the elements and vanished without a trace.
That thought did not trouble him. Time was not an enemy; it was the truest teacher.
But there was something different in the air—something restless. The pulse of the world below was faint, distorted, as though the land itself had forgotten its rhythm.
Barachas lowered his gaze. "Have they forgotten the old balance?" he wondered aloud. "Or has the world simply moved beyond it?"
He reached into the earth beside him and drew a handful of soil, dark and cold. He held it for a moment, feeling its weight, its quiet pulse of life. Then, with a soft breath, he let it scatter into the air. The wind caught it, twisting it into fragments, but before it could fall, he raised a finger.
The particles halted mid-air.
He closed his eyes, and the soil began to reshape—drawn together, bound by the moisture of the mist, touched by the lingering charge of his will. Slowly, it condensed into form—a bird, small and imperfect, but alive in the way that only symbols of intent can be. Its wings were shaped of soil, its feathers laced with threads of cloud.
It blinked once, awaiting his command.
Barachas regarded it quietly. "I do not wish to disturb them," he said, almost as if to himself. "Not yet. But I must see what became of them… of us."
He extended his hand, brushing a finger along the bird's head. It shivered, scattering droplets of mist.
"Go," he murmured. "See what lies beneath."
The bird lifted its head, its eyes catching a faint glimmer of light. Then, without a sound, it took flight—its wings cutting through the high wind, carrying it over the precipice.
Barachas watched it disappear into the endless sea of cloud below.
For a long while, he remained seated at the mountain's edge, his expression unreadable. He could still feel the faint connection—the bird's senses tethered to his own. He saw through it in glimpses: the shifting light within the clouds, the flash of distant lightning, the dim pulse of life somewhere far below. But he did not seek clarity yet. Not now.
He merely sat, listening, observing the silence between each flicker of vision.
The world below was no longer his to shape. He knew that instinctively. Too much time had passed. Whatever kingdoms, faiths, or powers now ruled there had grown in his absence. His kind had been forgotten, perhaps even erased.
And yet… the memory of the Sanctum still existed.
Even as legend, it endured.
"Even myths," he said softly, "have weight enough to move the present."
The clouds shifted, breaking briefly to reveal a sliver of light far below—perhaps a city, perhaps something else. He didn't need to know which. It was enough to know that the world lived. That, despite all its change, it still drew breath.
He closed his eyes and leaned back against the stone, feeling the rough surface dig into his spine. The wind carried whispers—somewhere between memory and reality—of laughter, voices, the clang of metal, the crackle of the old forge.
He imagined the others, long gone: his peers, his students, the masters who came before him. Each one fading into silence, leaving their fragments scattered across the ages.
He wondered if Alatar would one day join them—or surpass them.
The thought brought a faint smile to his lips.
Below, the bird continued to descend, its senses painting fragments of unknown shapes and shifting colors across his mind's eye. He did not try to interpret them yet. He would, soon. But not tonight.
For now, it was enough simply to be awake.
Barachas lifted his gaze to the horizon. The sun, half-obscured by mist, bled faint gold through the grey clouds, staining the air like liquid memory.
"The world changes," he said quietly, "but the mountain endures."
He closed his eyes again, letting the thin wind brush against his face, and for the first time since awakening, he felt the faintest trace of peace.
Not joy. Not sorrow.
Simply peace—an acceptance of time's indifference, and the decision to watch, rather than act.
The Sanctum behind him creaked softly, as if acknowledging his choice.
And Barachas sat at the edge of the world, watching through borrowed eyes as the clouds rolled beneath him—content, for now, to see rather than to shape, to wait rather than to speak.
The age of stillness had ended. The age of observation had begun.