Lyana, Thanatos & Guide
The Guide moved with slow, measured steps down the narrow corridor,his black cloak almost silently trailing behind him.
He had come for the last time,or so he believed,to the bedside of a girl he had known for far too long.
The room was strangely silent,almost sterile,as if cut off from time itself.
In the center, on a bed too large for her fragile frame,Lyana lay motionless,locked in a deep sleep no one seemed able to break.
Around her, mystical symbols pulsed softly beneath the floor,their faint glow bathing the room in cold, bluish light.
Beside her, a black prism rested,as mysterious as it was menacing,seeming to contain an invisible will.
The Guide stopped,his eyes scanning this silent scenewith a mixture of respect and dread.
He knew this moment surpassedall the trials and selections he had ever overseen.
A shiver of warning ran through him,a deep doubt:what if what he saw was not merely a sleeping body,but something more?
A sealed secret.A force beyond his understanding.
He stepped forward,aware this moment would upheave the order of things,perhaps even his own existence.
Silence reigned in the room.Too clean.Too calm.
The Guide was not supposed to come here.This was no place of selection.
But a doubt had driven him to break his own discipline.A trace.A tremor in the Axis.An anomaly in the probabilities.
She lay in a bed too vast,like a crystal at the center of a suspended world.Her breathing was calm, steady.
Around her, invisible glyphs barely pulsed beneath the floorboards.
And beside her...a black prism.
The Guide stopped short.
This material...It was no artifact.It was a sealed will.Alive.
He approached with slow, reluctant steps.Each footfall felt heavy.
— Hm.What do we have here...?As it stands, she is unusable.Unfit.The trial cannot accept her.
He was about to leave.But an inner whisper halted him.
That prism.That shape.He had seen it before.Once.Only once.
And suddenly, sweat broke out on his brow.
— No...It's impossible.This seal...This kind of sealing...Only one entity is capable.
Kael cannot.Unless...
He slowly turned his head toward the sleeper.
— Could it be her...?
A tremor, barely perceptible.A tension in the air.
He stepped back one step, then two.His cosmic instinct screamed.
He may have just offended what never forgives.
— No...It cannot be...Her...Is she the Absolute?
No.Worse.
She is the Absolute of Death...
He vanished instantly,teleporting to the adjoining room.
There, he saw her.
Thana.Standing.Back turned.Still.
When she turned around,her eyes were no longer black.But incandescent gold.Inhuman.
A gaze that held the end of all things.
Not a word was spoken.But in the air,death had already been declared.
The Guide dropped to his knees.
— Forgive me...I... I did not know...I beg you...I had no intention...I swear...
Thana said nothing.Then:
— You want to be forgiven?
— Yes...Yes, whatever you want...
— Then answer me.How do you heal the girl in the room?
He did not raise his eyes.He knew this was a test.One mistake,and his consciousness would be erased from all planes.
— By...By an elixir.Of reinforcement for intermediate Magia cores and veins.Not rare.The first merchant circle of floor ten may possess some.
But...
— But?
— Even at my rank...I cannot fetch it.It's... forbidden.The Cosmic Axis does not allow interference at this level.
She stepped forward.One step.And the room seemed to collapse on itself.
— I did not ask you to go.Just to answer.
You did.You are forgiven.
He sighed...
But she continued:
— Two more things.
He froze.
— First:everything you know about me, Kael, or her,you keep to yourself.Absolutely.
Second:you watch over Kael.Discreetly.
If you fail either of these orders...
She paused.But the Guide felt an invisible sword pierce his soul.
— No...No, I swear to you...I will be loyal.I... I will say nothing.I will protect him...
— Good.
She turned her back again.
— Now disappear.Before I change my mind.
He vanished.
She closed her eyes,alone amid the silence,
While the Guide intoned in a grave voice:
— You do not know it yet, Kael...but Death watches over you.