When Alatar opened his eyes, the world was still.
He stood amidst a forest whose canopy reached into veiled heavens, vast trunks older than memory rising like pillars of slumbering titans. The air was damp with dew, touched by the scent of moss and minerals. Threads of mist drifted between the trees, whispering faintly as though language still lived in the breath of the wild.
He did not fall here.
He was.
Existence had simply rearranged itself to make room for him.
The black robe upon his frame rippled faintly with the motion of unseen air currents, its folds alive with traces of cosmic dust and silence. He exhaled softly, and the forest seemed to lean in, curious.
"Below," he murmured, the word almost reverent.
It had been centuries since he had breathed air unbound by sanctum wards. This place was raw, untouched—vivid in ways the sealed chambers above had long forgotten. He could feel the pulse of the world beneath his feet: slow, patient, imperfect.
And yet… alive.
He closed his human eyes, and the Eye of Elarion opened.
The air trembled.
Without summoning time's distortion, without invoking dilation or fracture, he merely observed. The Chrono-Cognitive Field spread outward like an invisible ripple, expanding from his form until it met the limits of twenty meters.
Reality unfolded within that sphere—each atom and heartbeat mapped, each motion refracted through awareness. The dance of insects became pattern, the breath of wind a visible current. The soil beneath him hummed faintly with the memory of rain.
Within the layered calm, one anomaly stirred.
To the west.
Seven meters distant.
He turned his head slightly, and the vision followed.
Through the trees, motion erupted—shouts, metal against bone, the harsh rhythm of mortal panic.
A group of six struggled against a beast that dwarfed them.
It was tiger-like, yet not of the mundane world: fur black as eclipse, eyes like molten gold. Muscles coiled beneath its hide as it moved with the authority of a predator that had never known fear. Its growl rolled through the forest like a tremor.
The six fought in formation—four men, two women, their forms tall and lean beneath slender armor that caught fragments of light through the canopy. Their movements were disciplined but desperate.
Blades flashed, spears struck. Two at the rear wove glyphs into the air—magi, judging by the cadence of their breath, the distortion of ambient energy around their hands. Sparks of light and slashes of wind lashed out toward the beast, but it only enraged it further.
The creature lunged, one massive paw shattering a tree trunk in a single swipe. The two in front barely managed to block, the impact sending them skidding across the moss-covered ground.
One of the women shouted—a short command, urgent and sharp—and the others repositioned, drawing into a semi-circle. Sweat and dirt streaked their faces. The forest filled with the sound of ragged breath, the metallic scent of blood beginning to stain the air.
To Alatar, it was distant—an image half-contained within his Field, detached and silent in his awareness.
They will not last long, he noted. Their rhythm breaks after every third exchange. Their cohesion falters when pressed from the left. The mages are exhausted. Their constructs unravel before they form.
He did not feel pity. Only observation.
And yet… something in their struggle stirred a quiet curiosity.
It had been so long since he had witnessed beings so finite, so unrefined, yet alive. Their desperation was its own form of brilliance—raw and immediate in a way his centuries of discipline had nearly erased from him.
The ash at his feet stirred, answering an unspoken thought.
A single mote drifted free, gliding into the air like an ember seeking purpose. Alatar watched it drift, then whispered, "Go."
The mote shimmered once and vanished into the folds of space, carried along the invisible threads of his awareness. Within a breath, it reached the clearing where the mortals fought—and there, it multiplied.
A soft hiss filled the forest as the ash expanded outward, multiplying itself into fractal filaments until it formed a circular boundary in the air. Within that ring, reality bent. The edges blurred, light refracting like liquid glass.
An anchored gate.
Where the ash coalesced, another portal unfolded behind Alatar, tethered by invisible constants through the Field. The two became mirrors of one another, stabilizing their link through harmonic resonance.
He stepped forward once.
The gate rippled like water, accepting him without sound.
The world folded, and he emerged upon the other side—into chaos.
---
The air was heavy with the scent of iron and earth. The tiger-beast had just swatted one of the armored men into a tree, snapping branches like twigs. The mages shouted incantations—half-formed, trembling with fatigue. Sparks burst, dissipating before they reached the creature.
The others barely held formation.
Then the wind shifted.
Alatar's presence moved through the clearing like a slow wave. Every leaf seemed to hush. Even the beast froze mid-lunge, its golden eyes widening with instinctive unease.
The six mortals turned—faces streaked with dirt and blood, armor scuffed and fractured. Their eyes widened in disbelief at the figure who now stood where the air itself had just opened.
A man in black stood among them, tall and unhurried, robes moving as though stirred by a breeze unseen.
Alatar's gaze passed over them once—calm, unreadable—and then settled upon the beast.
Its breath came in short bursts, misting the air. The muscles beneath its fur trembled, caught between instinct and fear.
The ash around Alatar's feet began to rise, swirling in slow concentric arcs.
He did not speak.
The Chrono-Cognitive Field expanded again, folding the moment into layers. Each flicker of the creature's movement became a note in a vast, silent melody.
The mortals could not sense it fully, but they felt it—an invisible weight pressing against their bones, a stillness that stretched time between one heartbeat and the next.
The beast twitched first, the muscles in its haunches coiling as it prepared to leap.
Alatar lifted a hand, almost idly.
The ash responded before thought.
From the soil, from the very air, threads of grey light unspooled—thin as hair, sharp as razors—wrapping around the creature's limbs in a lattice of entropy. It roared, the sound shaking branches loose from nearby trees, but the more it struggled, the tighter the ash bound.
Every movement accelerated its own disintegration.
When the roar faded, the tiger-beast's form began to blur at the edges, its mass collapsing inward until all that remained was a faint residue—a pattern of decay, suspended in the Field's perception before fading into silence.
The clearing went utterly still.
Only the sound of Alatar's robe moving broke the quiet.
---
He lowered his hand. The ash settled like falling snow.
The six mortals stared, speechless. One of the men—young, pale-eyed beneath his helm—took an uncertain step forward, as though words hovered but refused to be born.
Alatar's gaze brushed him briefly, and the man stopped.
He could sense their awe, their confusion, their fear. It rippled through them like heat. To them, he was neither savior nor intruder—they simply had no concept by which to name him.
Alatar turned slightly, scanning the treeline once more. The Field confirmed what his senses had already told him: no further movement, no other threats within range.
Only the heartbeat of the forest remained.
He exhaled softly.
So this is what lies below the Sanctum, he thought. Struggle, imperfection… vitality.
The six remained frozen, waiting.
He did not speak to them yet. Words would come later—when he decided whether he wished to be known or unseen. For now, he simply looked upward through the canopy, where sunlight broke in thin, scattered bands.
A single droplet of water fell from a branch above and landed upon his shoulder, catching the faint light before evaporating into steam.
He smiled—barely.
"Alive," he whispered to himself.
And the forest seemed to listen.