Sirath Vael.
The name meant nothing to Aaron, which he supposed was fair — it was three thousand years old.
"You were one of the Ten," Aaron said. He kept his voice level. He was proud of that. "A god-level mage."
Sirath tilted his head — a small, precise movement. "You've heard of us."
"Everyone's heard of you. You're the reason the empire still tells children to look up at the sky sometimes." A pause. "They say you all just... vanished. One morning you were there and the next you weren't."
"That's one way to put it." Something crossed Sirath's face — not quite pain, not quite the absence of it. "A somewhat generous way."
Aaron turned the scroll over in his hands. It felt heavier than it should. "What's the less generous way?"
The old mage was quiet for long enough that Aaron started to wonder if the projection could run out of power, if there was some finite supply of light in the rock that was bleeding itself dry keeping this apparition coherent. Then Sirath said: "The less generous way is a story with context. Context requires trust. Trust requires time. And you —" he looked at Aaron the way a man might look at a seedling he'd been watching for months — "you have one year before your aptitude test, and a great deal to do before then."
"You know about the aptitude test."
"I have been in this cave for approximately three thousand years. What I know is limited. What I suspect, based on the state of the air and the mage-force in this mountain and the fact that you appear to be a child with no academic formation who nevertheless just picked up a scroll sealed with spatial energy without flinching —" a dry pause — "is a great deal more."
Aaron looked at the scroll again. Spatial energy. So that was what it had felt like — that silver, weighted sensation. He filed the information away with the methodical precision he applied to everything, the habit from a past life of treating the world as a system to be understood.
"Why did you choose space magic?" he asked.
Sirath's expression shifted — something careful and deliberate moved behind his eyes. "Because it was the element I was best suited to teach."
Aaron met his gaze. "That's true. But it's not the whole answer."
A beat. Then something that was almost a smile. "No. It isn't." Sirath's image moved, turning slightly, as though looking at something Aaron couldn't see. "The Space element is the rarest of the four rare elements. And it is the one most deeply connected to the nature of what I — what all ten of us — did wrong. I chose a Space successor because I believe a Space mage, properly trained, can do what none of us could." He turned back. "But that context, as I said, requires trust."
"And time."
"And time."
Aaron set the scroll down on the stone shelf and looked at the man who'd left it there three thousand years ago. Then he lowered himself to sit cross-legged on the cave floor — not out of reverence, but because his legs were getting tired and he thought better sitting down.
"All right," he said. "Then let's start with what you can tell me. What exactly am I inheriting?"
— — —
The answer was not what Aaron expected.
No ancient technique manual. No legendary spell collection. No magical treasure chest overflowing with the accumulated wealth of a god-level mage's lifetime.
What Sirath had left was himself.
"My Void Catalog," Sirath said. "Think of it as a library. Every technique I developed, every spell I mastered, every observation I made over the course of my life — compressed and stored. It will take up residence in your mind, in a form you'll be able to access as you grow. But — and I want to be clear about this — you will not be able to access most of it immediately. The catalog is keyed to your development. Try to read something beyond your current comprehension and you will simply see blank pages."
"A library that only shows you books you're ready to read."
"Precisely."
"And you?" Aaron asked. "Are you just a recording? Or —"
"I am considerably more than a recording," Sirath said, with the mild offence of someone correcting a factual error rather than defending their pride. "I am... a persistence. A deep enough impression of consciousness, left in a spatial formation, to be capable of genuine thought. Whether that constitutes being alive —" he paused. "I have had three thousand years to consider that question and have not yet settled on an answer."
Aaron absorbed this. "So you can actually teach me. Have conversations with me. Think."
"Yes."
"And you'll be in my head."
"In a manner of speaking. I will communicate through the Void Catalog. You will hear my voice when I choose to speak, or when I determine you need correction." A dry beat. "I expect to be doing a great deal of correcting."
"I appreciate that you're honest about it."
"I was the foremost mage of my era. Honesty is the least I can offer as a starting point." Sirath looked at him carefully. "Now. One question before we proceed. You are not from this world."
Aaron went very still.
"I don't make it a habit of stating things I'm not certain of," Sirath said. "The quality of thought in your mind when you touched the scroll — the patterns of it — they are not native to this empire, this language, this world. You have the mental architecture of someone who grew up somewhere else entirely." A pause. "This is not a problem. In fact, it may be the most interesting thing about you."
Aaron exhaled slowly. It was the first time in eight years that someone had known. Seen it — or sensed it, or whatever Sirath had done. He had not realised until this moment how heavy a secret was until it began to feel lighter.
"A different world," he said. "Yes."
"Then you already understand, in your bones, that there are places beyond the world you stand in." Sirath's eyes held a weight that Aaron couldn't fully interpret yet. "That will matter. More than you know."
He said nothing else on the subject.
"Now," he said. "Let's discuss your element."
— — —
Aaron sat in the cave for four hours.
He left knowing two things he hadn't known that morning.
The first was that in nine months, when he turned nine, he would walk into the aptitude test in Eskra and the examiners would see something they hadn't expected. He would make certain of it.
The second was the name Sirath Vael — not a legend, not a story, but a voice in his head — had looked at him when they parted, and said one final thing:
"The others were looking for a successor to continue what I had built. That is not what I want from you. I want you to be willing to ask whether what I built was right."
Aaron had walked back to the village in the late afternoon light, turning that over and over, the way you turn a stone in your hand until you understand which end is sharp.
He thought he was beginning to understand.