Chapter 442
He felt childish.
Like a small boy who wanted to sit in his father's chair just to know what it felt like to become the leader.
Yet at the same time, there was another urge, something deeper, more primitive, and far more difficult to ignore.
That urge did not come from his rational mind.
It did not come from the instincts of an adventurer seeking a new sensation.
It came from something older.
Something that whispered from the quietest corner of his consciousness that sometimes a person must do things that appear meaningless in order to understand the meaning hidden behind them.
After wrestling briefly with his doubts, after considering every possibility that might happen if he did this foolish thing, Xavier finally decided to approach.
Step by step he walked toward the magnificent throne that had been calling to him in a way he could not explain.
When his body finally touched the cold surface of the throne, Xavier felt something that immediately sent shivers across his skin.
It was not the chill of the black stone penetrating through his clothing.
It was not the grandeur of the seat making him feel small.
It was something far more abstract.
Something like a wave of energy spreading from the throne into every part of his body.
He sat carefully.
His hands rested upon the armrests carved into the shapes of lion heads with red gemstone eyes.
For a moment he remained silent, allowing himself to absorb the mysterious atmosphere of the room.
Far away, outside the pyramid, the wind might still have been blowing, carrying the dust of ages.
Yet inside this chamber everything felt silent.
Frozen.
Like a snapshot of the past that had never truly ended.
Xavier closed his eyes.
In that darkness he saw nothing.
Only emptiness, sometimes interrupted by random sparks of light that appeared and vanished in an instant.
He opened them again.
The throne remained the same.
Still magnificent.
Still silent.
He closed his eyes once more, this time longer.
Trying to feel whether vibrations of history still lingered within these stones.
Whether whispers of the past still echoed within this chamber.
Whether the long-dead civilization wished to say something to him.
He opened his eyes again.
Once again nothing had changed.
Only himself sitting upon an empty throne in the center of a silent pyramid on a planet that had lost every form of life.
The cycle repeated several times.
Eyes closing and opening.
Closing and opening again.
Like a strange ritual whose purpose he did not understand, yet performed with full sincerity.
"Your existence is an anomaly. And that is why I cannot subdue you."
At first nothing happened.
Only a familiar silence and a strange comfort as Xavier leaned against the black stone throne.
He sat upright.
Both hands resting on the lion-shaped armrests.
For a moment he allowed himself to dissolve into a sensation he could barely describe.
A sensation as if the entire room, the entire pyramid, the entire silent planet suddenly belonged to him.
A strange grandeur flowed from the throne into his chest.
A grandeur that made him feel, if only briefly, like a Maharaja worshiped by a civilization long vanished.
Like a ruler whose people were gone, yet whose reverence still lingered within every pore of the stones that witnessed their former glory.
Xavier savored that feeling.
Letting it flow through his veins like ancient wine too precious to drink in haste.
For a moment he truly forgot that he was nothing more than a wanderer on a dead planet that knew no one and was known by no one.
But after closing his eyes for the twelfth time, something changed within Xavier.
When his eyelids opened again, his gaze was no longer soft and distant as before.
It had become sharp.
Focused.
Directed toward a point in the distance that perhaps only he could see.
From the deepest part of his heart, a murmur emerged.
Uninvited.
Unexpected.
Yet filled with a conviction he could not deny.
He declared that Ilux Rediona was an anomaly.
A heavy word carrying countless consequences.
An admission that within the order of the universe he had always understood, there existed one variable that could not be placed into any equation.
More importantly, he realized that this anomaly could not be subdued.
Could not be controlled.
Could not be forced to obey the rules that governed other beings.
Ilux Rediona moved according to his own logic.
Lived within his own reality.
Became the exception that both justified and contradicted every rule that existed.
Xavier released a short breath.
Barely ten seconds long.
Yet within that brief exhale were thousands of unspoken words.
He continued speaking within his heart.
Expanding the murmur that had just begun.
Detailing what made Ilux Rediona so extraordinary and at the same time so disturbing.
That Ilux was still a snot-nosed child.
A boy technically far too young to understand the intricacies of the power now dwelling within him.
That the Authority of Perception Alteration and the five elementals of fire, water, earth, air, and cosmic energy flowing within Ilux's body actually came from him— Xavier— who had only lent them.
Not given them completely.
Not released them entirely.
Only entrusted them temporarily, like someone leaving a precious item with a trusted friend.
Yet even so, even though all that power fundamentally still belonged to him, even though he could reclaim it whenever he wished, the existence of Ilux Rediona remained an anomaly he could not ignore.
"Not merely an anomaly without cause."
The root of Xavier's unease toward Ilux Rediona did not originate from the boy himself.
It originated from an old wound still open within his own family.
A wound that had never truly healed even though time had passed swiftly.
Several years after he and his wife, Myra Astrielle, chose to end their lives together.
After they chose to leave a reality they could no longer endure.
Their descendants reacted in a way they had never expected.
The Gods— the title given to the children and grandchildren born from the bloodline of Xavier and Myra— claimed power in a manner that defied convention.
In ways that surpassed the limits of what civilizations across countless universes considered acceptable.
They did not sit quietly waiting for fate to arrive.
They did not passively accept whatever the universe granted them.
They moved.
They seized.
They took control of things that should never have been controlled by any being.
And among all those descendants, the most prominent, the most vocal, the one filled with the greatest fury was the youngest.
A great-grandchild of Xavier and Myra born not long before the couple decided to depart from existence.
The anger that youngest child carried toward his great-grandfather and great-grandmother was no ordinary anger.
It was a blazing fury like a fire that never extinguished.
A rage that had rooted itself so deeply that it influenced every decision he made for thousands of years.
To be continued…