"Good students," he said, to the four notebooks and nobody else.
Then, pausing at the threshold with the door half open, he tossed a final splinter over his shoulder.
"One detail for the curious. The human ancestor who fought in those wars did not truly die, whatever your books claim. His power permitted him to return. Reincarnation with his abilities intact. He has come back before, you understand, and he could come back again. Food for thought."
He walked out.
The room sat in a ringing vacuum.
From his own perspective, it was simply true. The human ancestor had taken rebirth to aid this world's protagonist. A fact, planted like a seed in a row of young minds that fancied themselves geniuses.
'And at my age,' he mused in the corridor, entirely comfortable with the arithmetic he was inviting, 'achieving all that I have achieved. Shouldn't I qualify as his reincarnation. A little.'
