The emperor's gaze softened, and the air around the throne seemed to thicken, heavy with incense and ancient power. The golden patterns carved into the stone floor pulsed faintly, answering his heartbeat like a distant drum. Ebraham tried to speak, but his throat was dry, his voice lost somewhere between terror and awe."My blood," the emperor said, his voice echoing from the shrine walls. "You crossed the threshold of my tomb, carried my tome, and bled upon my soil. The lineage has answered at last." The emperor rose from the throne, the movement slow and deliberate, his robes whispering like flowing water over stone.Ebraham instinctively stepped back, only then noticing that his wounded leg no longer hurt. The hole where the bullet had entered was gone, leaving only a faint, silvery scar. His breath caught. "W‑who are you?" he managed to ask.The emperor descended the steps, each one lighting briefly as his foot touched it. "Once, the world knew my name and trembled," he said. "Now, even my enemies' lies have turned to dust. I was the first to raise this empire from the wilderness. I am the last voice of its throne." He stopped an arm's length away, eyes burning a deep, impossible gold. "And you, Ebraham Thomas Emmanuval, are my heir."The words struck Ebraham harder than any bullet."Your… heir? No, that's impossible. I'm just an archeologist. I dig up bones and broken pottery, I don't—""You unsealed what others feared," the emperor interrupted, not unkindly. "You chose the tome when death closed in. You listened when the roots of the world whispered secrets of a forgotten king. That is not the work of a coward, or of chance."He lifted a hand, and the shimmering symbols from the shrine walls peeled off the stone like threads of light, swirling around them. Images flashed within the lights: armies under black and gold banners, towering palaces, libraries filled with scrolls, temples swallowed by jungle and sand. Ebraham saw city after city rise and fall, then burn and vanish."My empire was not merely conquered," the emperor said, his voice low. "It was erased. Names struck from stone, records burned, my descendants hunted until they scattered and hid among common bloodlines." The lights circled Ebraham now, warm against his skin, almost like hands resting on his shoulders. "But blood remembers, even when memory does not."Ebraham's heart pounded. In the dancing light, he caught a glimpse of a face that looked eerily like his own, but crowned, robed, stern and proud. His fingers tightened unconsciously around the forbidden tome that had somehow appeared back in his hands, its cover now pulsing with the same golden light."Why me?" he whispered.The emperor studied him for a long moment. "Because you are both of earth and of memory," he said. "You understand the language of ruins and the weight of history. You know how easily truth can be buried. The world will not listen to a ghost, but it may listen to you."He reached out and placed his hand on Ebraham's forehead. The touch was neither warm nor cold; it felt like standing under a waterfall of light. Visions crashed into him—maps of lost sites, hidden vaults beneath crowded cities, secret lineages encoded in temple carvings, rituals scrawled in the margins of half-burnt scrolls. Ebraham gasped, knees buckling, but an unseen force held him upright."With this, I name you," the emperor intoned. "Last scion of my house. Keeper of my pact. Successor to a throne the world has forgotten." His voice rose, and the shrine responded, the very stones humming. "You will walk the world of men, but you will carry my empire in your veins. You will uncover what was stolen, restore what was denied, and decide whether my legacy rises again… or is laid to rest forever."
