Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
The Council Chamber was far too vast for the three souls inhabiting it.
Its towering walls, carved with intricate designs and slender marble columns, held an atmosphere that felt oppressive.
Through the grand windows, a silver sky shimmered like a watery aurora, making it impossible to tell if it was day or night.
Seven thrones of white wood stood in the large room, magnificent seats carved with exquisite art, but only three of them were occupied.
A serene-looking child, close to twelve years old, used one of them.
He was the Guardian of Oblivion, a title acquired in an era that no one, except for him, could remember.
His face appeared expressionless, almost absent, as he listened to the woman who currently monopolized the conversation—the Guardian of the Threads.
A third member of the Council nodded vehemently as he listened to her.
He was a middle-aged man with a meticulously groomed beard; the Guardian of Order appreciated the woman’s efforts to keep any anomaly under control, and that was precisely what her speech was about.
“The union between A’aru and the human dimension is more fragile by the day,” she said, rising from her seat.
She walked a few steps across the room, and the echo of her footsteps rang against the white marble.
“We are clearly entering a major crisis of our civilization, as a result of the negligence of some A’aruin.
They have failed to fulfill their sacred mandate.
Corrupt beings, defying the union that Lethe itself designated for them. ”
“That wouldn’t be a problem if you were more prudent with the existing Silver Threads,” the Guardian of Oblivion cut her off, his voice soft yet implacable.
The child did not rise from his seat; it was enough for him to slightly lift his chin.
“The problem is you. You have thought, for hundreds of years, that you can sever Threads at will, reassign them if you wish, and you do not accept that, by doing so, many souls have been lost, weakening the system as a whole. Cutting Threads is not, and should not be, a solution for maintaining order.”
“My sovereignty, my rules,” she said as a cold reminder, her gaze boring into his.
An absolute silence took hold of the hall.
“That premise is only valid as long as it does not jeopardize the stability of A’aru.
Your sovereignty cannot affect ours,” the Guardian of Oblivion said calmly, as if he were teaching a lesson to a small child despite his own childlike appearance.
“The governance of the Threads directly affects the cosmic union of our dimensions. Your systematic tendency to return souls to Lethe will drive us to extinction. You must cease.”
The Guardian of Order leaned forward in his seat, his perfectly trimmed beard giving him a mature, martial air.
“His Excellency the Guardian of Oblivion fails to consider that the actions of the Guardian of the Threads have suppressed rebellions in the making,” he replied in a firm tone.
“A’aruin refusing to incarnate as humans, or wanting to join A’aruin other than those of their Original Synchrony; humans attempting to breach forbidden portals into A’aru. We cannot tolerate chaos.”
The child frowned slightly and closed his eyes, bringing his right hand to his temple as if listening to a distant murmur.
“The fact is that there are no new souls,” he finally said, opening his eyes.
“Lethe has not blessed us with new generations, and coupled with the mass genocide the Guardian of the Threads is executing, we are facing the decline of our civilization.”
“Guardian of Oblivion!” the woman protested, scandalized. “I am not carrying out a genocide! I am fulfilling my duty to Lethe.”
“Your Excellency, I beg to differ,” he replied, unfazed.
A pristine beam of light entered through the glass, bathing the room in a silver, melancholy glow.
The Guardian of Oblivion rose from his throne without looking at either of them, heading for one of the seven doors leading to the building’s exterior—the Gate of Oblivion, which only opened in his presence.
Before crossing the threshold, his eyes rested fleetingly on the empty seats as an almost imperceptible sigh escaped his lips.
A long hallway awaited him outside the room, its walls crafted from an incandescent material that was finely carved to form intricate trees with their branches and delicate flowers.
It was like entering an enchanted forest of subtle and ancient radiance.
He strolled down the corridor and stopped in front of one of the trees, from which emerged the face of a woman with closed eyes.
He approached and extended his hand toward the beautiful countenance, and when he did, the leaves stirred as if an invisible wind blew softly, and the woman opened her eyes, her face taking on the most lovely expression.
He contemplated the delicate face in silence, perhaps remembering times that no one, save for him, knew.
When he withdrew his hand, the woman fell back into slumber.
* * *
The sky glowed in shades of pink and orange in a sunset that seemed to melt over the mountains rising above the city.
Augustine hadn’t returned home yet, wanting to clear her head by thinking of other things after parting with Ana in the morning.
Alderian accompanied her in a somber mood after the terrible news of Lina, still unable to recover from the shock.
After all, Lina had been a close friend in the past, and although he hadn’t seen her for some time, he never imagined she would meet such a tragic end.
What was she thinking when she fell in love with another A’aruin? He couldn’t exactly criticize her, though; he himself was walking on the edge of the abyss. He looked at Augustine, lost in her own thoughts, who didn’t seem to have noticed anything.
They rested, sitting on a well-kept lawn on the bank of the river that ran through the capital, dividing it in two. Augustine leaned her back against the trunk of a large willow tree, motionless and pensive, watching the horizon from there, entranced, as if she had never seen a sunset before.
“Is there anything like this in A’aru?” she asked without looking at him.
“Not exactly,” he replied. “The geography is similar, though. The city is surrounded by mountain ranges, just like here, but in A’aru, it always feels as if we are in a night with a full moon. You cannot see the variety of colors that human sunsets have.”
“Is it dark in there? I wouldn’t imagine it like that.”
“Not dark,” he said, “it’s luminous in its own way, but it’s like being always in that hour of the day when the sun has already set, yet daylight still lingers.”
The sun finished setting and the light softened, slowly leaving them in the shadows. Augustine turned slowly toward him, placing them very close together.
“Like now?” she asked. Alderian looked at her in a long silence. “Have you ever fallen in love, Alderian?”
The question caught him off guard. “We A’aruin are not permitted to fall in love. Those feelings are only allowed when we incarnate as humans,” he said with bitterness, turning his gaze toward the river.
“I don’t understand. Two A’aruin couldn’t have a romantic relationship while they protect their own humans?” she insisted. “I noticed you seem very close to Kala—”
A flicker of pain crossed his face as the memory of Lina surfaced. “Why would you ask me something like that? I never imagined having that kind of relationship with Kala or anyone else,” he responded.
Augustine didn’t argue, and Alderian immediately regretted his harshness. A hollow in his chest reminded him of his recent promise of it being the two of them from now on, wondering if he could even keep such a promise.
“There is a tree in A’aru very similar to this one,” Alderian said after a while in an almost jovial tone, trying to smooth over his previous harshness. “It’s also on a riverbank. I’ve been thinking, while we watched the sunset, that this corner looks a lot like a place I go to frequently.”
Augustine stood up with apparent interest in the melancholy willow, reaching out to brush one of its branches, and suddenly, her face lit up with an idea.
“How about we come here another day and tie a ribbon to this tree?” she proposed. “You can do the same in A’aru, and that way it will seem like we live in the same place. It will be as if we live under the same sky.”
Alderian stood up, looking at her face bathed in the last light of the day. Augustine seemed unreal under those colors, like a dream he had once had, his face only a few inches from hers. The silence between them felt dangerous, yet electrifying.
“What do you feel when we are together?” Augustine asked.
Her question made him recoil, knowing there was a limit he wasn’t allowed to cross—not without paying a price, and if that price was Augustine’s life, he wasn’t willing to cross it.
“You are my human. Of course I want to protect you. That is my duty,” he said, turning his back on her. “Let’s come another day to put up that ribbon.”
“Is that all you want from me? To protect me?”
Alderian kept his face impassive as he turned to look at her. “What else did you expect?”
He left her behind, knowing that was not the answer she yearned to hear.
The silence between the two remained until they reached home. Alderian didn’t know if Augustine was angry or hurt, but the memory of Lina was vivid enough for him to remain firm in his conviction.
“I’m exhausted. I just want to sleep,” she said after closing the door.
“I’ll leave so you can get comfortable.”
Augustine set aside the books she was picking up from the couch and looked at him. “You don’t need to leave,” she said in a casual voice. “After all, you won’t see anything you haven’t seen before.”
She unbuttoned her blouse slowly, her gaze locked on his.
As she removed it, leaving her only in her underwear, Alderian stood abruptly, his pulse racing as he felt his body respond to Augustine’s boldness.
What was she playing at? Confused and unable to control himself, he fled without a word, missing her triumphant smile as she slipped into her pajamas and finished tidying the room.