Raizen stared at the Ruler's hands.

They didn't shake or look weak.

They looked like hands that had been clenched for years, holding something down so everyone could think they were completely safe.

"All of my Eon" the Ruler continued. "All of my years. Every day I lived beyond what my body wanted - it was not a gift. It was payment."

Atman's face went pale.

"That's why..." he whispered. "That's why you never let anyone heal you."

The Ruler nodded once.

"Healing would have bought comfort" he said, "but the deal, contract, call it however you want... It takes comfort as well. It takes whatever it can. It takes time. It takes strength. It takes the small things that make you feel human."

Elin stared at him like she couldn't decide whether to be furious or concerned.

"So you've been dying" she said, voice tight. "For years."

The Ruler's smile looked almost apologetic.

"I have been paying" he corrected.

He shifted again, and this time Raizen saw it clearly - a tiny stiff gesture from his hand, a small tremor in his breath he hid immediately.

Atman noticed it too. His hands clenched.

"My Ruler, you should stop talking" Atman said hoarsely.

The Ruler ignored him, not out of cruelty. Out of urgency.

"Now the payment is reaching its end" he said. "My body is collapsing."

He looked at Elin.

"Old age" he said softly. "Accelerated."

Elin's eyes widened again, and Raizen saw the moment her mind finally started connecting dots that had been scattered across years.

She didn't say it.

But she understood enough to be afraid.

Atman's voice cracked.

"So… If you die…"

The Ruler didn't answer immediately.

He simply looked at them, and Raizen felt the weight of leadership in that stare. Not pride. Not authority.

Responsibility.

"If I die while its containment is still anchored to me" the Ruler said, "we don't know what happens."

Elin's fingers curled once at her side.

Raizen's stomach turned.

"What does that mean?" Raizen asked, because someone had to ask the question that everyone was too afraid to shape into words. "If it escapes. If it… Exits that dormant state."

The Ruler's gaze flicked to him. He nodded slowly.

"It means... That the world might learn how little it understands about Ignorance."

Atman swallowed. "So it could… Spread? Possess? Come back to a Nyx form? Corrupt?"

The Ruler did not confirm. Did not deny.

"No one knows" he said quietly. "Not fully. That is the nature of it. That is why it is called what it is. An Anathema"

Raizen felt the hairs on his arms rise.

Ignorance.

A name that refused to be explained.

A danger you couldn't measure.

The Ruler continued before fear could grow in thier minds.

"That is why I summoned you" he said, voice steady despite the strain in his chest. "Not to confess or seek forgiveness. Not to beg."

His eyes settled on Atman first.

"Atman" he said, "you have held my sky closed today, for Alan, Elin and this young gentleman's arrival. You hid their movement, so nobody noticed."

Atman looked like he wanted to argue and couldn't.

"I need your power again. Not to let ANYONE know. Don't alert anyone."

Then the Ruler's gaze turned to Elin.

"And you" he said softly, "Sky Sovereign. You can carry what cannot be carried by others. You can take something that should never be moved - and move it."

"You need us..." Elin's voice sounded confused. "...To take it away?"

The Ruler nodded.

"Yes."

He exhaled, and for a moment Raizen saw the effort it took him to stay calm.

"To the floating islands" the Ruler said.

Atman blinked. "The floating islands…? Why there?"

The Ruler's mouth tightened faintly, not in annoyance. In the way you tighten when you say a plan out loud and realize how thin it is.

"Because the Ice Sovereign is there" he said. "And because ice is the only thing I think might be able to hold what I have been holding."

Elin's eyes sharpened.

"Ice isn't a prison" she said. "It breaks. It melts. It cracks."

"So do people." the Ruler replied.

Atman's mouth opened, then closed again. It was the tenth time he tried to speak, but nothing came out.

"But the Ice Sovereign has some tricks up her sleeve. Her ice is nothing like you've seen before."

"So you want to pass it on..." Elin said quietly.

The Ruler's eyes stayed the same, locked onto hers.

"I want to keep it contained" he corrected. "I want Ukai to survive without needing a dying man to hold a monster by its throat."

Raizen's voice came out small.

"And if the Ice Sovereign can't…?"

The Ruler didn't answer right away.

He looked at the photos.

At the faces. The memories. The small human moments frozen in frames.

Then he looked back to them.

"Then we will learn... Whether humanity deserves another chance."

Raizen's stomach dropped.

The Ruler shifted again, and this time a soft, involuntary sound escaped him - not quite a groan, just a small strangled breath.

Atman shot up halfway from his chair.

"My Ruler - "

The Ruler ignored him again, then looked at Elin, and his voice lowered.

"I have carried it for a long time" he said. "Long enough that I can feel when something changes."

Elin's eyes narrowed. "What changed?"

The Ruler's gaze moved past Atman, past Elin, and stopped on Raizen.

Then Raizen felt it. That strangely familiar whisper. It has been gone for quite some time. But now, that same strange whisper slid between his thoughts, cold like snow under his coat.

Oh...!

It noticed me...

"When you arrived" the Ruler said to Raizen, "it reacted."

The whisper suddenly retreated, quiet now.

"Raizen?" Elin turned sharply.

"I didn't- I didn't do anything!"

"Hm." The Ruler' looked away. "No. That makes little sense."

Elin frowned."Then what?"

"It must have sensed you, the Sky Sovereign" the Ruler concluded. "Your Eon. You're… Loud to things like that."

The weight in Raizen's chest eased slightly, and his ribs stopped aching for a few seconds.

"But it's still dormant" the Ruler continued, "and it's not as still as it used to be."

He paused, as if choosing the exact words was a form of safety.

"It has begun to stir more."

Raizen felt a quiet horror spread through him, not like panic or fear. Like inevitability. This was supposed to happen.

Because now the clock wasn't just the Ruler's failing body.

The clock was whatever was behind him, whatever he had been containing with years of life, Eon and sheer will.

And it was waking up.

The Ruler's gaze slid to Atman, then to Elin.

"Soon" he said softly, "I will not be able to hold it anymore."

He let that settle.

Then, with the same calm as before, he added:

"So tell me."

His eyes sharpened, not cruelly, but with the weight of a man asking the last useful question he has left.

"Will you carry it - or will you let it wake up here?"

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