Chapter 910: The Barrier

Night had fallen over the Primordial city, and none of the five who had stayed in the council chamber had forgotten Kaor's last words.

Dravok had come to tell them something important.

The problem was that they had no way of learning what.

Kaor's power was no longer complete enough to hand them an answer. At best it warned him that something was important, that a possibility carried enough weight to deserve attention. It could not tell them which events would lead there, or what they needed to prepare for.

That left them with the worst question available.

Prepare for what?

For most people, ignorance was comfortable. If they did not know about a threat, they did not spend their nights on it, wondering when it would arrive or whether they had done enough to survive it.

There were people who lived happier lives precisely because they knew less.

The Primordials could not afford that.

Their race had already learned what happened when danger reached them before they understood it. Staying uninformed now would protect nobody. It would only make the next disaster easier to repeat.

Belthro stood alone on one of the balconies of the main building.

From there he could see most of the city.

White and black structures spread out below him in the dark, lit by mana lamps set along the streets. The river cutting through the districts carried those lights with it, and the movement in the roads thinned out as more people went home.

It had taken them years to recover even this much.

What stood in front of Belthro could not compare to what the Primordial race had once held. Their population, their territories, their knowledge and their military strength were all fragments of what existed before the collapse.

It was still something.

For the first time in a long while, extinction no longer felt close.

The Primordials would not vanish tomorrow, or next year, or fade out because too few of them were left to continue. Their farms worked, children were being born again, and the city was stable enough to hold them.

Belthro should have been content with that.

His thoughts kept going back to Dravok instead.

He had already watched one disaster take nearly everything they had. Allowing a second one after surviving the first was not something he was prepared to accept.

If that kind of ruin reached them again, there might not be enough left to rebuild from.

Footsteps sounded behind him.

Belthro knew who it was before she reached the top of the stairs.

The staircase up to the balcony had been cut from polished white stone, smooth enough to throw back some of the light around it. It resembled materials used in cities outside the Dead Meridian, though it was not marble.

There was no marble here.

Felyth came onto the balcony a few moments later.

"You come up here when you've got too much on your mind. I thought I'd listen before you spent the whole night thinking yourself into the ground."

She walked over and stopped a few steps from him.

"Let me guess… It's Dravok, although it wasn't hard to guess, either, after what happened today."

Belthro kept looking out over the city.

"I doubt I'm the only one thinking about him. Him appearing here means he knew where we were. It also means he could have come looking for us any time he wanted."

Felyth glanced at the city before she answered.

"If you're worried someone else can find us because he did, that's close to impossible and you know it. The Dead Meridian changes every month. This city stays where it is, and reaching it without knowing exactly how is another matter entirely."

She studied his face.

"That's not what's worrying you, though."

Belthro finally looked at her.

"No."

"You're thinking about what's happening outside."

"If Dravok came here, he had a reason. He wouldn't cross the Dead Meridian and walk into this place because he wanted to see familiar faces."

His attention moved toward the darkness past the edge of the city.

"And there's the barrier. We still don't know how long it holds."

Felyth was quiet for several seconds.

"That's part of it," she said. "It isn't what's eating you either."

Belthro's eyes narrowed.

Felyth had known him too long to stop there.

"You've always looked calm from the outside. Serious, controlled, difficult to read. Inside you're the opposite whenever something matters enough."

She turned to face him properly.

"This is about your daughter as well."

Belthro said nothing.

"Do you genuinely believe she's alive after all this time?" Felyth went on. "She was that woman's apprentice. She was standing next to everything that happened."

Belthro turned his head.

The look he gave her reached her body before she could stop it, and a chill went down her back.

She had known Belthro far too long to be frightened of him easily. There were still moments when the age and the power behind those completely black eyes became impossible to ignore.

Felyth did not step back. She breathed out slowly instead.

"We need to prepare our people, Belthro. Every year that passes gives us fewer chances to get something wrong."

She paused before she added the rest, quieter.

"And I'm sorry for putting it that way. There's still a possibility. I know that."

Belthro's face did not change.

Felyth looked back at the city.

"If my husband is still alive, then your daughter can be."

Belthro answered at once.

"Ex-husband."

Felyth looked at him again.

"We never had the chance to divorce. So technically I'm still bound to him, and he's still bound to me."

There was no humour in it. She said it as a fact, one attached to a life that had ended without ever being properly closed.

Felyth remained there another moment before she turned toward the stairs.

"Try to sleep at some point."

She went down without waiting for an answer.

Belthro stayed where he was.

Nobody in that city could have said with any certainty what was running through his head. Even the people who had known him for centuries rarely understood everything behind his silence.

His sight was strong enough to cover kilometres when he focused it.

He was not looking at the city anymore.

His eyes stayed on one distant stretch of the Dead Meridian, far past the buildings and the farms and the river below.

Somewhere beyond that darkness stood the barrier dividing the Dead Meridian from the rest of civilization.

Belthro looked in that direction for a long time.

And wondered what was happening on the other side.