The ghostly sage hovered before Null, still glowing faintly from the pendant’s awakening. His outline drifted like faint moonlight reflected on still water—fragile, shimmering, but undeniably real. Dust motes swirled lazily in the cold air of the plaza, disturbed only by the subtle pulse of spirit light radiating from the old man.

  “I am Barcus,” the apparition said, voice resonating directly inside Null’s mind rather than through his ears. “Last High Scholar of the Agora… and the final witness to the day knowledge died.”

  Null took a cautious step backward, hand drifting to the obsidian dagger at his hip. He still felt the ache of Altitude Sickness in his lungs. His logical instincts—Ethan’s instincts—told him this could not be happening. Ghosts. Magic. Telepathic voices. None of it belonged in a world he understood.

  And yet… here he stood, staring into translucent eyes older than the mountain.

  “This place,” Barcus continued, sweeping a faint hand across the ruined plaza, “wasn’t always a grave. It was the Agora—heart of the world. A sanctuary atop its highest peak, where Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Oni, Beastkin… all races gathered freely. Not for war or profit, but for wisdom. A great library, a university—its purpose was unity through knowledge.”

  A flicker of grief rippled through his form, dimming the light of his outline.

  “Until Aton named our pursuit of truth a heresy.”

  Null’s breath hitched.

  “Aton feared unity,” Barcus said, voice carrying ancient bitterness. “He feared minds unshackled by His narrative. And so He sent His legions up this mountain… and burned everything we built.”

  His shimmering eyes closed briefly, the weight of memory bending his form like wind bending willow branches.

  “When the slaughter began, my disciples and I sealed the teleportation gates to prevent them from spreading their destruction across the world. It saved cities… but not us.”

  Barcus slowly opened his eyes again. “My body perished here, but my soul clung to this pendant. Waiting. Hoping.”

  He floated closer, studying Null’s face with growing intensity—like a scholar examining a newly discovered artifact.

  “I sensed others over the centuries. But their souls were… too simple. Too loud.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “But you… your soul is a quiet, fractured harmony. One that should not exist. A paradox—one and many. A vessel of impossible potential.”

  Null swallowed, throat dry. “What do you want from me?”

  Barcus’s expression softened into weary resolve. “I no longer have the strength to restore what was lost. But you… you are new. Untethered. Capable. Become my candidate. Walk the path I cannot. Learn my teachings. And one day, perhaps… become my successor.”

  The words hung between them like a fragile thread, woven of hope and desperation.

  “Why me?” Null asked.

  “Because you search for truth—even when it frightens you,” Barcus said gently. “And because the world does not have the luxury to wait for someone else.”

  The idea of a sanctuary for truth—of rebuilding an entire civilization’s heart—should have felt absurd. Impossible.

  Yet something about it resonated in Null’s fractured soul, echoing the unanswered questions of his lost week and the instincts that moved his hands like someone else’s.

  “I accept.”

  A faint but genuine smile touched Barcus’s spectral face. He floated forward and placed a cold, weightless hand upon Null’s forehead. The sensation was like dipping into a deep river—chilling yet surprisingly steadying.