There may also be some inaccuracies, since English is not my native language.
Essentially, TBATE is first translated from English into my native language - and in that process, some details are already altered to make it more understandable for us. Now I'm taking that adapted (and somewhat distorted) version, revising it, rewriting it, and then translating it back into English.
I hope you'll point out any mistakes in the text that I might have missed.
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Lucius Zogratis POV
As I stepped out through the main doors of the Denoir estate, my gaze drifted to Caera almost involuntarily. After her conversation with Lenora, her adoptive mother, she looked slightly lost, as though part of her mind had remained inside that enormous, cold house. Her eyes were unfocused, her shoulders a little tense, and her lips pressed into a thin line.
The place where the Denoir estate stood refused to let go of winter, even in early July. Light snow drifted lazily from the sky, sparse white flakes settling on the dark stone paths and the shoulders of our clothes. The wind, on the other hand, was anything but mild. It howled between the trees and the walls of the houses, slipping beneath the fabric of our clothes with such persistence that it seemed intent on reaching our bones.
We walked in silence. From time to time, Caera's gaze slid in my direction, but the moment I turned my head, she would immediately look away, pretending she had simply been staring ahead.
Three days ago, on my way to my room, I had run into Caera in the corridor by chance. She had been standing there motionless, holding a sheet of paper. By then, I already knew what it was-an order from her father to bring me and Arthur to the Denoir estate. I had been chosen to attend first, and judging by the faint flush in Caera's cheeks at the time, I could guess why it had been me who went first rather than Arthur, in whom Scythe Seris seemed so openly interested.
"What happened?" I asked, looking straight into her eyes and trying to keep my voice gentle. "You know you can talk to me about it, right?"
Caera shook her head almost imperceptibly. Then she raised her ruby-red eyes to mine. Her face was bright red, whether from the cold or embarrassment, and her lips looked a little paler than usual.
When she spoke, her voice came out quiet and almost uncertain, as though she were speaking more to herself than to me. "I know… but it's nothing special, really. Better to hurry. I don't want to waste mana on keeping warm, considering we'll be going into the Relictombs soon."
I looked at her pale lips, at the way her body trembled ever so slightly under the piercing gusts of wind, and without thinking for long, I stepped closer and silently held out my arm, waiting for her to take it.
She blinked, confused and a little embarrassed, but instead of giving me a strange or distrustful look, she quickly placed her hand on my forearm.
I let aether flow out of my core and spread over our bodies in a thick layer that shielded us from the wind cutting through our clothes. Caera shivered faintly-most likely from the sudden change in temperature-and her fingers tightened slightly on my arm.
She looked at me with wide eyes, though I did not meet her gaze right away. Instead, my attention lingered involuntarily on her lips. After a few seconds, they gradually began to regain their healthy color, no longer looking so pale and frozen.
Caera, who had been watching my eyes the entire time, noticed exactly where my gaze had gone. Her cheeks immediately flared an even deeper red. She hurriedly turned away and stared forward, clearly trying to pretend that nothing had happened, even though her hand remained on my forearm.
For some time, we walked in silence. Thin snow crunched under our feet, the wind howled somewhere between the estate walls and the bare branches of the trees, and within that thin layer of aether, everything felt strangely calm.
I noticed that Caera kept glancing at me out of the corner of her eye from time to time. Every time I turned my head slightly in her direction, she would immediately look ahead again, pretending she was simply lost in thought. I was just about to ask what was wrong when she beat me to it.
"Who are you, Lucius?" she asked.
Her voice came out quieter than usual. There was no suspicion in it, no fear-only a very strong desire to know at least something.
"That question again. What exactly do you want me to tell you?" I thought, meeting her gaze.
There was something warm in her ruby eyes. She smiled softly, and that smile was so sudden that for a moment I forgot what I had been about to say. Her lips parted slightly, and her gaze became calmer, gentler. That abrupt change in her mood made my heart skip a beat.
"Everything about you feels unreal," she said without looking away. "Your existence, your strange powers, our meeting in the Relictombs… Even your hair feels unreal."
Carefully, she reached out with her free hand and took a strand of my hair. Her fingers slid over it lightly, and yet I felt that touch far too clearly. Caera lifted the strand closer to her eyes, examining it with such sincere fascination that it was as though she were holding some rare artifact.
"Just look at the way it grows," she continued, tilting her head slightly. "Black and white mix together several times within a single strand, as though someone deliberately wove the two colors together."
She ran her fingers lower, letting the strand slowly slip from her hand. There was still an expression of quiet delight and strange softness on her face.
"But that isn't the most unreal thing about you."
Caera let go of my hair and raised her right hand. A moment later, her palm rested against my forearm. Despite the cold around us, I could feel the warmth radiating from her distinctly. I met her eyes, expecting her, as usual, to look away or try to hide her embarrassment. But this time, Caera didn't look away.
She only shook her head faintly, as though she herself did not quite believe what she was about to say. Her fingers tightened slightly on my forearm. "The ability to control aether is such a divine power. By Vritra's horns, I would have thought you were one of those gods if not for those runes on your back."
Instead of answering, I slowly exhaled and looked off to the side, toward the mountains rising beyond the snow-covered rooftops. They were called the Basilisk Fangs-a steep, jagged mountain range covered in snow for most of the year, its sharp peaks cutting through the gray sky like frozen fangs. They reminded me of the mountains on the central continent, only several times smaller.
"Beautiful, aren't they? Though just looking at them makes me feel cold," Caera asked after noticing my gaze-and my lack of response for nearly twenty seconds. To my ears, sharpened as they were, her voice sounded disappointed, though she tried to hide it.
I did not turn to her right away.
Instead, I drew in a deep breath of the cold air, feeling it fill my lungs and warm instantly beneath the protection of aether. Then I slowly turned back to her. After Caera had returned from the Blood Relic zone and recovered in only one day, she and I had descended into the Relictombs together several times without Arthur. More than ten times, in fact. And every one of those times, she had been beside me-in those dangerous, strange zones unlike anything else in existence.
In every one of those places, Caera had been beside me.
"Although we haven't spent that much time together…" I began, slowly searching for words that felt difficult even for me to say.
Caera turned her head sharply toward me. Her ruby eyes widened slightly, and her fingers on my arm tensed almost imperceptibly. She clearly had not expected me to suddenly speak after such a long silence.
I looked her straight in the eyes and fell quiet for a moment, choosing my words. They were simple enough, and yet for some reason, saying them felt harder than creating a world of my own.
My hand moved automatically toward my forehead, and my tongue was already about to form certain familiar words in another language, but I stopped myself in time. I had changed a great deal over this time. Though only a month had passed in the outside world, I had spent far more time in the Relictombs-a total of around seventy days, most of it alone with her or in the company of Arthur, Regis, and Caera.
More than three hundred and seventy years in the Blessed Land, and more than a hundred of those devoted to magic.
Through the Gray Sky, I received near real-time information about almost everything happening in my world, albeit in compressed, processed form. I could sense the general current of events, changes, deaths, births, discoveries, and mistakes among the Na'vi. The Gray Sky did not show me every detail directly, but it constantly gathered and sorted information, turning the endless chaos of life into fragments convenient for perception.
The Green Sky played an especially important role in this. Every dead soul passed there after death, and because it remained under the control of the Gray Sky, the life experience of each Na'vi became something like an informational shard. Memories, skills, habits, emotions, mistakes, victories, defeats, fears, and flashes of insight-all of it was preserved, broken apart, and turned into part of my world's vast reservoir of knowledge.
And because over more than four hundred and fifty years quite a great many Na'vi had already died, the accumulated volume of experience had become truly enormous. Nor did I merely receive that information passively. On the contrary-I actively sought out everything useful within it, forcing the Voice of the World to process each piece, compare it to existing knowledge, and improve whatever could be improved.
It consumed a monstrous amount of aether. But the result was worth it. Because of it, I had been able to bring many aspects of my life to an extremely high level. Farming, singing, cooking, cleaning, wound treatment, archery, swordsmanship, hand-to-hand combat, building houses, boats, bridges, wells, and fortifications-every skill was broken down into separate elements, mixed with the immense mass of already accumulated knowledge, cleansed of errors, and only then passed on to me.
In essence, I was receiving not merely knowledge, but the distilled essence of hundreds of thousands of lives lived. One Na'vi might spend a lifetime cultivating rare plants and accidentally discover a better way to care for the soil. Another might spend decades building boats and understand what hull shape worked best for fast rivers. A third might die in battle, but his knowledge and instincts did not vanish. None of it vanished. All of it entered the system, was processed, compared, refined, and became part of my understanding.
And sometimes, when something in particular drew my attention, I watched entire decades of some unusual person's life. Something like a protagonist-but inside my own world.
For example, I had spent more than forty years observing one boy to whom I had given my blessing, through which he had been born with a mana core in the very first year of the magic waves. He became something of a unifier. I often spoke with him, showing him how best to use magic, how others could gain access to it, and how best to lead his people. It was he who united many tribes, and it was he who saved countless people during the time of the Chaotic Hunt, thereby earning the love of all the Na'vi.
To do that, I always kept several parallel thoughts active, but even so the strain on my identity was enormous. I myself had observed someone for more than sixty years, constantly receiving knowledge from my world and day after day letting the decisions, mistakes, and victories of others pass through me. Because of that, I had consciously changed some of my habits and grown tremendously in that time.
This was one of them.
Oel ngati kameie.
I see you.
"I trust you, Caera," I finally said, quietly but firmly. "And I'm truly glad that I can say that out loud."
"So that's why I felt like this," I realized the moment the words left my lips.It was true. That was why it had been so hard to say. I truly had begun to trust her.
Once I understood that, I smiled faintly as I looked at her. I wanted to say more. But Caera interrupted me before I could continue. After my words, she gripped my arm more tightly, and as I looked at her directly, I saw her eyes widen and her brows lift in surprise. Her ruby eyes shone like two burning gemstones. Against the backdrop of the gray sky, pale snow, and cold mountains, they seemed even brighter, even more vivid. As though all the warmth of that bleak day had gathered only there.
Realizing what I was thinking, I let out a quiet huff of amusement, smiled faintly, and continued walking forward calmly, still guiding her along, still feeling her hand on my arm.
Third-Person POV
The moment they stepped out of the portal created by the Compass and into the Relictombs, a loud, ringing sound erupted from all sides. Caera's body jerked forward sharply. She collapsed to her knees, gritting her teeth against the pain as the blow struck her eardrums directly. Thin streams of blood ran from her ears. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying in vain to shut out the agonizing ringing. Her face was pale and damp with sweat.
"Damn it, another zone with sound waves?" Lucius cursed aloud, though he could barely hear his own voice. His words were instantly swallowed by the droning, threatening sound that filled the entire space around them.
The piercing ring echoed throughout the zone, reflecting off the rocky walls and returning in amplified waves. Lucius abruptly widened his search radius through aether and sharpened all his senses at once, trying to determine the source of the sound. After a few moments, he found the point from which the strongest reflection originated. Ten meters away from them, among the rocks, a huge crack yawned open. It was from there that the sound spread through the entire zone, colliding with the stone surfaces and turning into chaotic, painful echoes.
Without hesitating, Lucius activated the God Rune Aroa's Requiem on Caera. A soft glow of aetheric power wrapped around her body for a brief moment, rapidly healing the damage. The blood from her ears stopped flowing, and the tension on her face gradually eased.
Lucius looked at her once more. Though he could not sense mana directly, subtle signs told him she was already using it to protect her restored ears from the next wave of sonic impact.
She slowly opened her eyes, then quickly rose to her feet. Dusting herself off, Caera drew her blade and tightened her grip on the hilt. Lucius lifted a brow slightly, watching her closely. In response, she gave him a short nod, as though to say she was fine and could continue.
Her gaze darted rapidly in every direction. Caera was trying to figure out where the sound was coming from, but it seemed to surround them from all sides. After a few seconds, her eyes slowly lifted and came to rest on the sky above them.
They stood at the edge of an enormous chasm that stretched in both directions, dividing the zone from beginning to end. The only source of light filtered through large cracks in the sky, slicing through the darkness in thin luminous lines.
Like the zone with the blood-red sound butterfly, the sky emitted a soft pinkish glow. That strange light fell across the stone walls and reflected from the shining aether stones embedded directly in the rock.
"Aether crystals again…" Lucius thought.
His mind accelerated at once. Without losing even a second, he divided his initial four streams of thought into forty, allowing himself to analyze the situation, track aetheric fluctuations, and calculate possible threats all at once. Turning toward Caera, he was about to say something-but he didn't get the chance.
The ground beneath their feet suddenly trembled with such force that it was as though the chasm itself had answered the blow. In that same moment, the last explosion of sound reached its depths, rippling through the entire zone in a crushing wave. The stone walls shook, fragments rained down, and even the air seemed to warp under the strain.
And then everything stopped.
A sharp, ominous silence fell.
The echo that had filled every inch of the zone only a moment earlier vanished all at once, leaving behind nothing but a dreadful stillness.
Lucius was just about to speak again when another explosion of sound tore through the space.
This time, the blow was far stronger and louder than before. The wave of vibration passed through his entire body-from his feet to his chest-making every muscle tense. Even the air around them seemed to shudder, while the rocks answered with a low, heavy tremor. Lucius snapped his gaze upward.
Dense aetheric smoke stretched across the sky-violet mixed with heavy brown clouds. The next instant, a series of sharp, shrieking sounds came from the crack overhead.
"Caera, look," Lucius said calmly, extending his snow-white finger and pointing upward. But he heard no answer, because a series of strange metallic clanging sounds flooded the entire space. Lucius immediately activated his aetheric radar and tensed as he realized how many powerful aetheric signatures were emerging directly from the crack.
"Lucius!" Caera shouted sharply.
He turned his head toward her at once and saw her rush toward him without wasting a second. Reaching him, Caera grabbed his arm and yanked him sharply to the side, forcing him away from where he had just been standing.
The next second, enormous boulders came crashing down from above.
Massive stone blocks slammed into the floor of the chasm with deafening force, shattering into dozens of fragments. The air instantly filled with dust, small shards of rock, and the heavy rumble of falling stone. The ground beneath their feet shook, and visibility worsened rapidly as much of the chasm disappeared behind a dense gray veil.
Lucius quickly pulled Caera closer and, without taking his eyes from the collapsing vault overhead, wrapped one arm around her waist.
"Caera, hold on tight," he said calmly, even as stones continued to rain down around them.
Caera did not hesitate. She threw her arms around his neck and pressed herself close, trying not to lose her balance amid the unrelenting tremors. Lucius slid his hands lower, grabbed her by the thighs, and lifted her in one motion.
Caera jolted in surprise. A loud cry escaped her lips, though it was almost instantly swallowed by the thunder of falling boulders. For a moment, she stared at Lucius with wide eyes, clearly not expecting such a sudden movement.
"I need a little room before I can teleport," he explained, dodging another enormous mass of stone that crashed down nearby. Even while carrying Caera in his arms, Lucius continued moving with terrifying precision, weaving between falling debris while concentrating on the aetheric pathways.
Caera's lips trembled slightly. She bit down on them, trying to suppress the strange warmth that had risen low in her stomach because of their closeness and the abrupt movement. Her breathing hitched for a moment, but she quickly mastered herself. Caera gave a small nod, then pressed herself more tightly against Lucius and wrapped her legs firmly around his waist.
After avoiding a few more falling boulders and finding a safe opening, Lucius finally activated God Step and teleported them to another ledge.
Lucius and Caera appeared almost at the very edge of the outcropping.
"You can let go now," Lucius said.
Caera jumped down, and the moment her feet touched the ground, she hurriedly stepped away from him by a few paces. A light flush spread across her cheeks, and for several seconds she carefully avoided his gaze, as though unwilling to reveal her embarrassment. But the awkwardness did not last long.
Very soon, sounds from the other side of the chasm drew both their attention. At first it was only a muffled roar, but within seconds it grew loud enough to be heard clearly even from this side of the stone ledge. The air filled with heavy impacts, scraping, vibrations, and piercing cries.
An enormous aetheric beast, shaped vaguely like a bat, possessed strange wings-six of them instead of the usual two. Emitting a shrill screech, the gigantic monster was fighting a many-armed creature several times its size, something like a stone boar with four legs and four additional arms-two sprouting from its back and two from its sides.
From each of the boar's legs, huge iron scythes curved backward, making the creature look even more terrifying. Along its long, unnatural arms stretched rows of small green spikes, also bent backward. Yet they looked less like weapons than like grotesque growths upon the skin, as if living flesh had fused together with stone and metal.
From those spikes, which seemed hollow inside, a gaseous substance leaked. The stone-boar creature belched thick, dark-green flame from its mouth, which looked more like an insect's maw than that of any beast. That fire mixed with the caustic green gas and wrapped around the creature's body.
Meanwhile, the winged creature resembling a giant bat beat its immense wings desperately, trying to rid itself of the toxic, smoking fire.
The stone-boar beast reared up suddenly, lifting the front of its massive body, and opened its huge, revolting mouth-more like the jaws of an insect than a mammal. In the next moment, a torrent of thick green fire roared from within. The flames swelled ever more violently as bulbous growths along its stone hide began bursting one after another. From them poured and evaporated dark-green gas, mingling with the fire and making it brighter, denser, and deadlier.
The monster's jaws snapped open and shut with sharp metallic clanging sounds, as though iron plates were colliding somewhere inside its skull. Yet the flying beast was too nimble to be easily struck. It twisted through the tongues of green fire, changed direction sharply, and tried to gain distance, moving toward what seemed to be the more vulnerable side of the stone boar's massive body.
But before it could get far, the stone boar vomited forth another immense wave of caustic fire-this time not to hit directly, but to block the flying beast's vision entirely. Green flames and dark gas flooded the air in a dense curtain. Seizing that instant, the monster lunged forward and struck directly, blasting a mixture of poison gas and burning flame at point-blank range.
The flying creature writhed in pain as the bright green fire engulfed its body. The flames clung to its skin and wings as though alive, digging into its flesh and refusing to let go. Under the force of the heat, its wings began to smolder, then burst into flame, and the creature slowly started to fall, losing balance. Moments later, it came low enough to enter the reach of the stone boar's physical attack, with its four long, skeletal arms.
The stone boar charged forward like a great train crashing into a fragile bicycle. An instant crack of bones rang out, followed by a heavy impact and the wet sounds of tearing flesh that echoed through the entire canyon. Yet even that did not end it. The flying beast, bleeding heavily and still wreathed in the remnants of green fire, now looked several times more enraged. It surged upward at once, as far as its damaged wings allowed, and began launching frantic attacks in return.
Realizing the battle would soon end and unwilling to become part of it by accident, Lucius slowly turned to Caera. Throughout the entire fight, she had not taken her eyes off it, following every movement of the two monsters intently. When Lucius looked at her, she was already standing firmly, her feet planted solidly on the stone. Her whole body was tense, her gaze focused, and in her hands she held an elongated crimson blade, fully ready for battle.
"Did you find something?" she asked, still not taking her eyes off the fight.
"Yes and no," Lucius replied, shaking his head, then gesturing to her. "Come closer to the edge of the chasm. There's a strange fissure in the ground there, and the aether's fluctuating strangely around it."
Caera nodded seriously and followed him at once. But when she caught his look, she raised a brow, quickly understanding that he had no intention of wasting time taking the normal path. Without asking any unnecessary questions, she quickly leapt onto his back and wrapped her legs firmly around his waist.
In the next instant, the air around them cracked with a flash of aetheric lightning. Space warped for a brief moment, and they appeared several meters away, at the place where Lucius had sensed the strange distortion of aether-a dark stretch near the very edge of the chasm, almost entirely devoid of light.
Scattered stone debris broke up the ground everywhere, making it difficult to see clearly. The darkness and dust obscured detail, but unlike in the butterfly zone, Lucius's aetheric perception was not being disrupted here.
Lucius could feel it, and after a few moments his eyes adjusted to the dimness enough for him to see the shape with his actual sight. Near the edge of the chasm lay a massive winged creature. Its huge body almost completely blocked a dark opening in the earth, as though it had tried to seal the entrance with itself. It lay motionless, broken, and covered in deep wounds. Acrid green smoke rose slowly from the rents in its flesh, mixing with the dust and the heavy smell of blood.
"It's the same kind of beast as the bat on the surface," Lucius thought, looking at the barely living body. "Only this one is several times larger. Nearly as large as the stone boar."
"Lucius… it's still alive," Caera whispered, trying not to draw the monster's attention. For a few moments, she remained silent. Then Lucius heard the faint creak of leather and metal-Caera had tightened her grip on the hilt of her sword.
"Let me deal with it," she said in a restrained voice, not taking her eyes off the creature.
The monster's dull eyes shifted at once toward Caera. They tracked her as she slowly approached its helpless body. The creature tried to crawl away, but its movements were weak, jerky, and uncertain-more like the spasms of something already dying than true escape.
It dragged itself slowly toward the opening, as though trying to hide within it. Thick black blood oozed from the wounds in its sides and chest, leaving dark trails across the stone. Caera continued walking forward without haste, her crimson blade glimmering softly in the gloom, reflecting the greenish smoke rising from the creature's wounds.
As Lucius watched the aether struggling to heal the monster's body while the green fire clung to it, the beast raised its head. Turning its face toward the approaching Caera, it slowly and painfully tried to open its jaws, clearly intending to unleash one final sonic blast.
Seeing this, Lucius neither moved nor warned Caera. He already knew quite well what she was capable of, and as he had expected, Caera remained perfectly calm.
In the very next instant, her figure blurred. With a swift, almost impossible-to-follow movement, she appeared beside the monster's head. Her crimson blade flared with dense soulfire, and with a single precise strike, Caera cut off the creature's head before it could emit so much as a sound.
Black blood sprayed from the severed neck, splattering across Caera's clothes and the stones at her feet. The monster's head rolled away with a dull thud, and the great body jerked once, then finally went limp.
For a few moments, Caera stared at the fallen creature. Then she shifted her gaze to the dark opening behind its corpse.
"That's the passage, isn't it?" she asked, pointing toward the hole almost entirely hidden by the headless body. "Help me move this carcass."
Lucius simply nodded.
Working together, they quickly dragged the heavy corpse aside. It was awkward to move, but after a few motions they managed it, then cleared away the stones that blocked the way and widened the opening enough for one person to pass through.
When the path was open, Caera stepped forward without saying anything, but she did not descend at once. Instead, she turned back toward Lucius and looked at him expectantly.
Lucius lifted one brow slightly at the look, but Caera merely gave a quiet huff in reply. Her expressive ruby eyes locked onto his calm heterochromatic ones; she had already asked her question without saying a word.
For several seconds, they looked at one another in silence. Words were unnecessary. The decision had already been made. In just a month of descending together into the Relictombs, they had somehow learned to communicate through glances and raised brows alone. They had never practiced it. It had simply happened in one of the zones.
Lucius could read Caera's face easily because of his rank-ten intellect. The smallest movements of her eyes, the tension in her muscles, the curve of her lips, even a subtle shift in her breathing told him quite a great deal. But how Caera herself managed to understand the expressions on his own face, Lucius had never been able to explain. Especially considering that most of the time, he consciously controlled his emotions and barely allowed them to show.
Caera would go first. She wanted to test the new version of her soulfire, and Lucius understood that perfectly well. He did not argue. Instead, he widened his aetheric radar slightly, checked the space ahead, and, sensing no immediate threat, gave her an affirmative nod.
A faintly sly smile appeared on Caera's face. She turned toward the opening and, swaying her hips just slightly, started confidently down into the pit first.
(Author's note: how I'd love to watch Caera's walk in those tight pants from right behind.)
The path sloped sharply downward and was almost completely swallowed by darkness. There was hardly any light at all, save for the weak glow of tiny aether crystals jutting from the walls here and there. Their cold shimmer barely illuminated the uneven stone steps, the damp walls, and the narrow passage leading deeper underground, one that had already begun to widen slowly.