His eyes widened slightly.
"It does not make you my successor." The man looked back at him. "And it does not make you me."
Something inside Atheline loosened. He hadn't realized until then that part of him had feared exactly that.
They had a lot of similarities the white hair, the bow, the elemental affinities, the memories, the orb and the mysterious fragment: too many similarities.
A small part of him had wondered whether everything he'd become belonged to someone else.
The Supreme Sovereign seemed to answer the fear directly.
"Whatever you become belongs to you."
Atheline stared at him.
"I leave only a possibility."
The orb floated between them.
"Not power."
Cracks appeared across its surface.
"Permission."
Atheline frowned.
The orb shattered, inside was something colorless.
The fragment.
The thing that had been hiding behind Atheline's core.
"The Laws of this world reject contradiction." The fragment rotated. "Your soul may not."
