Not to Learn, but to Remember (Sanctuary)

[Luminar]

He offered his palm, a silent invitation to the connection. The moment stretched, weighted by the unspoken possibilities contained in that contact. Theron held his breath not in fear, but in anticipation of the inevitable shift. He had asked to confront the depths of his own continuity, and he would not retreat.

As Anton’s bare hand met his, the effect was immediate, visceral, and astonishingly strong. It was not a gentle brush but an instantaneous, magnetic surge that seemed to breach the carefully maintained barrier between his inner and outer worlds.

First came the acid taste of the past, the brutal, crushing knowledge of something. A wave of profound trauma, heavy with the weight of chains and the memory of inflicted wounds. The absolute, degrading reality of servitude and humiliation surged like bile in his throat, tied to the echoes of abuse one might have had suffered as a slave.

The darkness was instantly countered by the fierce, unyielding bonfire of a new life. The emotion was an iron-willed, burning determination. The refusal to be broken, the decision to seize control. This was instantly accompanied by a deep, righteous anger against his captors, feeding the relentless surge of pure power that allowed him to rise, conquer, and command. It was the thrill and the absolute cost of liberation.

Following the storm of battle and ascent, the long, stable reign asserted itself. He felt the cold, calculating satisfaction of wisdom. The tactical genius of rule. This was intertwined with a relentless, consuming ambition that stretched out for centuries, demanding growth and dominance, backed by the sheer, unquantifiable weight of immense power that had shaped his existence for most of a millennia.

But at the bedrock of all that power, a cold, crystalline tremor erupted: deep, instinctual fear, the constant companion of one who ruled through strength and knew the cost of impending failure that could not be side-stepped. This fear was sharp, punctuated by the frenetic energy of ancient, terrifying battles. The scent of blood and burning, the sound of tearing metal and the death screams of enemies.

Theron felt the overwhelming confluence of these feelings. The trauma and the power, the abuse and the ambition coalescing and rushing toward the surface, intensified by Anton's touch. He felt his own stoicism bend, the muscles in his jaw tightening against the pressure. His exterior poise remained, a masterpiece of iron-willed control, but internally, he was a maelstrom of his own history, exposed.

[Anton]

Anton followed the emotions within Theron, allowing them to guide his movements. They flew threw Theron. Trauma and humiliation forced away by iron-willed determination and ambition. There was anger there, deep and foreboding. There was also fear. The moments stretched as Anton felt it all. Theron's own stoicism was undermined by everything he felt in those seconds of time.

When Anton let go, it was done quickly. It wasn't fear. He wasn't afraid of what he could do or even the revelations he had by witnessing Theron's emotional map, but it had been unexpected. The shifting had been quick and abrupt. Emotions didn't change like that most of the time, unless something forced it.

Theron's face hadn't changed when it was over, but the surging emotions were there in his calm exterior. Anton stepped back as he let go and took a seat, taking deep breaths. "I felt everything you did, but that's it. I'm sure more was revealed to you in that exchange. Still, my promise to you is that I won't reveal what I...you...felt." Anton wondered if he had seen scenes from a former life as well.

The Luminar was an enigma though. Perhaps this was true with others, but he had never looked for it or simply that they both had a common purpose in this endeavor. "Something was different though. Some emotions," he didn't say which ones. "Were less malleable than they usually are. Stonger, more solid, deeper. Like they had a stronger connection. Never felt anything like that before."

[Luminar]

When Anton stepped away, Theron did not move much. He stood as though carved from the white stone of the Sanctum itself. The light through the stained glass struck him in long waves of gold and violet, like the world had chosen this moment to mark him. Again.

By while he was composed and still, within, something pleasantly shifted.

The sensations had not been images as he’d half expected. There were no sweeping vistas of past ages, and no broken voice whispering ancient names in his mind. No. It had been feeling. It was like drawing his fingers across the map of his emotional soul drawn out like calligraphy on fire.

Pain. Power. Pride. Fury, yes; strangely, there was fury enough to set the world alight, and hold it there until it begged for forgiveness. But beneath all of it blazed conviction.

He had always known there was a structure within him. Something monumental. Not just belief in something larger, but the quiet, maddening certainty that he was part of what was large. That he was the scaffolding others stood upon. He had never spoken it aloud, never dared give it language, but the feeling had always been there, coiled beneath the surface like a serpent waiting for its name.

Important. That was the word. He did not know who he had been before, but he knew he mattered.

Theron slowly closed his eyes and drew in a steadying breath. The sensation of being seen so clearly and deeply cracked something within him. A momentary fissure in the wall he kept between the man and the mask. But only momentary.

When emotion flared, control was quick to follow, and when his eyes opened again, they were calm. The storm had passed, and all that remained were still waters.

“You are... not mistaken,” he said. “What you touched is not of this moment alone. There are feelings within me I have never earned. Anger with no source. Pride with no cause. And certainty... with no proof. These emotions do not belong solely to the life I remember.”

He lifted his gaze to the far side of the library, to the high windows that wept colored light across the floor. Beyond them, the sun still shone, indifferent to the weight of revelation. The world did not shift. The marble did not crack. But he had changed.

What startled him most was how easily he accepted the notion of reincarnation.

He, Theron, raised in the logic-fortresses that was Di Inferi, whose traditions once excoriated superstition and sang only of science was now contemplating the existence of the soul like a man turning over a stone and finding grubs beneath.

Still... certainty was a seductress. One could be fooled by their own need for meaning, and Theron would not let himself become a slave to untested truths. It could be a hallucination or a projection of unmet desire like some subconscious narrative masquerading as memory.

He turned his head slightly, gaze falling with calculated precision on the man surrounded by books and centuries. Lucien.

Theron didn’t smile exactly, but there was a tilt to his chin. The kind of expression that often preceded one of his more dangerous ideas.

“Fascinating,” he said, letting the syllables bloom like smoke. “A phenomenon worthy of record. But even the most extraordinary of impressions must be verified.”

He took a half-step to the side, casual but intentional, placing himself so Lucien was clearly within Anton’s line of sight.

Theron’s hand drifted outward not fully toward Anton or Lucien, but in a loose gesture that beckoned... invitation. Suggestion.

“Lucien, you’ve always had a fondness for scholarship. It would be… academically dishonest, wouldn’t it, to let this moment pass without corroboration?”

He did not command. He never did. But his voice had that velvet gravity that made refusal feel like a deviation from the natural order.