Chapter 439
That he had become something greater than merely a Human Change.
That he might—just might—have become an instrument of a far greater power, a power that had long hidden within the Earth's core, waiting for the right moment to emerge once more.
"It feels like touching the remnants of a decision that was never finished."
He finally crossed that distance.
Xavier's steps carried him closer to the pyramid that had been standing in the distance all this time, a silent monument that seemed to mock the passage of time with its steadfastness.
The closer he approached, the more tangible it felt just how magnificent this structure must once have been, how many prayers and regrets had seeped into every pore of its stones.
Even though no one inhabited it anymore, even though no one cared for it anymore, the pyramid still stood firmly, as if it were the final guardian of the secrets buried within it.
The dust of ages clung to its surface like a thin veil that only emphasized the grandeur of its architectural lines, and Xavier felt as though he were standing before a sleeping giant that would never awaken.
When the tips of his fingers finally touched the edge of the pyramid, he felt a strange coldness.
Not the ordinary cold of stone long untouched by sunlight, but a cold that seemed to seep from within—a cold born from thousands of years of loneliness and thousands of nights spent without the presence of any living being.
The surface of the stone felt rough beneath his fingers, yet within that roughness lay the subtle refinement that could only be produced by a civilization that had reached the peak of advancement.
Xavier allowed his hand to trace the faint reliefs that had nearly been worn away by time, letting his fingers become eyes that read stories without words, letting himself drift into the whispers of a past that had never truly died.
From within his chest, a murmur escaped, like air forced out of lungs without his intention.
He spoke something that had never crossed his mind before, something that had only been revealed after witnessing the entire chain of the master's memories from within the mind of Alaric Syah.
That the fierce conflict between Adrien Valtheris and Alaric Syah—two names that should have been bound as mortal enemies—had transformed into something entirely different.
That Alaric, the ancestor whose lineage gave birth to all the descendants of Xavier from Xavier I to himself as Xavier XVII, had chosen an unexpected path.
He made Adrien his teacher.
Not as an enemy to be destroyed, not as a threat to be eliminated, but as a master from whom he learned about the Authority of Perception Alteration.
"The disturbance was invisible, yet slowly eroded his sanity."
Within the silence that enveloped this planet, Xavier once again opened the door to the past memories of Adrien Valtheris, and from there he caught something that had previously escaped his notice.
The planet beneath his feet—the silent gray world that seemed to have lost the pulse of life—held a secret far deeper than merely ancient pyramids and the ruins of collapsed civilizations.
This world was blessed with white cosmic energy, an ancient force that seeped into every atom of the air, every grain of dust, every crevice of stone that formed its surface.
That blessing did not come and go like the seasons.
It remained, it settled, it became an inseparable part of the planet's identity.
And indirectly, it made every inhabitant who had ever been born and lived there a rightful wielder of white cosmic energy.
Including Adrien Valtheris—at least before he chose to kill, before his hands were stained with the blood of innocent civilizations, before that dark decision changed everything about him and about how the universe perceived him.
Yet hidden within that blessing was a disaster no one had ever anticipated—not even Adrien himself.
From the fragments of memory he observed, Xavier began assembling the pieces of a puzzle that had long been scattered without connection.
The five elders who each controlled the elements of fire, water, earth, air, and white cosmic energy were not born from the same womb.
They did not grow beneath the same sky.
They did not breathe the air of the same planet.
They came from distant corners of the universe, from planets scattered among galaxies so distant their separation could not be measured by light itself.
And the reason they chose to move to Earth thousands of years ago was not because of adventure or the pursuit of knowledge, but because of desperation.
Their home planets had each reached the brink of extinction.
Time had run out.
Hope had run out.
And at that time, Earth was the only place still hospitable enough to receive the arrival of such alien beings with immensely powerful elemental abilities.
Among the five elders, the one who controlled the fire element came from the most extreme place of all—a planet that had never known night because it was constantly illuminated by the black cosmic energy of its dying parent star.
The fire he carried was no ordinary flame.
It was fire that had absorbed cosmic darkness for millions of years.
Fire that contained within every spark a void capable of devouring light itself.
Fire that naturally became the eternal enemy of the white cosmic energy permeating the planet where Adrien once lived.
When Adrien, with his light-blue lightning element that later evolved into the air element, absorbed the fire elder's power after that devastating battle, he did not merely inherit fire.
He also inherited a terrifying cosmic disturbance.
Within his half-robot body, two opposing cosmic energies began to clash—white against black, order against chaos, life against annihilation.
And that conflict would never end peacefully unless Adrien created a barrier capable of separating the two.
If he failed, if he allowed those two cosmic energies to continue colliding without restraint, his personality would shatter into fragments.
And that destruction would not remain contained within him alone—it would seep outward, spreading through the universe, exposing everything to the two cosmic forces that despised each other.
And from that moment, Alaric Syah was born into this world.
Not because of love.
Not because of the will of parents.
Not because of blind coincidence.
Alaric Syah was born because the laws of the universe—older than any civilization—chose to intervene.
They decided that balance must be preserved at any cost.
They decided that the chaos Adrien Valtheris would unleash if left unchecked for too long would tear reality apart down to its deepest seams.
And uniquely, Alaric was not born as an ordinary human.
He was born as a cosmic entity inheriting both cosmic energies simultaneously—white and black—yet with a perfect barrier separating them so that he would never suffer the cosmic disturbance that afflicted Adrien.
He could use either energy alternately—white at one moment, black at another—but never both at the same time.
And within that limitation lay his true strength.
The strength to become a balancer.
The strength to become the cure for the sickness slowly consuming Adrien.
Alaric Syah's mission had been clearly written since the moment of his birth.
He had to meet Adrien Valtheris and seize one of the two elements residing within him—either the white cosmic element that was the inheritance of Adrien's birth planet, or the fire element that came from the elder bearing black cosmic energy.
To be continued…