Within this sanctum he doffed his disguise, which constituted a heavy rope necklace strung with over a dozen entirely different, carved gemstone talismans. In so doing he shed a many-layered cognitive filter illusion; a more elegant solution to physical self-alteration, he found. Going this far would have been unnecessary otherwise, had it not been for Zefaris Newman; throughout the conversation, there had been several moments when he swore she saw right through him, and by the end, it was obvious that Zelsys’ instincts had sussed him out.

The Man in White, elder of two brothers, Wodan the Chronicler, knew himself to be at fault for failing to contain his own indignation at his younger brother’s brazenness in front of mortals. Nonetheless, he did not regret that momentary outburst. He sat down in the calm of his mountaintop mansion’s garden in the midst of flora that no longer grew anywhere on the continent. Conjuring a calligraphy stylus and blackstone archival tablet from his sleeve, he began writing his report on the target of his excursion.

A thought ran through his head as he mechanically wrote out the date: “The gall to claim I am his grandson…”

As a gesture of disrespect, the magnitude of such a claim was amplified a hundredfold by the brothers’ nature as Ankhezians. A normal mortal could live, if they were stubborn, perhaps to 150, assuming the use of commonly accessible elixirs; one’s grandchild could be, at most, a century younger than them. Meanwhile, Ankhezian nobility had put their vast and flawed knowledge of thaumaturgy to task in extending the lives of their entire race; in doing so, every living Ankhezian was rendered immune to aging, but also very close to barren.

The grandchild of an Ankhezian could thus be their grandsire’s junior by millennia, and the rarity of new births would even further increase the overbearing nature of Ankhezian parents and grandparents.

Wodan snapped his fingers in frustration, summoning one of his corvid calligraphy-golems, servitors which he used to do technical cleanup on his manuscripts. Instead of its intended purpose, he commanded this golem to bring him calming tea; a brew potent enough to put a mortal in a coma with one sip, but just strong enough to have the appropriate effect upon Wodan’s undying, unaging flesh-puppet body. Such a body was the other fruit of his failed attempts to create a True Homunculus, housing an Antediluvian Gem where a mortal’s Azoth Stone ought to be. It was empty now, serving as a reservoir for vast swaths of essentia should he need to cast magic, but its original purpose had been to house and transport his soul from his original body into this one.

Year of His Glory, the Architect, 4714

Cultivation Branch BK6 Report No. 78

Monikers: Walking Way of the Bone King, Second Supreme Law of That Which Lives, Legacy of Bone

Cultivation Tier: Class 2

Observation Report:

Regarding Subject VK-697, the Koschei's Heir…

Wodan felt his brother’s presence; looking right over his shoulder, from one of the mansion’s balconies, just under half a kilometer away. The irritated voice of Hedan sounded inside his skull: “Do not use that term. The child has scarcely fulfilled the preconditions to potentially at some point walk down Koschei’s path. Not to mention, there are half a dozen others more closely descended from the Second King.”

Sighing in frustration at his sibling’s continued flagrant misuse of telepathy, the most recent Art of the Deep Principle which he had mastered a mere 214 years ago, Wodan quietly pulled a talisman out of storage. It held a simple spell of telepathic message, but geared for long distances; as such, at this range it would blast in Hedan’s mind like a gong: “Yet all of them have gone out of their way to avoid walking the path of their ancestors. Most of them don’t even practice Ossomancy. If anyone will fulfill the criteria, it is this one. Furthermore, he is in possession of the Left Eye.”

This wasn’t really his concern. The youth’s defiance of what he’d been taught in favor of innovation was nice to see, certainly, as it proved that he had the scientific mind to explore and straighten out the tangled mess of his spiritual roots; however, a few weeks weren’t enough to make any meaningful progress. It was true that all cultivators, True and False Path alike, experienced rapid growth in the foundation-building stages of their development, but a cultivator’s true nature was oft revealed in how they dealt with bottlenecks and plateaus. Accounting for the time Subject ZN - Zelsys Newman - had likely spent inside whatever contraption served as her artificial womb before she was either released or broke free, Wodan estimated that even her initial foundation had to have been equivalent to several decades of foundation-building.

The younger brother made a big show of losing his balance and falling from the balcony, plummeting towards the earth at terminal velocity, only to suddenly bring himself to a halt just above the surface in a burst of smoke. When it dispersed, his true self was left, a stern, black-robed countenance floating half a meter off the ground. As the younger brother walked towards Wodan, the white-robed elder brother pre-emptively began the argument which he knew was inevitable: “I told the child that his inheritance was an Antediluvian Gem and advised him to seek out the Smoke Witch; do not even think to leverage this against me. I counterbalanced your attempted misdirection and obstruction of the Northern Passage; count yourself lucky that I didn’t warn them of Von Wickten’s survival after that stunt.”

“A wise choice. You would have had no justification for such meddling-” the younger brother began, but Wodan interrupted him.

“How many times have you claimed to be some sort of ancestor of mine, hm? How many times, Hedan?! We were born in the same minute, for the Architect’s sake! And I am older than you, at that!” he snapped. It was a childish thing to be angry about, and it wouldn’t last. Wodan swore that his brother would drive him insane at times, but at the end of the day, despite the two of them placing themselves on different panes of the scales of history, they still trusted one another more than any mortal. It was this trust in their own principles that had allowed both of them to, at times, subvert their self-imposed rules of limited intervention with the consequences being no more than an argument and the other brother using the transgression as an excuse for meddling down the line.

So it was that they had gone back and forth for nigh on two millennia, now.

“I know. You won’t stop reminding me, elder brother. How did your excursion into the Blackwall go? I sensed the gates widening, but I didn’t expect that it would take you this long to return,” the black-robed brother answered, hostility now absent from his tone.

“I accomplished my goal, but…” Wodan affirmed, continuing to write out his observations of Victor’s nascent cultivation method. “He’s still in there.”

Hedan froze behind Wodan, sputtering out a question: “...Pardon? His corpse, you mean, yes? He was strong enough that his body mummified rather than turning to dust when he burned his soul to raise the wall, that’s what you mean, surely?”

Wodan turned to face his brother, a tacit “No” evident in his expression.

“I only caught a glimpse of him, as he fled at my appearance, but I saw enough. The Sage of Fog yet lives, in some form or another. Some of the writings he left behind suggest… Regret for his peace-seeking ways. He seems to intend a great conquest to secure the future of his people, should he ever find his way out of that labyrinth. I suspect that he will. The Wall doesn’t recognize him as an intruder anymore; its hidden doors open for him just as they did for me.”

Eyes widened at the revelation, Wodan took a deep breath and sighed, the sudden tension dissolving from him as he uttered: “Then let us hope it takes him at least another couple years. With the time dilation, it should give us a decade or two to prepare for the Second War of Fog.”

“As if the Sage’s return will be necessary for that, at the rate things are going,” Wodan sneered.