Not to Learn, but to Remember (Sanctuary)

[Luminar]

Continued from: Sight Seeing

The word ready sat well on Anton. Not with the bravado of a soldier marching to battle, nor the naive eagerness of a boy chasing ghosts, but with the gravity of a man who had been waiting—perhaps unknowingly—for a door to be opened.

Theron inclined his head, the faintest smile curling the corners of his mouth. “Then let us pass from shadow into knowing.”

He turned, his cloak catching the light of the Chamber of Echoes as he stepped away from the circular nexus. Behind them, the chamber returned to its quiet heartbeat—the murmuring walls swallowing silence as reverently as they had once devoured sound. The others would linger or depart as they were called, but Theron’s stride was already aligned with a deeper current, and he knew Anton would follow.

They moved through the Sanctuary’s inner halls, architecture designed to humble. Vaulted arches bowed like monks in prayer. Glass lanterns suspended from the ceiling flickered with pale violet flame—ethereal, smokeless. The floor beneath them bore the sigils of the Ascendancy in delicate embossing, visible only when the light passed over it just so. Theron walked them not with haste, but with ceremonial pace, as if the very act of traversing this distance was a rite of passage.

At last, they arrived at the threshold of the Sanctum of Reflection. The air here was different. Quieter. Heavy, not with oppression, but with the weight of knowledge. The room opened like a cathedral turned inward. Shelves climbed the walls in spirals, packed tight with scrolls, books, and illuminated manuscripts that whispered in languages long buried. The scent of parchment and wax was as sacred here as incense.

In the center of the space, pools of light spilled from reading lamps perched like watchful sentinels above clusters of carved desks. Cushioned alcoves built into the walls offered solitude to those who preferred to study in silence, while the centerpiece—a great circular window of stained glass—cast shifting patterns of aquamarine, vermilion, and gold upon the marble floor. It was the Ascendancy, rendered in glass: arms outstretched, cloaked in threads of light, stepping between worlds.

Theron stopped just within the chamber, allowing the moment to breathe. “This is where the mind prepares for what the soul already knows,” he said softly, his voice echoing in the hushed reverence of the space.

“The Sanctum of Reflection is not only a library. One does not come here simply to learn, but to remember. The Veil keeps many truths hidden—but sometimes, the right words, spoken at the right time, can part it like silk.”

His gaze moved across the room to a figure seated beneath the stained glass—half-shrouded in shadow, half-painted in gold. A man surrounded by open books and drifting dust motes, moving as though time moved differently around him. Perhaps it did.

“Lucien Octavius,” Theron intoned, “is our librarian, keeper of the Celestial Codex, and chronicler of those whose questions deserve better answers. Such as yours,” he paused to lay a reassuring hand on Anton's shoulder before guiding them within.

He stepped aside now, as if Anton’s approach was the next act in a quiet ritual. “Lucien has an unusual memory for the arcane and the mythic. He may know of others like you, or of those long forgotten. I suspect he will be… intrigued.”

With that, Theron allowed the moment to settle into silence again—one hand resting loosely behind his back, the other at his side, patient as ever. He was watching now—not just Anton, but the Veil itself. It had brought the man this far.

[Anton]

The building was immaculate. It was designed in patterns that reacted to the world around it - perhaps even to the Veil itself. Anton followed the Luminar. He had already placed his trust in the man, not only for the answers he sought, but for what was perhaps the Opera singer's biggest secret. Anton knew others like him existed, even if he hadn't met them, but if it was a gift from the Ascendancy, perhaps there was a greater purpose into what he was given.

Anton kept himself looking around in awe. There would be time to explore the artwork that was the Sanctuary of the Ascendant Flame later. For now, he was here to learn what his vision meant. Anton was convinced that the veil had reacted uniquely to his abilities and that the memories he saw meant more than just a simple message against the dangers of doubt. There was more to this. If the Luminar was correct, the Veil was trying to tell him something, or trying to deliver some other sort of message.

Anton followed the Luminar into what appeared to be a library. According to the brotherhood leader, it was more than that. It was a place to reflect, learn, and grow. If he were to be given answers, they would be here, but only when he was ready for them. Anton felt ready, but he understood little of the Veil. There was only one more man in the Sanctum of Reflection. The Luminar introduced him as Lucian Octavius, and he was the librarian and several other titles Anton wasn't sure he understood yet. That would all come in time. He had no doubt that he had made the right choice by coming here today.

The Luminar stepped aside allowing Anton to take the next step. It was both a symbolic and literal gesture. The next step had to be his - not Theron's. He had to decide if this was what he wanted. He waited only until Lucian recognized them before stepping forward. "Mr. Octavius," he said stretching out a gloved hand. "My name is Anton Stepanov. Very nice to meet you."

[Lucien]

Lucien was engrossed. He was not unfriendly by nature, but when he was focused it was usually absolute. In fact he was a man quite often found locked in the confines of his own mind, pensive in expression, but usually quick to smile when disturbed. Today books littered the surface of his desk, bathed in the ambient light and shadow of the Sanctum’s ethereal setting. He was leafing through the pages with care, each motion thoughtful. Thinking, perhaps, rather than reading.

The librarian was a neat man. His auburn hair was combed back from his face, gold spectacles perched on his nose. His gloves were creamy white, indistinguishable from the sort one might wear when handling delicate documents – and many of the books piled upon his table were exactly that. Nothing Lucien considered truly valuable was kept in this space, of course, but appearances were important. In truth the Sanctuary’s birth had been not much more than a year prior, but already it gave the impression of far more ancient roots.

The Sanctum was where he spent most of his public time. Seekers had all sorts of questions, and Lucien was generous with the time he gave over to the inner mysteries of faith which drew people here. In addition he and Theron had plenty of questions of their own to occupy Lucien’s studies. As if summoned on the whim of such a thought, it was the timbre of the very same man’s voice that presently roused his attention. Lucien paused sedately to glance up. He was used to interruption, but it was less common for the Luminar to deliver a Seeker directly.

Interesting.

Lucien stood, smoothing down the front of his waistcoat. “Welcome,” he said. His smile was natural, his eyes bright and curious. A small nod of seeming deference acknowledged the Luminar’s presence a step behind, though it was mostly for propriety’s sake in front of a stranger. He did not reach to shake Anton’s hand, noting the unusual affliction of his gloves while splaying his own in a brief, graceful motion that ended in them clasped – not in apology but in appreciation of some unspoken understanding. “The pleasure is mine. How might I assist?”

[Luminar]

Theron lingered in the liminal space between the present and what had just passed, allowing the silence to steep like a rare tea drawn from the veins of the earth. The moment had not ended when they entered this sanctum—it had only transfigured. Some truths refused to be spoken until the air was still enough to hold them.

Anton had crossed the boundary. That was the first step. The next would require witness.

“Lucien,” Theron said at last, his voice no louder than parchment brushing stone, “the Veil has done something I have never seen.”

He drifted forward now, one hand lightly tracing the edge of Lucien’s reading table, not in idle motion, but as if feeling for the pulse of something deeper—the current that moved unseen beneath thought and light.

“When the Gift awakens, it does so with variance. Some are beset by sound, others by light, by dreams that leave the skin wet with starlight or the tongue tasting the ash of the unkonwn. But this—” He turned, now fully facing the librarian, the light from the stained glass haloing him in crimson and sea-blue. “This was no echo. No mirage. Anton became the man.”

His eyes, shadowed by the arches of his brow, were gleaming with the weight of what he had witnessed. The potential. The power.

“He saw the world not as a painter sees his subject, nor even as a scribe living through the words of another. He was within the skin of a man long passed: feeling, choosing, aching. It was not memory in the way we understand memory, nor prophecy. It was lived experience, foreign yet entirely his. He moved through it as a leaf caught in a stream, not steering the course, yet inseparable from its current.”

Theron’s gaze drifted momentarily toward Anton, as if to confirm the truth of it by mere presence. The young man stood quietly, but Theron could still sense the lingering thrum beneath his calm. A resonance, like the last note of a song echoing in cathedral rafters long after the choir has departed.

“I must confess,” he continued, turning back to Lucien, “that I have pondered long the mechanisms of the Veil. I have written of it. Prayed to it. And yet what I saw today defies even the most obscure texts of the Celestial Codex.” A pause. Then, with subtle reverence: “Anton walked through time, not in the manner of dreaming or prophet or psychic, but as one tethered to a thread drawn from the tapestry itself. And I suspect… he was meant to.”

Theron’s expression grew thoughtful, a soft crease forming between his brows like the page of an oft-read book.

“Have you encountered such stories?” he asked, quieter now. “Not tales of oracles or the haunted, but of transference—of one soul, unbidden, moving through the form of another not their own, yet not entirely foreign? Are there myths, Lucien, buried in the deep shelves, of men or women so chosen by the Veil that time itself opened like a bloom before them?”

He stepped closer, folding his hands behind his back with the grace of one trained in a hundred sacred rituals.

“I believe this is no anomaly,” he murmured. “I think it is the beginning of something we do not yet have language for.”

And then, after a breathy sigh:

“Or perhaps…” his voice gentled, almost lost to the library’s hush, “it is the rediscovery of a truth that always existed—forgotten not by time, but by us.”

He said no more then. The weight of the moment did not require embellishment. Theron’s eyes lifted once more to the stained glass above, where the Ascendancy walked between worlds, clothed in threads of light.

Today, one of those threads had stirred. And the world was changing.