NOVEL NEXT Chapter 126: Songs and Memories
For a solid minute that felt like a geologic age, I was paralyzed, utterly incapable of rational thought, trapped in a headlock of divine, feathery affection. The colossal phoenix, radiating a gentle warmth that smelled of sun-warmed stone and cinnamon, purred a sound like a joyous avalanche. All my preparations for a grim battle against a sorrowful guardian had dissolved into this single, absurd, overwhelming reality. This creature wasn't a monster. He was a very, very big, happy puppy.
Slowly, carefully, I placed a hand on his magnificent head, the feathers beneath my palm impossibly soft, like stroking a cloud made of embers. "Easy, boy," I murmured, sending the thought with a wave of calming intent. "Easy. I'm... I'm glad to see you too. But you've got the wrong person."
He pulled his head back, his golden eyes blinking at me with a look of pure, innocent confusion. He tilted his head, a gesture so enormous it felt like a small moon shifting its axis.
"Wrong person? Silly Enki! Your song is your song. It's been… quiet for a long, long time. Just a little whisper. But now it's back! Loud! Bright! It's you! Who else would sing the Ashen Song?"
Enki. The name snagged on something deep in my memory, a scrap of lore, a half-remembered myth from my old world, but the context was so alien, so utterly divorced from a dusty textbook page, that it refused to click into place. I had to ground this conversation in some semblance of my own reality.
"My name," I said slowly, trying to project a sense of firm, undeniable truth, "is Eren Kai."
He just blinked again, his colossal form a picture of happy incomprehension. "Of course! You always had so many names! You said names were just cloaks for a soul to wear." His thoughts were not just words; they were a cascade of sensory images, gentle and fleeting, that painted a history I couldn't possibly know. "The people who lived on the Great Flat River" They had a whole long song for you after we fixed the big salty flood that ruined their fields! Silly people. Always trying to worship you. But their songs were nice! We made their lands good and green, remember?"
I saw a vision of a parched, salt-blasted landscape under a cruel sun. I saw a figure, wreathed in my own familiar Ashen Flame, placing his hands on the cracked earth. Where he touched, fresh water bubbled up, and vibrant green life followed in its wake. It was a memory, sharp and real and utterly impossible.
The phoenix seemed to sense my overwhelming confusion. He backed up a few steps, his enthusiasm dimming to a more manageable, gentle glow.
"You really have been asleep for a long time, haven't you, Enki? The story got all fuzzy." His thoughts were now slower, colored with the gentle melancholy of someone remembering a long-lost friend. "I'm sorry. I get excited. My name is Bennu. You gave it to me to use back then! You said it meant 'The Rising One'."
"Bennu," I repeated, the name fitting him so perfectly it was like seeing a key slide into a lock. I gestured to the vast, luminous chamber around us. "This place... what is it? Was this Enki's Sanctum?"
"Of course!" Bennu chirped. "This is your workshop! Our cradle! We made it together. After…" a flicker of deep, ancient fear and sorrow tainted his thought-voice for a fraction of a second, "…after the Long War, and the big pearl. This was our quiet place. The world was so sleepy then, so quiet and thin. We were all fading. Enki… he was fading slower than anyone. But still fading."
He nuzzled his head against the pile of silvery ash. "He told me the Flame of Lifegiving was a thirsty fire, and this world was a dry, dry desert. There wasn't enough…" He searched for the word, and my own mind supplied it. Essence.
"So, he made this place. A sanctuary to hold what little was left of our fire."
"And you, Bennu?" I asked, taking a hesitant step closer. "Who... what are you?"
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"I'm a phoenix!" he chirped, puffing out his magnificent chest. "Just a little one, though. I'm only a few millennia old! My parents were much, much bigger! Proper cosmic fires, they were!" He spoke of it as if he were a teenager talking about his impressive parents. "They saw the Primordial Flame in Enki. More than anyone. They said he was… an original song, while everyone else was just an echo. A truth of reality itself, not just a wielder of its power." The distinction was subtle but immense. It hinted at a level of existence outside the structured reality of the Prime System I knew.
Bennu's thoughts took a darker turn. "That was the problem, you see. Why they were all so scared. The Old Empires, the ones who loved rules and boxes… they hated that he could sing outside them. That he could change the song itself. That's what the Last War was about. It wasn't one enemy, Enki. It was all of them. A whole universe of little kings, terrified of losing their power." A flicker of memory, unwanted and bloody: titanic ships clashing in the void, worlds cracking under the strain of unimaginable power, a war waged not for territory, but to extinguish a single, dangerous idea. "My parents told me to go with him. To be his friend, his hearth, and his great big feathery guard bird!"
My head was spinning. This Enki, my predecessor, my… echo, hadn't been defeated by a single great enemy. He had been purged by a galactic coalition terrified of the power I now held a flicker of.
"Enki never liked being out front, you see," Bennu continued, his thoughts shifting back to a gentler time as he began to weave pictures in the air with his innate light. I saw the ancient city outside, not as a ruin, but in its prime, bustling with people. But the figure leading them, directing the construction, settling disputes, was Bennu.
"He hated the worshipping," Bennu narrated over the images. "He said they should build for themselves, not for him. He was always happier in his workshop, playing with rocks and water and life. So I was the face! The big, shiny lord of the temple! Everyone loved me. I would fly in the sun and sing, and they would bring us offerings of bright crystals. We protected them."
The images in the air shifted. I saw the sunlit city begin to dim. The great causeways grew quiet, the forges cooled.
"But the quiet was coming for us all," Bennu's voice was a soft, sad sigh. "The embers were going out. The world just didn't have enough song to keep us bright. One by one, the Great Rooms wound down and the hearth went cold. The life-gardens withered. It was like a big, beautiful clock running out of power. Enki told me it was time for a long rest. He sealed the Sanctum, weaving a veil of mist and forgetting around the whole valley. And I…" Bennu gestured to the ash pile with his wing. "…I went to sleep on his hearth, to keep it warm for him."
"And... Enki?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper. "Where did he go?"
Bennu's joyous light flickered, a moment of profound, soul-deep grief crossing his telepathic voice. "He... left. He said he had to go find more kindling for the fire. That he would find a way to make the world bright again. And then he… his song just… faded away." The golden eyes fixed on me, now filled with a desperate, questioning hope. "But it didn't die! I always felt it! A tiny whisper, all this time. Faint and far away, but there! And then, a little while ago… the whole world started singing again! Bright and loud! It woke me up! And then your song… your song came walking right through the door! It's the same! The same fire, the same music, the same Eternal Flame! Why is it wearing a different face, Enki?"
I had no answers. My mind was a whirlwind. Was I a reincarnation? A descendant? Or was the Ashen Phoenix bloodline not a lineage, but a fundamental force that could be reborn in a vessel?
As I struggled to make sense of the impossible, Bennu's mood brightened again, his sorrow forgotten in the excitement of the moment. "Oh! You've probably forgotten where everything is! You've been asleep even longer than me! Your mind must be all fuzzy!" He hopped excitedly from one colossal foot to the other. "Don't worry! I kept it all safe for you! Most of the big machines have gone cold, waiting for a big spark of power from the nexus to be fully reborn, a song that might be a little too loud for you to sing in your current body. But some things are just sleeping, not broken! If you give them a little taste of the True Fire, they should wake right up! I know they would! The forges, the libraries… they're all still here, just a little dusty! Waiting for a spark!"
He lowered his head conspiratorially, his golden eye the size of a shield. "Especially the important place. Your stronghold. The place you kept all the real secrets. It's deeper in. Hidden. Safe and sound. I checked it just last decade!" His excitement was infectious, a pure, innocent desire to please.
He looked at me, his entire being alight with expectant joy.
"Do you want to go see it? I can show you! Come on, Enki, let's go!"
The invitation hung in the luminous, silent air of the great cavern. An ancient stronghold. The heart of this Sanctum. A place of secrets left behind by a being who shared my very soul-fire. My mission here had just taken a very, very strange turn. And I knew, with absolute certainty, that I had to see what lay hidden in the darkness.