Chapter 265 - Ancient Prophecy

“It seems you have a guardian watching over you, boy.” The guru-chi spoke with a knowing tone.

“G..guardian?” Nilya stammered, feeling like he had just been caught red handed, despite not having done anything himself.

Inside her sanctuary in the Fuha village home, Yuzu’s eyes darkened. She felt strings within the tapestry ripple subtly around her as the guru-chi became aware of her presence. He only had an inkling of her existence, a hunch, but she was no longer hidden from this immortal wise man.

The thin lips behind Nilya’s ears curved upward, revealing sharp, gleaming white incisors, “Keh keh keh, praise Lord Shuma, the scriptures are on our side.”

Lord Shuma, the dead Sun God, former ruler of the kingdom of Ying Chu which had been devastated in the War of Five Kings a thousand years prior. The guru-chi’s teachings flashed in both Nilya and Yuzu’s minds as he muttered softly, “The hand of fate guides the way to the throne.”

Nilya listened to the words with a quiet seriousness.

The guru-chi was quoting the scriptures of Aliza, a prophet who had lived in the previous era. The original written scriptures had all been destroyed in the inferno that consumed Ying Chu, but they were passed on verbally through the guru-chi. This ancient prophecy predicted many major events in Ying Chu’s history, providing guidance for the Sun God and his people.

During Aliza’s life she was not yet known to be a prophet but served as an advisor to the throne, handling normal matters over the seventy-six years of her life. During her life she would occasionally fall into a trance for several hours, scribbling cryptic writings onto the ledgers and documents that she was working on. Still holding the wet brush in her hands, she would snap out of her trance and see the words which she had written.

She was originally scared and confused by these incidents, but she was unable to bring herself to destroy the papers. She hid them, keeping them a secret from the world until finally on her death bed she revealed the existence of twenty-three scrolls to a colleague.

The colleague brought them to the Sun God’s priests, who dismissed them as insignificant. To the priests these were just feverish, riddle-filled writings with no greater meaning.

Strangely, instead of destroying or disposing the scrolls, they were simply stowed away deep in the great library where they were forgotten for one hundred years.

Then a day came that the kingdom was besieged by a calamity. A witless scholar came across the scrolls and used the contents to save a third of the kingdom from collapsing into the sea, which would go down in history as the Sundering of Cain. At this point the true value of the scrolls became apparent to the Sun God’s priests, and their study became mandatory for religious study within the kingdom.

Over the years the scriptures of Aliza came true, propelling her name to one of reverence and granting her the posthumous title of prophet.

Hundreds of years passed, and all twenty three prophecies had come and gone, guiding the kingdom of Ying Chu through a golden era.

Then, unexpectedly during the War of the Five Kingdoms, a twenty fourth scroll appeared.

This scroll was one of the first prophecies that had been written by Aliza, but it had been kept hidden for almost five hundred years. When Aliza passed the scrolls onto her colleague on her death bed, the colleague passed over every prophecy except this one.

Why? Because this scroll predicted the fall of Ying Chu and the death of the Sun God.

Fearing punishment, the colleague hid the scroll and passed it down through their descendants.

During the War of the Five Kings, the conditions for the prophecy written on this final scroll occurred and the descendant finally revealed the existence of the scroll to the Sun God’s high priests.

These high priests were the immortal guru-chi. 

When the Sun God died, the aftermath of his demise ignited the entire kingdom of Ying Chu in an inferno that turned the once prosperous nation into ash. From afar, the guru-chi watched their homeland burn, engraving the words of Aliza’s scriptures into their hearts.

These twelve wise men went their separate ways, taking on their final mission— to see this final prophecy come to pass.

The hand of fate guides the way to the throne,

The chosen oji and their chosen guide

Return to the ashes and light the eternal flame anew

To herald the return of the Sun

“For a thousand years we guru-chi have been searching for Lord Shuma’s true heir. We each have run dozens of oji-sen through the trials, guided them forward only to fail time and time again.”

“The prophecy is clear, and also vague. The rules are strict, but full of gaps. I was worried when the guide informed us that the hollow embers have all been destroyed. Keh keh keh. To think one of my brothers really dared to make such a move.”

“Why would he do that?” Nilya spoke up, “The trial is sacred, doing something like this might break the prophecy, right?”

“So you have been listening to me…” The guru-chi grinned, his mouth spanning from ear to ear, “Us guru-chi have debated this for centuries. How fallible is the prophecy? How closely are we bound by fate? The trial of requirement is a small space, any one of my brothers and I could easily enter it and destroy everything within it, if we wanted.

“Would that cause the prophecy to fail? Or would it in fact be what we were predestined to do? If the trial of requirement is destroyed the heir can no longer be determined by prophecy. Does that mean one of the oji that exists at that time are guaranteed to be the true heir? If the prophecy holds true, then that must be true.

“I know which brother destroyed the hollow embers, his name is Bacchi, he is the most fanatic of all of us, but also the most extreme. In our last grand counsel seventy years ago, he sought permission to destroy the embers in order to accelerate the prophecy.

“The vote failed, five to seven. But the recent blood eclipse has fulfilled yet another line from the prophecy. It seems he has decided to take matters into his own hands. Even so, he did not enter himself but instructed his oji to perform the deed. He still restricts himself to the limitations in the prophecy. Keh keh keh.”

“The guide said I could still find hollow embers below the mountain.” Nilya said with a frown. His eyes shimmered intelligently. Though he was young he had understood the meaning of the guru-chi’s story. He had also adjusted quickly to the strangeness of having a mouth on the back of his scalp, “Should we hurry to get one?”

“You must decide your path and go alone, without guidance or instruction.” The guru-chi said, repeating the words of the trial.

Nilya nodded, looking down the cliff at the glimmering silver hawk below. His expression was both determined and filled with a lingering doubt. He spoke his thoughts aloud, “I can see a few nests below, I’ll check if there is anything in them first, just in case the guide is wrong.”

“Boy, have no fear.” The guru-chi felt Nilya’s hesitation and spoke confidently with a toothy smile, “You and I have been chosen by destiny.”

Hearing those words, Nilya thought of the mysterious voice that had guided him and felt his confidence grow stronger. 

Satisfied with the effect of his words the guru-chi didn’t say any more. The flesh on Nilya’s neck squirmed as the lips were absorbed back under his skin. Nilya reached back and felt the smooth skin behind his ear.

He looked down the cliffs once more, taking in the dramatic, vertical landscape that was so different from anything he had ever seen before.

He took a breath, kneeling down at the edge of the cliff and gripping the stone firmly, then he swung his legs off the side and started climbing down.

Through the strings, Yuzu watched the boy descend with a sense of admiration.

Nilya was just a child, who probably had never seen a hill that couldn’t be climbed in more than ten minutes in his life. He had been thrust suddenly into a world of monsters and talking bird statues and trials, but had accepted it all without complaint.

Seeing this ten year old boy fall into this new role as easily as he did, even Yuzu began to somewhat believe in this prophecy herself. She wondered about this mysterious prophet Aliza who lived in a different era, whose prophecies had come true for over a thousand years.

Those prophecies which had come to her through divine inspiration.

Yuzu was no stranger to prophecy, because she herself had issued a few herself. Her warning to Nilya to protect his sister. Her visions which had guided Char Char. From a most basic standpoint these were prophecies which had allowed regular people to make the right decisions to avoid disaster, though even Yuzu had to acknowledge that they were extremely simple and clumsy.

Yuzu frowned, her eyes darkening as she broke her connection to Nilya’s string for the moment and cast her gaze across the swamp around her. The tapestry of fate shimmered to life in her spiritual vision, ebbing and flowing softly in the night in a natural, undisturbed state.

Though she had been watching the tapestry carefully over the past few weeks, she could not sense the influence of any other entities on fate. To the best of her knowledge and ability, she was the only person in the area that had affected the natural flow of fate.

Li Ru’s previous words to Yuzu reflected quietly in her thoughts.

“We were but pawns on a chess board.”

If Yuzu helped Nilya to pass the Trial of Requirement, then was she not helping to fulfill Aliza’s prophecy? And on a deeper level Aliza was only a messenger of the prophecy. The real source then, would it be the previous era’s Goddess of Fate, Akahi?

Try as she might, Yuzu couldn’t sense Akahi’s influence within the tapestry. But Yuzu had to assume that that influence existed. If she were stronger, if she could perceive a bigger piece of the tapestry, would those ripples become apparent?

What kind of future were those ripples driving Yuzu towards?