The Kiev'arian turned another page, each sheet shimmering faintly as though inscribed with fragments of Iandre's own memory. His throat gave a dry, rasping chuckle, followed by a measured "
hmmm" or a precise "
I see." Finally, he looked up at her, the hexagonal lenses of his spectacles flashing in the lamplight.
"
We were never going to triumph against the Rakata," he said evenly, voice clipped and cool, like a lecturer cataloging a long-dead war. "T
heir star-magic was too great especially with Saurav'ix guiding their hand. Some among my kin called their coming prophecy. The worshipers of Saurav'ix welcomed the slaughter as holy writ. Others whispered it was judgment for the purges we had already committed… against your kind, and all your branches."
Visions seared across Iandre's mind. She saw Kiev'arian hosts charging astride colossal war-beasts, their claws pounding the earth in thunderous cadence, the echos of battle crys echo'd in her mind as each strike unleashed devastation. Twi'leks shrieked as their temples collapsed in flame; Humans and Echani were hewn down in streets slick with gore; Togruta wailed as their young were torn from them. Blood spread across frozen soil and crystal stone, staining Kiev'ara's white expanse red until nothing remained unstained.
The librarian turned another page, unhurried, as though these atrocities were no more than footnotes in an unending archive. His pale brow arched slightly as a new memory flared upon the parchment clones turning blasters on Jedi, temples burning in the night, the betrayal of Order 66. He studied it with detached interest, then spoke again.
"
So. Even your kind were not spared the knife of prophecy," he said, voice calm but implacable. "
The wheel turns, child. It always turns."
He snapped the tome shut, dustless and sharp-edged, then reached for another. As he opened it, the air shimmered with a low hum, and for a moment Iandre saw an echo of the Realm Gate itself: a towering arch of light, pulsing with a thousand shifting hues. Its radiance had been said to sing, like the stars themselves crying out.
"
When the Gate burned," the librarian continued, his tone still clinical yet weighted with gravitas, "
many peoples came to us. They were not ours, yet they walked and spoke as though carved from the same flesh. Humans, blue-skinned cousins, horn-browed warriors, pale-eyed mystics all branches of the same tree. When the Gate went silent, it was as though the stars themselves had died. And those left behind… we named invaders. We named thieves. And in our fear, we slew them."
He paused then, closing the tome with deliberate care. His outline shimmered, edges unraveling like smoke. For the first time, his form looked less like flesh and more like light caught within facets of glass. His voice, though steady, carried the faint resonance of crystal struck by a chime.
"
I was the last keeper of this library. When the Rakata came, I did what had to be done. I bound my soul into the Codex into the crystal you hold now. This library is no more than its echo. I am no more than its shadow. Not a man, but memory given shape. All that you see, all that you hear these truths, these visions they are me. I am the Codex. And I am all that remains of Kiev'ara."
Iandre Athlea
