Paradox Interluder (Usurper #2)

2.

Fate was a false notion, an illusion created for nothing but control. Fear was the key ingredient in the recipe of manipulation, of forging a future based on molds already predetermined. The idea of being chosen for something important was against his nature. Oblivion didn't choose. It wasn't based on inherent genetics or foresighted, purposeful breeding. It was luck, a draw at straws, a genetic mutation weaving humanity and magic together. Perhaps whatever Divines created this Continent got bored with their simulations and the dullness of the mundane. Oblivion was marked as a term believing these new powers were the end of the world. Perhaps it was only just the beginning.

Kaid Al-Yami was nothing special.

His ability to control time, to mend mistakes of unimaginable consequences, or speak with the past meant nothing. A blade, once derived from the belief of fate, was nothing more than twisted history and planned mockery from Payne, his previous and dead enemy. He hoped his corpse was still rotting even after two years, that whatever hell he was in burned more than the fire that had scarred his face. Payne didn't haunt him in the afterlife, in the void where Kaid's dreams would enter when he slept.

What did haunt him, was his consequence of saving the world. The usurper blade had fulfilled its purpose before being altered entirely. Kaid knew it was always meant to kill Empress Jessamine, permanently. It almost succeeded in its task, only by a different wielder. Kaid didn't intend to save the world. He only meant to save his world. He meant to save the sandy haired goddess from her fate, a fate both of them knew to be forcibly thrown into their hands. Both of them were destined to lose, yet somehow, won in the end.

The only thing they lost was each other.

He didn't know if he could forgive her. He didn't even know if he already had. Kaid had entered a year of a void-filled sleep. A year in his mind that felt like a mere day talking with Farah, his deceased mother, in a place that was completely devoid of time and life. It was a place that called to him, one Kaid couldn't force upon his own. At first, he thought he had died and he had merely become a resident of such an afterlife. Only, he was a guest that had forced his way in unintentionally. His mother was a heavily opinionated woman, but a proud mother at that. All she wanted was her son's happiness, and upon awakening from his coma, he was unsure where that happiness resided.

Mara had hidden him inside Uhkhtar of all places, inside the city of Kanaf, a growing city and soon destined to be capital. It had been a fortress of old, now turned palace of grandeur, surrounded by a city of sand and brick. Ruins had now become a new foundation for the next generation of Uhkhtarians, but also refugees and other various Continent dwellers without much place to go. The world had apparently become chaotic during his time in what he thought was eternal slumber. When he woke up, he thought he had lost his Oblivion, that the heat of the arid and dry sun was just another version of hell. It wasn't until he awoke from his long slumber and saw young Kaid, son of Mara, that he realized his story was far from over.

Kaid had not lost his Oblivion at all, if anything the near death experience enhanced it in ways he hadn't realized. Time was energy, an invisible one that no clock or watch could fully express. That energy could be encapsulated in objects, in memories, and most of all people. When Bridger had taken him to Blackrock Isle, the place of his childhood, energy resided there like trapped vapors with no escape. And that energy needed to be transcribed, experienced, and documented by someone like himself before it could be fully released. Now, he could sense that in all things, in all beings, in the very grains of sands beneath his feet.

It was exhausting, to say the least, interpreting and sensing the fate of time woven in all things organic.

The only thing that quelled the influx of energy was a good book, and perhaps a light session of smoking a waterpipe to let the vapors coax his troubled mind. Only thing about smoking and reading at the same time was the way it would fog up his glasses. Like all things withered with excessive time, so did the quality of his eyes from constant reading. Kaid liked to blame that on those bright Caladin prison lights, though, rather than his excessive hobby. However, he needed something to drown out the silent, annoying noise in his head. Music could help. He almost believed hearing Jessamine play the piano would be the perfect cure, or perhaps merely a re-entry to the curse of her seduction.