“Isn’t it the same thing?” Percy asked.

“Not quite. Remember that this isn’t a physical world.” Nephthys explained. “I did produce that thing you mentioned during my ascension. It was useless for me, so I gave it to my subordinates. It seemed to help them develop their magic, but it got used up after a couple of centuries.”

Percy creased his brow.

“What about this?” he asked again, pointing at the urn. “It sure doesn’t feel any different. Or rather, I’d say it’s even more potent, though that might just be due to its quantity.”

Nephthys shrugged.

“The thing you call Wiseman’s Dust came from my body’s impurities. This thing came from my mind instead. You may want to think of it as the ideas, thoughts and beliefs I discarded while becoming a goddess. I suppose I wouldn’t have even noticed it or managed to collect it if I didn’t have a mind affinity, which might be why you haven’t heard of it before, but I can’t be certain about that.”

“How come you didn’t lend this one to your subordinates then?”

“I tried. It manifested in here during my ascension, and I haven’t been able to take it out. It just disappears if I do, and I didn’t have the heart to get rid of it. The only way for somebody else to use it would be to come in here, but they’d have to lose their bodies for that. Leaving the obvious problems with that aside, they wouldn’t even have a core in this place, so they wouldn’t be able to practice their magic anyway.”

“And you think I’ll be different?”

“Well, if my soul – and whatever’s left of my internal world – are going to be floating inside your own for the next couple of years, as we are hoping they will, there’s a chance.”

Percy nodded.

Part of him wanted to refuse, not quite ready to accept something this precious. Even a handful of Wiseman’s Dust was valuable enough that the entire academy had guarded it and carefully rationed it for centuries, let alone such a massive stash.

But he dismissed his silly thoughts fairly quickly. First, it was clear that nobody else was even able to use this thing. Furthermore, Nephthys’s very survival was going to be tied to his own, so there was no better investment for her than to gift him this.

“I’m glad you understand!” she said, smiling brightly.

“Are you ready to start?” he asked, feeling a bit anxious.

“I am. Keep in mind that I’ll have to sacrifice much of my soul and my internal world so that you can carry it. I will probably fall into deep slumber even after you bring us out of Amenthes. I doubt I’ll be in any condition to talk to you before you place us in the new body.”

Percy frowned.

“But what if I need to ask your opinion on something? I might be forced to give you a different body, or to do something risky.”

Nephthys shook her head.

“Just go with your judgement. We will follow your decisions whatever they may be… Well, it’s not like we have much of a choice in the matter anyway. All I will ask, is that you keep my people’s well-being close to your heart.”

Hearing her words, he clenched his jaw, the weight of the deity’s hopes and dreams feeling heavy on his shoulders.

“That’s a lot of trust you’re placing on somebody you’ve just met,” he muttered.

“It’s true that I haven’t known you for long, Percy, but I do trust you,” she nodded. “I’m sure you can’t quite say the same about me, however, since you can’t read my thoughts. Don’t think I didn’t notice those fleeting suspicions passing through your mind every few seconds.”

Percy felt some heat gather in his cheeks, but he didn’t deny her accusations. The truth was, he didn’t fully trust the goddess yet. How could he?

She had certainly done a great job presenting him with the most approachable image possible, but he’d be a fool to believe everything a stranger told him – certainly when talking about one as old and wise as her. She was obviously powerful and desperate enough to do whatever she had to, to survive.

He was also worried that she had done something to mess with his thoughts. It wasn’t impossible, given her affinity. At the same time, he hadn’t forgotten Metatron’s claim that hijacking his main body through his clones would have been difficult to pull off, even for one such as her.

Regardless, Percy didn’t want to doom an entire civilization due to his mistrust, so he had tentatively decided to help Nephthys back for now, and ask Zoris for his opinion before doing anything more. In any case, she was about to butcher her soul quite extensively to make the trip, so he doubted she’d be in any position to harm him later, even if she harboured ill-intentions.

By the time they reached Remior, she would probably be even weaker than a mortal. If Percy wanted to create another familiar, he’d have to trust somebody anyway, so he might as well give her that opportunity.

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The goddess chuckled again.

“Don’t be ashamed of your suspicions. I would have been a lot more reserved about placing my people’s future in your hands, had you been gullible enough to believe me without question. But I didn’t lie to you, nor do I wish for anything but our mutual benefit. I hope you come to realize that sooner, rather than later.”

Percy was about to respond, but the goddess never gave him the chance. A deep rumble permeated the structure, as cracks formed on the red stones all around him. Chunks fell one after the other, shattering into dust before they even hit the floor. The dust didn’t last long either, quickly fading away into nothing.

Unable to stand his ground against the violent quakes, Percy fell to his knees, holding himself up with his palms.

The room started to shrink rapidly, and it wasn’t the only thing. Rasef’s body appeared to shrink right with it, as did the goddess’s. Red shards fell off from them too, as if they were nothing more than a couple of animated statues. Their clothes and skin stretched, twisted and squirmed, filling the newly formed gaps, ensuring they looked exactly the same, regardless of how tiny they got. Even his host’s soul started to crumble, silver wisps peeling away in quick succession, as Percy’s own soul spilled out of the ever-narrowing gaps.

There were only two things in the room that weren’t affected by the transformation in the slightest.

The first, was naturally Percy’s soul. It retained its original size throughout the whole thing, though it looked like it was growing with respect to everything else. Of course, Percy himself could only see it via his host’s eyes, so from his perspective, it looked like a grey substance was pouring out of Rasef’s body, flooding the room.

The second object was the urn. Or rather, it was its contents – the Wiseman’s Murmurs – as Nephthys had hastily nicknamed them. The urn itself did shrink at first, before shattering from the internal pressure, as a translucent, pink dust filled the room.

Shifting his attention to the shrinking goddess, Percy noticed she was staring intently at the hieroglyphs on the walls. The cracks spread through the text, ruining the entries – the stored memories – at a frightening rate. The past that Nephthys had worked so hard to preserve – both her own and that of her people – was crumbling right in front of her eyes. She gritted her teeth, clearly trying to control where the cracks appeared, and which sections of the Sanctuary broke or shrunk, in an attempt to protect as much of it as she could.

Nephthys had maintained her composure throughout their conversation, appearing casual and unaffected by the horrors she had endured over the years, but Percy could tell that was just a front. Forced to choose between her people’s future or their past, she had clearly picked the former, willing to toss everything else in the garbage, and to even place her trust in a mortal, a myriad times younger than her.

“I’ll do my best to live up to your hopes,” he said, his eyes burning with determination.

Nephthys didn’t even turn to look at him, but he knew she had heard him. He could tell, by the faint smile tugging at her lips, washing away some of the sorrow in her expression.

It didn’t take long for both Percy’s soul and the rising tide of pink powder to fill the hall. The latter gushed through the exits, already rushing through the neighbouring rooms, while the former wasn’t bound by such constraints, phasing freely through the floor and ceiling.

At some point, he lost access to Rasef’s senses. Or rather, he voluntarily retracted from many of the man’s injuries, unwilling to worsen them as his soul continued to grow – relatively speaking.

He kept part of his soul inside his host’s body, however, as he couldn’t afford to forsake their connection entirely, lest he wasted all of Nephthys’s efforts. The rest, he wrapped tightly around Rasef’s fake body, anchoring himself as best as he could to the shrinking Sanctuary.

A few seconds later, he felt more souls pressing against his own. They were small, like Rasef’s – feeling more like pebble-sized dolls than people. Under other circumstances, he would have questioned whether they could even survive like this, but he understood the goddess had overseen the process, carefully compressing and protecting her subjects using her internal world.

Eventually, Percy’s wisp felt as large as the entire pyramid, struggling to grow any larger. Or rather, the Sanctuary continued to shrink like before, but an external pressure now forced his soul to shrink with it.

It was the inviolable radiance of Nephthys’s own soul, bright, dense and absolute, cutting his expansion short. This was his first time being near such a powerful soul, which caused him to shudder at first, thinking that merely touching it would incinerate his wisp in an instant.

However, that couldn’t have been farther from the truth. The silver sun appeared just as gentle and warm as the goddess herself, taking great care not to harm him.

‘Try to empty some space in the pyramid for me,’ her crisp voice suddenly said, ringing through his mind. ‘I have to squeeze as much of my soul in there as I can.’

At the same time, the dense substance surrounding him receded a little, giving him room to expand outside the structure. Following her instructions, Percy withdrew as much of himself as he could, leaving only a single tendril reaching into the pyramid, wrapping around and inside Rasef’s body – that, he had to keep, else he would lose his ability to interact with everything else.

Nephthys didn’t miss the opportunity to enter her internal world herself, torrents of silver rushing into the object. Percy watched with his non-existent mouth agape, unable to fathom how she could exert such delicate control over her soul even without his bloodline, affinity, or experience to help her. Then again, he’d be a fool to expect any less from her.

Once it felt like the pyramid couldn’t shrink any further, nor contain another drop of her soul, Percy felt a loud shockwave reverberate through him. At first, he didn’t understand what had happened, at least until he felt the colossal chunks of silver around him drift away one after another.

Nephthys had detonated the rest of her soul, literally destroying anything she had failed to stash inside the pyramid!

Without Percy’s gifts, this was the only method she had to help him carry her home.

‘Let’s do this then.’

Wrapping his wisp around the object – the whole thing was about as small as a tangerine right now – Percy then tugged at his cord, trying to unlodge himself from the goddess’s dying body. The pyramid did feel quite heavy, but not nearly as much as he had expected it to. The goddess hadn’t lied when she told him she could help with this.

Pulling with all his might, he felt his soul stretch and tear. Luckily, the pyramid budged too, filling him with hope. The pain was great, but he’d felt worse – and so had the Amenthei. Gritting his figurative teeth, Percy kept at it for a couple of minutes, eventually blasting away at a dizzying speed. He shot toward Remior, hundreds of souls sleeping soundly in his embrace.

There would be many obstacles to overcome before he could help any of them – be it verifying the sincerity of the goddess’s words, getting his hands on a suitable host to stuff them in, and hell, even surviving long enough to make all of that happen. But one thing was crystal clear…

‘I’ll do my best.’