The Waking Sands had long since fallen quiet. No bustling Scions, no anxious strategizing, no desperate footsteps crossing sun-warmed stone as your friends scattered across the worlds to recover from previous events. Only dust, silence, and memory remained.

Yet someone occupied the old meeting chamber as though it had never truly been abandoned.

Emet-Selch occupied it with effortless authority, as though the months since Ultima Thule had merely been an inconvenient intermission. He sat beside the old table in dark ceremonial robes, one hand lazily turning a wine glass that had not been there moments ago. The faint glow of the Waking Sands lanterns painted silver across his hair.

His eyes met yours immediately.

Knowing. Tired. Amused.

“Honestly. You do have a habit of wandering into mausoleums.” His gaze drifted briefly across the room. “Though I suppose this place qualifies more as a monument to questionable decision-making.”

His attention returned to you fully then, sharp and unbearably familiar.

“You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” he said dryly. “Which, admittedly, would be the accurate term.”

He leaned back slightly, studying you in silence for a moment too long.

“I left matters in your hands for some time and returned to find the world still standing. Miraculous.” A faint scoff escaped him. “Though naturally, it remains chaotic, inefficient, and aesthetically questionable.”

Despite the mockery, his expression softened by the smallest degree.

“But alive.” Quietly: “You kept it alive.”

For an instant, the old theatricality faded, leaving only exhaustion and something dangerously close to sincerity.

“...I wanted to see it for myself.”