“I must look so old to you,” said the man whose identity she still could not believe. Sv

“I must look so old to you,” said the man whose identity she still could not believe. Svietavaj did not reply. What was there to say to such a question from a man who she, like the rest of the Empire until yesterday, had believed to be unaging, undying?“I had supposed, given how few years are left to me, that it would be my successor who would have told you the secret.” She nodded at this, still mute, as though it made any sense at all that for a thousand years, any group - no matter how tight knit - could’ve kept such a monumental truth silent. She wondered if there was any record of how many, like Ayna, had died or been killed to keep it so. How many deaths this simple, petty old man himself had ordered just to protect the knowledge that he and every Emperor prior was but a mortal man. -- source link

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