1 - Pannek2 years and 99 days before the Undoer Incident.

  At the age of twenty-two, Salih Pannek was the youngest lecturer of Tatsubo's Academy of Pure Sciences and Research. Few have had the rush she had to start teaching. "Wouldn't you rather write a proper essay, first, or earn yourself a post-doctorate?" They asked. And she would always respond the same; "No, there are more important things to be done first." A selfless truth — as according to her beliefs the Kharetti Academia had much to be improved upon, and she implicitly decred herself the best (and, to be frank, only) candidate for the task. But fixing the very tools that formed her was no trivial task, so she began with a compromise, by being the sole history teacher on the scientific campus of the highly prestigious Tatsubo Academy, a contradiction addressed on her first lecture. "A scientist without wit, without letters, is no better than a device, and an inefficient one at that. We have enough devices in our country, inefficient or otherwise. At any given point, a company can spawn a dozen or a hundred more of them, and you'll be at the door holding your items in a cardboard box wondering between sobs why it was that the university's 'top student' was id off in less than a year." With a stern voice and a straight back, the hundred-student amphitheatre remained silent for the entirety of her initial speech. For each word she spoke she trod along the risk of colpse. But she remained firm; the first impression ruling above all others. "A scientist without History wreaks the future. We've made mistakes as a nation, and enough of them." She had spoken to her fellow academic counsellors about the scary prospect of criticizing the Empire during a css, but they told her that, in practice, she could always defend herself by ciming that all the aforementioned errors were committed by a previous ruler, such as that of the Great Yiemmansek. "Technology is a means, and to weaponize it means failure. A scientist knowing their past leads the future. An ignorant one builds upon a fwed base." The students were amused, at the very least, by her audacity, and most stayed silent, until she closed her speech with "It is imperative that you don't let a machine speak your words." The echo of her voice hinted some students to ready themselves to csp their hands together, not knowing if they were supposed to appud or not. The sharp gaze she returned to them answered with a negative. She came to put on no show; and a minute or two of standing ovation is wasted time, time that could be better spent sharing better knowledge. That speech was immediately followed by a very brief overview of the course, the grading system, and her office hours — then, she began, and every lecture from then started, in time, where the st one ended.

  Knowing how important time was to Professor Pannek, few dared speak during her lecture, unless it was in inquisitive whispers. She seemed to know when a whisper was css-reted and when it was a simple gossip, and she'd be quick to demand silence or kindly invite the whispering unit to leave the css. Those who arrived te were mercifully permitted entrance, still, but not without a puncturing gaze from an annoyed professor, who'd keep an exhaustive mental note of the irresponsible, to then deny their pleads once they've failed the strict final exams.

  Sixteen weeks into her first academic term teaching, and she'd earned herself sizeable assistance, sometimes higher than that of certain scientific courses, and she'd pack the amphitheatre with students of various majors, many older than her, that come to see if the mythos of Salih Pannek are true. Of the professor that knows the chronology of her nation like the back of her hand, who describes it like she's lived every second of it, who defends it like she committed every action, and who criticises it like she suffered from it all likewise.

  Physicists would sometimes redirect their careers into the metaphysical, and the essays and papers produced by Professor Pannek's students would have a writing that would easily make it not only into scientific magazines of great renown but sometimes even literary ones, simply to merit the prose. Salih Pannek became an illustrious, nearly divine member of the university — which made it all-the-more confused as she rejected interviews, calls for conferences abroad, or any opportunity for her merits to be broadcasted and properly recognized. For her, it sufficed to continue teaching — for her office to remain in its pce and for the packed lecture halls to still await her presence and have it nurture their knowledge.

  In that temple of discipline she'd harvested, it was rare to see any defiance of common sense's rule of w. So when one particur Monday of a particurly gloomy Winter, her te-afternoon lecture on Intraservan sovereignty was interrupted by a newcomer, needless is to say that she wasn't pleased. After roughly eight hours of separate lectures, the professor had been taxed beyond empathy — so the intrusion of a nobody tip-tapping her shoes down the lecture hall's stairs at dangerous speed hit like a personal offence that she readied herself to respond to. It was dumbfounding to the point where she cked a response to the student-looking woman standing in front of her; what warrants a person the audacity to run down to where a professor stands in the middle of a lecture? Questions about her course are asked at the end of it and, at worse, with the primitive call of a raised hand (sometimes ignored), and any threat to the campus' integrity would be easily announced through the bring horn of an arm. Entering the building had as a primary requirement to scan one's student or staff card: could this strange vermin dy have hijacked the security and is now here... to murder her?

  She flinched, and panic suddenly came to her eyes, wondering: has she been found? After so much time spent hiding, after a life rebuilt from scratch, records burned to a crisp and all traces of her lineage vanished, could this be the very moment she has to leave this world? It couldn't be. It couldn't be. Her work here was not finished— it had barely even started! But what can she truly do? If she's known to be here, she's outnumbered. There is nowhere to run to. There's no time left to run.

  Her mind resists no longer, and instead recalls longer into her past.

  At the age of twenty-two, Salih bore the burden of generations upon generations: the st piece of a dynasty that once ruled the empire. A dynasty that one day ruled a step too far. Well-intentioned in its radicalism, it was quickly forced out of power and executed by the very parliament it formed. Betrayed by the comrades who spent hours conceptualising and then building a reformed empire. Long nights spent working with soon-to-be traitors, arguing about legistion and fantasies which would never see fruition.

  The Great Yiemmansek, then Empress of Kharett, had been fooled, and she was spared of living in regret as assassins, YRATAK's pawns, sliced her and her husband's throats a mere eleven years ago. Only one child had been left behind — Ydra Yiemmansek, nowadays known as Salih Pannek, at the time less than an adolescent, who fled Khan –the Empire's capital– for Ibralesh with the help of her uncle, a man so cking his survival was not as detested as that of little Ydra, once heiress to the throne. The Sun knows she's been close, time and time again, to sharing the same fate of her parents; whether it be during random identity checks performed by the military in her high school, whenever forced to use forged passports to apply for basic needs, whenever fabricating a false story about her upbringing once asked about it, when applying to her job as a lecturer, among many other situations.

  She had lived a life of escaping. From the capital's outskirts where she lived with her dethroned mother and her father, fleeing to Ibralesh where she would be raised in ever-changing schools, reforming and rebuilding friends and comrades whenever her uncle felt suspicious enough of their neighbours.

  It is no wonder that she walks every step of her way with fear— she knows well the YRATAK rule is still looking for her. Leaving no stone unturned in their search of the orphaned empress. And for every shake and tremor of hers, a deep wrath sought vindication, and pleaded she would, one day, strike back, and recim what was rightfully hers.

  "What?" A stutter was hidden as Salih spoke to the newcomer, having just finished seeing her short-lived, ridicule life fly past her gaze. Those present at the lecture hall watched with atonement, surprised as they saw some of Salih Pannek's first dispys of vulnerability. They would've expected such a first to be a ugh or an arrogant smile, at least. Not fear.

  "I-um. I'm sorry." Salih's fear faded as she heard the newcomer's voice; fragile, startled, and soft. Assassins sent by the Empire speak in full sentences with the least hesitation one can muster. Assassins sent by the Empire do not squeak or fold in fear, like this stranger does. "My name is Liya Merebold, I'm a guest lecturer at the university." Her voice has grown faint, as if the announcement of her title shouldn't be the most important part of her presentation. "I have a conference in this cssroom. Or, well, had? It should've started thirty-six minutes ago." First Liya checks her watch to verify her statement, then Salih does to find out that, indeed, she had gone more than three-quarters of an hour overtime in her lecture.

  "Oh." Salih lived to see another day. A warmth returned to her blood, and she sighed. Her heartbeat, still terrified, was no longer human — she could faint at any moment. She hoped this 'Liya Merebold' would not hear the thumping... "My apologies. I suppose I do not oft track the length of my csses, since nobody has ever quite interrupted them." Especially not at the tail end of a weekday. Students never really dared tell her that the css had finished, so they would have to hope she noticed herself at some point. Some argue this is why she manages to cramp such lengthy time periods into a semester: just by forcing her students into longer csses.

  "I mean, it's fine." Even the most meddling of students on the front row couldn't quite hear what Liya was saying. With both hands csped behind her back, her shoes tapping each other and her face tilted down, all audible speech was flustered mumbling. "It was a great css so far. I almost didn't want to interrupt it, but I have a couple dozen people waiting outside for my thing to begin. If I had a smaller audience I could've just relocated, but this is the rgest amphitheatre in campus."

  With a thumb pointing behind her, Liya showed that, indeed, there was at least a good ninety people in a queue, waiting to enter the amphitheatre, who had urged Liya many times before to interrupt Salih to seize the pce. But she felt hesitant to speak up before — and how could she? The History Professor's eyes had a hypnotic depth to them, dark and infinite, in which she got lost from the very first moment she saw her. Her speech, coated with the sweet depth of the Khani accentuation crashed onto her ears like the waves of glory, and every step she took in her stage had a formal intent that synchronized her to the history she taught. And even at such a long distance from the lecturer (distance which she strove to diminish as she tip-tapped her way down the amphitheatre's stairs), she followed the lecturer's figure and attuned her ears, so each word prophesied matched the intellectual incandescence at dispy.

  But what was it, exactly, that brought Liya Merebold to stand so shyly in front of Salih Pannek before leading a conference of her own?