A continuation of the rumors in Xing and Amestris during the Year of the Sage 415 to 418, and 1915 P.E (Post Empire of Xerxes.)
There was light in the sky. Light in the desert, and many people in Xing recalled the red light that had shone over Amestris a year prior, when they had fallen unconscious, and though this light was blue, not red, they regarded it with fear. The earth shook as the pillar of blue-white light pierced the heavens in the western desert. The sun was bright, but the blaze put the sun to shame, casting unnatural shadows over everything. Delegations besieged the rulers of both nations as the light blazed in the dessert. To the dismay of the people of Xing, Emperor Ling exited the palace, looked to the west, shaded his eyes with his hand, laughed, and declared in tones of great amusement, "Showoff." Then he turned to his Chang sister. "Ed, or Al?"
"My Alphonse would never waste such large amounts of chi!" Princess Chang answered, and her pet panda growled an agreement.
The emperor snickered. "Yeah, I thought it was Ed too." Then he surveyed the delegation as a particularly large tremor shook the ground. "No need to be frightened. It's just the son of the Western Sage being a showoff. If I had to guess, I'd say he's rebuilding Xerxes right now, since the light is directly over the ruin."
Everyone who had failed to realize the light was over Xerxes felt foolish. Then another wave of shock emanated through the populace. The son of the Sage?
The second half was soon to be forgotten until Mei Chang's wedding; however, for less than a month after the blaze, a group of travelers came from the desert. They brought news of the light and its cause, having been there when it occurred.
The tale they told, was that Amestrians had marked out a radius for miles around the ruins, and no travel had been permitted. Even those refugees who had made a home in the ruins had left. There had, however, been whispers about a figure entering the ruins alone. Then there had been strange chiming sound, and as blue light spread out from the ruins, the ground had begun to shake, ad shift, sand changing, melding, and becoming more soil and rocks than sand. Walls erupted as sand poured off them, long buried buildings, forgotten completely, surging upwards in the light, sparks dancing over all, shooting up as far as the eye could see, until they had realized that what had for centuries been believed to be the ruins of Xerxes, had actually been the ruins of the center of the capitol. Towers and pillars, columns and balconies, colonnades and domes, waterways, shaded paths, courtyards, roads, buildings, streets, mansions, all erupted from the sand that had long since buried them. The buildings that had stood, as ruin flowed together, fallen stone blocks moving to fit their lost places once more.
Fountains had flown together and bubbled to life, and the few among the merchants who had some skill in alkahestry declared that it had felt as if a wave swept under the ground, at the leading edge of the tremors, and behind that wave things had felt fresher. As if a lingering corruption from whatever had happened to the great city was now gone. Clean somehow, in the ground, even as the sandy land tossed and shook with the quakes caused by the buried city unearthing itself at long last. In the distance, what had long been believed to be the entire ruin rose higher and higher, and blazed brighter and brighter, until at last, when the light died and their vision cleared, a citadel was there. The great domed roof was no longer in fragments, but whole, clearly a palace or temple, and all around it stood the city of Xerxes, as it must once have been.
The Amestrians and the people of the ruin had entered the city then, and when they emerged, there was someone with them, clad in red, his form and features like those of the desert and the sunset made flesh. They had not heard what he said to the people of the ruins, but they had seemed grateful, and the Amestrians stunned.
And the Emperor knew the entity who had done this, by name. That could not have been a work of men. The greatest of the alkahestrists could not have worked such a feat yet one who was seemingly born of the desert had. It must be that the emperor knew him as one god-touched by another. Truly he was chosen by the gods, as his utter lack of the Royal family's plight if collapse testified, for it was known that he had been as prone to collapse as any of the before his return as the undying immortal.
