The stormy skies of the floating continent rumbled far beneath Aevion's feet as he stood before the shimmering fracture in reality—the gateway to the Library of the End.
No flames, no fanfare. Just a cold wind that whispered forgotten knowledge and silent warnings through the empty campus halls. This time, there would be no instructor guiding him, no allies beside him. Only the unspoken memory of Mira's demise and Liora's vanishing haunted the corners of his mind.
But Aevion's eyes, pale lavender burning with a quiet fire, did not tremble.
He stepped through.
The portal welcomed him like a stone coffin. The Library of the End had not changed.
Books twisted in the air like specters. The stone pathways hummed with verses from a tongue no mortal should speak. All around him, the six Guardians began to awaken—no longer tolerant of intrusion. Their pale eyes flared like stars in an old sky.
They did not speak.
Neither did he.
Instead, Aevion opened his palm. Veritas flared from beneath his skin—threads of translucent, shifting glyphs spinning like endless mechanisms. His Nexis shone through it, purple and white, laced in solemn grace. A breath. A blink.
Six clones burst into existence, each identical to him in soul, skill, and strength. They fanned out into the circular corridor like echoes of inevitability. And the battle began.
The Guardians moved as if reality bent for them. One stepped across entire distances with a thought. Another wielded lawless entropy like ink, dissolving space itself. One chanted in pure silence—unraveling memory and perception. These were not spells. They were concepts.
But Aevion's eyes adapted with every strike, every clash. His clones moved with mirrored brilliance, absorbing their tactics in real-time, evolving. Veritas catalogued each technique, inscribing it into the silent tomes of his essence. And with every new motion, Aevion became… more.
The sixth guardian launched a tidal wave of temporal fracture. Aevion struck through it with Vexiaris, his sword singing with Nellum's Embrace—a stance of sorrow and serenity. Time cracked. Space recoiled.
The clones erupted outward, one-on-one with each guardian.
Minutes passed. Then only silence remained.
The six lay in fragments—each vanishing into ash that did not touch the floor.
Aevion stood amidst the circular sanctum of the Library's heart. The knowledge pulsed like a being, ancient and eternal.
And he spoke.
"I do not destroy you out of hate," he whispered, lowering Vexiaris. "But the time for gods who hoard is over."
He reached out. Veritas and Nexis intertwined, and the glyphs of paradoxical sealing began to form. A cage of non-existence. A realm neither future nor past, unreachable but ever within him.
The Library of the End folded.
Its towering shelves, its infinite languages, its final page—all compressed into a sliver of space sealed deep within Aevion's being. Aether and paradox bound it, accessible only to him, untraceable by all else.
He exhaled.
A single book floated to his hand before the seal closed: The Nexus of Lost Wills.
Aevion turned back toward the portal.
The stone floor behind him was stained only by quiet footsteps and the ghosts of six gods who once stood proud.
Back in his dorm, the dragon egg lay beside his bed—warm with life.
But Aevion did not sleep that night.
He stood at the window, watching the sky. The seal pulsed faintly in his chest like a second heart.
He was no longer the angel who had fallen.
He was becoming something the world could not yet define.
Aevion pushed open the door to his dorm, the weight of the day settling over him. The faint scent of parchment and old wood lingered in the air, mixed with the soft fading light filtering through the window. His mind still replayed the moments spent sealing the Library of the End into its paradoxical prison — a monumental task now behind him.
His eyes immediately sought the place where the dragon egg had rested. But the egg was gone.
A flicker of curiosity, maybe something more, nudged him forward. He crouched slowly and glanced beneath his bed.
There, curled in the dim shadow, was a tiny creature no longer than two feet from snout to tail tip. The baby dragon's scales shimmered in gentle hues of white and purple, shifting like delicate brushstrokes in a painting. Her wings, still small and fragile, were folded neatly against her body. But it was her eyes — large and round, glowing with a soft pink light — that caught Aevion's breath.
Carefully, as if handling something sacred, he lifted the dragon into the air. The little being twitched, blinking slowly up at him.
"Nyxara," he said quietly, testing the name on his tongue.
Before he could lower her, the door creaked open behind him. Yui stepped inside, her honey gold hair catching the last of the daylight, her bright lavender eyes widening instantly.
"Oh!" she gasped, a breathless note of surprise. "Is that...?"
Without hesitation, she reached forward, eager to hold the tiny dragon herself.
Aevion hesitated for only a moment, then gently passed Nyxara into Yui's outstretched arms. The dragon stirred, her pink eyes flicking between them.
Yui cradled the creature carefully, a soft smile tugging at her lips as she studied every shimmering scale. "She's incredible... so small."
Aevion watched quietly, letting the moment settle between them. No words were needed.
Outside, the sky deepened into night, but within the quiet dorm, a new presence had quietly come to life.