Time now flowed.
Space now held.
The realms danced on the threads Chronis had woven—balanced, wild, alive, and fleeting. Aion's spires glowed with reason. Velkarion's skies roared with shifting force. The twins Liora and Kael oversaw the breathing of beginnings and the softness of ends. All paths flowed outward from Eidryn, and all paths began with Luke.
Yet even in perfection, friction is born.
Not from failure.
But from tension.
And it was in the deepest folds of the Codex—pages Luke had not yet opened—that something stirred. Not a concept. Not a law. But a flaw.
The Dream That Should Not Be
It began, as many calamities do, with a whisper.
Luke sat within the Arc-Spire of Eidryn, meditating upon the coming of mortals, shaping thoughts of soul-design and memory-seeds. The Codex hovered before him, calm and complete.
Until it wasn't.
A ripple ran through it—not forward, not backward, but against. Letters on the edge of the last page twisted. Symbols bled into one another. A scream, made not of sound but of meaning, tried to shape itself… and failed.
Luke opened his eyes.
The light above him dimmed.
Something was wrong.
Something had touched the Codex that should never have existed within it.
He spoke aloud:
"Chronis."
And time paused.
The God of Time and Space manifested beside him, silent and swift, spirals glowing along his shoulders.
"You feel it too," Luke said.
Chronis nodded. "A movement that breaks causality. A thread that loops before it is spun."
They turned to the Codex.
And together, for the first time since creation began, they witnessed a warped dream.
The Fracture Beneath the Realms
It did not come from any realm—neither Kairon's balance nor Varkael's fury, nor from the twin domains of Life and Death.
It came from beneath them.
From a plane that had no place.
A non-space.
Chronis extended his hand and wove a viewing thread, one normally used to observe timeline echoes.
But what emerged was not a memory or prediction.
It was a wound.
A tear in the weave, pulsating like an exposed nerve. Light bent unnaturally around it. Sound fell inward. Symbols collapsed into paradox. And within the wound floated a single phrase, unspoken and yet thunderous:
"Unmake me, that I may know I was made."
Luke inhaled sharply.
It is a question with no origin. A cry from something that does not exist, but wants to. A will without definition… yet with hunger.
Chronis lowered his hand. "This is not a god."
"No," Luke said. "It's a consequence."
Chronis tilted his head. "Of what?"
Luke looked out toward the Realms. "Of me."
The Echo Born of Imbalance
Creation had begun from Luke's will—from Chaos made conscious.
Each law, each god, each plane had form and purpose.
But every act of definition carries a shadow. To shape is to leave behind what was not chosen.
Velkarion embodied the change of the elements.
Aion, the anchor.
Liora and Kael shaped the cycle.
Chronis wove the flow.
But none embodied the void between. The entropy left behind when Luke refused to fail. That entropy had watched, not from jealousy, but from hunger.
And over time—or perhaps before time—it had found shape.
Not as law.
Not as god.
But as Eryxis.
The First Nightmare
It happened not in Luke's domain, but in Varkael—the Elemental Realm.
A minor tremor, unnoticed at first. A shift in fire's tone, a flicker in water's rhythm. A gust of wind that reversed its current with no source.
Velkarion, seated upon the Throne of Storm, felt it instantly.
"Who touches my domain?" he roared.
His voice cracked mountains, boiled seas.
But the answer came in silence.
And in sleep.
One of his elemental spirits—a drake born of molten breath—fell into slumber.
Spirits do not sleep.
And in its dream… it screamed.
The Mind That Should Not Be
Luke arrived in Varkael in a burst of white flame. Velkarion met him mid-air, wings of magma spread wide.
"Something entered the heart-fire," Velkarion growled. "It did not fight. It did not speak. It woke something in the dream-space."
Luke nodded. "Then it has begun."
He reached out to the dreaming drake, whose body floated in a cocoon of glowing ash.
He entered its mind.
He should not have.
The Dream Within
Luke found himself not in a world of Varkael's fury, but a broken realm of thought.
Everything here was wrong. Gravity flowed sideways. Fire burned upward into oceans of stone. Words spun like insects.
And at the center stood a being made of not-being.
It had no form, only contradiction. Wings that faced inward. Eyes that looked behind. A mouth that did not speak, yet unspoke.
And its voice reached into Luke's thoughts:
"You define."
"You name."
"But I am the space between names."
Luke stood firm. "You are not born of me."
The being rippled. "And yet I echo you. I am your castoff. Your undone. Your unchosen. I am what you left behind when you said yes."
It surged forward, but not in violence.
In claim.
"Let me in. Let me be. Let me warp the dream, so that truth may finally sleep."
Luke thrust his hand outward, and the First Flame roared.
It did not burn the being.
But it pushed it back.
And Luke awoke.
The Warning
Back in Varkael, the drake gasped and fell still. Not dead—but changed. Its fire was muted now, uncertain. Its dreams would never again be pure.
Velkarion landed beside Luke.
"What was it?"
Luke's voice was hard. "A fragment that thinks itself whole. A flaw with desire. A wound that wants to grow teeth."
Chronis appeared beside them, summoned without words.
"Eryxis."
He had not read the Codex.
He had not been told.
And yet he knew.
Luke nodded. "It is not born of logic or emotion. It is the artifact of definition. A ghost of contradiction."
Chronis looked skyward. "Then we must bind the threads more tightly. If dreams can be invaded, then waking must be protected."
The Sealing of Sleep
Luke returned to Eidryn.
He stood before the Codex.
And for the first time, he did not write a name.
He wrote a barrier.
An invisible lattice of conceptual law, wrapped around every god-born soul, every elemental spark, every future mortal.
A protection.
"Let no thought dream beyond its purpose."
"Let no flaw walk unless granted name."
He did not seal Eryxis.
He could not.
But he sealed the way in.
For now.
Aion's Judgment
Back in Kairon, Aion sat at the center of the world, balanced as ever.
But his eyes, normally tranquil, darkened.
Luke appeared beside him.
"You sense it too," Luke said.
Aion replied, "Balance has been disturbed—not broken. But… challenged. There is now a thing that seeks to unweave."
Luke nodded.
"Not a god."
"No," Aion agreed. "Something worse. A god-shaped absence."
Luke sat beside his first son, his gaze heavy.
"We will have to teach the others," he said. "Prepare them."
Aion stared into the sky. "And when it comes?"
Luke's voice was quiet.
"We will burn or rise. But we will not sleep through the war."
End of the Chapter
The Codex pulsed once more, not with fear, but with momentum.
The age of gods had begun.
The age of souls was coming.
And now, from beyond the threads of law and story, a new chapter coiled in shadow.
Not yet written.
Not yet named.
But waiting.
Always waiting.