Time did not exist in the White.
Lucien learned that quickly.
There was no hunger.
No fatigue.
No sense of before or after.
He fought endlessly—creatures born from absence, malformed concepts that crawled out of nothingness itself. Each kill made him stronger. Each victory carved instinct into his being.
But memory?
Memory did not return with strength.
Until the White changed.
It happened without warning.
One moment, Lucien stood alone in endless nothing.
The next—
The White rippled.
Like water disturbed by a single drop.
Lucien froze.
He had learned that when the White reacted, it was never meaningless.
A sound echoed.
A footstep.
Lucien turned.
Someone was standing there.
A woman.
Silver-black hair flowing freely, untouched by gravity.
Eyes deep and familiar—too familiar.
She wore no armor.
No robes.
No symbols of power.
Just a simple dress, torn at the edges as if it had survived a thousand disasters.
Lucien's breath caught.
His mind screamed impossible.
"…Mom?"
The word left his mouth before thought could stop it.
The woman's eyes widened.
Then softened.
Then shattered.
She crossed the distance between them in a single step and pulled him into an embrace so fierce it hurt.
"I found you," she whispered, voice breaking.
"I finally found you."
Lucien did not move.
He could not.
His body—strong enough to shatter realities—trembled like a child.
This Seloria was not the one he remembered.
She was older.
Sharper.
Her presence warped the White around her—not by dominance, but by conflict.
She did not belong here.
And yet, she stood.
"You shouldn't exist here yet," she said softly, pulling back to look at him.
"Which means everything went wrong."
Lucien stared.
Fragments exploded behind his eyes.
Aetherion.
Fire.
Screams.
Ellira smiling.
Kael laughing.
His father's voice.
Seloria's disappearance.
The White trembled again.
Seloria took his hands.
"Listen to me, Lucien.
I'm not your mother."
Lucien's heart clenched.
"I'm a Seloria.
Just… not from this timeline."
She explained.
In her world, the Calamity never slowed.
Humanity lost.
The gods fell.
The Creator intervened too late.
Reality collapsed inward.
And Seloria—
She touched the White.
Not by choice.
But because Lucien, her Lucien, died protecting her.
When he died, the White responded.
It tore her loose from causality.
She fell between timelines.
Between narratives.
Between creators.
"I saw everything," she said.
"Every version of you that could have been."
Most of them died.
Some became tyrants.
Some became gods.
One—
One became The Sole Exception.
And that Lucien—
Was him.
Seloria looked around the White.
"This place erases context.
It strips you down to your name."
She knelt before him.
"That's why you forgot us.
That's why you forgot pain.
That's why you forgot fear."
The White was not cruel.
It was selective.
It kept what mattered for what was coming.
Lucien was never meant to awaken whole.
He was meant to become.
Seloria revealed the final truth.
The Dreamveil family was not chosen by gods.
They were aligned to the White.
Not as servants.
As anchors.
Every generation, one Dreamveil was born closer to the White than the last.
Lucien was the convergence.
Not planned.
Not controlled.
An inevitability born from countless near-failures.
"You weren't meant to save the world," Seloria said.
"You were meant to outgrow it."
Seloria knew she could not stay.
The White rejected paradoxes.
And she was one.
She placed her forehead against Lucien's.
"Your memories will return slowly," she whispered.
"Only when you're strong enough to carry them."
She smiled through tears.
"You'll see me again.
In your timeline.
Not as a miracle—but as a consequence."
The White surged.
Seloria began to dissolve.
Lucien reached for her—
And stopped.
For the first time, he understood restraint.
"Live," she said as she faded.
"Not as a god.
Not as a weapon.
But as Lucien Dreamveil."
And she was gone.
Lucien stood alone again.
But the White felt different now.
Less empty.
Less silent.
He remembered his father's face.
His sister's laugh.
His brother's warmth.
He remembered Seloria's voice.
And something deep within him shifted.
Not power.
Purpose.
Far away, in Paraxis—
The second page of Götterdämmerung shimmered faintly.
It was only a prologue.
The Twilight of the Gods was never about gods dying.
It was about inheritance.
The era Lucien would make—
Was not for him to rule.
It was for those who came after.
For Arios.
For Lysera.
For mortals who would climb higher than gods ever dared.
A third page waited.
Unwritten.