Chapter 445
"Who are you really?"
Xavier was no longer sitting on the throne.
After being immersed for so long in the whirlpool of contemplation that carried him through the past, after witnessing once more fragments of the lives of Adrien Valtheris and Alaric Syah, after revisiting the bitter memories of his failed reincarnations and his encounter with the foreign entity, he finally decided to stand.
His feet touched the cold stone floor again.
His body, which had seemed fused with the magnificent throne, now stood upright once more in the posture of a wanderer ready to continue his journey.
From the way he stood, from the direction of his gaze fixed upon the exit of the chamber, from the tension of the muscles beginning to move again, it was clear that Xavier intended to leave this place.
He prepared to evolve once more.
To return to the Land of the Gods.
To continue his adventure in the dimension that had long served as the main stage of his life.
Perhaps there he would find answers he could not discover on this silent planet.
Perhaps there he would encounter meetings he had long awaited.
Perhaps there he would finally reach the end of his endless wandering.
But only a few seconds after he took his first step, when he had not yet moved far from the throne he had just abandoned, Xavier suddenly stopped.
He froze mid-step like a statue that had suddenly lost the ability to move.
From lips that did not move, from the deepest corner of his heart, a murmur emerged.
A question long buried yet never truly spoken, not even to himself.
He questioned the true identity of that foreign presence.
The mysterious entity that once joined him in the reckless attempt to break through the Gods' obstruction.
The entity that now existed together with the individual known as Ilux Rediona.
The entity that had long dwelled within the same depth of consciousness as himself.
Who exactly was that being?
Where had it come from?
What purpose did it have in joining him?
And most importantly, why had he never been able to find any trace of it anywhere, even after searching for so long?
That question did not arise without reason.
While the consciousness of Xavier XVII slept beneath Ilux's awareness, during the years he was buried in a deep sleep he could not control, he had never truly been idle.
In moments when Ilux slept, when the boy's consciousness weakened, in the narrow gaps between wakefulness and unconsciousness, Xavier searched.
He explored the dark corridors within Ilux's soul.
He crawled through the networks of nerves that connected every memory.
He infiltrated every corner that might provide a clue about the existence of the foreign entity.
And once, during his persistent attempt to locate an extraordinary individual possibly related to Ilux Rediona, Xavier accidentally caused Ilux to spontaneously open the records of cosmic history.
Not ordinary records.
Not history books written by mortal beings.
But a universal archive containing every event, every birth, every death, every heartbeat that had ever pulsed throughout the entire multiverse.
And there, within that infinite ocean of information, Xavier found something that left him stunned.
What he found was not an answer.
It was an irregularity that only deepened the mystery.
There was emptiness where a trace should have existed.
Silence where there should have been a voice.
A black hole where there should have been a star.
The foreign entity had left absolutely no trace within the records of cosmic history.
There was no record of its birth.
No record of its journey.
No record of its existence at all.
It was like a ghost that had never truly lived.
Like a dream that had never truly happened.
Like an illusion that had never truly been real.
And that anomaly, that emptiness, that mystery was something Xavier had never been able to comprehend, even after turning it over in his mind thousands of times.
Who was the entity that had once joined him in the desperate attempt to break through the obstruction?
Who was the being now residing alongside him within the consciousness of Ilux Rediona?
And more importantly, would its presence bring blessing or disaster to that innocent child?
"The birth of Ilux is a complete violation of the universe's archive."
Within the silence of the magnificent throne chamber, Xavier reflected once more on what he had discovered within the cosmic historical records.
The more he reflected, the deeper the horror creeping through his soul became.
In truth, there was no individual named Ilux Rediona.
There had never been one.
There should never have been one.
Within the cosmic historical records that served as reference for every civilization across each universal box, within the universal archive that never lied and never erred, it was clearly written that the mother of Ilux's father had been declared infertile.
Not ordinary infertility.
Not infertility caused by health conditions that might change.
But absolute infertility that could never be cured.
Infertility that guaranteed the couple would never have children for the rest of their lives.
And in those same records it was written that Ilux's parents had not died while being hunted by the Gods as Xavier now witnessed in reality.
Instead, they had died from stress.
From exhaustion.
From the crushing pressure of life that eventually claimed them slowly and painfully.
"He is the process of erasure itself."
Every step Ilux took.
Every breath he drew.
Every action, no matter how small, that should have allowed him to be recorded within cosmic historical records was swallowed by an emptiness that could never be explained.
Like ink falling onto paper only to vanish without a trace.
Like a scream inside a vacuum disappearing without echo.
Like light entering a black hole and extinguishing without residue.
Such was the existence of Ilux Rediona within the records of universal history.
Nothing remained.
Nothing was recorded.
Nothing could be traced.
Cosmic historical records— the foundation of destiny for every being across the multiverse— suddenly lost their function when confronted with this child.
He was like a hole in the fabric of reality.
Like a stain that could not be erased because he himself was the eraser.
Like a mystery that could never be solved because he himself was the source of all mysteries.
And this condition continued endlessly.
Without conclusion.
Without explanation.
Making Ilux Rediona the only being in the history of creation whose cosmic historical record was truly blank.
Not blank in the sense of innocence.
Not blank in the sense of purity.
But blank in the sense of emptiness.
Void.
Without content.
Without trace.
Without proof that he had ever existed in the world.
And most astonishing of all, none of this had been altered by the Angel Tapsry, the exalted being who served as guardian of the continuity of the threads between lives within the Book of Destiny.
The angel whose eyes were always covered with bandages.
Whose duty was to ensure that every thread of life remained perfectly connected.
Whose authority was to correct every error within the weave of fate.
Whose presence was always felt whenever anomalies appeared within the records of history.
Yet this angel had made no intervention whatsoever concerning Ilux Rediona.
He allowed the child to exist without trace.
He allowed the record to remain empty.
He allowed the mystery to remain a mystery without ever attempting to reveal it.
To be continued…