The sun rose slow and heavy over the Azure Blue forests, painting the mist in ribbons of amber light. The twin suns—Azure and Solan—pushed their glow through the leaves, and the morning dew glimmered like spilled starlight.
Lucien stood in a clearing that hadn't existed the day before. The ground was fresh, newly shaped, as if reality itself had been rewritten in this patch of forest.
He lifted his right hand, index and middle finger extended, his movements deliberate—artistic, even.
"Dreamveil Estate," he murmured, and the words rippled outward like a command to the world itself.
The air vibrated. The forest wind bent back, trees bowing away from him as light and void began to interlace at the center of the clearing. Shadows folded, earth glowed, and then matter bloomed—a marble foundation growing like vines from the soil, obsidian pillars twisting up into being, and ethereal windows appearing one by one like eyes opening to the morning.
Within moments, a mansion stood there—black marble with faint blue veins of living energy running through it. Its architecture didn't belong to this planet; it was both ancient and divine, elegant yet impossibly vast. Floating lanterns drifted lazily around its eaves, burning with small stars instead of fire.
The Dreamveil Estate.
Lucien looked at it for a while, silent, before speaking softly, "A proper home… for the first time in this world."
Behind him, little Aelira sat in the grass, watching with wide, fascinated eyes. She couldn't have been older than a year now. Her tiny hands clapped together whenever light or sound changed in front of her, and her laughter seemed to make the forest brighter.
Lucien crouched next to her, picking a flower from the edge of the clearing and holding it out.
"Flower," he said. "F-l-o-w-er."
She blinked once, then babbled something incoherent, tilting her head.
Lucien smiled faintly, shaking his head. "Close enough."
He snapped his fingers; the flower shifted color from blue to gold, then to white, before finally dissolving into sparkles.
Aelira gasped, her little hands trying to grab the sparkles, which made Lucien chuckle—a sound that, for him, came rarely.
Inside Dreamveil Estate, time flowed differently.
Each room adjusted itself to Aelira's needs—the floors softened where she crawled, floating orbs followed her for warmth, and walls projected skies of her choosing. When she cried, soft lullabies whispered through the air.
Lucien wasn't just raising her. He was building a world around her.
Days turned into weeks. Weeks, into months.
And slowly, Aelira began to talk.
"Pa," she said one morning, toddling toward him on unsteady feet.
Lucien had been writing a few new sigils in the air—reality scripts that controlled the weather around the estate—but his hand froze mid-gesture. He turned slowly.
"Pa?" he repeated.
She nodded with absolute certainty, smiling like she had solved the universe.
For a long second, Lucien didn't react. Then, quietly, a small laugh escaped him—a genuine, almost disbelieving laugh.
"Well," he said, lowering his hand. "That's new."
He picked her up easily, and she giggled, clinging to his collar. "Pa strong!"
Lucien raised an eyebrow, clearly amused. "Strong, hm? You've barely seen me do anything."
Aelira puffed her cheeks. "Saw!"
Lucien looked at her for a moment, then sighed dramatically. "So it begins… little one defying the Creator already."
She only laughed harder.
By her third year, she was already counting pebbles.
Lucien sat across from her at a small table in the garden, the surface scattered with smooth stones. He leaned on one hand, watching with faint interest as she tapped each pebble with a stick.
"One… two… three… five!"
He smiled slightly. "Four comes before five, Aelira."
She blinked, frowned at the stones, and then threw the stick down. "Four stupid!"
Lucien chuckled under his breath. "I can't argue with that logic."
With a wave of his hand, the stones rose, rearranging themselves into glowing runes in midair. "Each number is a symbol of order. Even chaos follows laws. When you can count them all, you'll start to understand what I mean."
Aelira stared, wide-eyed, trying to touch the floating runes.
Lucien smiled faintly again—soft, distant, but real.
That evening, after she had fallen asleep, Lucien stood in the open courtyard of Dreamveil Estate with a blade in his hand. The sword wasn't forged from metal, but from condensed reality—a blade of seamless black glass that reflected nothing.
Aelira's small figure could be seen through the window behind him, asleep in her cradle.
Lucien drew the blade once, fluid and silent. His movements were perfect—mathematical grace combined with something almost divine.
He slashed the air slowly, and each swing rippled with cosmic precision.
"The first movement…" he said softly, as if explaining to no one. "Always begins in silence. The sword doesn't move through space; space moves for the sword."
He turned his wrist, sending a faint shockwave through the trees. Leaves spiraled upward, then fell back in place, not a single one torn.
"This is what I'll teach her when she's older," he murmured, sheathing the blade. "Not to fight—but to understand."
The days continued quietly.
Lucien read to her. He drew constellations in the sky with his finger, naming each one after forgotten gods and concepts. He built her puzzles that shifted dimensions when she solved them, toys that hummed with the resonance of creation.
And at night, he told her stories—not of power, but of beginnings. Of light before form, of dreams before time.
"Papa?" she asked one night, half asleep in his arms as they sat beneath the glowing roof garden. "What's… void?"
Lucien looked up at the stars for a long moment before answering. "Void," he said softly, "is where everything starts… and everything returns."
"Scary?"
He shook his head. "No. Not if you learn to smile in it."
She smiled drowsily, trusting him entirely.
Lucien brushed her hair back gently. "Sleep, Aelira. You'll understand when you dream."
When she finally drifted off, Lucien gazed at the sleeping girl and then at the night sky beyond Dreamveil Estate.
The stars shimmered, almost like they knew he was watching.
"Dreamveil," he whispered. "A fitting name, after all."
He turned, walking through the silent hallways of his creation, the echo of his footsteps blending with the hum of living architecture.
Somewhere far away, beyond countless worlds, the real Lucien—the one in the metaphysical plane—smiled faintly through his connection with the clone.
In that quiet moment, between two universes, even a god could admit—
This felt… peaceful.