Paraxis' Prison did not open.
It unfolded.
Layers of unreality peeled back like pages being torn from a book that was never meant to be read. The descent was not downward, nor inward, but conceptual—each step Lucien took stripped away a layer of existence until even meaning began to thin.
This was not a place where criminals were held.
This was where mistakes were buried.
Where taboos were silenced.
Where beings were erased from narrative continuity but not permitted the mercy of death.
Even the Watchers avoided lingering here.
Elyndor walked beside Lucien, his expression unreadable, but his awareness stretched taut. The prison reacted to Lucien's presence like a wounded animal—walls of negation tightening, seals reinforcing themselves, inscriptions rewriting faster and faster.
Lucien didn't slow.
The moment he crossed the threshold—
He knew.
"There," he said quietly.
Elyndor followed his gaze.
At the center of the prison stood a cluster of cages unlike the others. They were not forged from laws or symbols, but from denial itself—structures that insisted, over and over, that what they contained should not exist.
Lucien smiled.
A small, genuine smile.
"Found you."
The cages shattered.
There was no flash.
No explosion.
No resistance.
Lucien snapped his fingers—and denial ceased to function.
The prison screamed.
Seals older than the metaphysical plane collapsed into dustless nothing. Chains forged from forgotten epochs unraveled. Entire containment narratives imploded as if they had never been written.
Elyndor took an involuntary step back.
From the broken cages stepped two figures.
A man tall and broad-shouldered, his presence carrying the quiet authority of someone who had once stood at the beginning of something vast. His hair was silver-black, his eyes deep crimson—calm, sharp, unbroken despite eons of imprisonment.
Beside him stood a woman, her aura gentle but impossibly resilient, eyes like starlight reflected in still water. Where the man felt like foundation, she felt like continuity.
The Founder of the Dreamveil lineage.
And his wife.
The First Dreamveil.
They looked around slowly, disoriented—then their eyes fell on Lucien.
Recognition sparked instantly.
Not memory.
Blood.
The man inhaled sharply.
The woman's hand trembled.
"…So," the founder said softly, voice steady despite everything,
"the line endured."
Lucien inclined his head slightly.
"More than that," he replied. "It evolved."
They felt it then.
Not power.
Inevitability.
The woman smiled faintly, tears forming despite herself.
"You carry the end… and the beginning," she whispered.
Lucien stepped aside and gestured casually.
"My grandfather Lexus will explain everything for now," he said.
"Just… take it easy."
With a thought, a portal opened—clean, warm, and impossibly gentle amid the prison's horror. Beyond it lay the Dreamveil estate on Aetherion.
Selene stood there.
Arios beside her.
Lexus waiting.
The ancestors stepped through.
The portal closed.
And Paraxis' Prison was suddenly much quieter.
Lucien resumed walking.
Elyndor followed in silence.
They passed cages containing things that made even the Watchers uneasy.
Entities older than the metaphysical plane—beings born before concepts stabilized. Monsters that predated gods, whose mere names had once collapsed civilizations. Abstract horrors that existed only as outcomes without causes.
Lucien didn't spare them a second glance.
"They're nothing," he said casually.
Elyndor did not disagree.
Then—
Lucien stopped.
One cage remained.
Smaller. Simpler.
Inside sat a boy.
Black hair.
Brownish-black eyes.
No visible chains—yet utterly bound.
He looked up as Lucien approached.
Their gazes met.
Something stirred.
Potential—not raw power, but direction. A convergence point waiting for meaning.
Lucien studied him for a moment, then smiled faintly.
"Huh," he murmured. "Interesting."
The boy felt it.
Not fear.
Not hope.
But the terrifying sensation of being seen.
Lucien turned away.
Elyndor hesitated, then asked carefully,
"You're not going to free him?"
Lucien glanced back once.
"Not yet."
They reached the prison's exit.
Before stepping through, Lucien stopped again.
"Elyndor," he said calmly.
"Yes?"
"I entered Paraxis for two reasons."
Elyndor listened carefully.
"For my family," Lucien continued,
"and for what I felt like doing the moment I arrived."
He turned, crimson eyes glowing faintly—not with threat, but certainty.
"Listen closely. I'm staying here for a while."
The Watchers stirred instantly.
Lucien raised a hand lazily.
"Relax. Time doesn't get a vote with me. Not with you. Not with Paraxis."
He smiled.
"I'm going to get familiar with your realm."
A pause.
"And I'm sure you know why."
Lucien looked directly at Elyndor.
"You won't deny it."
For the first time since Lucien arrived—
Elyndor smiled back.
"…No," he admitted quietly.
"I won't."
Because Paraxis had catalogued the future.
Because the Götterdämmerung had already begun.
Because the Library of Reality had opened a new book.
THE LIBRARY OF REALITIES -
The space shifted.
Endless shelves stretched outward in every direction, each holding worlds, timelines, endings, beginnings. Stories written, unwritten, and never meant to exist.
Lucien stepped inside.
Hands in his pockets.
Eyes calm.
The Library of Realities welcomed him.
And somewhere—
A page turned.