A blinding white swallowed him whole.
For a moment, there was no pain.
No fear.
No sound.
Just weightlessness.
Aiden floated in a colorless void, limbs drifting as if underwater. His breath echoed strangely—too loud, too slow, as though time itself had stretched thin.
He blinked.
No walls.
No floor.
No Yunaria.
No Fragment.
No Astral Gate.
Nothing but one endless, empty expanse.
His voice trembled when he finally spoke.
"…Where am I?"
The answer came as a whisper.
Not from outside.
From inside.
"Where you always return."
Aiden froze.
The white around him rippled—once, twice—like disturbed water. Shapes formed within the light: silhouettes, blurred by haze, outlines of people he didn't recognize yet somehow instinctively knew.
A battlefield.
A broken throne.
A woman's silhouette reaching toward him.
A dragon spiraling in the sky.
His heart hammered.
"No… no, stop—stop showing me this—!"
He pressed his palms against his temples, but the images only grew clearer.
A voice—calm, deep, ancient—cut through the chaos:
"You have forgotten your cycle."
Aiden spun around.
And there, standing before him, was a creature far larger than he expected.
A dragon—
but not like the monstrous beasts of myth.
This one was elegant, luminous, and made of starlight.
Its scales shimmered with constellations.
Its eyes—gentle and vast—held galaxies within.
Aiden stared in awe.
"You're… Astraxion."
The dragon inclined its head.
"A shard of me, yes. Your mind cannot yet endure my true form."
Aiden swallowed.
"So this… this is a memory?"
The dragon's wings unfurled slightly, light dispersing like falling snow.
"No. This is the space between memory and truth. A place your soul returns to whenever it faces erasure."
Aiden clenched his fists.
"Why does everything talk like I'm supposed to understand?! I don't know what I am. I don't know this 'cycle'. I don't know any of you!"
Astraxion's luminous gaze softened.
"You do not remember because remembering would break you."
Aiden's breath caught.
Astraxion continued:
"You sealed your throne. You erased your past. You scattered your own power. All to escape the burden of a crown made from the bones of dying worlds."
Aiden stepped back.
"No… no, that's insane. I would never—"
"You did."
Aiden's voice cracked.
"Why?! Why would I erase myself?!"
The dragon lowered its head until its snout hovered inches from Aiden.
"Because a king who remembers every fallen world would lose his sanity."
Aiden froze.
Astraxion's voice was gentle—but the truth beneath it was unbearable.
"You bore witness to a thousand worlds collapsing. You carried the screams of civilizations. You held the memories of every soul lost to the void."
Aiden trembled.
"And when the World-Eater rose against you… you did the only thing you could."
The void rippled.
The images sharpened—
Aiden standing atop a mountain of broken stars.
The World-Eater devouring the sky.
Aiden raising a blade of light.
A crown of floating shards orbiting his head like planets.
A voice—his own—whispering:
"Erase me. Let the next cycle begin."
Aiden stumbled backward.
"No… no, no—this isn't me. I'm not that person. I'm not some king of—of erased worlds—!"
Astraxion's wings closed around him in a cocoon of warm light.
It wasn't threatening.
It was comforting.
"Aiden… listen."
The dragon's voice softened even more:
"You are not being asked to become what you once were."
Aiden blinked up at him, confused.
"You are being asked to survive long enough to choose your own path."
Aiden's breath steadied—but only a little.
"You're saying the Fragment… came to pull me back into that version of myself."
"Yes."
"And Yunaria… she was protecting me because she knew?"
Astraxion did not immediately answer.
Instead, he gazed into the void where Yunaria's faint silhouette flickered—her outline bathed in silver light, desperately reaching toward him.
"Yunaria is bound to you by a vow she made across cycles."
"A vow…?"
"One she has already died fulfilling more than once."
Aiden felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.
"Died…?"
The dragon did not soften the truth:
"She has always stood between you and the World-Eater. Each cycle, she chooses to protect you — even when it means her end."
Aiden's voice cracked.
"Why?! Why would she do that for me?!"
Astraxion replied:
"Because you asked her to."
Aiden's breath caught.
A soft pulse echoed through the void.
Yunaria's silhouette grew brighter—reaching, reaching—
Aiden… come back… please…
The dragon stepped aside, creating a glowing path.
"You must return. The Fragment seeks to claim you. Yunaria cannot hold it alone."
Aiden stared at him.
"Before I go… answer one thing."
The dragon's cosmic eyes met his.
"Am I truly this… 'Lost King'?"
Astraxion spoke without hesitation:
"You are. But you are no longer the king you once were… nor the king you fear becoming."
Aiden exhaled shakily.
"And what am I now?"
Astraxion's enormous head bowed—not in superiority, but in respect.
"You, Aiden, are the first soul in all cycles to choose your own identity."
The path lit brighter.
The void trembled.
Yunaria's voice grew more desperate.
AIDEN—WAKE UP!!
Aiden took a single step forward—
But Astraxion spoke again:
"One last gift."
A warm pulse touched Aiden's chest.
A sigil—different from the Archivist star—flared briefly.
Aiden gasped.
"What… what was that?"
"My memory. When the time comes, call my name."
"Astraxion…"
"You will not face the darkness alone."
The world exploded back into white—
And Aiden fell.