Darkness swallowed him, but it wasn't frightening. Not entirely. It was more like standing inside a deep hush, a pause between heartbeats. Eli's knees felt weak, but Nyxion's presence steadied him in a way no one else could.
"You're wondering why me," Nyxion said, voice echoing softly, carrying through the nothingness. "A question of caution, or of curiosity?"
"Both," Eli admitted. His voice sounded small even to his own ears.
The silence stretched. Then Nyxion stepped forward—or maybe the space itself bent toward them; Eli could no longer tell. A pinprick of violet light appeared, expanding into a faint street lined with shadows. They stood somewhere between the Vale house and the wider realm, yet it was neither.
"You're unclaimed," Nyxion repeated. "Not peasant. Not worker. Not lord. Not all-mighty. Not marked by divinity."
"I'm… nothing?" Eli asked.
"You are more," Nyxion corrected, tilting their head. "But your power has yet to choose form. You walk in the world of others, yet you are unseen, unnamed. That is dangerous—and useful."
Eli swallowed, trying to make sense of it. He had always known the family secret: the Vale house wasn't just a house. Each member of his family held a talent no ordinary human could wield. Mara, the eldest, could bend perception; she made herself nearly untouchable by prying eyes. Lila, his second-oldest sister, could glimpse a few seconds into the future, the way one sees the bend of a river before it turns. His parents—careful, deliberate—guarded powers too subtle for casual notice, shaping the home's safety in ways Eli only partly understood. And the twins… well, even the twins had a knack for chaos.
And yet here he was, middle child, the one whose gifts felt unformed, standing before a Holy One who could crush a lord with thought alone.
"I have a task for you," Nyxion said, their tone shifting. "A marker must be placed."
Eli blinked. "A marker?"
"A symbol. A signal. Something only the realm will understand. Not a weapon. Not a call to arms. Something subtler… but vital."
He wanted to ask why me? but before the question could take shape, Nyxion continued:
"You will travel. You will cross regions where monsters roam freely, where factions fight over nothing, and where the power of even a lord may bend in unexpected ways. And you will place it in a place where it will be seen only by those meant to see it."
Eli's stomach twisted. "I don't even know how to—"
"You will learn," Nyxion said simply. "The realm responds to you. And it will protect you, in ways you cannot yet understand."
For a moment, the violet sky darkened further, and Eli felt the presence of the other beings—lords, all-mighties, workers, peasants—like eyes moving behind the veil. Some curious. Some wary. Some indifferent.
"You are… alone?" Eli asked.
Nyxion nodded. "I do not travel with followers. I have my reasons. The task is yours alone. And when it is done, you may return—or not."
"Or not?" Eli's voice caught.
"The realm does not force its will," Nyxion said. "It only opens doors. You decide which to walk through."
Then, without further warning, a rush of wind wrapped around him, and the darkness was gone. The streets of the Vale neighborhood blinked back into focus, quiet and unremarkable. A leaf spiraled past in the breeze, the twins' laughter echoed faintly from the porch, and his mother's humming drifted from the kitchen.
He was home. Somehow, yet not. His body ached with the weight of the unseen, and his mind buzzed with the presence of the task that now rested on him.
Nyxion's words lingered, like a mark pressed into the fabric of his memory: Unclaimed. Unnamed. Useful.
And Eli knew, with a certainty that made his chest tight, that nothing in the Vale house—or the world beyond it—would ever feel ordinary again.