A NEW BEGINNING, AFTER THE END. PART 3

Lucius exhaled, slow and steady. He said nothing more.

Because deep inside, he was beginning to understand.

This wasn't death. Not yet.

But it was the threshold.

And someone—or something—was waiting for him to decide what came next.

"Why are you here?" Lucius asked again, this time more grounded, more aware of what his words might pierce. Then, after a pause, he added what had weighed on his tongue since their first encounter:

"Are you… My guardian deity?"

The question hung in the air between them, delicate and heavy. The figure made no immediate response. Instead, the darkness shifted slightly—its form still shadowed, cloaked in folds of ink—but its eyes, for the briefest moment, softened. Not with pity, not with kindness. Something else. Something older.

It turned its gaze to the mountain range to Lucius's left, a contemplative stillness overtaking its usual stoicism. Then it finally spoke.

"A guardian deity," it began, voice even and low, "protects their chosen. Ensures they remain unharmed. Keeps death at bay… at least until their own mana runs dry." A faint smirk twitched into the tone—mockery or melancholy, Lucius couldn't tell. "I am not that. Not yours. Not anyone's."

It paused, letting the declaration settle like dust on stone.

"But I am something similar. Not a guardian... not quite. Something else. Something tied to someone. A term… even more specific, and admittedly cooler, if I may say so myself."

Lucius's brow furrowed, but the words didn't quite make sense—not yet. He searched for a meaning, for some deeper implication, but the silence that followed gave him nothing. He didn't have time to guess before the world itself began to change beneath them.

The earth trembled—not violently, but like breath being drawn after long stillness. The land unravelled, spiralled, then began reshaping with a suddenness that stole Lucius's focus. Familiar terrain blurred into something new. Something foreign. Like two dreams colliding—his and the entity's—and only one was beginning to dominate.

The mansion vanished first, fading like vapour into the newly twisting winds. The grasslands shrivelled, their warmth stolen. Trees dissolved into ash and scattered upward into the sky, which had already begun to darken—not like nightfall, but like a storm breaking reality apart.

The entity stood calmly amid the chaos, hands folded behind its back as if merely observing.

"Curious," it mused aloud. "Though this world belongs to you, your mind, your memory—my intervention… the moment I stepped in and made myself the lord of this place… it triggered something. A bridge, perhaps. A link between your mind and mine. One that allows memories to bleed across."

Lucius's eyes widened slightly. He understood now. This wasn't just his realm anymore. The darkness was manifesting too—its own memories, its own trauma, its own buried images now invading the landscape that had once been Lucius's sanctuary.

What had once been a dream—his dream—was gone.

The mansion, the children, the laughter, all erased.

And in their place?

Storms. Colossal, violent, and unnatural. The skies weren't simply clouded; they were fractured. As if the heavens themselves had been ripped open, great veins of lightning writhed through the void like serpents. Thunder cracked not with sound, but with force that made the very air bend inward. The storm Lucius had endured during the Chimaera battle felt insignificant now—a whisper compared to the scream of this sky.

Below it all stretched a wasteland—a fallen city, flattened beyond recognition. Towers lay shattered, their bones buried in dust. Craters scarred the ground like impact wounds from gods at war. The scale of ruin defied comprehension—some of the indentations stretched for miles, wide enough to devour whole cities.

Lucius turned slowly, trying to find anything, anyone, familiar in the devastation. Nothing. Not even echoes remained.

Then he looked at the entity.

Its expression hadn't changed much, but its eyes, those cold, deep-blue eyes that shimmered like a sea sealed beneath ice, glinted with something unfamiliar. A tremor. Recognition. Maybe even dread.

Lucius felt it too.

This place… it wasn't his dream or memory. It was someone else's memory, it was the darkness's memory, that overtook and rewrote his own.

The mansion and family had been his escape. A fantasy—his imagined future. He remembered now: the children playing? They belonged to Mercy, Rebecca, Edward, and Adrianna. The girl chasing the puppy—Siara—was a name he and Sara had once spoken in quiet moments, should they ever have a daughter. A tribute to their mentor, Sia. Even Buck, Lav, Arcane, and Rartar had been there, beneath the trees, as he had always hoped they would be.

But this?

This ruin, this storm, this cold that bit even his thoughts—it was the darkness's memory now. Or perhaps a nightmare that refused to die inside the darkened entity.

Lucius looked at it again. The figure hadn't moved. Yet the ground pulsed faintly around it. As if the memory being summoned didn't belong only to the entity, but was being forced to surface through its connection to him. Shared. Bled out.

"Is this yours?" Lucius finally asked, his voice low.

The figure didn't answer immediately. Its gaze remained locked on the broken world around them, as though afraid that speaking too soon would shatter something fragile hidden within this destruction.

But something in its silence said everything.

Yes, it was.

And this was only the beginning of what Lucius had yet to see.