The vision cracked.

Lucien gasped awake.

The Origin Core Shrine returned around him all at once.

For several breaths, Lucien did not understand where he was.

Then sensation returned.

His hands were gripping the shrine floor hard enough to leave marks in the stone. His body was drenched in sweat. His breathing came rough and uneven as though he had just been dragged out of an ocean deeper than reality itself.

Then Lucien laughed once.

It came out rough and humorless.

"Of course," he whispered. "Of course it gets worse."

Lucien lowered his head and shut his eyes.

His thoughts would not settle.

He did not know how long he remained there.

He did not even remember walking back to his room.

One moment he was in the shrine.

The next, he stood inside his private chamber.

He looked pale.

That annoyed him for some reason.

Then another memory surfaced.

The Primordial Slime.

Long ago, it had told him that there was a reason the Primordial Entities wanted the Origin Core.

They had seen something beyond the universe.

And the Origin Core would help them.

Lucien’s eyes narrowed.

"Are they connected?" he muttered.

The Primordials’ goal.

The Abyss’s goal.

Were the Primordials and the Abyss moving because of the same shadow?

If so, then the question became worse.

Were the Primordials truly evil?

Lucien hated the question the moment it appeared.

Because it had no clean answer.

If the Primordials had seen something beyond the universe, then perhaps they too believed they were acting for survival.

Perhaps they looked at the Origin Core the way the Arch-Lords looked at timelines. Not as something sacred, but as a tool.

Maybe they were not simply villains.

Maybe they were trying to save something.

Then Lucien’s expression hardened.

"No," he whispered. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Even if that were partly true, it did not absolve them.

If they truly wanted to save the universe, they could have coordinated with the Primordial Slime. They could have sought unity. They could have protected the small worlds instead of letting war and ruin spread across creation.

Instead, they reached for power.

Maybe they feared something real.

Maybe their reason had once been large enough to look noble from a distance.

But somewhere along the way, survival had become possession.

And possession had become cruelty.

Lucien exhaled slowly.

"In the end," he murmured, "they probably just want to save themselves."

That sounded much more believable.

And much more dangerous.

He rubbed his forehead.

His mind still refused to stop moving.

He knew too much now.

Not enough to solve anything.

Only enough to understand that every problem he had faced was one piece of a structure too large for comfort.

He almost laughed again.

Just then...

Lucien felt it.

Nothingness.

The sudden wrongness appeared beside him like a part of reality had quietly chosen to stop participating.

Lucien’s eyes snapped open.

He turned.

And there he was.

Alanthuriel.

Lucien stared.

Then he forced himself to breathe.

"Senior Alan," he greeted.

Alanthuriel was silent.

Then his voice entered Lucien’s mind.

"So you have seen the truth."

Those words were enough.

What Lucien saw had been real.

His heart beat harder.

He wanted to ask a dozen things.

But for a moment, no words left him.

Alanthuriel continued.

"The key has been taken back by Oblivion."

Lucien froze.

The room seemed to tilt.

For one horrifying breath, all he could imagine was the vision continuing.

The Arch-Lords recovering the key. The Prime Continuum unlocking. The pruning resuming. The main timeline becoming not protected, but judged.

And if this timeline was deemed flawed?

Everything he knew might cease to be.

Lucien’s throat tightened.

Alanthuriel watched him.

Then, perhaps sensing the direction of his thoughts, spoke again.

"I have given you time."

Lucien looked at him sharply.

Alanthuriel’s meaning remained calm.

"The key will not function soon. I altered it before surrendering it. Its authority remains intact, but its structure no longer answers cleanly. They must decode what I denied. They must rebuild what I made meaningless. That will take years."

Lucien breathed.

Years.

Lucien closed his eyes briefly.

Then opened them again.

"Senior Alan," he said, "may I ask how the fight with Oblivion went?"

Alanthuriel did not answer immediately.

When he finally did, the answer was absolute.

"It was barely a fight."

Lucien stilled.

Alanthuriel continued.

"Oblivion cannot defeat Nihility. That is fact."

The statement held no arrogance.

That made it more convincing.

Alanthuriel spoke as though he were describing the direction of falling rain.

"Oblivion can remove what existed. Nihility can deny that the removal has authority."

Lucien felt a chill move through him.

Alanthuriel went on.

"But victory in combat was never the issue."

Lucien understood before the next words arrived.

"If I refused to surrender the key, the Abyss itself would act."

The room felt colder.

Alanthuriel’s presence deepened.

"The Arch-Lords would no longer wait upon Oblivion’s recovery. They would manually interfere with this timeline. They would not need the key to wound it. They would not need permission from causality. They are among the authorities from which such permissions descend."

Lucien’s fingers curled.

So that was it.

Alanthuriel did not lose.

He chose the less disastrous outcome.

If he held the key, the Abyss would act directly.

If he surrendered the key, modified and delayed, the Abyss would attempt to restore its use first.

Years bought.

But the implication was suffocating.

The Abyss stood beyond ordinary causality.

Lucien had only just understood that causality was the strain of a locked timeline correcting deviations.

But the Abyssal Arch-Lords existed at a level where they could impose changes upon the structure that birthed such corrections.

They were not pieces moving within the board.

They were forces that could reach toward the board itself.

Lucien shivered.

He hated feeling small.

This made him feel microscopic.

Alanthuriel’s voice entered him again.

"For the meantime, there will be no direct problem from them."

Lucien looked up.

"The Abyss will not interfere?"

"Not immediately. Their attention will narrow on the key first."

Alanthuriel paused.

Then added, "I hope you and this world grow during the free time I purchased."

Lucien almost laughed.

Only Alanthuriel could describe a delay before cosmic-scale timeline judgment as free time.

He lowered himself into a chair and pressed his palms together before his face.

His mind sank.

Lootwell already had enough reputation in the West.

His people were growing.

He could influence the world now.

Not completely.

But enough to shape direction.

Still, other threats remained.

The Black Mass. The Primordial Incarnations. Other scheming factions.

Lucien leaned back and covered his eyes with one hand.

"I shouldn’t have fucking peeked at a fate I can’t afford to hold."

The words came out tired.

He had wanted answers.

Now his mind could not stop building implications from them.

He was just one man.

One absurd man with a cheat, yes.

A ruler of an impossible territory, yes.

But still one man.

What was one man supposed to do against beings who discussed timelines like strategies and destroyed realities because they failed a test no one living had been told they were taking?

Alanthuriel said nothing for a while.

Then the nothingness beside him changed.

Lucien lowered his hand.

Alanthuriel assumed a humanoid form.

It was still not entirely natural.

He looked like a tall, pale man shaped from controlled absence, with dark hair that seemed more like an agreement with shadow than actual strands.

His eyes were calm and colorless at first glance, but if Lucien looked too long, he felt as if he was staring into a place where all unnecessary things had already been removed.

Still, the form was easier to speak to.

"I will stay for now," Alanthuriel said.

Lucien stared.

Alanthuriel looked toward the distant view of Lootwell beyond the chamber.

"I want to watch what your territory will become."

Lucien opened his mouth.

Then closed it.

Alanthuriel continued, "Do not worry about the Abyss for now. You are on the right path."

Lucien stilled.

The words landed heavier than he expected.

From anyone else, they might have been comfort.

From Alanthuriel, they felt like measurement.

"Senior Alan, you are sure?" Lucien asked.

Alanthuriel looked at him.

"You gather fragments instead of hoarding only power. You grow a tree instead of sharpening only weapons. You build systems that raise others rather than standing alone at the top of a grave. You are changing people. That matters more than you currently understand."

Lucien fell silent.

Alanthuriel’s gaze returned to the city.

"One being cannot change the fate of a universe by standing apart from it."

Lucien listened.

"But one being can alter the people who will carry that universe forward. Enough altered roads create weight. Enough weight bends fate even in a locked timeline."

Lucien’s breathing slowed.

That thought entered him like a key turning in a quieter lock.

He did not need to personally become the answer to everything.

What he could do was continue what he had already been doing.

If the timeline was locked, then every person who grew stronger inside it mattered more, not less.

There were no discarded branches to hide failure. No alternate roads to carry lost potential. Every transformed life added weight to this one road.

Lootwell was not only a territory.

It was a method.

Lucien slowly lowered his hands.

The tightness in his chest loosened.

Then he smiled faintly.

’Right.’

One man might not change the universe.

But if that man changed enough people, and those people changed others, then perhaps the universe would one day look back and realize its fate had already shifted.

Alanthuriel watched him.

For a moment, the Abyssal Arch-Lord’s humanoid face seemed almost pleased.

Lucien looked back at him and exhaled.

"Then I’ll continue."

Alanthuriel nodded once.

"That is all I wished to confirm."

Lucien gave a tired laugh.