Chapter 816 - Nothingness

Chapter 816: Chapter 816 - Nothingness

The darkness did not end.

Lucien followed Alanthuriel through it for what felt like far longer than the distance between two places should have allowed.

There was no wind, no ground, and no stars.

Even the pressure of the Abyss that Lucien had expected never arrived.

The realization came gradually.

This was not the Abyss.

Lucien looked around more carefully.

The darkness surrounding them possessed no hostility because there was almost nothing here capable of being hostile.

Space felt unfinished.

Distance existed only because Alanthuriel continued moving.

Time passed because Lucien carried his own continuity with him.

Outside those references, the surrounding emptiness offered very little for either Law to describe.

"Nihility," Lucien murmured.

Alanthuriel glanced back.

"Part of it."

That answer immediately stopped Lucien from making the mistake of assuming this endless emptiness belonged entirely to Alanthuriel.

Nihility was too vast for that.

It was not simply another plane hidden beside the Big World, nor was it a deeper region of the Abyss.

It was closer to the absence between structured things.

Universes possessed boundaries.

Planes possessed boundaries.

Timelines possessed continuity.

Where those structures did not completely touch, Nihility could exist between them.

Alanthuriel’s authority over Nihility allowed him to navigate that absence.

He had not created the darkness surrounding them.

He had opened a route through it.

Lucien began to understand why the path had felt so different from an ordinary spatial gate.

There was no tunnel connecting two locations.

Alanthuriel had temporarily withdrawn them from the structures that normally defined where something was.

A faint thread stretched ahead of him.

Lucien had not noticed it before.

It was almost impossible to distinguish from the surrounding emptiness, yet Alanthuriel followed it without hesitation.

"Is that our route?"

"One of them."

Lucien decided not to ask how many others existed.

The answer would probably create more questions.

They continued.

Here, the waiting made sense.

Alanthuriel had not brought Lucien directly to the Arch-Lords because arriving too early would expose him.

They were moving through Nihility while the enemy prepared the temporal passage elsewhere.

When the correct moment came, Alanthuriel would unfold this route directly into the operation.

Until then, Lucien remained somewhere that ordinary perception would struggle to reach.

The silence gave him too much time to think.

Eventually, one question became impossible to ignore.

"Senior Alan."

Alanthuriel slowed slightly.

Lucien looked into the emptiness ahead.

"Before we left, our diviners saw something."

Alanthuriel said nothing.

Lucien continued.

"Aurelia followed the future. Elunara followed individual fate. The Grandmaster searched for the point where things went wrong."

He remembered that wall of darkness.

"They all reached the same place."

Alanthuriel stopped.

For the first time since entering Nihility, the route became completely still.

Lucien watched him.

"The futures ended," Lucien said. "There was only darkness beyond them. Aurelia said it felt like the dead planes where some of the small worlds once rested."

Alanthuriel remained silent.

Lucien had expected questions.

There were none.

That troubled him.

"Does that mean we fail?"

The words disappeared into Nihility without an echo.

Alanthuriel did not answer immediately.

His attention remained somewhere Lucien could not follow.

Several moments passed.

Then Alanthuriel finally spoke.

"Trust yourself."

Lucien frowned.

That was not the answer he wanted.

Alanthuriel turned toward him.

"Everything from the moment you enter will depend on your decisions."

Lucien stared.

"You didn’t answer my question."

"No."

The honesty somehow made the uncertainty worse.

Lucien looked away.

The blank future returned to his thoughts.

Perhaps Aurelia had already seen the result.

Perhaps every road from the present ended because the mission failed and the forged timeline replaced their own.

Perhaps everything Lucien had prepared before leaving was simply delaying something that had already become inevitable.

The thought lasted longer than he liked.

Alanthuriel spoke again.

"I told you before that there is a reason I chose you."

Lucien looked back.

"And I told you that one day you would understand why I consider your existence paradoxical."

Lucien’s expression changed slightly.

Alanthuriel had used variations of that description before.

He had never explained enough for Lucien to understand what he truly meant.

"Will I learn that in the past?"

"You may."

That was irritatingly vague.

Alanthuriel continued before Lucien could complain. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

"Your future is unusually difficult to establish around certain points. Your existence carries relationships that should not comfortably coexist, yet they do. You have already seen enough to know that ordinary causal assumptions do not always describe you correctly."

Lucien listened.

"That does not guarantee your success."

Alanthuriel’s voice remained calm.

"It gives you the ability to reach choices others could not."

The distinction mattered.

Lucien lowered his gaze.

Alanthuriel was not promising him victory.

He was telling him the future had not been decided for him.

For some reason, that helped more.

Lucien exhaled.

"All right."

He did not ask about the darkness again.

There was no useful answer available yet.

Whatever waited beyond Aurelia’s blank future would either be prevented by what Lucien did or created by what he failed to do.

Thinking about it would not change the mission.

Preparing himself might.

•••

They moved again.

Lucien eventually noticed Alanthuriel shaping something beside him.

A strand of darkness emerged from the surrounding Nihility.

Calling it a strand was misleading.

It had no physical thickness.

Lucien perceived it because Alanthuriel gave the connection enough definition for his senses to recognize.

One end remained in Alanthuriel’s hand.

The other moved toward Lucien.

Lucien instinctively examined it.

"What is this?"

"Your way back."

Lucien’s attention sharpened.

The thread touched him.

It did not attach to his clothes or skin.

It settled somewhere deeper, along the boundary of his existence.

Lucien felt Alanthuriel on the other end.

Faintly.

The sensation resembled a direction that existed even when every ordinary direction disappeared.

Alanthuriel released his hand.

The thread became nearly impossible to see.

Lucien could still feel it.

"If you want to return, pull it."

Lucien looked at him.

"Physically?"

"Intent is enough."

Alanthuriel’s expression was serious.

"If you decide that you need to leave, allow that intention to reach the thread. I will feel it."

"And then?"

"I will retrieve you."

Lucien remained quiet.

Alanthuriel added, "Whether the mission has succeeded or failed."

That surprised him.

"If I give up halfway?"

"I will pull you back."

"If stopping me means the timeline is lost?"

Alanthuriel’s gaze did not change.

"The choice remains yours."

Lucien stared at him for several seconds.

There were no conditions, no threat, and no hidden demand that Lucien die in the past if circumstances became impossible.

Alanthuriel had asked him to attempt something that could decide the fate of their timeline.

He was still leaving Lucien a way home.

Something warm settled beneath the tension in Lucien’s chest.

He nodded.

"Thank you, Senior Alan."

Alanthuriel acknowledged it with a slight movement of his head.

Then he looked ahead.

The faint route through Nihility had begun changing.

Lucien sensed it too.

Something enormous had shifted beyond the darkness.

Not toward them, but around them.

Structures that had been impossibly distant a moment ago were approaching the edge of perception.

Alanthuriel’s expression became severe.

"It is beginning."

Lucien’s attention sharpened.

Alanthuriel continued.

"When we emerge, focus on the objective."

Lucien nodded.

"Do not waste your attention on the Arch-Lords."

That was easy advice to agree with.

Lucien still remembered Oblivion’s gaze killing him before his revival measure restored him.

He had become incomparably stronger since then.

But he had no desire to test how much more comfortably he could survive being noticed now.

Alanthuriel looked directly at him.

"Do not stare at any of them longer than necessary."

Lucien understood..

"Once the Incarnations enter the passage, you follow immediately."

Alanthuriel’s Nihility began spreading around him.

His familiar human shape remained visible for a moment longer.

Then it became increasingly difficult to separate his outline from the absence surrounding them.

Lucien had seen Alanthuriel’s true nature before.

This was different.

The darkness was not covering him.

It seemed to remember that Alanthuriel belonged to it.

Space loosened.

Time lost its ordinary direction.

Lucien’s instincts immediately began warning him.

Alanthuriel looked toward the structure beyond Nihility.

"Prepare."

Lucien gathered himself.

Living Creation settled.

His Omnigenesis Vessel became still.

His understanding of Time tightened around his continuity.

The Aevan world remained quiet within his inner universe.

Everything else faded from his attention.

Alanthuriel raised three fingers.

"Three."

Lucien focused on the route.

"Two."

Something beyond the darkness opened.

"One."

Nihility unraveled.

And reality returned all at once.