"So you are Raziel, right?" she said, a faintly mocking smile curling her lips.
In that same instant, she acted.
Not with words.
Not with gestures.
She looked.
She attempted to scan him—peel him open layer by layer, seize every truth, force his existence to kneel beneath her will. It was an instinctive act, something she had done to countless beings before. Kings, Sovereigns, false gods—all had bent.
But Raziel did not move.
He did not flinch.
He did not resist.
He did not even acknowledge it.
He simply stood there, untouched, his expression cold and unreadable, as though nothing at all had happened.
And then—
She saw it.
Not him.
Something else.
An endless void stretched before her, boundless and immeasurable. Its foundation flowed like water—yet it was not water. It was black, deeper than absence itself, rippling endlessly. And still, impossibly, it reflected light.
Not a sun.
THE SUN.
The light that empowers this OMNIVERSE.
The light from which order, time, and meaning are born.
Yet there was no sky.
No source.
Only the reflection.
She realized she was standing upon it.
Then they emerged.
Entities—dark and white—erupted from the void like wounds being torn open. They had no faces. No bodies. No presence.
And yet—
They existed.
They screamed.
Not with sound, but with a resonance so violent it erased memory, silence, and peace alike. Every scream birthed chaos. Every movement rewrote causality into something broken and wrong.
They wandered endlessly, arms raised, tearing their own essences apart and stitching them back together. Their presence spread like disasters incarnate—unfathomable calamities without intent or mercy.
They did not fight one another.
They fought their own possibilities.
Reality fractured under the strain.
Then the light shifted.
The Sun—THE Sun—was swallowed.
Yet its light remained.
Where it once was, teeth replaced it.
Endless teeth.
Singular mysteries stacked upon one another, representing the Unknown itself—the primal fear born not from death, but from false being. From something that should not exist, yet does.
The black waters beneath her feet transformed into mirrors, reflecting endlessly—not her reflection, but THE OTHER SIDE.
THE OTHER PRESENCE.
She tried to look away.
She looked up.
And it became worse.
A tree rose before her.
Not a tree—THE TREE.
It sprouted from the very origin that began the sphinx of existence itself. Its roots pierced everything. Its branches covered the Great Beyond. Around it hung universes, multiverses, singularities, orders, Laws, Casualities, Primordial Voids, Imaginations, Balance, Potential, Nihilities, Entropies, Paradoxes, Identities, Mysteries, chaos, megaverses, gigaverses, Hyperverses, infinite Beyonds, The Origins, dimensions, civilizations—
All shaped like fruit.
All meant to be eaten.
The tree was black and red, its bark pulsating as though alive. Nothing escaped its knowing. Nothing hid from it. Every secret was already consumed.
And above it—
An eye.
One vast, impossible eye.
The eye that saw all.
Knew all.
Erased all.
Perceived all that is, all that is not, and all that will be.
White rings looped endlessly around it like broken halos—loopholes in existence itself. Its iris was black, shielding itself from its own existence, as though even it feared what it was meant to witness.
Its pupil was scattered—particles of countless colors, each one an entire omniverse, drifting endlessly.
She turned sideways, desperate to escape—
And found doors.
Countless doors.
Colourless, yet visible. Handleless, yet openable. Doors that could never be closed once opened.
Doors to other realities.
Not fiction.
Not non-fiction.
Not inevitability.
not Awareness.
not Existence and non-existence.
But.
Other realities.
Her curiosity betrayed her.
She opened one.
And screamed.
Thirteen thrones stood within.
Embodiments.
Each throne personified a Law—radiating, spinning slowly in a perfect circle. Twelve were visible.
The thirteenth—
Was above.
Beyond the skies that served as the ceiling of this place. A throne not seated within reality, but above nothing and everything infinitely.
Then—
She snapped back.
"Mother? Are you alright?"
Michael's voice reached her, distant yet urgent. "You looked… spaced out."
Lyra staggered slightly, her breath uneven.
For the first time in centuries—
Her hands were shaking.
"Yes, dear… I'm alright," Lyra said softly.
She reached out, intending to place her hands upon her son's shoulders—to reassure him, to anchor herself in something real.
But she couldn't.
Her hands trembled violently.
Her body betrayed her.
Tears streamed freely down her core—not silent tears, not restrained ones—but the cries of an Elder Dragon, raw and ancient. Her sobs shook the air so violently that even the cry of a new born infant would have been insignificant in comparison.
She was crying without sound, yet the Arena felt it.
What had she just seen?
She didn't know.
Where had she been?
She didn't know.
Her mind—honed by eons of time, sharpened by dominion over causality—had no frame of reference. No memory, no prophecy, no legend could contain what she had witnessed.
But there was one thing she knew with terrifying certainty.
She had looked upon something she was never meant to perceive.
Her gaze slowly drifted back to Raziel.
she wanted to know what kind of being protected him.
what kind of being he was.
She wanted to know the mystery behind his very existence.
Her curiosity burned hotter than her fear. The mystery gnawed at her very soul, tearing at her sense of self. She needed to know. She had to know.
Lyra steadied herself.
Power surged within her as she forcibly tried to regain control, her dragon heart desperately trying to stabilise. She straightened, stepped forward, and faced Raziel once more.
Her voice shook.
"Are you… friends with my child?" she asked. her voice shaking with terror.
The pressure around her words was immense—centuries of authority, instinct, and maternal fear compressed into a single sentence.
Raziel saw it.
He felt bad for the mother of his friend.
He understood.
And so—
He acted.
[Absolute Null]
The world stopped.
Not slowed.Not frozen.
Stopped.
Pressure vanished. Aura vanished. Sound vanished.
Breath ceased across existence.
Every being—every student, every professor, every soul tied to this world—was stilled completely. Even the flow of causality itself was erased, reduced to nothing.
Nothing breathed.
Nothing moved.
Nothing was.
Except—
Lyra Draven.
She stood alone in a stillness so profound it predated creation itself. A silence older than time. The stillness before the calm. The stillness before the first thought ever formed.
Raziel stepped forward.
When he spoke, his voice did not travel through air.
It declared.
"Yes."
The word echoed everywhere at once—across the Arena, across the Gate, across layers of reality that should not have been connected. It was not loud, yet it was absolute.
"I am your son's saviour."
The moment his words settled—
The terror vanished.
The fear dissolved.
The pressure that had been crushing Lyra's soul simply… ceased to exist. Her heart steadied. Her tears slowed. The scream lodged in her chest faded into silence.
She could breathe again.
She swallowed.
"I… I have one question for you," Lyra said quietly.
"What is it?" Raziel replied, his tone calm, almost gentle.
Her lips trembled.
"WHO ARE YOU?"
For the first time—
Raziel did not answer immediately.
Instead, something awoke.
[Title Activated: MAKER OF EVERYTHING]
The world responded.
Light bowed.Shadow kneeled.Concepts fell silent.
Lyra's vision shifted—not violently, not painfully—but inevitably. She saw Raziel not as a man, not as a being—
But as meaning itself.
The environment shifted.
They weren't in the arena anymore.
They were in the space of Origin.
He stood at the centre of all things and all non-things. Every law flowed from him. Every ending curved back into his beginning. Creation was not something he did—
It was something that happened because he existed.
When he spoke again, every syllable carried the weight of Godhood—not authority enforced, but truth accepted.
"I am," Raziel said, his voice resonating like scripture written into reality,"the one who makes."
"I am the reason something exists instead of nothing."
"I am the boundary that even gods cannot cross… and the hand that allows them to exist at all."
Lyra's knees buckled.
She did not fall because she was forced to.
She fell because worship felt natural.
Raziel looked down at her—not with arrogance, not with cruelty—but with an unfathomable calm.
"And to you," he continued, his words shaping belief itself,"I am simply the one who chose to protect your son."
Silence followed.
A sacred silence.
Lyra lowered her head, her entire being trembling—not in fear now, but in reverence.
For she finally understood one thing:
She had not met a god.
She had met the reason gods could exist at all.
She knew who he was, but she didn't know what he was.
she had another question.
Yet, she didn't ask him. Instead, she restrained her curiosity, keeping it to herself.
She asked him in her mind, as if she wanted him to hear her:
'Raziel ÆLNOÛS'
"WHAT ARE YOU???"
But the mystery of Raziel ÆLNOÛS had only just begun.
["Truly Interesting!]
["my #@>?"]