The sky rippled like a vast, translucent canvas above a land that hadn't existed a moment before. No stars, no sun, no shadows — only a space that became real because Albert had stepped into it.
The stones beneath his feet had no weight, yet left footprints. Not because they had to — but because time itself demanded it.
Albert walked without hurry. Clothed in the silence of a consciousness that no longer sought answers, but simply contemplated the forms in which questions could become roads.
— Are you... here? whispered a voice, drifting among currents of light.
It wasn't a familiar voice. It had no body, nor did it come from anywhere. It was formed as Albert advanced, as if the space itself was trying to speak.
— I am. But not as an answer, he said. Nor am I still a question.
A cloud of thought fragments began to swirl around him — scenes from unlived lives, dreams abandoned by other realities. None of them touched him. But each recognized him.
From the shadow of a fractured pillar of light, a figure emerged. Young. Dressed in a gray robe, with silver strands flowing from the shoulders. Hair down to the waist. Eyes... empty.
— You are the one who shattered the threshold. The one who refused to choose one of the three doors. The one who descended without permission.
Albert stopped. Not out of fear. Out of respect.
— And you are? he asked.
— I am the one sent to hand you one last question. Not because you must answer... but because the world still hasn't understood that your silence is already a choice.
A smile tugged at the corner of Albert's lips.
— Then ask.
— If you hadn't been you... what would you have been?
For a moment, the space contracted. The answer was obvious. And because of that... impossible to speak.
Albert looked up at the ceiling of the sky.
— I would have been someone trying to understand me.
Silence. Then, the figure in the gray robe unraveled, leaving behind a single leaf — one that had never existed in any season. Albert looked at it.
And stepped forward.
As Albert walked further, the space around him began to shape itself — not as a new realm, but as an idea trying to remember its own form. Rocks floated in the air without any connection to gravity. Islands of light wounded by darkness. Voices that had never been spoken moved through the wind like forgotten memories.
A river began to flow from the sky.
It wasn't water. It was liquid memory — sequences of thoughts, decisions, renunciations. Everything a being might have wanted to forget, but time hadn't allowed.
Albert ran his fingers through the suspended stream. A single touch, and the image of an old man losing his daughter appeared, then vanished.
— A whole world that never learned to ask for forgiveness, he murmured.
A familiar voice echoed from the side. Whispered, but clear:
— Or a world that chose to forget before it was forgiven.
Albert turned his head.
Upon an invisible pillar of stone sat a feminine figure, her hair tied in waves cascading over her shoulders. She didn't seem alive, but she wasn't dead either. Dressed in dreamlike white, with a silver mask covering half her face.
— Are you one of the Memory Keepers? he asked.
— No. I'm just one who chose not to forget, even if there's nothing left to remember.
— Why are you here?
— Because you touched the place where all things that never happened cry.
— Not for me.
— No. For those who were never you.
Albert looked again into the river. Now, it reflected the face of an unknown child. Then a woman. Then a battlefield.
— Each step creates a choice that kills dozens of others.
— And each choice gives birth to you again, she replied.
Albert stepped into the river. Memory coiled around his ankles, but it didn't pull him down. On the contrary, it seemed to recognize him.
Then, suddenly, an explosion of light. The space around collapsed into a single point, and at that point... an egg.
A massive, transparent, floating egg. From it came a rhythm. A heartbeat. An echo.
Albert closed his eyes.
— A choice that was never made.
And by touching the egg, the entire space tore like old canvas burnt at the edges.
A gate appeared in the void. Not one of the nine. It had no number. No symbol. Only a vibration.
— It will lead you nowhere, a voice whispered.
— That's exactly why I will open it.
The door didn't open. It disintegrated. As if reality couldn't withstand a choice that was so... without purpose.
Behind the door — only wind.
A wind that had no origin, no direction, no boundary. It wasn't air. It was presence. It was will. It was what remained when there was nothing left to ask.
Albert stepped into it.
And everything that had existed before ceased to have a name.
The wind was not wind.
It was an absence that knew how to touch. A presence that didn't ask for confirmation. And in its center, Albert seemed... limitless. Not because he had become more powerful — but because the space around him no longer had rules capable of measuring his presence.
Each step he took didn't echo, but reality itself rippled slightly, like still water recognizing an invisible force.
From this borderless wind, from this non-place, a voice began to form. It was his own. Not foreign. But it didn't sound like a memory — more like a question he had carried all along without ever speaking it aloud:
— If you had been you... would you have chosen everything the same again?
Albert didn't answer.
Instead, he reached out his hand. And in his palm gathered pure light — not magical, not mystical, but light without a source, existing only for the sake of existing.
That light shaped itself into a circle. Then two. Then a slowly pulsing spiral.
A new kind of magic? No. It was something older than magic. Like a promise forgotten by time.
— This was never learned, Albert said.
— No. It was remembered, replied the same voice, now closer.
From the void in front of him, a silhouette began to take form. It had no clear features, but it was human in essence. Transparent, like an open window into another version of reality.
— Who are you? Albert asked. Not with interest, but with pure curiosity.
— I am your first question.
— The one I forgot?
— The one you refused to ask. Afraid the answer might be... final.
Albert stared silently. The spiral in his hand closed into an unknown symbol.
— I am no longer the one who asks.
— But you still carry the question in your gaze, even if you never speak it.
— Does that make me weak?
— No. That makes you real.
The silhouette extended its hand. Albert didn't hesitate. Their hands met — and the wind turned into a sea.
A sea with no water. No depth. No sky above. Just an endless white expanse they now walked together.
— Why bring me here? Albert asked.
— I didn't bring you. You arrived on your own.
— Then what is this place?
— It's the place where there is nothing left to see. And because of that… everything can be imagined.
Albert gave a faint smile.
— Can I create here?
— No. Here, you already are everything you would have created.
The silhouette vanished. Albert remained alone. But the solitude didn't weigh on him. It wasn't isolation. It was completion.
And somewhere far ahead, a new door was forming — not of wood, not of stone, but of pure intention.
Albert sensed that if he touched it, the entire world would become a thought. But he didn't rush. For the first time… he waited.
— For what?
— For the world to decide whether it still deserved him.
The door born from intention pulsed before Albert, but it didn't call to him. It existed only because he had chosen not to ignore it. It had no handle. No hinges. It was merely an outline of light vibrating in sync with his inner stillness.
Albert did not walk toward it. Nor did he approach. His thought had already crossed to the other side.
And in that moment… something moved.
Not in space.
But in truth.
A shadow appeared — not emerging from darkness, but from light. The silhouette seemed sculpted from reflections, and its eyes… were voids that burned in reverse.
— Are you the one who never chose? the silhouette asked, its voice echoing like a rejected idea.
Albert looked at it. Without surprise. Without tension.
— No. I am the one who chose too much.
The shadow tilted its head, intrigued.
— What is this place to you?
— A final question that no longer needed an answer.
— Then why did you come?
— Because here, I don't have to explain to anyone who I am.
The silhouette stepped closer. From one angle, it appeared feminine. From another, masculine. From yet another — neither. It had no name. But it had intention.
— You could stay here. Forever.
— And if I did?
— No one would forget you. But no one would search for you either.
— Then I must leave.
The door pulsed harder. From it, lines of energy began to stream, like the script of an invisible language. They weren't written in ink — but in silence.
Albert raised his palm. From it emerged a single color: violet.
His eyes shimmered violet. Not like fire — but like pure thought.
— The dream has been reactivated, he said calmly.
The shadow stepped back. It dissolved behind its own form, like an idea forgotten too soon.
And Albert stepped.
Not through the door.
But into it.
And everything that had been until then folded around him like the cloak of a world unwilling to let him go.
But it was too late.
The dream — and with it, all dreams — opened.
The moment Albert stepped into the dream, it wasn't the dream that changed.
The entire world rearranged itself.
The planes of existence — from the material to pure thought — trembled slightly, as if a forgotten memory suddenly remembered it had once mattered.
Outside the dream, in reality, clocks stopped for a single heartbeat. And in that heartbeat… everything was different.
—
[Plane of Dreams – Somewhere Between Sleep and Wakefulness]
Albert stepped into a landscape that couldn't be described. A forest with no trunks, only leaves falling upward. Rivers flowing through the sky. Voices breathing from the soil.
Here, dreams no longer belonged to the dreamers.
— They dream with me, he whispered to himself.
From silence, a being took form. It had seven eyes, each looking into a different direction, each seeing a different reality. Its shape shifted depending on who observed it. But Albert didn't observe — he understood.
— Are you the one who dreams without sleep? the entity asked.
— No. I am the one who dreams for those who forgot how.
— Then… you are Welcome.
The word "Welcome" wasn't spoken. It was felt.
The being unraveled. And in its place appeared a living mirror. It didn't reflect images — but thoughts. And in it, Albert saw something no one had ever seen before: a dream no one had yet dreamed.
In it, Kaelya held a child in her arms.
In it, Zhelenya was laughing.
In it, the blue-eyed girl was free.
In it… Albert no longer had to save anything. Only to exist.
But the dream unraveled.
Because the world wasn't ready.
Albert blinked.
And the dream exploded into a sea of violet light.
—
[Temple of the Nine – The Nameless Chamber]
One of the temple walls cracked fully. From it, a white liquid began to leak, burning the air around it.
Zhelenya looked up.
— He's returning, she whispered.
Kaelya appeared beside her, hand over her heart.
— He dreamed… the future?
— No. He dreamed a choice the world cannot accept.
—
[Eternal Council – In the Shadow of the Horizon]
Sypherion closed his eyes. The eighth member flinched. The empty chair seemed to pulse.
— He is coming back, said Sypherion.
— Will he still be the same?
— No. Because now, he's the one who dreamed the world… and wasn't rejected.
—
[Plane of Dreams – Closed]
Albert opened his eyes.
They were completely violet. No trace of doubt. No mark of the past.
Only a decision:
— I am returning.
And with that thought, the space between dreams and reality unraveled like old parchment.
Albert was once again at the center of the world.
But not as before.
Now, he was the answer the world had never dared to speak.
When the Answer Becomes Anticipated
—
[Central Academy – Sublevels of the Watcher's Tower]
An ancient clock stopped abruptly. Professors grading exams felt a chill with no source. On the archive hall ceiling, a previously invisible magical circle began to glow violet.
— Is it the activation of the fourth ocular level? a young arcanist asked.
Zhelenya appeared in the doorway, looking upward.
— No. It's something far more serious.
— What could be more serious?
— He dreamed a choice the world still avoids.
—
[Continent of Smoke – Sanctuary of the Silent Ones]
The four faceless, voiceless shadows stared at each other without motion.
The air's vibration said:
— He has returned.
— But not the same.
— He took a question… and returned with an entire world.
—
[Nameless Lake – Beneath the Water]
The living symbols opened their eyes again. Red. Black. Violet.
— He dreamed what cannot be spoken.
— He saw what cannot be spoken.
— He became what cannot be spoken.
—
[The Sealed Library of Nimbara]
An unseen page wrote itself.
"He was not the dream. He was the dream that dreamed itself."
The blind librarian rested his parchment hands on the desk.
— Now… all books must be rewritten.
—
[Temple Arena – Where Everything Remained Suspended]
Students, professors, guests from other continents… all felt his return.
But no one saw Albert yet.
He was a presence that preceded arrival.
Kaelya gripped Zhelenya's hand.
— Will he recognize us?
Zhelenya closed her eyes.
— That no longer matters. What matters is whether the world recognizes itself in his eyes.
—
[Somewhere outside existence]
A broken clock restarted its pendulum on its own.
And for the first time… time itself waited. Because it, too, wanted to see him.