"It was not created, summoned, or shaped by will.The Unborn Realm simply waited…for someone to imagine it."—From the lost pages of the Lucid Archive
Location: The Dreamgate Threshold
Lucien Vaelthorn stood before the Dreamgate, a vertical rift suspended in dreamlight and silence. Beyond it, the stars looked... incomplete. Galaxies flickered between ideas. Mountains rose and collapsed with every blink. Nothing had names. Nothing had rules.
It was a world still becoming.
The Realm Unborn.
And now, it was his to enter—or to deny.
Behind him, Sovael stirred uneasily.Lyrenna watched with a hand near her blade.
"You don't have to go," Sovael said quietly."That thing is raw creation. It might tear you apart."
Lucien didn't respond immediately.
Because he knew the truth:
It wouldn't tear him apart.
It would offer him something far worse.
Completion.
Lucien turned to Lyrenna. "You still think I'm just the Heir?"
She nodded. "You are. But maybe... you're more than one thing now."
"The Hollow Core. The Crownless. The Chaoswalker. And now...""Dreamshaper," he muttered.
Lyrenna stepped forward, her voice low.
"But remember this—whatever you shape... shapes you back."
He nodded.
Then stepped through the Dreamgate.
The Realm Unborn
Time screamed.
Lucien fell without falling, breathed without lungs. Gravity coiled like a serpent around his spine. And then...
He touched something.
A surface made of potential.
The ground wasn't stone—it was a question waiting to be answered. Every footstep left ideas in his wake—trees began to grow from nothing, shaped by fleeting childhood memories, then withered back into mist.
The skies above him shifted depending on his thoughts.
When he feared? Thunder.
When he hoped? Sunlight.
When he mourned? A rain of stardust.
This place had no laws—except the ones he brought with him.
Suddenly, a voice echoed.
"Lucien Vaelthorn. The Hollow who dares to dream."
He turned.
A figure rose from the mist.
It was himself—but not.Eyes like twin voids. Skin inscribed with glyphs. A darker, older Lucien, forged from mistakes he hadn't made yet.
"I am the Lucien who shaped this world and lost it," the doppelgänger said."I am what happens if you choose wrong."
"What are you?" Lucien asked."A warning? A test?"
"A memory of a possibility," it said."The Dream tests those who enter it."
The two Luciens circled each other.
"What did you do wrong?" the true Lucien asked.
"I imagined a realm without sorrow.And so it became empty.Joy means nothing without grief."
Lucien grimaced. "So I have to imagine everything? Pain, loss, cruelty?"
The echo nodded.
"To dream a true realm, you must carry its weight.All of it."
Lucien stepped forward. "Then so be it."
He raised his hand—and let his entire past pour out.
Every failure. Every death. Every betrayal. Every scar.
The world responded.
The dreamscape began to solidify.
The Realm was beginning.
Forests of crystal breath.
Rivers that whispered names never spoken.
Cities that waited to be born in stories.
Above him, a sky took shape—a firmament inscribed with potential, shaped like a clock with no numbers.
Lucien felt a tremor.
The Dreamer's voice returned:
"Will you shape it with intent?Or let it shape itself?"
Lucien breathed deep.
"Neither," he said."I'll let others shape it—with me. Together."
A pulse spread from his body—an invitation.
Back at the Dreamgate
Lyrenna felt the shift.
The Dreamwalkers... awakened.
Not violently, but gently. Their eyes opened, not to madness—but to purpose.
Some fell to their knees in reverence. Others laughed for the first time in years.
The Dream was no longer one mind.
It was becoming many.
Lucien was calling them in.
Back inside the Unborn Realm
Lucien stood atop a new summit—a spire that had grown from his conviction.
Around him, the realm teemed with potential citizens—not summoned, but attracted by the dream itself.
And not just people.
Concepts.
A Knight who protected forgotten truths
A city that never fell to time
A library that wrote itself
Lucien smiled.
"This will be the anchor," he said."The new Realmspring."
And at its heart: a throne.
But not for a king.
For a council.
A circle of Dreamshapers, chosen not by blood or title—but by story.
Suddenly, a shadow passed across the sunless sky.
Lucien looked up.
The Dream wasn't done testing him.
A tear opened—violently this time.
From it, a serpent of unformed thought slithered forth. A remnant of chaos, untouched by Lucien's balance.
It hissed:
"You forgot one thing... dreamers wake up."
Lucien stepped forward.
"Then I'll become the waking."
He summoned Null, not to destroy—but to stabilize.
Reality buckled.
But held.
He did not kill the serpent. He shaped it.
It became the first Guardian of the Threshold—a reminder that even chaos has its place, when acknowledged.
And thus, the Unborn Realm breathed its first true breath.
A realm born not of order, nor rebellion, nor prophecy.
But of understanding.
Lucien turned to the gathering hosts behind him.
"Welcome," he said."To a realm where no one writes alone."