Chapter 409
Without another word or a final glance at the chaos they had left behind, they moved.
Theo, perhaps with the same hand that had previously offered his palm, now summoned or opened a portal.
It was not an elegant pentagonal portal like Xavier's, but something that perhaps reflected his own character—more practical, darker, or even slightly rough around the edges, yet equally effective.
Aldraya, faithful to her words, stepped closer.
She did not hesitate.
Once the portal stabilized, with a synchronized motion, the two figures stepped inside together.
Theo likely entered first, leading as promised, with Aldraya following closely behind.
Their bodies were absorbed into the distortion of space-time, vanishing from the sight of the quiet, empty field.
The portal then closed behind them, leaving no physical trace of their presence except perhaps a faint residue of energy that was soon scattered by the night wind.
They had departed, following the departure of Xavier XVII.
Their goal was to trace the legend who had gone ahead of them, following the invisible thread of his journey across layers of reality and universes.
Arc One, Episode 11 – Beginning, finished.
Arc One, Episode 11 – Middle, begins.
"The stars revolve as they should. The planets remain faithful to the lines of their destiny. Even black holes, the devourers of light, never step outside their roles."
Across the vast and silent expanse of the cosmos, where eternity is the only sovereign, he streaked forward.
Not merely moving—but surpassing.
Every path he crossed was a slap against the laws of physics, a quiet contradiction to the established order of the universe.
Dwarf galaxies glimmered faintly in the distance, witnessing a phenomenon that should not exist.
A young man with a speed that ignored the gravitational pull of singularities surged endlessly forward.
His feet never touched ground, nor did they move with the rhythm of ordinary steps.
He simply shot through the void, splitting emptiness itself, leaving behind trails of space-time distortion that quickly collapsed and healed behind him, as if the universe itself sighed in relief after being crossed by a being too vast to comprehend.
He was the Hero of Humanity.
Xavier XVII, a name that once existed only as whispers within legend, had now returned in form.
He had just completed a silent reclamation unheard by the universe's ears—a quiet retrieval of the essence of five elemental powers and the Authority of Perceptual Alteration that had long been entrusted to a vessel named Ilux Rediona.
Now within his chest, fire and water, earth and air, along with the fifth cosmic element, revolved in perfect harmony, united with the authority to manipulate the way reality itself was perceived.
There was no turbulence.
No collision.
Those powers returned to him like rivers flowing back to the sea, like breath returning to lungs after being held for far too long.
Everything was intact.
Everything was perfect.
Everything was his once again.
His gaze pierced through layers of reality stacked like countless pages of a book.
He could see the pulsating heart of distant neutron stars, hear the silent songs of spinning pulsars, even sense the anxious gravity of black holes that had failed to pull him in.
His senses no longer belonged to an ordinary human, but to an entity that had transcended the limits of existence.
Around him, cosmic dust scattered like grains of sand swept by a hurricane, forming tiny spirals that quickly vanished into darkness.
He was not heading toward any specific destination—at least not within conventional navigation.
He simply moved, surged forward, testing once more the limits of the body that had just been restored after being divided for so long.
"This universe was not constructed to be understood."
The shimmering pentagonal portal resembled a geometric painting suddenly brought to life, a corridor leading to dimensions untouched by logic.
The moment Xavier stepped across its threshold, the universe he once knew collapsed in an instant.
Space and time, once rigid and linear, suddenly bent into something fluid, flowing around him like a river without banks.
And then he surged forward.
No longer merely accelerating in the ordinary sense of physics, but moving in a way that transcended speed, distance, and every concept ever defined by intelligent beings as movement from one place to another.
Billions of universes scattered before him like pearls across endless black velvet, each pulsating with its own life, its own laws, its own secrets never dreamed of by even the wildest imagination.
The beauty stretching before him was not beauty meant to be admired—it was beauty meant to be conquered.
Amid that unimaginable velocity, Xavier's lips finally trembled, producing a murmur that was immediately swallowed by the surrounding emptiness.
It was not a murmur meant for anyone to hear.
Within this corridor between universes, there were no ears to listen, no consciousness to capture the sound.
The whisper was a confession—a monologue meant only for himself, and perhaps for gods long since dead.
He admitted within his mind that this universe, with all its complexity and magnificence, was built upon an architecture utterly beyond human comprehension.
Human intellect, so proudly celebrated, and logic, crowned as the pinnacle of civilization, were nothing more than childish toys before the boundless cosmic order stretching endlessly across existence.
Humans might measure the distance between stars, formulate theories about the great explosion that birthed everything, but they would never truly understand why everything exists, why everything is arranged exactly as it is, and where the true destination of this endless cosmic journey lies.
Xavier's speed did not slow in the slightest.
Even his own whisper was not significant enough to disturb the rhythm of his velocity that had already surpassed the boundaries of reality.
And as he continued surging forward, panorama after panorama unfolded before him—a cosmic exhibition never meant to be witnessed by human eyes.
There were star clusters forming perfect spirals yet rotating in reddish-purple hues never recorded in any light spectrum on Earth.
There were colossal nebulae stretching across billions of light-years, yet within them no stars were born—only glowing mist pulsating like the slow heartbeat of the universe itself.
There were even remnants of supernova explosions frozen within time, as if the detonation occurred in extreme slow motion, revealing every fragment of matter thrown outward in terrifying beauty.
All of these were sights rarely seen—perhaps never identified within all of humanity's space research, because human eyes were limited to narrow spectrums and telescopes capable only of peering through very small windows.
Between the clusters of passing universes, Xavier briefly glimpsed phenomena that made even him—the Hero of Humanity who had surpassed the boundaries of existence—fall silent for a moment in cold awe.
There was a galaxy shaped like a woven lattice of glass threads, with stars that were not spheres of plasma but pure points of light hanging at the intersections of those threads.
There were regions of emptiness containing no matter at all, yet within that void energy rippled in organized patterns, forming a silent symphony perceptible only to beings whose senses had transcended natural limits.
And there were colossal structures faintly resembling the ruins of ancient civilizations—remnants of something so enormous that the entire Milky Way galaxy could fit within it many times over, yet now only fragments drifting along the currents of time between universes remained.
To be continued…