Elian was not born with the aura of wisdom that now enveloped him like an ancient cloak.
Once, he had been an impetuous youth, thirsty for knowledge, his eyes bright with an almost feverish curiosity. His life, since childhood, had been intertwined with the threads of the Dream Realm, not through an innate gift like Kael's, but by lineage.
For generations, his family had served the Deep Foundations, the hidden citadel at the heart of the Dreams, the keeper of the secrets of sleep and wakefulness.
They were the architects of the Dream Realm, scholars of its arcane laws, creators of its most complex structures.
One day, the laboratory was saturated with the smell of dried dream herbs and illuminated by globes that pulsed sluggishly.
Elian was hunched over an old tome, but instead of reading it, he was using the cover as a surface to rapidly carve a temporary focusing seal into the wood.
Marcus entered and saw his brother Elian's work. He sighed, shaking his head.
"Elian, what are you concocting now? You've left your volume of External Techniques open to the wrong page. You should be studying the Flow Inversion, not trying to rewrite the Incantations of Transformation as if we were in the Dark Cycle!"
Without looking up, he chanted a soft murmur to charge the seal, then replied:
"Flow Inversion is a dead end, Marcus. We know how that spell works; we've replicated it for generations. But this... this isn't a replication spell. It's a Primary Sensory Bind. I'm trying to understand not how dreams function, but what they are at the root."
Darius, the traditionalist brother, older and more solemn, joined the discussion, crossing his arms:
"And this is your usual, arrogant mistake, little brother. You are the brightest of us, I admit, but also the most rebellious."
He stepped closer to Elian, "The Great Masters established that our task is ritual replication, the maintenance of the Oneiric Flows. We must preserve knowledge, not try to cross the Magical Boundary."
With eyes sparkling with challenge and frustration, Elian looked up:
"Preserve what? Stagnation? You content yourselves with studying these ancient texts until they crumble, repeating formulas you don't fully understand. You know what to recite; I want to know why they work."
Marcus pressed him:
"The 'why' is irrelevant to our craft, Elian. The ultimate purpose of dreams is clear: comfort, hope, and self-construction. It has been passed down to us through the Rituals of the Veil."
Elian turned toward him.
"But I don't believe that's their true purpose! If dreams are the engine of the soul, why are they so fragile? Why do they wither? I don't want to replicate traditional spells to patch up dreams; I want to understand their essence! I want to push further and cure the barrenness at its source!"
Darius shook his head.
"And so you risk destroying the entire Dream World in the process, Elian. There is a reason why no one has ever dared to cast Primary Trial Incantations. Return to your texts before your brilliance becomes a curse upon us all."
Elian leaned against the table, pointing his finger at the carved seal: "No. Not until I understand why we are born with the capacity to dream. And it's not enough for me to know how to repair what is broken. I want to know how to prevent it from breaking at all."
Marcus and Darius exchanged a worried glance, while Elian returned to his carving, the only one convinced that true knowledge was always beyond the next chapter of the spell book.
His ambition was immense, almost reckless, and often led him to break the rigid rules of the Deep Foundations.
"Elian, knowledge is not a river from which to drink without measure!" his mentor, an elderly and austere Custodian, had once told him, his patience worn thin by Elian's incessant questions. "It is an ocean, and you throw yourself headlong into it without a boat!"
Elian, then little more than a teenager, had answered with a defiant smile. "Master, how can I ever understand the ocean's depth by staying on the shore?"
He had a natural talent for dream manipulation, an intuition that surpassed mere technique. He could shape dream landscapes with unnerving ease, navigating collective dreams with an almost unnatural precision. But his true obsession was the Foundress: Solara.
The stories of Solara, the legendary figure who built the Foundations and wove the Dream Realm as it was known, fascinated him. Elian studied every scroll, every fragment of legend concerning her, trying to decipher her methods, her motivations, the secret of her immense power.
"Why does the Foundress obsess over you so much, Elian?" Anya, already a young apprentice to Elian himself, had asked him once, sitting beside him in the silent library of the Foundations, the dim lantern light illuminating the piles of ancient texts. "Isn't it enough to study her works? Why do you want to dig so deep into her mind?"
Elian had looked up from a yellowed scroll, his eyes shining. "Because Solara was not just a builder, Anya. She was a visionary. She understood something we have forgotten. The Dream Realm is more than just a place of rest; it is a reflection, a source. And if her creation is so perfect, there is a reason that goes beyond mere artistry."
He lowered his voice. "And I have a feeling something is happening. The fissures in the Dream Realm... they are not natural. I believe Solara anticipated something like this."
During that period, his meticulous study led him to discover ancient warnings, whispers of a potential plague: the Ash.
It was a corruption that, according to the darkest prophecies, would consume dreams, transforming vitality into void, and that would originate from a deep disillusionment or a catastrophic error in creation itself. Many in the Foundations dismissed these prophecies as mere legends to frighten apprentices, but Elian felt there was a profound truth in them.
He had spent years trying to replicate Solara's experiments, seeking to understand her link to the Dream Realm in a way that went beyond simple manipulation, an almost symbiotic bond: Solara existed thanks to the link with the Dream Realm, and vice versa.
One day, during one of his solitary experiments in a remote wing of the Foundations, Elian attempted to reconstruct a fragment of an ancient dream, an "oneiric relic" that was said to contain a glimmer of Solara's consciousness. He followed complex formulas, chanted spells that most Custodians had forgotten, his mind stretched to its limit.
But something went wrong. He failed to contain the energy.
A wave of cold and despair overwhelmed him, an emotion so intense and alien that it made him stagger. He saw for an instant a destroyed dreamscape, not from an impact, but from a slow, inexorable decay, as if it had been drained of all vitality. And in the center of that desolation, he perceived a presence. An ancient presence, yes, but not benevolent. A presence that was not Solara, but something that had taken her place, something empty and hungry.
It was the Ash, which was not just an external evil, but a corruption born from the very heart of the Foundress, a shadow of what she had been.
Master Elian emerged from that experience changed. His hair had begun to gray more rapidly, and wrinkles were etched more deeply on his face. The youthful impulsiveness had given way to a solemn gravity, but his eyes retained that spark of determination. He was not just a scholar; he had become a warrior of knowledge, a Custodian in the purest sense of the word. He no longer sought only to understand, but to protect.
"The Ash is not an enemy to be faced with swords or conventional spells. It is a spiritual sickness, a poison that creeps in through the fissures of the Dream Realm, and only a deep understanding of its nature will be able to stop it."
He began to train Anya and Lyra with iron discipline, not only teaching them the techniques of dream manipulation, but also the history, prophecies, and philosophy of the Custodians.
He wanted them to be prepared, not only to face visible dangers but also the invisible ones, the threats that could corrupt their own souls.
"The Dream Realm is a delicate balance, my young apprentices," he often told them as they walked through the corridors of the Foundations. "Every thread we weave influences the fabric of reality. And every wound in the dream, even the smallest, can leave a scar on the waking world."
His speeches, once steeped in academicism, now resonated with a new urgency, the weight of his discovery pressing down on his shoulders.
The burden of his knowledge was immense. He knew that the Foundress, their very source of power, had become their greatest threat. Solara was still there, but she was a corroded Solara, a Solara who had become the personification of the Ash.
And Elian knew that the fate of the Dream Realm, and perhaps the waking world, depended on the ability of a few Custodians to face this uncomfortable truth and find a way to stop what had once been their guide and protector.
His wisdom was not born from books, but from pain and the awareness of a terrifying truth.
What would happen now?