The dust of the Nightcrawler still lingered in the nursery air—fine, dark particles scattered across silver tiles like ashes of a nightmare.
Seraphielle held Liam so tightly he could barely move. Her hands shook. Her wings were flared so wide they brushed both walls, feathers glowing with instinctive magic.
Thalorien stood beside them, sword still drawn, golden blade humming with contained starfire. His knuckles were white around the hilt.
Elyndor, Protector of the world, remained kneeling.
Not to the emperor.
Not to the queen.
To the child in her arms.
---
## **THE SILENCE AFTER THE IMPOSSIBLE**
No one spoke for several heartbeats.
The room felt… wrong.
Too still.
Too heavy.
Seraphielle was the first to break.
"Explain," she whispered, voice strained. "Now. What was that thing? Why didn't I sense it? Why did it go for my child?"
Her hand held Liam so protectively that her nails dug into her own skin.
Elyndor lifted his gaze slowly.
"That," he said, "was the Nightcrawler. A void-born assassin, older than your kingdoms, older than your wars. It does not move through mana or flesh, but between reality and the emptiness outside it."
Thalorien's jaw clenched.
"Demon work."
"Yes," Elyndor replied. "Summoned by desperation. They fear what your son will become."
Seraphielle trembled.
"My baby is still a child. Why are they so afraid they would send a monster your power cannot even detect?"
Elyndor's gaze softened—just a fraction.
"Because they are not blind. They feel what I feel."
His eyes turned to Liam.
"That he is not meant to be contained by this world."
---
## **A CHILD WHO SHOULDN'T EXIST**
Liam stared back at Elyndor calmly.
His body was small and warm in his mother's arms. To anyone else, he was merely a baby who had been startled by noise.
But inside, he was replaying everything.
The moment the Nightcrawler slipped through reality like ink.
Its intent—cold, surgical, absolute.
Its surprise when it touched the barrier inside him.
Its mindless terror when something *else* looked back.
He hadn't attacked it.
He had merely… pushed.
Pushed with a fraction of what he was.
And that was enough to erase a creature Elyndor feared.
Seraphielle kissed his head, tears drying on her cheeks.
"My little star…"
Thalorien sheathed his sword with a sharp, metallic hiss.
"We cannot let this happen again. Our enemies are mad enough to summon things even gods won't touch."
His eyes burned with fury.
"If they want doom, I will show them doom."
---
## **FEAR SPREADS LIKE A PLAGUE**
The Nightcrawler's unmaking sent shockwaves through every dark corner of the world.
### In the Abyss
The Circle of Demon Lords convulsed as their connection to the Nightcrawler shattered.
Old Night screamed, black blood pouring from his eyes.
"He… erased it… AGAIN! AGAIN!"
Hissing filled the hall.
"The Nightcrawler was our last hope—!"
"He destroyed it as an infant!"
"Nothing we send will reach him!"
One demon lord whispered:
"We tried to kill him twice. Twice we failed. Twice he erased our finest without lifting a finger."
A long, suffocating silence.
Then Old Night spoke, voice hoarse and terrified.
"From this moment… we do not touch the elves. Not their borders. Not their trade lines. Not even their shadows. If the prince ever points at us… we will vanish."
They weren't strategizing anymore.
They were trying to postpone inevitable judgment.
---
### In Human Lands
In the human capital, King Aldros stared at a cracked scrying mirror, the glass spiderwebbed from the backlash of his ruined spell.
Their attempt to observe the assassination had ended with the mirror exploding and three mages losing consciousness.
"Your Majesty… the void-weapon we—borrowed—" one advisor stammered, "it's… gone."
"Gone?" Aldros repeated, voice hollow.
"Not dispelled. Not banished. Just… gone."
Another counselor swallowed.
"Your Majesty… if that child can erase entities like that… what happens if he learns what we did during the war?"
Images haunted them.
Burned elvish forests.
Slain elvish scouts.
The siege of Aelthrys.
Aldros sank into his throne, suddenly feeling old.
"Then we must make sure he never does," he whispered. "Send healers. Send offerings. Send apologies. If we cannot beat the elves, we will drown them in diplomacy."
But even as he said it—
He knew.
If mercy did not exist in the child's heart,
no apology would matter.
---
### In Dragon Peaks
Molthrax the golden elder felt the tremor across the sky and recoiled.
"One of the void-creatures… vanished," he muttered.
"You mean killed?" a younger dragon asked.
Molthrax shook his massive head.
"No. Erased. Not even a body."
A younger crimson dragon snarled bitterly.
"We are dragons! We do not cower before a prince!"
Molthrax turned a burning gaze on him.
"This is not about pride. This is about extinction. We razed their forests. We devoured their cities. If he ever decides to burn our skies… dragons will become myth."
He looked south, toward the elvish lands.
"Pray," he said softly, "that the child learns mercy before he learns revenge."
---
## **INSIDE THE PALACE — THE MASK OF NORMALCY**
Days passed.
The palace tried, desperately, to pretend nothing had happened.
Servants smiled too widely.
Guards stood too stiffly.
Peaceful routines resumed—
on the surface.
But the wards around the nursery doubled.
Tripled.
Layers of elvish barrier magic wrapped the tower—
not to keep Liam in,
but to keep the world out.
Seraphielle spent hours each day with him—talking, humming, reading to him. Stories of starlit forests and gentle spirits. Stories of heroes and hope.
She didn't tell him about the demons.
Or the humans.
Or the dragons.
Not yet.
He already knew more than she imagined.
Thalorien, when not crushing border incursions or overseeing reconstruction, visited as often as he could.
He held Liam awkwardly at first—
afraid to hurt him,
afraid he was too fragile.
But Liam always reached for his father's hair, tugging lightly, eyes gleaming.
That small, ordinary gesture broke something hard and painful in Thalorien's chest.
He was powerful.
He was fierce.
He was an emperor.
But he was also a father,
terrified of losing his son again.
---
## **THE PROTECTOR BEGINS TO SUSPECT**
In the sky fortress above, Elyndor stood alone in a chamber of shifting light.
Floating crystals projected streams of data—mana fluctuations, leyline distortions, astral records of the last thousand years.
He ignored them all.
He was replaying a memory.
The moment the Nightcrawler reached for Liam.
The moment the child's sealed core pulsed.
The moment the void-thing recoiled in terror and unraveled.
"That was not Tier power," Elyndor murmured. "That was not element, not law, not traditional magic."
It was something else.
Something that felt like…
*Origin.*
He dug into the astral records.
Ancient logs from the era before planets stabilized.
Notes on anomalies, reincarnations, beings that slipped between cosmic rules.
He found only a single mention:
> "There are souls not assigned by the Cosmic Cycle.
> Errors, glitches, or… interventions.
> When such souls descend into lower worlds, the system panics.
> Reality shifts.
> Fate bends."
"An intervention…" Elyndor whispered.
"Who sent you here, little one?
And why?"
He had a duty to the world.
But now, he had another duty:
To the anomaly that could unmake it—
or raise it higher than ever before.
---
## **LIAM FEELS THE CHAINS**
One night, as the moons hung low and the stars shivered faintly, Liam lay awake in his cradle.
His parents had finally fallen asleep in chairs nearby, exhausted but unwilling to leave him alone.
The room was quiet.
Too quiet.
Inside his chest, he felt it again—
the sealed power pressing against its cage.
A dull, growing ache.
*I could have done more,* he thought. *I could have stopped the Nightcrawler before it even entered this realm. But I can barely move… barely speak.*
He closed his eyes.
He reached inward, toward the memory of blue oceans and system prompts.
For a moment—
A whisper:
**[Host… connection… weak…]**
His pulse quickened.
*System?*
**[…Body… immature… Access… limited…]**
He focused harder.
*Can I grow faster?*
Silence.
Then:
**[Risk: Soul-Body dissonance.
Accelerated awakening could shatter your vessel.]**
He imagined his mother holding a corpse.
His father breaking.
Elyndor kneeling in failure.
No.
Not an option.
*Then what can I do?* he asked.
There was a pause.
Then the system said something unexpected:
**[Observe.
Learn.
Bind threads now, power later.]**
*Bind… threads?*
Images flashed in his head—
not of energy or spells,
but of people.
His mother.
His father.
Elyndor.
Elvish soldiers.
Even the frightened faces of enemies glimpsed in system visions.
**[Your power is not only destruction, Host.
It is connection.
The more threads tied to you now…
the stronger your influence when you awaken.]**
So strength wasn't just about raw force.
It was about bonds.
About whose fate became tied to his.
Liam opened his eyes.
His small hand stretched out—
and rested on his mother's fingers as they hung over the side of the cradle.
Then his other hand reached—
and brushed against Thalorien's sleeve.
Two threads, anchored.
He smiled faintly.
*Then I'll start with them,* he thought.
*Before I become a god… I'll be their son.*
---
## **THE CONTINENT HOLDS ITS BREATH**
Weeks passed.
No more monsters came.
No armies marched.
No sieges formed.
Not because the world had healed.
But because it was afraid.
Afraid of the elves.
Afraid of the Protector.
Afraid of the prince who had erased two impossible beings.
Rumors slithered through black markets and royal halls.
"The elves have a weapon that can kill concepts."
"The Protector doesn't guard the world—he guards the prince."
"The child is the true ruler now."
"We offended a godlings' family. There is no salvation."
Some kings turned to temples.
Some dragons to retreats.
Some demons to deeper darkness.
All of them were really praying for the same thing:
*Let the child be merciful.
Let him grow kind, not cruel.
Let him ignore us.*
Because if he turned his eyes beyond his empire…
The world knew it had no power to resist.
---
## **THE CHAPTER CLOSES ON A SOFT PROMISE**
In the quiet of his nursery, with the world quaking beyond its walls, Liam yawned softly.
His parents dozed nearby.
The moons cast silver halos around them all.
He looked at their sleeping faces.
At the fine lines of exhaustion.
At the faint tensions that never fully left their brows.
At the way his mother's fingers never loosened fully from the edge of his blanket.
He reached out again, touching both of them.
Tiny hands.
Threads.
Connections.
The system's faint presence hummed with approval.
**[Good.
When you rise, you will not rise alone.]**
Liam closed his eyes, content.
The world feared him.
The Protector watched him.
The demons dreaded him.
The dragons cursed him.
The humans schemed around him.
But tonight, none of that mattered.
Tonight, he was just a child—
sleeping between two people who loved him enough to wage war against the world.
He would become a god one day.
But first, he would become worthy of being their son.
And somewhere, deep in the roots of reality—
Fate trembled, rewriting itself around a boy who should never have existed…
…and who would one day decide if this world deserved to.