NOVEL NEXT Chapter 172: 172
The simple, grey portal stood open before them, a quiet doorway leading from the silent, perfect peace of their newly created home dimension back out into the infinite, chaotic cosmos. Rhys stood before it, his family gathered closely around him.
Sera, back in her child form, held his hand tightly, her now-brown eyes wide, reflecting the swirling nebulae visible through the portal. She was excited but also a little sad to leave their beautiful new garden so soon.
Emma stood on his other side, her face still hidden behind the simple green veil she had adopted. Her posture was calm, poised, her green eyes filled with a quiet, scholarly curiosity as she gazed into the unknown universe. The heavy, star-flecked book containing her mother's research was held securely in her hands. She was ready to learn, to understand the vast new reality laid bare before them.
Yuki leaned against the crystal railing of the Cinderfall platform, arms crossed. Her expression was a familiar, unreadable mask, the cool, analytical gaze of Yuki overlaid with the faint, mischievous smile of Seduction. The boredom that had often plagued her seemed lessened, replaced by a glint of genuine anticipation. The universe was a vast playground, and she was eager to explore its possibilities.
"So," Yuki drawled, her voice the first to break the peaceful silence of the garden dimension. "The nest is built. The old ghosts have been put to rest. Are we finally going somewhere interesting? This perfect little world is already starting to feel… repetitive."
"That's the plan," Rhys said with a small smile, his gaze fixed on the swirling vista visible through the portal. "But where?"
The universe was an open book now, its pages infinite. They could go anywhere, do anything. For a man who had spent his entire mortal life trapped in a single, dying province, confined first by his family's disdain and then by the Seal itself, the sheer scale of the freedom was almost overwhelming. It was a weightless, slightly disorienting feeling.
Emma stepped forward, holding up the ancient leather-bound volume. "The book my mother left," she said, her voice a quiet, steady anchor in the face of the infinite. "It is not just a key to the portal network she discovered. It is a star chart. A map of the known worlds as they were recorded in the Lyra archives, some dating back thousands of years. It is old, incomplete, filled with myths and legends as much as facts. But it is a starting point."
She opened the book, the aged pages filled with intricate, hand-drawn maps of constellations and galaxies never seen from their sealed world. Her mother's neat, precise handwriting filled the margins with notes, observations, and cross-references to texts Rhys couldn't even imagine.
"My mother was a scholar," Emma continued, her voice filled with a sad, proud love. "She did not just seek freedom for herself. She sought knowledge. She cataloged dozens of worlds that were rumored to be accessible through the network she was rediscovering. Worlds with strange laws, unique forms of life, ancient ruins, and forgotten histories."
She turned several pages, her finger tracing constellations Rhys didn't recognize. Finally, she stopped at a specific page. It showed a small, vibrant spiral galaxy with a single, brightly shining star at its very center. The margins were filled with more notes than any other entry.
"This one," she said, her voice holding a note of scholarly excitement. "She called it the 'Nexus'. The ancient Lyra texts, fragments recovered from ruins predating even the House itself, spoke of it as a crossroads of the universe. A place where a thousand different cultures and races met in ancient times. It was supposedly a center of trade, of knowledge, of immense power, built around a star of pure, stable energy." She looked up at Rhys, her green eyes shining. "If any place in the universe holds the answers we need to understand this new reality, the history of the Seal, the nature of the wider cosmos… it would likely be there. Or at least, hold clues to where we should look next."
Rhys looked at the map, at the swirling image of the distant galaxy. The Nexus. It sounded like the perfect place to begin their new journey. A place where they could observe, learn, and gather information about the vast, unsealed universe they now found themselves in. He needed context. He needed understanding. He was a god, yes, but a god ignorant of the cosmos he now inhabited.
"Then that is where we will go," he said, his voice a simple, decisive command that nonetheless carried the weight of his divine will.
He looked at his family. "This will be a new life for all of us," he said, his voice serious, grounding them before the leap into the unknown. "The worlds out there are not like the one we left. They operate under different laws, different energies. They are full of ancient powers, of beings whose strength we cannot yet imagine. We will be strangers in a strange land. We will need new identities. New faces."
He looked at Emma. "You can no longer be the fallen princess of House Lyra," he said gently. "That name carries too much history, too much pain. It ties you to a past that is gone."
She nodded, understanding immediately. The name 'Elara' was the name of a ghost, a hunted victim defined by betrayal. She was not that person anymore. She had faced her past, embraced her power, and chosen her own path. "Then I will be Emma," she said, her voice a quiet, firm declaration. "Just Emma. A scholar. A traveler."
He then looked at Yuki, who watched him with her usual unreadable expression. "And you," he said. "The name of the Celestial Fox is likely known, perhaps feared, in the wider cosmos. Seduction is… too conspicuous for quiet observation. Yuki is too cold, too distant."
She shrugged, a lazy, elegant motion that rippled through her perfect form. "Names are just labels," she said, the logical Yuki half speaking. "They are unimportant." Then, the playful Seduction half added, a mischievous glint in her eyes, "But if it will make you feel better, husband-not-husband, you may call me whatever you wish… as long as it is not boring."
"Then you will be Yuki," Rhys decided. "A quiet, mysterious companion. It will suit the logical half of you." A faint, playful smile touched his lips. "And the other half can consider it a challenge to be interesting without relying on a name designed to provoke."
She rolled her eyes dramatically, but a small, amused smile played on her lips. She seemed to accept the challenge.
Finally, he looked down at Sera, who was looking up at him with her wide, innocent eyes, absorbing the conversation with an intelligence far beyond her apparent age. "And you, my little slime-ball," he said, ruffling her now-brown hair. "You will be my daughter. Sera. That is the one truth in this universe that will never change."
She beamed, a look of pure, unadulterated happiness radiating from her. She hugged his leg tighter.
He then thought of himself. He was no longer Rhys Ashton, the exiled disciple. He was no longer the Grey Ghost, the silent hunter. He was no longer the Ashen Sovereign, the lonely king of a dead dimension. He was a primordial god, the Son of Creation, the God of Life. But he did not feel like a distant, cosmic entity. He felt like a father, a partner, a man who had finally found his place, not in a kingdom, but within his family.
"I will be Rhys," he said simply. "A simple traveler. A gardener." It felt right. It felt true.
With their new identities decided, their first destination chosen, they were ready.
Rhys turned back to the grey portal. He held out his hand, palm facing the swirling gateway. He focused his will, his divine consciousness reaching out, connecting with the fundamental fabric of the Aetherium Weave that lay just beyond the portal. He was no longer just opening a door; he was choosing a destination, weaving a path through spacetime itself. He focused on the star chart in Emma's book, on the specific, complex cosmic coordinates that designated the Nexus galaxy, and the single, central star system within it.
The image in the portal, which had been a chaotic vista of the cosmos, swirled and then solidified. It showed a new world, breathtaking in its scale and alien beauty. They saw a vast, sprawling metropolis built across multiple interconnected orbital rings and floating platforms, all circling a brilliant, stable, white star. Impossibly tall spires of gleaming metal and crystal reached from the rings towards the star, connected by shimmering bridges of light. Flying ships of a thousand different designs – sleek crystalline vessels, blocky cargo haulers, organic-looking bioships – moved between the structures in silent, graceful, and perfectly ordered streams. Below the rings, the surface of a lush, green planet was visible, continents and oceans swirling beneath a thin veil of clouds. It was a true crossroads of the universe, a testament to the power and ambition of countless civilizations.
"Our first step," Rhys said, his voice quiet but filled with a sense of profound significance.
He took Sera's hand. He looked at Emma and Yuki. They both met his gaze, their expressions a mixture of apprehension and excitement. They nodded.
Together, the four of them, a strange, broken, and now divinely powerful family, stepped through the portal. They left their new, quiet garden dimension behind, sealing the gateway behind them, leaving Cinderfall and its silent Vindicator guardians to their eternal watch. They took their first, tentative step into the vast, unknown, and now-unsealed universe. Their journey, their true journey, had just begun.
They arrived not in the bustling heart of the orbital city, but as Rhys intended, in a quiet, secluded maintenance access tunnel on one of the lower, less populated rings. The air here was different from the pure, potent essence of the Boneyard Desert or the heavy psychic weight of the Whispering Mire. It was a chaotic, dizzying mix of a thousand different energies, technological hums, biological signatures, and the faint psychic residue of billions of different sentient minds living in close proximity.
The first thing they did was solidify their new appearances. Rhys, with his divine control over the laws of creation, didn't need a skill or an illusion. He simply willed it, subtly altering his physical form, his energy signature, his very presence, to match the identity he had chosen: Rhys, the unassuming traveler, his power hidden beneath layers of carefully crafted normalcy. Emma reinforced the subtle psychic field that made her seem ordinary, a simple, veiled woman whose Mind Sovereign power lay dormant beneath the surface. Yuki suppressed her overwhelming celestial aura with practiced ease, becoming just another beautiful, if aloof and slightly dangerous-looking, woman. And Sera, with a happy giggle, kept her hair brown and her energy signature muted, appearing as nothing more than a curious human child.
They were a family of travelers, nothing more, easily lost in the galactic crowd.
"Alright," Rhys said, taking a breath of the strange, recycled air. "First things first. Information. And credits."
They stepped out of the maintenance tunnel and into a wide, bustling transit corridor. The sheer scale and diversity of life were even more overwhelming up close. Beings of light flowed past beings of rock. Creatures with multiple limbs navigated around beings with none. The sounds were a cacophony of clicks, whistles, hums, and languages that defied human comprehension. Glowing holographic advertisements flickered in the air, hawking goods and services Rhys couldn't even guess the purpose of.
It was chaotic, vibrant, and utterly alien.
"This place… makes the Azure Sky Palace look like a primitive village," Emma murmured, her voice filled with awe as she tried to absorb the flood of new information.
Even Yuki seemed impressed, though she tried hard not to show it. "Hmmph. Gaudy. Overcrowded. But… potentially amusing," she conceded.
Rhys led them through the throng, his senses carefully filtering the overwhelming input, looking for a place to start. He needed to exchange some of his unique resources for the local currency without drawing attention. He spotted a sign in a universal script: "Exchange Emporium – All Currencies, All Goods, Discretion Guaranteed."
Perfect.
He entered the emporium, leaving his family waiting outside. Inside, behind a reinforced counter, sat a being that looked like a large, crystalline spider, its multiple facets catching the light.
Rhys didn't waste time. He placed a single, small, perfectly clear lifespan crystal on the counter.
The crystalline spider froze. All eight of its multifaceted eyes focused on the crystal. A low, rapid clicking sound, the spider-being's equivalent of a sharp intake of breath, filled the small shop. It had dealt in rare materials for centuries, across a thousand worlds. It had never seen a crystal of such perfect, pure, and potent life energy. It was a treasure beyond measure, capable of extending the life of even a near-immortal being.
The transaction was swift and silent. Rhys walked out of the shop a few minutes later with a small, black, and completely anonymous credit chip loaded with a fortune so vast it could buy a small star system. He also had a basic data slate loaded with a galactic map, common language translation software, and a primer on the Nexus's laws and customs.
Their first hurdle was cleared. They had resources. They had basic knowledge. Now, they needed a place to stay, a quiet corner in this chaotic city where they could begin their true exploration. Rhys looked up at the towering spires, at the endless streams of flying ships, at the three suns burning in the alien sky. The universe was open. And they were ready to take their next step.