The final day before the dungeon opened was a study in absolute stillness. I sat cross-legged before the great, opalescent archway, the black, jagged peaks of the mountains a silent, unjudging audience. The world around me was a void of salt and stone, a perfect vessel for the focus I required. I did not eat, nor did I sleep. I simply existed, my mind a placid lake, my Tier 6 power a deep, quiet current flowing beneath the surface. I gathered my will, consolidated my spirit, and recalled every lesson learned, every victory won, every scar earned. I was not the frightened boy who had entered the first Gauntlet. I was not the vengeful survivor who had toppled a king. I was Eren Kai, master of the Eternal Flame, and I was ready.

As the sun touched the horizon, painting the salt flats in hues of blood and gold, the final seconds on the cosmic timer ticked away in the back of my mind. Three… two… one…

Zero.

A low, resonant chime, like a colossal bell struck once in the heart of the mountain, echoed not in the air, but directly within my soul. The great archway, which had been glowing with a soft, passive light, awakened. The pearly white material swirled, its surface becoming a roiling, liquid vortex of nebulae and starlight, a swirling galaxy held captive in a perfect, impossible curve. It was not a door opening; it was the universe itself extending an invitation.

I rose to my feet, my heart a slow, steady drum in my chest, and took the first step forward. As my boot crossed the threshold from the grey paving stones into the vortex of light, two things happened simultaneously. First, the air grew thick, ancient, and heavy with a power so profound it felt like breathing liquid time. Second, a system notification, stark and jarringly different from any I had ever seen, blared in my mind's eye with an uncharacteristic tone of frantic alarm.

[WARNING: Reality Manifold Detected. Uncategorized by Prime System Parameters.]

[WARNING: Entering a region of Tier ??? Power Saturation. Prime System functionality may be limited or unreliable.]

[User advised to proceed with extreme caution. Prime System is unable to guarantee stable causality beyond this point.]

The Prime System, the cold, omniscient god of our reality, was telling me it was lost. It was in uncharted territory. That knowledge, more than any roaring monster could, sent a genuine thrill of fear and excitement down my spine.

I stepped through.

The disorienting swirl of light lasted only an instant. I found myself standing in a hall of such impossible, breathtaking scale that my mind struggled to process it. I was in the antechamber of a cosmic titan.

The architecture was a fusion of two mighty, long-dead aesthetics, a dream of Greece and Babylon woven together. I stood at the base of a grand, celestial staircase, each step a single, seamless block of polished white marble, wide enough to accommodate an army marching abreast. The staircase rose towards the main structure: a colossal ziggurat, a stepped pyramid not of mud-brick, but of the same alabaster marble, its successive tiers supported by rows of impossibly graceful Doric columns. Cascading down the sides of the ziggurat were hanging gardens, lush with alien flora that glowed with a soft, silver light, their vines trailing down the stark white columns, a perfect marriage of ordered geometry and wild, untamed life.

The ceiling was not a ceiling. It was a perfect, star-filled night sky, constellations I had never seen blazing with a cold, clear light, their movements slow and majestic. The air was cool and carried the faint, sweet scent of night-blooming flowers and old, sacred stone. My [Prime Axiom's Nullifying Veil] was cranked to its absolute maximum, a shroud of non-existence that should have made me a ghost, yet I felt impossibly small, an ant in a cathedral.

My [Predator's Gaze] swept the area, a frantic search for threats, traps, or guardians.

It found nothing.

The hall was utterly, profoundly silent. Yet, it did not feel abandoned. It felt… expectant. Flanking the base of the great staircase were two immense statues carved from lapis lazuli: Lamassu, great winged lions with the serene, bearded faces of wise human kings. Their carved eyes seemed to follow me with a gaze not of menace, but of deep, ancient knowing.

I began to walk, my footsteps the only sound in the cavernous silence. The floor was a mosaic of polished obsidian and gold, a perfect, circular map of a star system I did not recognize. This wasn't a dungeon in any sense I understood it. It was a temple. A monument.

I ascended the great staircase, every sense on high alert. At the top, I entered the main chamber of the ziggurat, and what I saw shattered every preconception I had.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The chamber was a sphere of reality even larger than the antechamber, the star-filled void stretching in every direction. And in the center of that void, growing from a small, impossible island of green, living earth, was a tree.

It was a tree of impossible scale, its roots thick as rivers, glowing with a soft, golden light. Its trunk, a colossal pillar of pearlescent, silver bark, rose for thousands of feet. And its branches… they did not end in leaves, but in shimmering, unstable tears in the fabric of space. Portals. Most were dark, but a handful flickered, offering glimpses into other worlds: a blood-red desert, a cityscape of crystalline towers, a roiling ocean of pure, raw mana.

This was a nexus. An interdimensional hub. The scale of my ancestors' power… it was beyond anything I could have imagined. Drawn by an irresistible curiosity, my Veil at its absolute peak and a blade of Ashen Flame held ready in a sub-dimensional space, I drifted towards one of the active portals. My mind raced, analyzing, cataloging. What powered this?

"Ah. You have finally come."

The voice was calm, warm, and so deeply familiar it felt like a part of my own soul. It was a voice from a life I thought was gone forever, a voice that had been the bedrock of my childhood. Every single defensive instinct in my body screamed, my muscles coiling, ready to Leap into a combat-ready state in a nanosecond. Illusion. Trap. Psychic projection. Memory-wraith. A thousand possibilities, each more dangerous than the last, flashed through my mind. This was the dungeon's test. It had found my greatest weakness, my most profound longing, and was turning it into a weapon.

My jaw tightened, and a cold, hard resolve settled over me. I would not fall for such a simple, cruel trick. I would unmake this phantom and whatever entity was puppeteering it.

Slowly, my limbs feeling heavy as lead, I turned.

Standing a few yards away, by the trunk of the great, silver tree, was a man. He looked exactly as my memories held him, perhaps a few more lines around his kind, intelligent eyes. He was wearing simple, comfortable-looking robes of a soft grey material, his hands clasped behind his back, a gentle, unassuming posture. It was the face of my grandfather, Arthur.

"You are not real," I said, my voice flat, cold, and utterly devoid of the emotion that was trying to claw its way up my throat. A single, shimmering tear of black Ashen Flame formed at my fingertip, a promise of utter annihilation.

My [Predator's Gaze] was a raging torrent, dissecting him on a conceptual level, searching for the psychic tethers of a manipulator, the flawed energy signature of a mimic, the soulless void of a golem.

It found… him.

It found a human soul, impossibly ancient, radiating a quiet, steady warmth so profound it felt like the heart of a star. It found the unique, irreplaceable resonance of my own bloodline, a familiar song that my very spirit recognized. It found no malice. No deception. Only a deep, patient, and overwhelming sense of… belonging. The phantom I had prepared for did not exist. There was only him.

The man — my grandfather — looked at the teardrop of unmaking on my fingertip, then met my eyes. He didn't flinch. There was no surprise, no fear. Only a soft, sad smile.

"That is the Kai blood, alright," he said, his voice a gentle, knowing rumble. "To see a ghost and, instead of running, decide to burn down the entire house just to be sure." His smile widened, and it was that familiar, loving crinkle at the corners of his eyes that finally broke through my ironclad defenses. "It is good to see you have not lost that fire, my boy."

The Ashen Flame on my fingertip sputtered and died. The carefully constructed walls around my heart didn't just crack; they disintegrated into dust.

"Grandpa…?" The word was a choked, broken whisper, all the hardness and resolve I had summoned turned to ash in my throat. It was a child's question, filled with a desperate, hopeless yearning.

He opened his arms in a simple, welcoming gesture. "Welcome home, Eren. You have been gone for a very long time."

That was it. That was all it took. The Lord of the Ashen Phoenix, the Conqueror, the walking avatar of Entropy, was gone. In his place was a lost child who had just found the one person he thought he had lost forever. I stumbled forward, my legs barely holding me, and threw my arms around him, burying my face in the familiar fabric of his robes, a wave of gut-wrenching, world-shattering relief washing over me, so powerful it almost brought me to my knees.

He was real. He was warm. He was here.

He held me tightly, one hand stroking the back of my head, a gesture that was as familiar as my own heartbeat. "There now, my boy. It is alright. You found the way back."

After a long moment that felt like an eternity, I managed to pull back, wiping clumsily at the hot tears that streamed down my face. "How…?" I managed to choke out, my mind a whirlwind of confusion. "The Kyorians… they took you… Anna too. She told me you were separated. I tried looking everywhere, there wasn't a single clue… I've been searching for so long…"

He looked at me, and for the first time, his serene expression was tinged with a deep, weary sorrow. He looked from my tear-streaked face, to the raw, untamed Tier 6 power that still clung to me like a shroud, and then to the shimmering portals that dotted the great tree's branches.

"Ah," he said, his voice soft. "So that is how it has played out this cycle." He met my confused gaze, his eyes ancient and deep. "I am so sorry Eren. It needed to be this way. I have never been lost. I have always been here, as is my duty. It was the only way we can be sure you and Anna were safe." His hand rested on my shoulder, a solid, real, grounding weight. "The question is not how I came to be here, my boy. The question is… how in the name of all the stars did you manage to find this place? That gateway to the outer worlds… it should not have opened for you. Not yet. Not for a long time."

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