The Null Realm began not with stone, but with intent.
It unfolded from the center of the void, a singular pulse of divine will radiating outward in measured silence. Not built—willed into being. The twenty stood at the edge of the abyss, and from their thoughts, structure took root.
It started with Vireon. He raised his hand, and the emptiness around him buckled. Lines of order unfolded beneath his feet, weaving a framework of reality too complex for mortal comprehension. Gravity, time, and matter aligned to his vision.
Seren followed, fingers brushing the formless weave. Where she touched, colors bled into existence. Life coiled in her wake—small, delicate, radiant things that glowed in the stillness.
Then came Aelor. He laughed, a light sound in the void, and bent a sliver of time into a circle, making it dance in his palm like a living coin. He pressed it into the new floor, and it sank into the foundation, threading temporal echoes into the bones of the realm.
Others contributed. Some crafted floating spires that defied logic. Some poured oceans into suspended glass spheres. A few set whole stars within orbiting chains of silver light, like lanterns around a cathedral.
They built a palace not meant to be lived in, but remembered.
And still, Caelum stood apart.
He walked through the forming halls as if he were not part of their making. The walls whispered when he passed, though no god had spoken to them. Lights dimmed when he paused. Not in reverence. In recognition.
He did not raise his hand. He did not shape the world. But the world bent subtly around him all the same, like breath drawing toward a held word.
Drazel watched him from across the great hall.
The Seventh's gaze was not curious. It was calculating.
"He builds nothing," Drazel murmured to no one in particular. "Yet the castle answers him."
Whispers spread. Not all spoke them aloud, but suspicion fermented like rot behind grand declarations and shared creation. Even Vireon, ever silent, began to watch Caelum more closely.
In truth, Caelum did not know what lay dormant inside himself.
He did not build because he feared what he might create.
Instead, he walked through the palace as though searching for something just outside of memory.
Then one night—if it could be called a night in a place without suns—he found himself at the edge of the central sanctum.
The chamber had no floor. No walls. Only starlight, scattered like sand across an invisible sphere. Dreams lingered here. Not his. Not the others'. Older. Deeper.
He sat.
And for the first time, he let himself feel the shape of the power pulsing under his skin.
It was not light. It was not fire. It was something colder. Heavier.
Memory. Loss. Longing.
A gift, perhaps. Or a wound.
Whatever it was, the Null Realm remembered him.
And the forge of creation—perfect, vast, glorious—had been shaped not by what he offered, but by what he refused to give.
And that absence would echo longer than any monument they raised.