The next room made my senses short-circuit for a solid three seconds.
Then, as my brain slowly rebooted, I realized I was standing in something that felt less like a room and more like a paradox. A cathedral carved from a forgotten dream of the future—ornate arches twisted with circuitry, floating glass panels that pulsed with colors my vocabulary didn't cover, and hovering data terminals shaped like constellations, each flickering with fragments of equations, languages, and maybe memories. A soft ambient hum filled the air—not mechanical, not magical, but something between them. It whispered things. Not words. Impulses. As if the room itself was curious about me.
There was gravity here, but not the kind that pulled on bodies. It pulled on thought. On spirit.
Gerard stepped forward, his boots tapping against what I assumed was obsidian—or maybe solidified starlight. He didn't seem fazed. Of course he didn't.
"This," he said, gesturing to the floating tome before him, "is the Sanctum Core. Our archive. Our hearth. The heart of the Paladins."
The tome hovered, ancient and luminous, its cover engraved with a single word.
[Paladins]
The letters shimmered with an inner light, like the stars themselves were caged beneath the ink. As I stepped closer, the book flipped open—not page by page, but thought by thought—images and scribbles bursting to life in chaotic order. Worlds. Names. Symbols. I couldn't read them, but they read me. They knew I didn't belong.
Not yet.
Gerard continued as we walked, his voice echoing against the curved walls.
"The word Paladin—once synonymous with holy knights in shining armor—is far more ancient than any scripture that tried to own it. Before it was wrapped in mortal myth, it was a signal. A call. A pact."
He paused beside an orb of shifting geometry. His hand brushed it, and the ceiling above us opened into a dome of moving stars. No, not stars. Events.
Wars that never made it into history books. Collapsing galaxies that screamed as they died. Beings made of light kneeling to shadows. A serpent swallowing a sun, devouring it like fruit. Worlds stitched together with chains of lightning. A child cradling the skull of a god.
Then it all faded, and I was back in the room, breathless.
"In a fractured universe where the divine and the arcane bleed into one another," Gerard said, "a Paladin is not a title. It is a covenant."
A quiet hum passed through the air, and the tome shifted, now displaying a figure—armored in glass and bone, holding what looked like a cup made of light. The Holy Grail.
"They are the custodians of balance," Gerard explained. "Operating between timelines, between dimensions, between forgotten truths buried in myth and erased from memory. They are not beholden to kings, nor angels, nor the great beasts of old. They answer only to the Grail—the last remnant of divine will, now infused into the threads of destiny itself."
The Grail. I could still feel it in my blood, like an echo that never faded. A subtle weight in my hand even when it wasn't there. I wondered if I'd ever stop feeling it.
I glanced back at the book. Each page now showed faces, blurred and shifting—like history was ashamed to name them. A soldier whose heart beat backward. A witch who gave up immortality to guard a single moment. A wanderer with no face, only reflections.
"They are chosen not for virtue," Gerard continued, "but for contradiction. A scientist who believes in fate. A monster who longs to save. A knight who once shattered a kingdom. Geniuses born of madness. Saints with broken vows."
He led me past a chamber with what looked like floating crystal armories—blades that bent light, gauntlets that pulsed with neural fire, scrolls made of woven sound, helmets carved from planetary cores.
"Paladin is not a monolith,"
Gerard said, stopping at a balcony that overlooked a central chamber.
"It is a mosaic. Chaotic. Radiant. Deadly."
Below us, I saw them—people. Paladins. Training, building, meditating, existing. One man was sparring with shadows that moved of their own accord. A woman floated midair, her body surrounded by equations that shifted each time she blinked. Another sat cross-legged before a pool that reflected not water, but infinite versions of herself.
"It is where science meets magic. Where prophecy shares a bed with free will. Where the past and the future hold hands and dare the present to keep up."
We stood there for a moment. Watching them. Paladins. A new species of purpose.
"The sanctuary exists between layers of reality," Gerard said. "You won't find it on a map. It's a living thing, built from the bones of dead universes. A home for exiles. For paradoxes. For people like us."
He turned to me.
"Felix," he said quietly.
"We are not heroes. We are not saviors...
We are the ones who stand between the unraveling threads of creation—and whatever waits to pull the last one loose."
For a heartbeat, I couldn't breathe. Not because of fear, but because something ancient had settled inside my chest—recognition. A whisper of belonging.
I looked down again at the Sanctum Core.
The tome turned its pages one final time, and the images it showed were… recent.
'Dad...'
The moment I died.
And then… the Grail. In my hand. Not a symbol. Not a metaphor.
"How long has this place been here?" I asked. My voice was smaller than I intended.
Gerard stepped forward, touching the edge of the hovering tome.
"No one knows," he said. "But it has roots in every myth humanity ever tried to bury. Atlantis. Shambhala. Ys. Lemuria. The Tower of Babel. The Burning Library of Asha. The fallen star-temples of the Sahari. Each a fragment of the same greater whole. The Sanctum predates them all. It does not follow time—it folds it."
Gerard paused...
They didn't arrive all at once. The first emerged from the ceiling—no, walked down it—sharp claws clicking against the wall with eerie precision, each step a defiance of gravity until he landed in a silent crouch, grinning like a storm just waiting to happen. Moments later, another shape twisted through the air in a blur of motion—flipping, spinning, spiraling down from above with effortless grace before landing on one foot, posture flawless, eyes unreadable.
A soft hum followed—high-tech thrusters descending slowly from the cathedral heights, sleek boots touching down with surgical quiet, surrounded by a glow of interface rings and faintly pulsing data streams. Then, without warning, there was a presence behind me—no footstep, no sound, just the cold certainty that someone had arrived where no one had stood before. I turned slowly. She was already watching.
Gerard, as if he would like to put an emphasis once more.
"We are the ones who stand between the unraveling threads of creation—and whatever waits to pull the last one loose."
"And now, you are a Paladin."