Chapter 563: It was the origin. The center.
Nidhogg remained motionless for a few moments after hearing Elion’s remark. Her expression didn’t change much, but Kael immediately realized she had taken those words seriously. The situation had finally ceased to be just a complicated family argument or a sequence of absurd events involving teleportation, volcanoes, and atmospheric collapses. Now there was a concrete objective before them. For the first time since all this began, they needed to enter the central domain of Yggdrasil for real.
The silence that settled inside the house wasn’t uncomfortable. It was just the kind of silence that arises when everyone involved understands that the next step will require attention. The runes Elion had recently engraved still remained hidden beneath Kael’s skin, pulsing slowly along with his mana and the primordial energy left by Nidhogg. He could feel it clearly. His body felt different. Heavier at times. Lighter at others. As if it were being prepared to endure something he couldn’t yet fully comprehend.
Elion observed the two for a few seconds before crossing his arms again. Her expression remained tired, but now she looked much closer to the usual pragmatic archmage than the irritated woman who had tried to solve emotional problems through offensive teleportation.
"I think there’s no reason to delay this any longer."
Kael nodded slowly.
Nidhogg did too.
Neither of them seemed particularly excited about the prospect of what was to come, but both understood that continuing to wait wouldn’t solve anything.
It was then that Elion let out a small sigh and discreetly pointed to the exit of the house.
"You two will need to go alone."
Kael immediately turned to her.
"Alone?"
"Yes."
"Aren’t you coming?"
Elion made an almost bored expression before answering.
"No."
The answer was so simple that Kael waited for further explanation.
It came a few seconds later.
"I was banished."
The silence that followed was immediate.
Kael blinked once.
Then again.
Then he looked at her again.
"You were what?"
"Banished."
"From the Central Kingdom of Yggdrasil?"
"Yes."
Kael stared at his mother for several seconds without saying a word.
It simply didn’t make sense.
He slowly turned his face towards Nidhogg.
Then back to Elion.
Then back to Nidhogg again.
Then he finally spoke.
"Wait."
Elion already seemed tired of the conversation before it even began.
"No."
"No, really wait."
"Kael."
"Are you telling me that a primordial dragon that literally eats Yggdrasil roots is still allowed to enter that place..."
Nidhogg seemed slightly offended.
"I don’t eat that many roots."
"...but you, a Primordial Witch, were expelled?"
Elion looked away.
The gesture was small.
But extremely suspicious.
Kael immediately noticed.
"Wow."
Elion continued looking to the side.
"Wow."
She sighed deeply.
"It was a specific situation."
"That’s never a reassuring phrase."
"It was a long time ago."
Kael continued staring at her.
Elion remained silent for a few seconds before finally admitting:
"Perhaps I conducted some magical tests."
Kael crossed his arms.
"What kind of tests?"
Elion seemed to reflect.
"Experimental."
"What kind of experimental?"
She sighed again.
"Hardly relevant nowadays."
"What kind of experimental, Mother?"
Now even Nidhogg seemed interested in the answer.
Elion finally closed her eyes.
"Nuclear magic."
The silence was absolute.
Kael didn’t answer.
He didn’t react.
He didn’t blink.
He just stared at her.
Expressionless.
Emotionless.
Just staring.
Elion opened one eye.
"Stop looking at me like that."
Kael continued looking.
"It was an accident."
Kael continued looking.
"Partially."
Kael continued looking.
"I had calculations."
Kael continued looking.
"The calculations were wrong."
Now even Nidhogg was trying to hide a laugh.
Elion immediately pointed at the two of them.
"You both lost the right to judge me hours ago."
"You destroyed part of the Central Kingdom."
"It was just a small region."
"You were banished."
"Yggdrasil overreacted."
Nidhogg finally spoke.
"No. This time it didn’t overreact."
Elion made an offended expression.
But he didn’t answer.
After a few seconds, he simply waved his hand as if deciding to completely abandon the discussion.
"Enough."
Kael still seemed unable to believe that information.
His mother had been expelled from the center of reality for testing nuclear magic.
The more he thought about it, the less surprising it seemed.
Which, somehow, was even more worrying.
"Prepare yourself."
Elion’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
Kael raised his head.
Nidhogg had also already stood up.
Without answering, the dragoness walked to one of the enormous natural openings existing between the gigantic roots of the Original Kingdom. The bluish light of the dimension illuminated her silver hair as she observed the void below.
Then she took another step.
And it simply launched itself.
Kael moved forward instinctively.
But there was no danger.
Before he could even fully react, Nidhogg’s body began to glow.
A golden light filled the surrounding space.
The magical pressure instantly increased.
The roots of Yggdrasil vibrated.
The very air seemed to bend.
Kael watched as the humanoid form disappeared.
First came the scales.
Then the wings.
Then the rest.
But this time it wasn’t the colossal form he had seen before.
It was something much larger.
Much worse.
Much harder to comprehend.
Nidhogg’s body continued to grow.
And grow.
And grow.
Until the concept of size began to lose meaning.
Kael felt the air leave his lungs.
Not because something was suffocating him.
But because his brain simply couldn’t process what he was seeing.
The gigantic roots that had once seemed like mountains now looked small beside her.
Entire valleys disappeared under the shadow of her wings.
Parts of the Original Kingdom became insignificant before that absurd scale.
It was like observing a living continent.
No.
Not even that seemed enough.
She had truly told the truth.
Her true form was larger than continents.
Much larger.
Kael remained motionless.
His eyes fixed on that impossible entity.
At that moment, he understood something he had previously only accepted abstractly.
Nidhogg wasn’t just powerful.
She wasn’t just ancient.
She wasn’t just primordial.
She was one of the few existences capable of existing outside the normal proportions of reality.
A creature so gigantic that the world needed to create specific rules just to accommodate her existence.
Her voice echoed throughout the entire dimension.
It wasn’t high.
But it seemed to come from everywhere at once.
"Go up."
Kael took a few seconds to answer because he was still busy trying to regain his ability to reason.
"You really weren’t exaggerating."
A deep laugh echoed through the void.
"I rarely exaggerate about size."
Even in that absurd situation, Kael managed to let out a small laugh.
Then he began walking toward the enormous surface of golden scales that now stretched before him like a living mountain.
Because, apparently, the next stage of his life involved traversing reality itself riding a dragon larger than entire continents.
And, considering everything that had happened up to that point, it didn’t seem as strange as it should have.
It took Kael several minutes just to reach a safe area on Nidhogg’s scales. Even knowing rationally that she was carefully controlling every movement, walking on that colossal body produced a strange sensation. It didn’t feel like he was climbing onto a living creature. It felt like he was traversing an entire mountain range made of black gold and metallic scales. Some plates were larger than entire cities. Between them were natural valleys where streams of golden mana slowly flowed like luminous rivers.
When he finally found a stable position near the base of one of the enormous bony structures that supported his wings, Kael paused to catch his breath. From there, he could observe a significant portion of the Original Kingdom. Yggdrasil’s gigantic roots stretched across the horizon in every possible direction, forming an entire world upon themselves. Even so, they now seemed small compared to Nidhogg’s true form.
The dragoness’s colossal head moved slowly above him. Her golden eyes were so large that Kael could see entire reflections of landscapes within them.
"Are you comfortable?"
Kael took a few seconds to answer.
"Comfortable isn’t exactly the word I’d use."
"You’re alive."
"That’s an absurdly low standard."
"It’s still a valid standard."
Despite her response, Kael could perceive a slight satisfaction in her voice. Nidhogg seemed genuinely calm now. There was no provocation. No excessive sarcasm. There was only an ancient serenity, as if that colossal form was far more natural to her than any humanoid appearance.
Then the dragoness’s entire body began to move.
The Original Realm trembled.
Not from violence.
But simply because something of that magnitude had decided to advance.
Kael felt a vibration run through the scales beneath his feet as Nidhogg slowly extended her wings. The movement was so wide that part of the horizon disappeared beneath her shadow.
The magical pressure immediately increased.
The roots of Yggdrasil reacted.
Golden currents surged throughout the dimension.
Ancient runes began to appear among the natural structures of the Original Realm, like automatic mechanisms awakening before the approach of something too powerful.
Kael watched everything in silence.
Then Nidhogg spoke.
"The Central Realm has no gates."
Her voice echoed through the entire space.
"There are no normal ways to get in there."
Kael lifted his face.
"Then how are we going to get in?"
Her golden eyes turned forward.
"We’re going to make a way."
That didn’t sound reassuring.
Not at all.
Before he could ask another question, Nidhogg began gathering mana.
The effect was immediate.
The space before her began to change.
First came small distortions.
Then cracks.
Then reality itself began to warp.
Kael felt a shiver run through his entire body.
He had seen powerful magic before.
He had seen Elion alter physical laws.
He had witnessed impossible teleportations.
But this was different.
Nidhogg wasn’t using magic the way mages did.
She wasn’t manipulating rules. She was grasping directly at the very fabric of existence.
And pulling.
The void before her began to shatter.
Black cracks spread across space like fractures in glass.
Golden lines appeared between them.
Then came sounds.
Not explosions.
Not rumblings.
But something worse.
The noise of reality itself giving way.
Kael felt his runes instantly glow beneath his skin.
Elion’s protections reacted on their own.
Golden currents coursed through his arms, neck, and chest.
His entire body was enveloped in a layer of adaptive energy as the dimensional pressure increased.
The fissure continued to grow.
Larger.
Deeper.
More impossible.
Space no longer felt like space.
Time, too, began to behave strangely.
Kael saw fragments of light emerge from within the rupture.
He saw stars.
He saw oceans.
He saw entire landscapes disappearing before he could comprehend them.
It was like observing countless realities compressed against one another.
Then Nidhogg advanced.
The movement was slow.
Controlled.
But still colossal.
The dragoness’s head passed through the fissure first.
Then the neck.
Then the wings.
Reality continued to tear to accommodate its passage.
Kael held on tightly against the scales below him as he felt an absurd pressure compress his body.
The runes of Elion shone even brighter.
Primordial mana swirled around him like a golden storm.
For an instant, his vision disappeared completely.
There was no up.
No down.
No direction.
Only light.
And emptiness.
Then it all ended.
The pressure disappeared.
The noise ceased.
And the world emerged again.
Kael opened his eyes.
His breath simply stopped.
They had passed through.
But this wasn’t just another dimensional realm.
This was something entirely different.
The Central Realm of Yggdrasil seemed to exist outside any common concept of reality.
Immense expanses of branches stretched across the horizon in every possible direction. Some were as wide as entire continents. Others supported entire forests on their surfaces. Rivers of golden light flowed through the living wood like liquid streams of pure mana.
There was no true sky.
Above them was only a luminous immensity formed by gigantic leaves, each larger than mountains. Light streamed through these structures in shades of gold, green, and blue, creating a constant glow that seemed to spring from existence itself.
Kael observed creatures flying among the branches.
Beings made of light.
Impossible animals.
Forms that constantly shifted between matter and energy.
Some looked like birds.
Others resembled dragons.
Others had no equivalent in any known ecosystem.
Further away, entire cities seemed to have grown directly upon the branches of the World Tree. Crystalline structures emerged from the living wood without any visible separation between construction and nature.
Nothing seemed artificial.
Nothing seemed natural.
It was both simultaneously.
The air possessed a strange aroma.
Clean.
Ancient.
Like rain on newly grown wood.
The currents of mana were so dense that Kael could see them. They flowed through the environment like invisible rivers made visible by their own intensity.
Even time seemed different.
Slower.
Deeper.
As if that place existed at its own pace.
Nidhogg continued advancing between the gigantic branches with careful movements. For the first time since Kael had known her, even she seemed to show respect for her surroundings.
No provocation.
No jokes.
Only silence.
Kael immediately understood the reason.
That place wasn’t just important.
It was the origin.
The center.
