(General P.O.V)

On the edges of unreality,the film of energy separating the waking world from the dream world, an ethereal cloud of starlight and awe-inspiring gradient roiled around, waiting.

The scene changed. The surrounding gray nothingness shifting into high mountains with oceans in wide basins on top of them, ice covered grounds that gave way to rivers of honey and birds the size of airplanes that broke apart into billions of insects. Pockets of dense energy dotted the place causing differences in the creatures and life found here.

The dreaming was unreasonable.

The aforementioned mysterious cloud roiled around before collapsing into the figure of a tall angel with a huge sword strapped to his back. This angel was different from the usual type. He was not astoundingly beautiful. His face was carved with straight lines that gave him a very stern expression.

His aura was not welcoming either. It did not put any of the creatures around at ease and as one, they ran away. Even the sky above started thrumming with thunder and lightning. The angel was over 7 feet tall and was dressed in an ornate golden armor. His wings while white were duller than most, glowing with a Gray tone.

"Dream, where is your brother?"

Metatron voiced out into the wind. His eyes shifted around, capturing everything. Knowing.

"Do not presume this to be the silver city, Metatron. This is my realm and I will not allow you to act with impudence."

The smooth deep voice that replied was followed by flakes of black energy that formed from the ground up.

Morpheus and Metatron stared at each other with clashing gazes. One a figure of dressed in black, The Sandman and the other the voice of god himself.

"I come in peace, Lord of Dreams. It would be wise for you to answer my question." Metatron warned an impassive Dream.

"Where is Aden Strong?"

Dream narrowed his eyes.

"Leave."

He then turned around and started walking off. Metatron looked at his retreating back.

"I came with the will of God. You turned me away. Remember this day, Morpheus."

Then he exploded into a cloud and shifted towards the sky, leaving behind a trail of white light.

"The voice of god? Metatron is still the delusional fool he has always been, I see."

Lucienne added, once Dream told her what had transpired. They were now inside the library. An empty library despite it's fully stocked nature, for you see, every book was blank. The histories of over 7 billion people simply gone.

"Careful Lucienne, power is still power, no matter who wields it."

He cautioned, causing the librarian to stare at him from the corner of her eyes. Lucienne cleared her throat, adjusted her glasses, placed the book in her hands on the table and turned to her master.

"Sooner or later we will have to face the reality Lord Morpheus. Whatever your little brother did, it has fully exempted him from the laws that govern reality."

Morpheus' jaw worked like crazy.

"Why?"

Lucienne opened her mouth, closed it and opened it again.

"I am sure you are quite aware of the reason yourself Lord."

"The trial."

Morpheus murmured, stroking the spine of a book titled 'Vaatu'. Vaatu was technically a creature of the dreaming and that connection between The Dreaming and him was stronger than the average person's. Yet even he was... missing from his senses.

"He could have asked for my help..."

Morpheus added, face scrunched up in a frown.

"Like you did when you had to recapture the escaped Nightmares?" Lucienne countered.

"Like it or not, Lord Morpheus, you and your siblings like to handle your problems on your own."

Lucienne reasoned.

"Though in the case of some, cause them."

"You mean my brother Desire?"

Morpheus asked, startling Lucienne. The woman dressed in a killer tux, looked embarrassed for a second.

"Oh my, did I say that aloud?"

Morpheus scoffed in humor.

"You're not wrong. Desire loves to create mayhem where he can. I am surprised that this is not his doing."

Lucienne nodded, promising to herself not to forget who she was talking about. Still, she had an idea.

"What about your elder brother, Lord Morpheus? Surely nothing can escape the gaze of destiny?"

Dream stood straighter for a second as he contemplated the idea. Lucienne was not exactly wrong but she was missing the point.

"What is Destiny without Dreams? What are dreams without destiny?" He closed the book in his hands with an audible snap.

"Understand this Lucienne...each concept of life, is as important as the next." He waved his hands and an illusion of each of the Endless sigils appeared in mid air.

The sigils were arranged in descending orders. From the oldest, Destiny to the youngest, Duality (Aden). Another wave and the sigils flew off their arranged orders and started roiling around, pivoting on their own self imposed axis without a logical order.

"There isn't a first or last or what came before each other. We all existed together as one bundle of consciousness that seemed to splinter out into individual components only because of the way sentient creatures view time. As something moving forward. You imposed order to something that up until then needed no order. So anything Destiny cannot see, I cannot as well. And vice versa."

Lucienne understood enough now. If Lord Morpheus did not know where Aden was, no one would. What Lucienne did not notice was how the chaotic words in the illusion created by Dream seemed to slow down and start orbiting around one word, Duality. Dream saw it though. The illusion broke and Dream got back to sorting through the books.

"A change like this...after more than a million years. Fascinatingly terrifying."

(Aden's P.O.V)

"Well Gaea, tell me the news."

I had my fingers tightened into fists, tense with worry.

"Initial diagnostic run shows that everything went according to the plan. The shift has not changed anything substantial."

I breathed out a sigh of relief from my position at the top of my favorite meditation space. The air plane looked as it usually did, a bright day with no discernible source of light, yet visibility was not an issue. Mist and clouds with peaks of individual mountains that speared right through the layers of water drops floating in the sky.

"That's good to hear, Gaea. Now we just need to solve one thing and we will be fully equipped to face anything that comes our way. Which means that I cannot ignore the trial or miss it. Not yet."

Practically no one knew my realm had a direct link to the source wall, which is how the core of my realm was sustained. That however meant there was a likely possibility that someone powerful like the Presence knew already. I wasn't taking any chances.

There were a few alternative methods to energy that Gaea was working on to ensure we attained full independence from that layer of reality.

The methods did not even need to be permanent. As long as we could upgrade the realm to the next level, it would start producing it's own energy. The process would also be made efficient due to the concept of an energy conducter made from a special alloy that ensured only less than 1% of the total energy was lost.

we could use and re-use energy as much as we wanted without fear of losing it completely. Unfortunately, for all of Gaea's incredible computational skills and genius, she was one entity and couldn't consider all infinite outcomes to such a difficult subject.

Earlier, I stated that the realm would not want for energy after it had been upgraded. The reason was fairly simple. Souls were immortal packets of pure source that produced soul energy or most commonly known, spirit energy. With the Quintes connection to the realm, Gaea could repurpose the spirit energy they would naturally give off during their day to day lives to use as a battery. That alone would keep the realm running. But taking into account, all the changes I wanted to bring about, that alone would not be enough.

It would have been much easier if I could just carry out another miracle but after expending all that power to tear my realm away to its own space, I needed time to gather more faith energy.

After discussing a few more options we landed on the most optimal solution. One that would solve two of our problems simultaneously. The first would be that I wouldn't have to wait for the Quintes race to be created so that the realm could upgrade and start producing energy without refining it from the Source. Secondly, the potential amounts for the energy produced would be massive by way of this project.

Getting to that idea hadn't been a smooth ride however. Gaea had had the idea that after enough data analysis and simulation experiments, creating multiple artificial souls that would be unified into one super consciousness which would act as the Realm's source of energy was possible. Leave alone the moral and ethical wrongness of such a practice, it was philosophically backwards and showed Gaea's limitation as a thinking, breathing entity.

That at the end of the day, she wasn't human or mortal. She was the consciousness of an entire world with millions of different species. so why would she feel that her favor was meant for one specific species when she was a mother of more? Luckily, she was still learning about reality's favoritism. We were more intelligent and our souls moved on to various afterlives upon death. That, permit me to say, allowed us to be at the forefront. We came before any less intelligent species. Such is life.

So that plan was completely scrapped, we could not use sapient creations for something like that but anything else was fair game. That got me thinking and from that mulling, a plan was formed. We couldn't use human, quintes or any other reasoning being's soul but that didn't mean we couldn't use, plant life. And boy did that open avenues. Botany already contributed to mankind's survival. This wouldn't be different.

What we needed was someone like Lex Luthor.

Someone very smart who could turn my idea into a reality. Preferably an expert in spirit energy manipulation due to it's abundance and importance to not only the project but also the realm as a whole. Those qualities could be found in a very very eccentric scientist who was ironically enough, an expert in spirit energy generation and manipulation.

And all I needed to do to get him? Use one of my perks to make it happen. It was time to activate the Sapience Bundle and bring Iknik Blackstone Varrick, business magnate, inventor, crazy man, rebel leader and foremost expert in spirit energy, into my realm. God help me.

Oh I couldn't forget his assistant/wife either. Damnit. Luckily the mission to destroy the Light and kill every major supervillain in the world had some really really enticing rewards.

I snapped a finger and relayed a message to my most bloodthirsty spirit.

"Michael, how about we begin operation 'Clean up?'

His reply was calm with an undertone of excitement.

"As you wish Master Aden."