The Wall

The Wall separates Paegeia from the world beyond while controlling who may cross and under what conditions. In Elena’s account, it is more than a boundary to be seen: it is the center of a regulated passage system in which travel depends on documents, inspections, and rare exceptions. Its lethal response to one attempted deception gives that system a darker edge, while the unexplained absence of Elena and her father from the registration records leaves a personal mystery embedded in its rules.

The Boundary and Elena’s First Encounter

For Elena, the Wall is initially a place she has crossed without truly seeing. A trip to the airport promises her first chance to look at it; when she passed through on the night her father died, she had no opportunity to take in what lay around her. The prospect fills her with anticipation and imagined possibilities, so the Wall arrives first as an object of expectation: a barrier whose appearance and workings she does not yet know.

That gap between crossing and seeing matters. Elena has already been carried through the boundary, but only later does she begin to learn what passage entails. Her first account of the system comes not from a view of the Wall itself but from the airport’s arrangements and Lucille’s explanations. The boundary is thus introduced through the procedures that make it traversable, and through the questions those procedures raise about Elena’s own unrecorded passage.

Routes, Registration, and Inspection

The airport distinguishes between local travel and travel beyond Paegeia. Lucille explains that the white Enchanted elevators serve destinations inside Paegeia and can be used by humans as well as Dragons; the green tubes lead out of Paegeia. She describes a network of more than five thousand elevators, with Dragons in human form working at airports on the other side. The scale of the network makes travel seem routine, but its routes are divided by destination and status rather than being interchangeable.

Crossing outward also requires official recognition. Lucille says every Dragon from Paegeia must be registered before entering the world beyond, and that Dragons carry passports and identification from other countries in case they are asked to prove who they are. At the airport, Elena sees five Dragons being turned around while humans search them. Lucille explains that the checks are intended to confirm that each traveler really is a Dragon, not merely someone who looks like one.

The system’s severity has a specific origin. Long ago, a human used a spell to appear as a Dragon and tried to enter; the Wall disintegrated him. Afterward, attendants began conducting full searches. The incident links the Wall’s lethal force to the inspection routine: a past breach attempt has become the justification for scrutiny of every Dragon seeking passage. Lucille warns that the arrangement is not something travelers can casually evade, since those who disregard it may be unable to return.

The consequences of lacking the right papers are visible even beyond Lucille’s explanation. A woman at a counter tells a raggedly dressed man that he cannot leave Paegeia without the correct documents and that officials on the other side will deport him back home. His insistence that he has to get across does not alter the requirement. The encounter presents the border rule not as an abstract formality but as a barrier that can frustrate an individual’s urgent need to travel.

Exceptions and Elena’s Unanswered Passage

Direct flight through the Wall is reserved for Dragons with special passes. Lucille gives Matt as an example: he brought Elena directly through, and he is one of only a handful with that permission. She adds that he knows every Dragon on the other side. His exceptional access contrasts with the ordinary route of registered travel and inspection, making Elena’s own crossing unusual even before she understands how unusual it was.

Elena does not remember the journey. She recalls only waking at Dragonia Academy, and Lucille’s account therefore supplies a missing part of her personal history: Matt flew her directly through the Wall. Elena says Matt did not know everyone, but the disagreement does not resolve the central uncertainty about her passage. The memory remains absent, even as the mechanism is clarified.

A further mystery concerns registration. Lucille says Master Longwei had asked whether Elena could come home with Becky, and that why Elena’s father never registered the two of them on the other side remains unknown. She offers no explanation and expects that they may never learn one. Her reassurance that Elena is safe now answers the immediate emotional need without closing the question of how Elena and her father came to be outside the system.

The Wall’s Narrative Significance

The Wall operates simultaneously as a physical boundary, a travel threshold, and an administrative test. The elevator routes, required documents, identity searches, and special passes distribute mobility unevenly: ordinary travelers must satisfy the rules, while a small number of authorized Dragons can cross by direct flight. The attempted impersonation explains why suspicion has become routine, and the man turned away at the counter shows how the rules can deny passage in practice.

For Elena, these arrangements turn a long-anticipated sight into a revelation about her own past. She learns that her passage was exceptional, that she cannot remember it, and that her father’s failure to register them has no known explanation. The Wall’s significance therefore lies not only in separating Paegeia from elsewhere, but in exposing the difference between being carried across and being accounted for. It is a boundary Elena has already crossed, yet one whose procedures still frame what she does not know about her history.