"When you're too heavy to move, all that's left is to watch the sky bleed."
The Drift collapsed halfway.
Ren hung in the void like something forgotten between breaths — not falling, not flying, just... suspended.
All around him: static and pressure. Aetherium-threaded echoes coiling like broken veins of memory that didn't belong to him.
And in front of him, pulsing red across a floating glyph-panel:
AETHERIUM CORE – LOCKDOWN MODE
COOLDOWN ACTIVE – REMAINING: [37:28]
Dimensional transit halted. Core stabilizing. Drift sync: offline.
REN (drifting slightly, arms loose at his sides):
"Cool. I get stuck in a dimensional reboot window and the universe throws a tantrum without me."
He sighed.
That's when the light hit.
It wasn't coming toward him — it was happening.
A full-spectrum burst, bleeding through fold-space, unfiltered and uncaring.
The Core, in lockdown, had tethered him to the edge of live-system events — like a watcher, plugged into all active warzones.
It wasn't a vision.
This was now.
He saw the sky break above Planet 9 — Yxtrielle's orbit twisting under pressure.
Not magic. Not tech.
Just a man.
Va'theran.
No robe. No disguise. Just the body of a man who had stopped giving a shit about hiding.
One step: the battlefield bent around him.
One gesture: glyphs turned to dust mid-air.
One breath: half a Riftborn squad blinked, then simply didn't exist anymore.
The Threxil war-beasts screamed as their echo cores melted out of sync.
And behind Va'theran?
Nothing but stillness — the kind that made reality stay quiet out of respect.
He didn't shout. He didn't gloat.
He just moved like war had asked him to stay out of it for too long, and now it owed him.
Further out, over Solmerea — Planet 10 —
Ren caught a flicker of motion so sharp it hurt to track.
Lira.
Still alive. Still burning.
Her chrono-glyphs wrapped around her like armor, slicing through time as she slashed forward through collapsing royal wards.
Five Empires had gone to war over control of the Core.
She was holding all of them back with seconds — blocking missiles before they were cast, undoing damage as it struck.
A sword in one hand.
The past and future balanced in the other.
And she was smiling.
Ren turned, pulled slightly by another ripple.
That's when it happened.
Not nearby. Not in the Verge.
Somewhere further — too far to measure, too strange to name.
He didn't know the system. He didn't know the names of the planets.
But he saw it.
Four.
Four entire planets. Alive. Populated. Orbiting a red sun.
And then they were gone.
No explosion.
No implosion.
No light buildup. No countdown.
Just white.
One blink.
Gone.
REN (staring, breath gone):
"…What the fuck."
FROST (voice only, cutting through static):
"We don't know."
SPACE (sharper than usual):
"That wasn't a weapon. It didn't leave evidence. It left... absence."
GRAVITY (with a tone colder than death):
"It wasn't attack. It was judgment."
TIME (quiet, shaken):
"That wasn't something trying to win. That was something editing."
The light faded. The silence crawled back in.
Ren's panel flashed again.
[31:44 Remaining]
Core: Stabilizing...
Dimensional sync: Not yet ready.
He floated in the stillness.
No thoughts.
No glyphs.
No Core.
No war left in him.
Only one truth:
Something had entered the galaxy.
And it wasn't playing by the rules.
REN (whispering):
"They're not part of this story."
The panel pulsed once.
AETHERIUM CORE (gentle, almost amused):
"Yet.