The silence after the battle was deafening.
For the first time since the fleet had arrived at The Nexus, there were no alarms, no explosions, no screams of ships being torn apart. Only the quiet hum of stabilizing engines, the occasional flicker of emergency beacons, and the vast, unchanged expanse of space.
The Vanguard's bridge was filled with the stunned breathing of officers who had just witnessed the impossible.
The Forgotten were gone.
The Nexus was sealed.
And Elias Voss was something else entirely.
---
Sienna watched Elias carefully.
He stood at the viewport, golden energy still crackling faintly around him. His silhouette was the same, but there was something in his presence now—something untouchable. He wasn't just the scientist who had set out to study The Nexus.
He was more.
Finally, she broke the silence. "…So."
Elias turned his glowing eyes toward her.
She hesitated. "Are you still you?"
Elias exhaled slowly. "I think so." He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers as faint traces of golden energy pulsed beneath his skin. "But I don't think I can go back to what I was before."
Roarke approached from across the bridge, his usual unreadable expression now heavily guarded. "You ended it," he said. "The Forgotten, the breach, all of it." His gaze darkened. "What exactly did you do?"
Elias's fingers curled into fists. "I changed the rules."
Roarke didn't flinch. "Meaning?"
Elias turned to face him fully. "The Nexus was a barrier—a seal created by something older than any of us. It was never meant to be permanent. Eventually, the Forgotten were always going to return." He paused, his voice steady. "So I rewrote the barrier into something absolute. I made sure they can't ever breach through again."
Roarke crossed his arms. "And how, exactly, does one rewrite the fabric of the universe?"
Elias met his gaze, the golden glow in his eyes flickering. "…By becoming a part of it."
Sienna felt a chill run down her spine. "Elias…"
He gave her a small, tired smile. "I'm still here, Sienna. But The Nexus—it's not just some ancient construct anymore. It's me."
The words hung in the air.
No one spoke.
Because they all understood the gravity of what he had just said.
Elias Voss wasn't just a man anymore.
He was the last remnant of The Nexus itself.
---
The Cost of a Choice
The fleet began its slow recovery. Wounded ships were stabilized, the dead were counted, and transmissions were sent back to the nearest human outposts.
The war was over.
But there was no celebration.
Because in the wake of The Nexus's final collapse, something had shifted in the universe.
The laws of physics—the very nature of existence—had changed.
New anomalies were already appearing across deep-space sectors. Not Forgotten breaches, not remnants of the war, but something else.
Something new.
Humanity had survived—but the cost of that survival had yet to be fully understood.
---
Later—Aboard the Vanguard
Elias sat alone in his quarters, staring at his hands.
He could still feel The Nexus, even though it no longer existed in the way it once had. Its energy pulsed through him, woven into his very being.
He was no longer just Elias Voss, the astrophysicist.
He was the last guardian of a threshold that no longer needed guarding.
The question now was—
What was he supposed to do next?
A soft knock came at the door.
Sienna stepped in, hesitating for only a moment before sitting across from him. She studied him, not with fear, but with the same analytical sharpness she always had.
"…So," she said finally. "You're basically a walking cosmic phenomenon now?"
Elias chuckled. "Something like that."
She sighed, rubbing her temples. "Figures. Leave it to you to break the universe and fix it in the same damn day."
He smiled, but it faded quickly. "Sienna… things aren't going to go back to normal. The Nexus is gone, but the universe—it's still changing." He hesitated. "And I think I might be the only one who can make sense of it now."
She was quiet for a long moment. Then, she said softly, "Are you going to leave?"
Elias exhaled. He didn't know the answer yet.
"…Not yet," he said.
Not until he understood what came next.
---
Epilogue of a War
Across the galaxy, something stirred.
Not the Forgotten.
Not the remnants of The Nexus.
Something entirely new.
The war had ended.
But the universe had only just begun to change.
And Elias Voss was going to have to decide what role he played in it.
Because for the first time in eternity—
The cycle was broken.
And no one knew what came next.