Ash blanketed the sky.
Though the rift had closed, its echo lingered like the taste of lightning on the tongue, or the memory of a scream that never truly faded. The Aetherion hovered, broken but alive, carried not by engines anymore but by the stubborn will of the Dominion Key's residual field.
Leon woke in silence.
The infirmary was dim, its windows sealed by dark fabric. Aether lanterns floated midair, pulsing softly. Every breath he took scraped against the rawness in his lungs. His fingers trembled as he raised them not in fear, but in unfamiliarity.
He couldn't feel the Key anymore.
He had wielded it. Burned with it. Fought gods with it.
Now, it was as cold as stone.
Seraphine sat nearby, asleep in a chair, her armor cracked and bloodstained. Even in rest, she was alert one hand on the hilt of her blade, the other resting on a datapad displaying readings from the rift event.
Kael leaned against the far wall, a cast around his arm, his cybernetic eye flickering with corrupted data.
"You're awake," Kael said softly.
Leon tried to speak. Failed. Tried again.
"…Did it work?"
Kael didn't answer at first. He walked over, set a hand on Leon's shoulder.
"It closed. But that thing? It didn't just look through the veil. It left something behind."
Elsewhere In the Wastes of the Forgotten Sun
A young boy named Tenro stumbled through dead fields, chasing his lost goat through the blight-scorched valley.
The sun here never rose properly. It flickered, dim and bloated, as if trying to remember how to shine.
But something new had grown where the sky tore.
A flower.
Black as pitch. Pulsing.
Tenro approached it, wide-eyed, reaching
The flower opened.
Not like petals. Like an eye.
And far away, across a dozen realms, the Hollow Star blinked in unison.
Back on the Aetherion
"Where is Elias?" Leon asked hoarsely.
Seraphine stirred. "Alive. Barely. Whatever he became, it's been burned out of him but I wouldn't trust him in chains, let alone free."
Leon looked down at his hands.
"I saw things, Kael. Not just through the rift. I saw myself. A version of me… ruling, not fighting. A tyrant in gold. Another version of me, dead before the journey began. And one…"
He looked up, voice breaking.
"One where I was the Hollow Star."
Seraphine stood slowly, her voice grim. "The Keys never unlocked doors. They were always mirrors."
Leon nodded.
"I need to know what's coming next. Because that wasn't an ending. That was a greeting."
Kael handed him a transmission chip. "Then you'll want to hear this. We intercepted a message deep-code buried in the flare aftermath. It was sent… from the future."
Leon inserted the chip.
A voice crackled through.
His own.
"If you're hearing this… it means I failed."
Future's End
The voice echoed in the chamber like a dying god whispering prophecy.
"If you're hearing this… it means I failed."
Leon sat motionless. His own voice older, weathered, etched with defeat continued from the small chip embedded in the console. The others gathered in silence: Seraphine, Kael, Captain Vale, and the last surviving Arcanum Engineer, Freya.
"I tried to stop it. I built the Keys. I rewrote the bindings on the World-Code. I killed my other selves. It wasn't enough."
A chill rippled through the air. The Aether lanterns flickered.
"The Hollow Star… isn't a being. It's a convergence. A destiny. It's me, without chains. Without mercy. You can't kill it. But maybe maybe you can rewrite the story before it locks in."
Leon's breath hitched.
"Is that what this is?" he asked aloud. "A fixed future trying to solidify?"
Kael tapped on his cracked datapad. "Temporal echoes are rare but not impossible. But this… this isn't just a warning. This is a loop. A failed cycle trying again."
Freya leaned in. "The flare that followed the rift collapse destabilized our quantum core. What if it also triggered a feedback across alternate branches of reality? That voice your future self it could be an echo rebounding through the tear."
Seraphine narrowed her eyes. "So what do we do? We wait for the next flare? Or stop pretending time's on our side?"
"No," Leon murmured. "We chase the origin."
Hours Later – In the Bridge of the Aetherion
A new map had been uploaded a scatter of temporal anomalies across the remaining fragments of the Dominion Network. All leading toward a dead zone in space-time called The Null Spiral once a prison for forgotten gods, now a pulsing beacon.
Leon watched the chart in silence.
Seraphine approached him, brushing dust from his shoulder. "You ready?"
"No," he said honestly. "But I've got to go."
She hesitated, then touched his arm. "Don't forget who you are. That's how the Hollow Star wins. By erasing you. Turning you into it."
Leon looked at her his expression softer than it had been in weeks.
"I won't forget."
Meanwhile – Deep Beneath the Shattered Continent of Thalos
In the ruins of an old Dominion Vault, something stirred.
Tendrils of corrupted light bled from the walls symbols not drawn, but grown. A hollow figure stepped forward, clothed in ragged gold, his face a cracked mirror of Leon's.
It smiled.
"Almost time."
The Hollow Star turned to the creature beside it a stitched beast of bone and psalm, created from broken timelines.
"Let them come. We'll show them the end they tried to forget."
The vault pulsed. And somewhere in the broken skies, the stars began to blink… not out of existence, but into something new.
Something wrong.
---
The Null Spiral
The Aetherion pierced the upper veil of reality, engines humming with a new resonance one not born of machinery, but of intent. Reality blurred as the ship transitioned into the Riftstream, the only known passage that could lead them to the Null Spiral.
Leon stood at the helm, eyes fixed on the churning void ahead. It wasn't just darkness it was memory, forgotten dreams, and timelines collapsed into themselves. The Null Spiral wasn't a place. It was where stories went to die.
"Stabilizers holding at eighty percent," Kael muttered, teeth clenched as he adjusted a glowing dial.
Freya's voice chimed in from the rear: "Temporal flux is rising. If we stay too long in the stream, we'll start fragmenting. Consciousness first. Then body."
"How long do we have?" Leon asked.
"Six minutes. Seven, if you ignore the bleeding shadows forming on the rear hull."
Leon exhaled. "Plenty of time."
Inside the Riftstream
Time convulsed. Past and future bled into the present.
Leon saw flickers of other versions of himself. One bled out on a throne of broken systems. Another knelt in chains before a weeping child. One raised a sword made of his own regrets.
Then one more.
A vision not of Leon, but of Seraphine her arms glowing with Dominion script, her face cracked with divine light. She screamed, not in pain, but in fury.
"Don't let them write you out!"
He jolted. The vision shattered.
"Leon!" Seraphine's real voice called out. "We're crossing the perimeter!"
Ahead, the Null Spiral loomed.
The Null Spiral – Edge of All That Remains
They emerged into stillness. No stars. No motion. Just a grey, shifting horizon made of whispers.
The Aetherion groaned.
Then, like a breath held too long, something exhaled.
A construct formed from nothing massive, cathedral-shaped, forged from half-erased code. The Gate of Forgotten Echoes. Built by the last version of Leon… and left to test the next.
A voice rang out familiar, broken, cold.
"To proceed, Leon Vale, bearer of the Conquest Code and Heir of the Hollow Throneyou must sacrifice one truth and one ally."
The crew went still.
Captain Vale stepped forward. "What the hell does that mean?"
Freya's face paled. "It means… only a lie and betrayal will open the way."
Leon's jaw tightened. "Then it's a trap."
"No," Seraphine whispered, hand on her sword. "It's a lesson. One you once failed."
Elsewhere – Deep in the Spiral
The Hollow Star stood before a mirror made of broken time. Behind it, the stitched beast whimpered as the sky screamed in reverse.
"Come, Leon," the Hollow Star whispered. "Let's see what you're willing to lose… to become me."