The portal snapped shut behind him.
For a second, everything was darkness. Then—light. Sound. Wind.
Steven stumbled slightly as gravity returned, his boots hitting scorched black stone. The world around him was a wasteland—Cindaros, once a lush, volcanic trade planet, now reduced to ash plains and dying firestorms.
The air shimmered with heat and residual energy. Something terrible had happened here, recently.
His Codex hummed.
> [Coordinate Lock Confirmed: Cindaros V – Archive Ruins Detected]
Steven narrowed his eyes at the broken skyline ahead. Great obsidian towers, half-melted, jutted out from the horizon like the ribs of a fallen giant.
"The glyph came from here."
He stepped forward, the ground crunching beneath his boots. Bones. Metal. Broken sigils.
Cindaros hadn't been erased like the others—but it had been left to die.
> This place was targeted… but resisted.
Someone fought back. Hard.
As he moved deeper into the ruins, he felt it: lingering spellwork, old but potent. Defensive enchantments woven with raw willpower.
And then—movement.
A flicker in the corner of his vision.
Steven spun, palm raised. A small orb of light flared to life above his hand, casting the dark hallway in shimmering blue.
Shadows danced.
Then, from behind a broken pillar, a voice—dry, cracked, barely human.
"You shouldn't have come here, Starcaster."
Steven tensed. The voice was old—scarred by smoke and time.
From the shadows emerged a figure. Cloaked in burnt robes, a shattered staff clutched in one hand. His face was gaunt, eyes glowing faint gold.
Another caster.
Steven blinked.
"…Impossible."
The man coughed violently, but stood firm.
"We felt the signal. We sent it out as a warning."
"You were part of the Order?"
"I was the last Sentinel of Cindaros."
"Now I'm just its echo."
Steven stepped closer, carefully.
"Who did this?"
The Sentinel shook his head slowly.
"It's not a who. It's a what. A force born of broken balance. A hunger born where divinity decayed."
He looked up.
"It calls itself The Absence now. It's not erasing systems—it's erasing threads. Reality. Time. Memory. Whole histories."
Steven's Codex flared red.
> [ALERT: Temporal decay surge detected nearby…]
A rumble shook the ruins. The sky cracked.
The Sentinel turned, eyes wide.
"It found us."
From above, a dark scar opened in the sky—a void of pure nothingness, leaking tendrils of silence and gravity. From within… something crawled out.
Not machine. Not flesh. Something in-between.
Steven's heart pounded.
"What in the hell is that?"
"A Fragment," the Sentinel whispered. "Of the Absence."
The creature dropped to the ground, faceless, shifting, its presence draining color from the world. It turned toward Steven.
And it moved.
Fast.
---
To be continued…