The thing surged forward like a tidal wave of void.
No sound. No roar. Just motion—too fast, and too silent.
Steven dropped into a defensive stance, fingers flaring with glyphs.
"Starseal Protocol: Aegis Ward!"
A spherical shield of pale starlight snapped into place just as the creature struck.
BOOM.
The ground fractured beneath him. Dust spiraled into the sky like smoke from a dying god.
Steven grunted, boots sliding back across the ash. The Fragment hissed—a noise that wasn't a sound, but a pressure, like his mind was being stepped on.
> Not physical. Not magic. It's unmaking me—just by being near.
He clenched his jaw and pushed back.
"Codex!"
"Analysis scan! Now!"
> [Initiating Arcane Diagnostic… Fragment Class: Proto-Erasure Entity. Composition: Unknown. Weakness: —DATA CORRUPTED—]
"Great." He snarled. "So I'm fighting a glitch in reality."
The Sentinel coughed behind him, blood on his lips. He raised his broken staff and murmured something—barely a whisper of a chant.
**"Steven… you must not let it touch you. Even one second—it'll erase your name. Your memory. Your story."
The creature moved again.
Steven reacted on instinct.
"Chrono Snap!"
A pulse of time magic froze the Fragment mid-lunge for half a second—just enough.
He leapt backward, landing on a tilted spire, then hurled a swirling sphere of compressed light from above.
"Starburst!"
The explosion lit the ruins in golden fire.
The creature screamed—if you could call it that—and scattered into pieces that turned into nothing mid-air.
Gone.
Steven landed hard, panting. The Sentinel dropped to his knees.
"Is it dead?" Steven asked, not relaxing.
"No," the old caster wheezed. "You just burned away its projection. The real thing… still watches from the dark."
> Then this was a test, Steven realized. A scout. Or worse—a messenger.
He turned to the dying Sentinel.
"Why did you send the glyph?"
The man looked up, eyes clouded with pain.
"Because… the Absence has marked you, Steven Lethal."
"You're not just the last Starcaster…"
"You're the only one who can stop it."
Steven's Codex pulsed again. A new symbol appeared—one he hadn't seen since the fall of the Order.
A location. Hidden. Sealed. Forbidden.
"The Temple of Echoes."
Steven's eyes narrowed.
"So it begins."
---
To be continued…