The ruins of Eden-4 loomed in silence, scorched by time and betrayal. Nova stood at the edge of the collapsed citadel, where the wind howled through shattered archways and the sky flickered with static light. Behind him, the remnants of the Revenant Protocol flickered on a rusted holopad, its last message playing in a distorted loop.
"Memory Chain engaged… Initiating synthetic override…"
Nova shut it off.
The air reeked of scorched ozone and metal dust. This place had once been a sanctum — now, it was just another echo.
He tightened the strap on his gauntlet and turned toward the narrow valley that opened beyond the cliff. There, carved into the earth, half-buried in obsidian glass, was a stairwell that led underground — untouched by looters, unknown to the data archives, and absent from the Dominion's last sky charts.
A hidden bunker?
No — something older.
Something buried.
*---------------------*
The stairs spiraled into darkness, slick with condensation and ancient moss. The further Nova descended, the more the air thickened — not just in temperature, but in memory. He felt it in his bones, as though the walls themselves whispered past lives.
At the base of the stairs was a chamber shaped like a throne room, but made entirely of black stone, veined with silver. Crystalline growths pulsed softly in the corners, and in the center stood a throne carved from hollow stone — empty.
No dust.
No decay.
Someone had been here. Recently.
Nova approached cautiously, his scanner humming. The readings were fractured — unstable spatial resonance, faint gravitational anomalies, and remnants of a power signature not seen since the wormhole breach.
"This isn't a bunker," Nova murmured. "It's a memory anchor."
A crack in time. A moment frozen by force.
*---------------------*
As he stepped near the throne, the air rippled. His surroundings blurred.
He blinked — and the world changed.
No longer the ruin, but the same chamber alive, vibrant, and filled with ghostly silhouettes: robed figures speaking in tongues, maps floating in the air, soldiers in black armor bowed before the throne.
But the throne was still empty.
"We are the Echo Lords," one figure whispered. "And this is the first anchor."
Nova stepped back. They couldn't see him — not fully. This was a projection, a temporal bleed.
And yet one voice pierced through:
"You do not belong here, traveler."
Nova spun.
The throne was no longer empty.
A woman sat there now — or what looked like one — her body made of fragmented stone and stars, eyes like endless tunnels.
"Do you seek the truth, or vengeance?" she asked.
Nova's hand twitched near his sidearm.
"I'm just looking for a way to fix what we broke."
She smiled — and the chamber shook.
"Then you must find the remaining thrones. Thirteen were made. Only three remain unclaimed. The others fell… corrupted."
She lifted a hand, and a glyph burned into the air — the same symbol from Chairman Patro's stolen ledger.
Nova's breath caught.
The Dominion knew about this.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"I am what remains of the Architect. I built the first door."
"The wormhole?"
"No," she whispered. "I built the key that opened it."
*---------------------*
Nova snapped awake — back in the empty throne room.
The glyph still hovered, burning red-hot in the air.
He reached for it, and the moment his fingers touched the symbol, pain lanced through his skull. Flashes. Visions.
Cities floating in broken time.
Thrones made of dead gods.
Patro's voice, younger, crueler: "Seal the gateway. Burn the heretics."
A child screaming inside a crystal coffin.
He fell to his knees.
"You have seen the first thread," the voice echoed once more. "Now trace it, or be consumed."
When he looked up, the symbol was gone.
And the throne?
Cracked.
Dead.
But not silent.
*-------------------*
Hours later, Nova emerged from the crypt, shivering in the dawn light.
Behind him, the ground trembled. The stairwell collapsed — as if it had never existed.
Above him, the sky shimmered. A small crack in the clouds opened — not weather, but a rift.
Through it, he saw another city — hanging upside down in a sky that bled stars.
"One of thirteen," he whispered. "And I'm already too late."
His gauntlet vibrated — a signal.
It was from Kira.
But she had vanished two chapters ago.
Signal Origin: Unknown Quadrant. Wavelength Match: Revenant-Class.
Nova opened the transmission.
It was a single word:
"Run."
And then the stars began to falls.
*-------*