The shuttle shook.
Not from turbulence, but from reality strain—the kind that made even Dominion warships hesitate. Erza stood near the viewing pane, watching streaks of distorted light blur across the void. Space wasn't still here—it was tensing, folding inward.
The Orbital Fringe wasn't like Elarin. It wasn't a city or a continent.
It was a scattered archipelago of sky-piercing outposts, asteroid fortresses, and shielded observation rings orbiting an unstable star. Sagittarius energy laced this region with gravitational fractures—time stutters, spatial warps, kinetic flares.
And somewhere in that chaos…
The Sagittarius Gate had opened.
✦ A Sudden Arrival
"Brace!" the pilot yelled. "Warp distortion—left quadrant!"
Without warning, the shuttle tore through a rip in space—and dropped violently.
Erza grabbed the console, Leo aura flaring just enough to stabilize his fall. Lysra flipped midair and landed gracefully, while Korr caught Seris before she slammed into a bulkhead.
Auren cursed. "That wasn't turbulence. That was a pull."
"Something tried to grab us mid-warp," Seris confirmed. "The Gate didn't open—it fired."
Erza looked outside.
They weren't above the Fringe anymore.
They were inside it.
Or, more accurately, inside the Sagittarius Gate.
✦ Sagittarius: The Warp Piercer Gate
The world around them wasn't spatially coherent.
Chunks of metal, ship fragments, orbiting cities—all frozen in motion, floating at impossible angles. Bullets mid-air. Missiles caught in mid-flare. Beams of light held in suspended frames like memory slides.
And through it all—suspended in a spiral of motion—stood a tower of arrows and bones.
The Spire of Velocity.
"This place," Auren whispered, awestruck. "Time doesn't move forward here. It spirals."
Seris scanned the kinetic map. "The Sagittarius Gate generates a Velocity Web. Every action, every movement is delayed, accelerated, or reversed depending on emotional intent and direction."
Korr grunted. "So fight without thinking?"
"Or die slow while your enemies move twice," Lysra muttered.
Erza tightened his grip on his gauntlet. "Then we'll burn straight through it."
✦ The Warped Guardian
They didn't get far before the Gate tested them.
A sound cracked across space—like the breaking of a bowstring the size of a mountain.
From the sky above them descended a massive figure, its body laced in constellation markings, its head crowned with curved antlers of copper and bone. A great bow floated behind it, strung with light from an inverted star.
Its lower half was that of a beast—its upper half humanoid but shrouded in shifting cloaks of kinetic flame.
"I am Sagittaros, Warden of the Inverted Sky."
"And none pass who do not bleed backwards."
✦ The Battle Begins
Sagittaros moved like a mirage—every step echoing in two directions.
Erza dodged left—and got hit from the right.
Auren launched a lightning slash—and it landed before he swung.
"His attacks… occur in reverse!" Seris called. "He unravels movement!"
Lysra blinked into shadow—only to reappear tangled in one of his trap-laces mid-sentence. Korr took a kinetic arrow to the chest and was launched backward in time—forced to relive the last six seconds of pain over and over.
Erza had seen enough.
"Leo… lend me your clarity."
His eyes ignited gold.
And time around him stilled—not fully, but focused.
Leo Transcendence activated.
Now, instead of reacting late, Erza began burning paths through time—cleansing distortions with solar precision.
He met Sagittaros blow-for-blow, every parry clearing a section of reality behind him. Sparks ignited into temporal flames—burning not just the enemy's body but his momentum.
But Sagittaros wasn't just a beast.
He spoke.
"You seek to rewrite what was stolen. A prince with fire in his grief…"
"But Inversion comes for all. Even lions fall when arrows pierce stars."
And with that, he unleashed his ultimate shot—an arrow laced with Inverted Constellation energy.
Seris screamed. "Erza, don't—!"
But Erza stepped forward.
"Then I'll pierce the sky back."
✦ Solar Collapse
His flame ignited.
Leo's roar echoed through time, shattering the path of the arrow mid-flight. But not before it grazed Erza's shoulder—searing with inverted energy.
He dropped to a knee, coughing.
Behind him, Sagittaros recoiled, wounded—but not dead.
"Retreat," Lysra hissed, catching him.
"No," Erza growled, staggering to his feet.
"This is only the first Gate," Auren said. "We learn. We prepare. And next time… we hunt."
Sagittaros vanished into the spiral above, but his final words echoed:
"The next Inversion will not wait. The stars will bleed. The Archer only lossed his first shot