The descent into the Astral Wards' sanctum was unlike anything Orion had experienced before. There were no stairs, no corridors—only a silent collapse of gravity itself, folding around them like pages in a book no longer bound by logic. One moment he was walking behind Kael; the next, he was stepping across reflections of stars that had never existed, drifting in a spiral that refused to obey the rules of motion or time.
Lyra stayed close, one hand always near her blade, though her eyes never left the strange child, who floated upside down beside them, her crystalline sphere now glowing with a steady, mournful pulse.
"Does it always feel like you're falling through your own memories?" Lyra muttered, her voice echoing where no walls stood.
Kael glanced back. "Only the first time. After that, you stop remembering what falling is."
Before Orion could respond, the stars beneath his feet shattered like glass. In their place came a flat expanse—an impossible platform suspended over nothing, with a horizon made of shifting arcs of reality. Time twisted in the distance, entire wars playing and rewinding across translucent fields of memory.
And at the center of it all was the sanctum.
It resembled a ruin at first—scattered arches and broken columns suspended in midair. But Orion saw the truth beneath: this place had been built to be incomplete. It was a construct of unstable thought, a sanctuary for those who had survived too many broken realms to believe in permanence.
More figures waited there.
A giant with skin of obsidian and eyes like dying stars rose as they approached. Beside him stood a woman whose body seemed carved from moonlight, shifting subtly with every breath. Others lingered further back—half-formed beings, stitched together from remnants of collapsed universes.
Kael raised a hand. "They're here."
The obsidian giant grunted. "So this is the Threadbearer."
Orion stiffened. "I've been called worse."
The woman stepped forward, her gaze piercing. "You've also been called herald—by forces who should not remember your name."
Orion exchanged a glance with Lyra, then looked back. "What do you know about me?"
"Too much," the woman said softly. "And not enough. You are a node—an anchor point across multiple dead timelines. Whatever is unraveling the multiverse is using you as leverage."
Kael turned toward Orion, voice low. "That's why we need you to remember everything. Even the things you think are dreams. Because the Nameless Presence isn't tearing through realities—it's rewriting them. And it's starting with you."
Lyra's fingers tightened around her blade. "So what are you saying? That Orion's just a vessel? A pawn?"
The obsidian giant spoke again. "No. He's the script."
Orion's blood chilled. He felt the symbiont within him coil tighter, listening.
The girl with the sphere spoke at last. "We've seen him in dreams of other universes. In places that never were. Always the same eyes. Always the same fracture."
Kael nodded. "And in every one of them, something followed him. Something that learned to mimic creation. To corrupt it."
Orion took a slow step back. "The Hollow."
"No," Kael said. "Something worse. The Hollow was a symptom. You carry the disease."
Silence fell.
Then the woman of moonlight approached Orion slowly, placing a hand gently on his chest.
"But that means… you can change it. You can choose how the story ends."
Orion looked at Lyra, his mind reeling.
"But I don't even understand what I am yet."
Kael gave him a faint, sad smile. "Then it's time you learned."
Behind them, the platform began to fracture again—not from instability, but from something entering. A warning ripple echoed through the Wards.
Kael turned, hand on his blade. "We're not alone."
The sky split.
Reality screamed.
And through the crack came a storm of eyes, mouths, and limbs—impossible things speaking in forbidden tongues, pouring through a tear in the multiverse.
"The Nameless has found us," whispered the child.
Orion didn't hesitate. He stepped forward, his body igniting with the golden shimmer left behind by the Weavers, the flicker of the Hollow still embedded deep in his bones.
No longer just a survivor.
Now, a chosen fracture in the veil of all things.
The war had followed him.
And he was ready to fight back.