The scar is visible from orbit. The transport slows as it crosses the old boundary of Veyra Reach. The sky shifts color. Clouds thin, then break apart. Below them, the plateau stretches wide and empty. At its center lies the wound.A valley of black glass cuts through the land, miles long, its surface smooth and cracked like frozen waves. Light bends along its edges. Faint motes drift upward, slow and steady, as if the ground itself exhales.Oliver stands at the open ramp as the ship descends. Wind tears at his coat. His boots vibrate against the deck.Billy leans near the console, chewing on a strip of synth-tobacco he never lights. “Sensors are screaming,” he says. “No threat lock, but everything’s humming.”Iris steps beside Oliver. Her hand rests near her sidearm, not touching it. Her eyes track the valley. “I can hear it,” she says.Oliver nods once. “So can I.”The transport sets down on a ridge overlooking the scar. The engines cut. Silence rushes in, heavy and thick. It pres

The night sky goes wrong without warning. At first, it looks like cloud cover. A dark smear stretching from horizon to horizon. Then the stars behind it dim. Not vanish. They fade, as if something drinks their light before it reaches the ground. Across the northern hemisphere, people stop walking.Cameras tilt upward. Telescopes scramble to focus. System sensors spike, then flatline.The aurora spreads. It is black, not empty. Thick bands ripple slowly, folding over each other like curtains pulled by unseen hands. No color bleeds from it. No radiation spills outward. Instead, the city lights beneath it flicker. Street lamps dim. Shield towers hum louder, compensating.In Solara Vant, the Grand Prism Plaza goes quiet. Oliver stands on a balcony high above the city, coat pulled tight against the wind. Iris stands to his right. Billy leans against the railing, chewing nothing, jaw tight. Above them, the aurora pulses once. The city’s light drops a fraction. Oliver’s HUD flares red.AN

The sky over Solara Vant was gray, low, and heavy with snow-laden clouds. The chill cut through the city’s crystalline towers, but inside the Rift Vanguard’s war room, heat hummed from energy panels and monitors displaying the faint flickers of rifts around the globe.Oliver Beckett stood at the head of the table. His coat was dusted with frost from the morning walk to the council chambers, but he didn’t brush it off. He didn’t need warmth; focus was enough.Iris leaned against the edge of the table, arms folded, a hand occasionally flicking through a light-field display of unstable zones. Billy, restless as always, tapped on a side console, the hum of power under his fingers making him smirk.Across from them, representatives of three nations watched the screens warily. Military officers in crisp uniforms, diplomats in tailored coats, and a handful of Traveler Guild operatives filled the room. Their eyes flitted between the pulsing anomalies and Oliver, waiting for direction.The ro

The first warning came without sound. The stars ahead of the fleet dimmed, not fading but thinning, as if scraped away by an unseen blade. Navigation lights flickered across every ship at once. The formation held, engines steady, but the space between vessels warped, stretching and snapping back like strained wire.Oliver stood at the forward rail of the Vigilant Dawn, boots locked to the deck. His Reality Anchor pulsed under his skin, slow and heavy. The air in the bridge felt thick, like breathing through cloth.“Entering Sable Plateau boundary,” the navigator said. His fingers hovered above the console instead of touching it. “Visual range collapsing.”“Switch to short-range lidar,” Oliver said. “It’s already on.”The main display shifted. The stars vanished. The wasteland filled the screen. Below them stretched an endless plateau of black stone and ash, cracked into jagged plates. Lightning crawled across the surface without sound, blue veins running through the ground itself.

The corridor ended in a wall that was not a wall. It breathed. Dark metal plates slid over one another in slow patterns, opening and closing narrow seams that leaked dull violet light. Cables as thick as a man’s arm ran along the floor and vanished into the structure, pulsing in time with a low hum that vibrated through boots and bones.Oliver raised his fist. The squad halted behind him, weapons up, muzzles tracking the shifting seams.“Billy,” Oliver said quietly. “This your door?”Billy crouched near the wall, fingers brushing a cable. The hum jumped in pitch at his touch. “Not exactly,” Billy said. “But I recognize the language.”He pulled a small device from his belt and pressed it against the metal. Symbols rippled across the surface, sharp and angular. Traveler code. Stolen. Twisted.Billy’s jaw tightened. “He didn’t copy us. He learned us.”The wall split down the center. Heat rolled out in a heavy wave, carrying the smell of ozone and burnt iron. The hum deepened, resolving