Alistair Cain did not hate his job. He hated the uniform.The crisp, slightly cheap polyester of the Horizon Imperial University security shirt chafed against the skin that had once been hardened by the storms of the Nine Heavens. The cap, perpetually ill-fitting, was a crowning insult.It had been seventeen months since the High Gods banished him to this forgotten solar system for the ‘crime’ of ending their war too efficiently. Seventeen months of suppressing the infinite power of the Calamity Star, seventeen months living on Earth as a man—a man required by his Divine Contract to wear the most pathetic mantle possible: a campus guard at the West Gate.In his security booth, which resembled a shack, he sat on a cheap plastic chair and watched the slow, grinding sun set behind the massive, ivy-covered main library, which he was actually there to guard. The Library served as the Nexus, preventing the city from being engulfed by the Abyssal Gate underneath it. As part of his 1,000-year

The Headmaster's voice, carried through the ancient, analog signal of the Nokia communicator, was the only sound in the suffocating darkness of the maintenance tunnel.“Be careful, Alistair. The Grand Master’s ceremonial uniform looks strangely like… a security guard’s uniform.”Alistair didn't move for a full five seconds. The betrayal—or rather, the calculated irony of the High Gods’ penance—was sharp enough to cut through the thousand years of indifference he had cultivated. A security guard uniform. The very symbol of his lowest-status exile was the sign of his greatest enemy's rise.His mind flashed through the few mortals he had allowed close since his banishment. Elena? Impossible. Victor Lei? Too obvious, and the Headmaster had said someone he trusted.The only person who fit the description of a trusted colleague—a fellow guard who shared the isolation of the night shift—was a man named Corporal Jin. Jin was a quiet man who worked the night shift at the East Gate, always offe

The world was collapsing, but Alistair’s immediate focus was Elena.She stood rigidly in the grand entrance of the administration building, her sapphire gown shimmering under the emergency lights. Her eyes were fixed on the sky above the docks, where the faint, high-altitude glow of the Star Eater’s gravitational prison was already beginning to fade.“A piece of me just died,” she repeated, her voice thin and spectral.Alistair knew the Warden’s threat was real. The contract, tied to the Nexus breach, had activated its penalty clause. Elena hadn’t physically died, but the first sliver of her soul had been harvested to signal the transaction to the High Gods.He shifted instantly from God of War to Son-in-Law.“It was the stress, Elena,” Alistair said, his voice dropping to a comforting, almost mundane tone. He gripped her arm, a gesture of grounding rather than affection. “A sensor in your office must have blown, causing a minor electrical shock. You’ve been working too hard on that t

The silence that followed the Warden’s death was heavier than Alistair’s suppressed gravity. General Kael, Executor of the High Gods, stood on the blood-soaked lawn outside the shattered office, his dark armor absorbing the moonlight. He carried the Nebula Blade, a weapon capable of slicing through condensed stellar dust.Alistair lay on the floor, the pathetic serrated steel dinner knife clutched in his hand. He was completely spent, his consciousness flickering like a faulty fluorescent bulb. He was a sheep facing the celestial butcher.“The Calamity Star,” General Kael’s voice boomed, deep and resonant, a sound designed to command a million soldiers across a galactic theater. “I should have known a millennium of penance would leave you weak. To be felled by a mere Dimensional Predator and reduced to fighting with mortal scrap. Disgusting.”Kael did not rush. He lifted the Nebula Blade, the cosmic energy humming, and pointed it at Alistair. The blade was a declaration: this was an e

Alistair Cain knew absolute oblivion. It wasn't silence or darkness; it was the deafening roar of every moment, every possible outcome, every dimension collapsing into a single, blinding point. As the temporal shockwave from the overloaded Nexus consumed him, he felt his Calamity Star essence—the core of his identity, purged only moments before—briefly coalesce, mapping the collapse.The Nexus hadn't just exploded; it had triggered a localized, catastrophic temporal shunt.He awoke not with a bang, but with the painful, slow return of mortal sensation: the gritty taste of copper, the ache of a broken rib, and the smell of jasmine and ozone.He was lying on his back. Above him, the sky was a bruised, sickly purple, not the normal night black. The stars, where visible, were wrong—too bright, too close, and arranged in unfamiliar constellations.The Library was gone. Not collapsed, but erased. Where the administration building had stood, there was now a clean, circular depression in the