The Victorian night was a chaotic, swirling mess of coal smoke and temporal distortion. Alistair Cain stood over the inert body of his Victorian counterpart—the disgraced detective—whose ambition had been stolen by Corporal Jin's temporal chopper.“Jin’s trying to ensure the Harvest, not stop it,” Alistair spat, his mind racing. Kael needed the Temporal Catalyst to fail; Jin needed the Catalyst to be intact but useless so the Anchor would scatter and he could collect the pieces.Alistair looked from the inert Detective, who was sinking rapidly into a catatonic state, to the end of the alley where the frantic screams of Elena were fading. She was running toward the Observatory Clock—the node’s center.I need a substitute catalyst. Reputation and ambition.He dropped to his knees beside the Detective. He tore open the man’s oilskin trench coat. Underneath, pinned to his breast pocket, was a heavy, official document—the Investigative Report on the Horizon Imperial Canal Collapse. This re

The Golden Era courtyard was bathed in an idyllic, 1950s sunlight that suddenly felt toxic. General Kael smiled, his polished Mid-Century Sabre reflecting the threat it posed to the world.“Which choice do you make, powerless god?”Alistair had no time to process the devastating implications. His student's father, Victor Lei’s Father (the Temporal Catalyst), stood terrified, the black camera aimed at Elena, ready to capture the image that would expose the Nexus to the atomic age.Before Alistair could react, Elena acted.“Awaken,” she whispered again, her voice clear and resonant with the full, pure power of the Nexus Anchor.The Nebula Blade, which Kael had been using, was a weapon of the High Gods, designed to be inert in a mortal's hand. But Elena was no longer a mortal. She was a living extension of the Nexus Seal.The Mid-Century Sabre in Kael's hand—the blade's current form—screamed, not with a mechanical sound, but with the painful, blinding shriek of a weapon being ripped from

The transition from autumn to winter at Horizon Imperial was usually a gradual affair of falling leaves and a sharpening breeze. But this year, the cold didn’t arrive on the wind. It arrived from the ground up.Alistair Cain adjusted his new security jacket, the fabric stiff and smelling of warehouse plastic. It had been six weeks since the Library collapse. The "official" narrative—a localized seismic event caused by ancient limestone caverns—had been swallowed by the student body with the usual apathy of those more concerned with midterms than geology.But Alistair knew better. He felt the phantom weight of the amber baton every time he did his rounds. He was a mortal man now, his "Authored Power" spent to tether the Star Eater, but his instincts remained those of a being who had watched empires crumble.He stopped at the West Gate fountain, the same spot where he’d seen the reflection of Kael’s vengeful eyes. The water was frozen solid. Not in a sheet of ice, but in jagged, vertica

The shattered window let in a blast of air so cold it felt like being struck by a physical weight. Alistair Cain, a man with no memory of leveling mountains or defying High Gods, felt his heart seize with a primitive, mortal terror.Before him stood his own reflection—the Inverted Calamity Star. Clad in emerald-fire armor that pulsed with a sickening, violet-tinted glow, the double stepped into the office with the grace of a predator. Behind him, the Warden-hollow—a grotesque shell of the man who had once been Alistair’s jailer and friend—hovered in the freezing air, the iron key in its hand humming with the frequency of a dying world."Who are you?" Alistair's voice was a ragged whisper. He stood between the shattered window and Elena, his hands empty, his badge pinned to a chest that felt hollow.The Inverted Star smiled, a jagged expression of pure ego. "I am everything you discarded to be a 'good man,' Alistair. I am the ambition, the cruelty, and the absolute power that made the

The Board of Regents’ meeting room was located at the apex of the Ivory Tower, the tallest structure at Horizon Imperial. It was a room of glass, steel, and a silence so profound it felt predatory.Alistair Cain walked through the double mahogany doors, his boots thudding rhythmically against the plush carpet. He still wore his blue guard’s uniform—now singed and stained with the gray soot of the Deep Archive—but his posture held the terrifying weight of the Integrated God. Beside him, Elena walked with her head held high, the Liquid Sun still humming in her veins, making her eyes shimmer like molten gold.At the end of a long, obsidian table sat five figures. Four were shadows—featureless silhouettes in expensive suits. But the fifth, seated at the head, was unmistakably the Old Warden.He looked younger, his face smoothed by some unnatural surgery, and he wore a suit that cost more than the university’s annual security budget. He wasn't the ragged shell Alistair had seen in the Null