The "Quiet" lasted exactly forty-two minutes.Alistair stood in the center of the courtyard, the charred badge still hot in his palm. The students were breathing the air of a normal world—thin, scentless, and free of the ozone-sting of the Nexus. For the first time in millennia, Alistair couldn't hear the ley lines humming beneath his boots.He thought it was peace. He was wrong."Alistair," Sarah Kim whispered. She was the first to notice. She wasn't listening to the Victorian echoes anymore, but she was staring at the fountain. "The water. It’s not... it’s not falling right."Alistair looked. The water wasn't flowing in a stream. It was breaking into perfect, floating cubes. The Anchor was gone, but the Laws of Physics that the Anchor had held in place for a thousand years were now like a suspension bridge whose cables had been cut. The bridge doesn't just disappear; it collapses into the canyon.The shattering of the Nexus didn't remove the supernatural from Horizon Imperial. It un

The transformation of Alistair Cain into the "Glass Badge" had left Horizon Imperial in a state of eerie, high-definition perfection. For three days, the campus was the quietest place on Earth. No monsters, no silence, no gods.Then, at 8:01 AM on Monday morning, the "New Guard" arrived.He didn't come through a portal or a rift. He arrived in a white Bentley that produced no sound, parking it perfectly straight in Alistair’s old spot. He stepped out wearing a suit that cost more than the library’s endowment—a sharp, silver-gray fabric that seemed to repel dust and shadows alike.He looked like a young Alistair, but without the scars. Without the weariness. He looked like a man who had never lost a war because he considered "mercy" a tactical error.He walked to the security booth, where Marcus Thorne was currently trying to bypass the new "Glass" encryption. The man tapped on the window with a signet ring."Out," the man said. His voice wasn't a rumble like Alistair's; it was a razor

The departure of Valerius had left a vacuum, but not a silence. Horizon Imperial was now a "Hot Zone."To the outside world, the university was surrounded by a "Structural Instability" warning and a three-mile radius of electronic interference. To those inside, the campus had become a sprawling, sentient workshop. Alistair was the infrastructure—he regulated the oxygen, he reinforced the walls against the pressure of the government’s "Scrubber Drones" circling outside, and he whispered through the vibrating glass of the lab windows."We have exactly seventy-two hours before the High Throne re-synchs their tactical coordinates," Marcus Thorne announced. He was standing in the center of the Engineering Annex, which had been transformed into a hangar.In the center of the room sat the "shuttle"—a scavenged, high-altitude research craft that had been "Modified" by the students. It didn't look like a NASA vehicle. It looked like a Victorian library cross-bred with a particle accelerator. I

The shuttle wasn't built for deep space, but the "New Horizon" didn't care about the laws of aeronautics.As the ship cleared the solar corona, Alistair stood at the center of the cabin, his hands resting on the bulkheads. He wasn't just touching the metal; he was "feeling" the structural integrity of their existence. The Glass Badge, now fused into the dashboard, pulsed with a soft, rhythmic gray light—the heartbeat of a ghost that had finally come home to its body."Alistair, the High Throne’s broadcast is still echoing," Marcus reported, his fingers flying across a holographic interface that now responded to his thoughts with terrifying speed. "They’re not just offering a deal. They’re 'tagging' our soul-signatures. If we stay in this dimension, they’ll find us in an hour.""Then we leave the dimension," Alistair said."To where?" Leo asked, looking at the tattered remains of the solar map. "The Null-Space is empty. It’s a graveyard of deleted timelines.""It’s only empty if you do

The High Throne was not a place. It was a Perspective.To enter it, the New Horizon didn't fly through space; it climbed the "Hierarchy of Meaning." As the campus moved through the higher dimensions, the students felt their thoughts becoming visible. Marcus’s calculations manifested as glowing golden gears in the air; Leo’s resolve felt like a physical mountain pressing down on the quad."Alistair, look at the sky!" Elena shouted.The purple mists of the Null had been replaced by a vast, infinite sea of white parchment. Thousands of "Drafts"—failed universes and discarded timelines—floated in the distance like crumpled sheets of paper. And in the center of it all sat the White City, a spire of absolute logic that pierced the ceiling of the multiverse."The Throne," Alistair said, his voice now a resonance that shook the very foundations of the Ivory Tower. "Marcus, lock the Anchor. We don't land. We Intercept.""Intercept? Alistair, that city is a Tier-0 Reality Zone!" Marcus yelled, h