The golden halls of the empty Sky-Palace didn't stay silent for long. As the continent began its terminal tilt toward the Ash-Lands, the air in the throne room curdled into a sickly yellow mist. From the floor rose a figure draped in robes of shifting sand, his eyes replaced by two spinning brass gears."The Janitor stands in a house of ghosts," the figure whispered. The voice sounded like dry leaves skittering over a tombstone. "I am Elidor, the Fourth Star. The Oracle of the Final Script. I have already seen your next seventeen breaths, Cassian Thorne. In sixteen, you will strike. In seventeen, you will miss.""I don't have time for a reading, Elidor," I said, my grey eyes tracking the descent of the floor. "I’m here to stop this rock from hitting my city. Move, or I'll sweep you into the trash with the rest of this palace."Elidor laughed, a mechanical, clicking sound. "Stop the fall? Inevitable. The physics are written. You will lunge with the Sword of Nothing in three seconds. I

The Sky-Palace wreckage was still glowing cherry-red, but I was already a mile away, a grey streak of kinetic death. The golden giant—the fused Three-in-One—towered behind me, a pillar of divine arrogance sucking the life out of the atmosphere."Cassian, talk to me!" Mallow’s voice was a frantic storm of static. "The soul-meters are peaking! The green glow in the refugee camps... it’s turning into a blinding white. People are clutching their chests and just... slowing down. Like they’re being drained of the very concept of time!""One million people, Mallow," I said. My voice was a flat, airless rasp. "The Stars think they can buy a throne with our blood. They forgot who owns the debt.""You’re too far!" Silas’s ghost-recording crackled in the background, a cruel reminder of the distance. "You’re three thousand miles from the primary harvest hub in the South! Even with a glider, it’s a six-hour flight!""I’m not flying," I said.I stopped in the middle of the salt flats. I reached int

The sky didn't just break; it unraveled like a moth-eaten shroud. The Three-Headed Abomination—that towering, grotesque fusion of starlight, iron, and coral—raised its six arms and gripped the fabric of the atmosphere."The script is too small for us!" the head of the Fifth Star screamed, its porcelain mask cracking as it pulled. "If we cannot rule this world, we will bleed it into the next!""Cassian, get back!" Mallow’s voice was a frantic burst of static over the comms. "The gravitational readings are inverted! They’re not just breaking the sky—they're tearing a rift to the Void-Dimension!"I stood in the center of the obsidian wasteland, my chest a leaking wound of black smoke. The **[VOID-DEVOURING SEAL]** was no longer a container; it was a bridge. Every time the Abomination pulled at the sky, the pressure in my own soul doubled."You're making a mess of the ceiling," I rasped, my voice sounding like grinding glaciers.I lunged, my body a blur of grey and shadow. I appeared dire

The sky was no longer a canopy; it was a throat, and it was screaming. I stood at the epicenter of the carnage, my shadow stretching across the obsidian plains as the Void-Legion tore into the Three-Headed Abomination. The air smelled of ozone and the metallic tang of divine blood."Cassian, pull back!" Mallow’s voice crackled through the comms, nearly drowned out by the thunder of collapsing mountains. "The tectonic plates are shifting! You’re not just fighting a monster; you’re grinding the crust of the planet into dust!""The crust can be rebuilt," I said, my voice vibrating with a frequency that cracked the stones at my feet. "The filth cannot."The Abomination roared, a discordant harmony of three dying Stars. It swung a massive, molten arm, shearing the top off a nearby mountain range as if it were a sandcastle. The shockwave hit me, but I didn't budge. I was anchored by the weight of the Abyss."You are a plague, Thorne!" the head of the Fifth Star shrieked, its porcelain face

My father’s grip on my wrist was an absolute constant. It wasn't just physical strength; it was as if he held the conceptual anchor of my very being. Around us, the grey dunes of the leveled mountain ranges shifted in a dry, ghostly wind. The thousand monsters of the Abyss remained pressed to the soot, their many eyes fixed on the man who had suddenly made the Prince of the Void look like a child playing with shadows."Why?" I asked again. The word felt like it was being dragged through a throat full of rusted needles. "The clan. The elders. You were their leader. You watched the Alliance turn our home into a funeral pyre.""I didn't watch it, Cassian. I directed it," my father said. His voice was warm, lacking any hint of the cold malice I had expected. It was the voice of a man explaining a simple chore. "A gardener doesn't mourn the dead leaves he clips to save the tree. The Thorne lineage had grown stagnant, content to hide in the cracks of the world. I needed a sun-eater. I neede