The darkness beyond the System had no clear direction.There was no sun, no horizon, and no familiar laws to guide movement. Yet as Axel drifted through the endless void, he slowly began to understand that this place was not empty at all.It only appeared empty from a distance.The closer he moved toward the floating structures scattered throughout the darkness, the more details became visible.The first ruined world they reached looked like a shattered continent suspended in space.Massive pieces of land floated separately from one another, connected by faint streams of blue energy. Mountains hung upside down. Oceans drifted through the air in enormous spheres, held together by forces Axel couldn't understand.The hybrid girl stared at the scene with open disbelief."Was this really a world?""It was," Axel said.Even he could feel the traces of life that had once existed there.Ruined cities covered the floating landmasses. Broken towers stretched toward a sky that no longer existed

The silence left behind by the Administrator's death followed Axel and the hybrid girl long after they departed from the colossal corpse.Neither of them spoke much during the journey.The warning continued lingering in their minds.The Architects had vanished.The systems had become corrupted.And something called the Silence was apparently responsible.The information created more questions than answers.For now, however, Axel focused on something more immediate.Survival.The void beyond reality was far larger than he had originally imagined.Every direction revealed new ruins, dead worlds, abandoned structures, and fragments of broken systems drifting endlessly through the darkness.Some regions appeared peaceful.Others radiated enough instability to make even Axel avoid them.Several days passed.The pair explored cautiously, gathering information wherever possible.During one expedition, they entered a fragmented reality cluster made from pieces of multiple destroyed worlds sti