I stared at the blue light. Layer 5.I didn't think about it. I didn't look at Nyxra or Zeryth to ask for their opinion. I just hit the prompt.The throne room didn't fade, it snapped. One second I was sitting on the seat of a god, and the next, my stomach did a violent flip. The air went from the warm, golden hum of the Source to a cold, metallic stink. It smelled like rot.We hit a floor made of rusted grating, hard."Ugh, my head," Zeryth groaned. He scrambled up, his heavy pipe already in his hand. Nyxra stayed low, her eyes darting around. "Vaxien? Where are we?""Not home," I said. I stood up and felt something heavy in my chest. Not power, weight. I tried to flex my Synthesis, but it felt like trying to breathe through a straw.I looked up. We were on a dock. It was a massive, floating slab of junk suspended in a gray void that went on forever. There were no stars here. Just fog and men.Twenty of them, maybe more. They wore thick, tactical vests and helmets with glowing red vi

The guards didn’t wait for a second invitation. They charged. The weight of the local physics felt like I was wading through waist-deep mud. I lunged at the first man, but my timing was off. In the old world, I would have been a blur. Here, I was just a man with a heavy arm. I swung the plasma blade in a desperate arc. The glowing red edge hissed through the air. The guard tried to raise his pulse-rifle to block, but the blade didn't care about his tech. It bit into the metal and sheared the weapon clean in half. The guard stared at his ruined gun for a fraction of a second before I kicked him in the chest, sending him drifting back into the zero-G void. "Vaxien! Behind you!" Nyxra screamed.I didn't turn. I felt the heat of a pulse-round whistle past my ear. I dropped low, my magnetic boots clattered against the rusted grating as I struggled to find my center.Zeryth was already in the thick of it. He wasn't trying to be a hero. He was fighting like a cornered animal. He dived un