The drop of liquid blue starlight didn't burn. It froze.When the primal substance first contacted my bare chest, it didn't penetrate my flesh, but it hammered through my physical biology, bypassing bone, flesh and tissue, and hitting the dead, scorched crater of my internal meridians.I didn't scream. A shockwave of absolute sub zero creation energy paralyzed my lungs.I collapsed backward.I fell to the pale metal floor, and Aria caught me before I touched it, and gently lowered me. My vision inverted. The sterile, zero-gravity vault was replaced by the terrifying, infinite expanse of my own ruined soul. The blue starlight struck the charred husk of my Devouring singularity from the Abyss and exploded.It wasn't to fix the damage that the Genesis Spark had caused. It was busy destroying the last remnants of my earthly ship to construct a new one. My veins blazed, deep sea blue, blindingly bright. My back curved, I couldn't help but arch it, in a cataclysmic, agonizing transformation

We didn't just re-enter the Apex Stratum; my arrival fundamentally anchored it.When the obsidian dreadnought ripped out of the dimensional slipstream and settled above the black, silver-veined continents of my new world, everyone in the dimension held their breath. The raw gravity of the Stratum, from my old core, instantly recognized its creator. The strong, or stormy, ambient energy storms came to a still and gentle violet twilight.I was on the command bridge, gazing up at the sky.The 300-mile rupture of the universal barrier was dying down. The huge, black, solid mass of the Octahedron that had sealed the hole was bubbling over into gray ash. I could glimpse the Outer Dark from the remnants of the cosmic horror. It was an ocean of pure, ravenous entropy, pressing against the decaying plug, with the weight of a trillion dying realities.Ghost spoke into the comms, "Boss.Ghost spoke into the comms, "Boss. He wasn't aboard the dreadnought, he was broadcasting from the Alpha Leviath

I didn't wait for the Entropic Core to make the first move. I lunged.With the local gravity of my Sovereign's Shroud I broke the hollow sphere in microseconds, driving both celestial platinum knives right into the giant trunk of the black glass tree.No effect was observed. No breaking glass heard.As soon as the sharp platinum penetrated the surface of that entity, the blades just vanished. They were not melted or broken; the actual material was simply erased from existence. I walked in clumsily, with my armored fists punching into the trunk. The Event Horizon gauntlets disintegrated to my wrists in no time.I hurled myself with great force backward, breaking the un-making process with a flash of blue starlight before it could ascend my arms.The soundless voice of the Core resonated through the marrow of my bones, "You fight with the tools of existence. You can't cut a shadow, Kaelen Vance, I'm not a being, I'm the inevitable conclusion of all things, I'm the Great Silence.The inv

Peace is a heavier burden than war.If you're in a battle for your life, the only math you need to know is the length of your blade and the speed of your enemies. Sitting on that pitch-black throne of the Apex Stratum, the math of the multiverse was infinite, and I felt every one of them pulsing in my chest, in the Primordial Eclipse.We had been 30 cycles since we integrated the Oblivion Tide. Absolute, unbroken silence for 30 days throughout the dimensional tree.I rested my head on the void-metal backrest of my throne and gazed at the violet twilight sky of our new world through the open arches of the Citadel. There was no one in the great hall except for the quiet, regular humming of the Warden silver structural veins Aria had woven into the bedrock below the dais.Aria was now in the Lower Realms, personally enforcing Earth's absolute quarantine, making sure there was no trace of celestial tech left behind.The thick obsidian doors on the opposite end of the hall burst open noisi

We built the crucible in the graveyard of the old world.Once, the Neutral Zone was a hollow center of the universe, where the Cosmic Council sat debating the tax on the Lower Realms on polished neutron-star cores. It was now a vast area of floating wreckage, broken in the conscription and the Oblivion War of Aria. It was a great base. It was not of any single Stratum, and was the undeniable crossroads of the Heavens.I was in the centre of the vacuum, the reality of my Primordial Eclipse, offering gravity and atmosphere. Maya floated a dozen yards away, her Tier 7 tech-meridians blazing and she projected a massive, three dimensional holographic blueprint across the broken neutron stars.Maya explained, "It's not a physical doorway, Kael, it's a doorway to the mind. But if we give origin energy to anyone who requests it, we are again creating the Emperor's parasitic loop. The Gate must be a spiritual filter. A centrifuge for the soul.Watching Aria twirl and twine the thick cables of