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Taly stood at the edge of the universe.

This was the cradle of creation. The place where time had first unfurled.

Her body remained elsewhere, anchored to a distant reality, but her mind had ascended beyond it, slipping into the vastness of the cosmos.

Before her, planets and galaxies wheeled through infinite black. Their light flickered against the void—cold, distant, untouchable.

Here, at the brink of existence, she could hear the echoes of the universe’s birth, a chorus of whispers. Voices from the dawn of time, telling of worlds forged in fire and stars igniting in the dark.

She could see the first wave of energy still rippling outward from that brilliant explosion where it all began.

The Weave shimmered all around her in a dance of light and shadow, stretched across the loom of infinity. And she was the shuttle, the will, the one drawing the threads into form.

Like a hum, the hyaline pillars vibrated. Even here, she felt it. And from the opposite edge of the universe, a murmur echoed.

That was her heading.

Like plunging a needle into fabric, Taly began to stitch. She pulled the thread taut, willing time to fold—but the Weave resisted. Even with her enormous power, it wasn’t enough to shift the full weight of the cosmos. It was like hauling a sodden blanket through a river, sluggish and unyielding.

Then, another force took hold—a steady, firm hand pulling alongside hers.

It began as a ripple, faint and distant.

The hum grew louder, building beneath her skin.

Slowly, the distant galaxies drew closer, not moving but stretching, their shapes elongating as space began to fold like fabric pulled from both ends.

The vast expanse twisted. Stars blurred into streaks of light, and planets—once mere pinpricks—swelled into view.

The hyaline—it was doing the work. She’d been right all along.

Not dead, not inert.

She could feel that strange power working around her to bend space while she pulled the thread of time.

Comets arced through the shifting black, their tails bending unnaturally as the distance collapsed. Nebulas unfurled like delicate veils, their vibrant colors spiraling together in a chaotic dance.

But something was wrong.

The streaks of light didn’t just converge—they were dimming. One by one, the stars winked out.

At first, she thought it was a trick of perception, an anomaly in the Weave. But no—this was real. Horribly, terrifyingly real.

Matter accelerated. Orbits distorted. Warping, as if pulled toward some unseen center.

Galaxies stretched and contorted as they spiraled inward.

The fabric of space—it wasn’t folding. It was collapsing .

All of it, drawn toward a singularity with her at its center.

Taly understood then—Aneirin’s true power. It was never about aether, never about space. Not just bending or breaking the rules of magic.

His power was destruction at the most fundamental level.

They’d seen it with the collar. Seen it with the people he possessed.

They’d seen it with the riftways—one malfunction had erased a mile of stone in every direction.

Not broken. Not displaced. Gone .

He was a force that could swallow reality whole. She could feel it—space unraveling, time fraying, everything she thought immutable, dissolving into his grasp.

A cold horror bloomed within her, an awe at the terrifying scale of him.

“The absence of life isn’t death.” Aneirin’s voice echoed all around. “That’s something my siblings never understood. Death is a transition, a change—a final chapter, but still a chapter, nonetheless.”

Stars continued to blink out of existence.

“What I create is nothing.”

Entire constellations twisted, then shattered.

“Not the end of a story. I am the absence of the fairytale itself.”

A broken world circled the void, its remnants spiraling toward doom.

“I am the darkness that waits patiently at the end of all things. I am both the beginning and the end. I devour everything—light, time, and space. Yet I am never satisfied. For I am the void. My power, my curse, is to unmake, to consume, to be the final breath of worlds and stars.”

Two distant points of light were being drawn closer—two blue planets locked on a collision course. They blurred as they accelerated, stretching the fabric of space and time between them like a fraying thread.

Each second brought them nearer, the distance collapsing in on itself.

“Form the bridge,” Aneirin commanded.

All she needed to do was tie the final knot, and he would be unleashed onto the human world.

He would be unstoppable. She could see it so clearly through the lens of infinite, all-knowing power.

It was a split-second decision. One born from a guess.

She couldn’t fight this cosmic tide, but perhaps she could steer it. The universe wasn’t a rigid structure but a living fabric, and time flowed through it like a current. By altering that flow, she could nudge the spatial trajectory without fighting its immense weight.

The temporal currents swirled around her, growing more turbulent by the second as the universe contracted. The collapse was like a great whirlpool, sucking everything inward.

It created a knot in time—a point of compression where every moment folded inward, stacking tighter with nowhere left to go.

With a deep breath, Taly focused on that density. On the pressure that built and built.

The goddess’s approval rippled through her like a sweet, vicious thrill.

“Fuck you, Bill,” Taly whispered into the blackness of space.

Then she wrenched with her magic, yanking at the fabric of the universe as it rushed toward convergence. She aligned herself with the collapsing flow of time, harnessing its momentum to carve a new course.

Just a degree of difference—but over infinite space, the deviation grew.

Like a shuttle cast through the warp, she was flung across the cosmos, riding the crest of a tidal wave of energy. The universe blurred. Stars streaked past like comet tails. Galaxies spiraled by in a dazzling whirl of color. Time stretched and snapped.

She wasn’t stopping the collapse. She was redirecting it. She felt the Aion Gate twist behind her, dragged in the arc of her trajectory.

She needed a new destination—and she found one.

The thrum of hyaline resonated through her. A second Gate. Ancient, nearly forgotten. Its signal was faint, buried beneath the noise of collapsing space, but it was there. Waiting.

A bright red planet shone like a distant beacon, standing out against the endless dark.

That’s where she aimed. Locking onto its distant gravity, she wrenched the course toward the forgotten Gate.

Taly opened her eyes, and she was back in her body.

Aneirin was only just realizing what she’d done. His eyes widened, his arrogance fracturing into shock, rage, then a delicious hint of panic. “You bi—”

She didn’t think. Didn’t hesitate.

With a surge of aether, the world blurred, time stretching as her movements accelerated.

Taly seized him.

Those spectral wings flared wide—and with a mighty beat, she focused every ounce of her strength into that final, decisive shove.

Aneirin—Aiden—let out one last scream, raw and piercing, a sound that seemed to echo through the void as he toppled backward. The Aion Gate loomed behind him, its surface rippling like molten glass.

Then he was gone.

The lamina of energy swallowed him whole. His scream cut off mid-note.

Taly stood panting, those wings of pure aether slowly contracting back into her.

The mages holding Aimee looked around, confused, and she took the opportunity to wrench free of them.

She started toward the Gate. Her steps faltered. Then her head turned, and her eyes found Taly instead.

“Taly.” Aimee’s voice cracked as she grabbed her shoulders. With a hiss, she let go like it burned. “Taly, we have to go now.”

But Taly remained aloof, silent. Aimee’s panic barely registered, her words like distant echoes in a world now too small, too fragile.

She could see it all—the infinite Weave bending to her will. Aimee was just another piece on the board, insignificant and trembling.

There was a flicker of memory—a flash of Aimee laughing in the surf, cheering her on as she learned to ride the waves. For a heartbeat, Taly’s chest tightened, but the goddess’s power surged, drowning the feeling.

What did it matter?

This wasn’t the same world, and Taly wasn’t the same girl.

The guards tried to seize her, but Aimee pushed them back with a blast of steam that erupted from her palms. The hiss of boiling air drowned their shouts as they stumbled back, shielding their faces.

“Taly,” she tried one last time, her eyes pleading.

But Taly’s gaze caught on Aimee’s afterimage—a flickering ghost of a moment not yet fully realized. It wavered, beginning its retreat.

Aimee hesitated, just for a breath. But the afterimage was still peeling away. Then she followed it. Without another word, she vanished into her glamours, leaving Taly alone on the platform.

It took a moment for the realization to settle. To fully make its way through the ranks of undead and their keepers.

The first sounds were murmurs, hushed whispers spreading among them. Eyes widened, glancing between the Aion Gate and Taly, still bursting at the seams with light and power.

They didn’t know what had happened, only that they no longer had their god to protect them. This was the moment where either fear or conviction would take over.

A rallying cry rose above the ranks as a shadow mage with eyes like fire stepped forward. “No mercy! No surrender!”

For an instant, they faltered—then confusion hardened into desperate resolve. Mages clinging to their last vestiges of purpose led the undead army in a charge.

Weapons were raised, spells crackled to life, and the ground trembled beneath the feet of the advancing force.

Taly turned to face them, completely calm, her face serene.

Then a deafening explosion tore through the air from the south.

“Woo!” Kato crowed as the explosion ripped through the battlefield like a thunderclap.

“My turn.” Eula braced herself, the metal plates on her left gauntlet shifting and peeling back to reveal the barrel of a cannon. There was a buzz of machinery, lights flickered, then—

“Woo-hoo!” Kato grinned and pumped his mechanical fist as the missile carved through the undead force in a spray of body parts and sparks.

“I’m definitely getting one of these.” Eula swung her suit’s massive arm as the first of the undead rushed them, sending a heap of brittle bodies flying.

“Did you see their faces?” Kato shouted over the comms. “Ooh, look, that one dropped his weapon.”

The cockpit hummed with the familiar symphony of engines and hydraulics. Kato found it soothing. The suit responded to his slightest shift in balance, amplifying his strength and speed as he ran.

His heart raced in time with the rhythmic pounding of the suit’s feet against the ground. The world outside the visor passed by in a kaleidoscope of color. Sparks and arcs of magic exploded around him as he dove into the undead throng, throwing them aside to find the real prize.

For every undead soldier, there was a shadow mage controlling them. They tended to stay at the back of the rank.

He plucked that rat-bastard off his feet. Squeezed him like the traitor he was. The mage’s head popped like a grape. As his body went limp, shades began to drop.

“Keep it up!” Eula urged, sending out a barrage of plasma bolts.

Fists and swords pounded against the suit, echoing inside the cockpit as alarm bells sounded. “Uh-oh,” Kato said.

“What do you mean ‘uh-oh’ ?”

On the display, Kato watched as the enemy turned as one. Tiny markers swarmed across the screen, a flood of red closing in on their position. “I think the distraction worked a little too well.”

“Shit.” Eula tossed a hulking shade—a nightmarish amalgamation of different parts of different people—like she would a bag of flour. Its body hit the oncoming wave, knocking them down like bowling pins. “Might I suggest a tactical retreat?”

“You know, I always heard that cardio was good for—hey! Wait up!”

The engine roared to life as Kato kicked on the accelerator, tearing across the battlefield to catch up with Eula’s rapidly retreating form.

Behind them, the ground trembled as the entire army surged forward, a tide of bodies giving chase.