The sky above Oron Karth shimmered—not with stars, but with memories of stars. Wisps of light, half-faded constellations, pulsed in and out of alignment, bleeding together like forgotten dreams. The world groaned with the weight of change.
Ethan stood at the edge of a shattered cliff, boots crunching softly against crystallized dust. Below, the valley rolled into fractured terrain, flickering with spectral echoes—shadows of what had once been. His fingers tingled, the aftershocks of reality manipulation still humming through his blood. The System's update was fresh in his mind, but its words echoed less than the silence that followed.
Aelira stood beside him, still and radiant, her form outlined by strands of gold-silver light. Her gaze remained fixed upward, where the constellations shifted with impossible rhythm. Her voice was quiet, distant. "They're... remembering."
Ethan looked up, narrowing his eyes. "The stars?"
"No," she said. "The Realms. The cosmos. They're trying to remember what they were before the Throne warped them. Before the first Cycle."
A pulse from the Wraithling thrummed behind them. The ship floated low, its once-sleek hull now laced with glowing fault lines. Glyphs pulsed across its surface, forming patterns Ethan didn't recognize. Its voice, usually calm and clinical, now spoke in a low resonance.
"Dimensional drift confirmed. Temporal bleed active. Cross-layer harmonics destabilizing."
Then, a silence fell—and into that silence stepped a figure.
He was tall, clad in tattered robes that shimmered with celestial decay. His skin was translucent, like starlight stretched thin. Eyes deep as singularities regarded them.
"You are the ones who broke the seal," he said. His voice was neither judgmental nor kind. It simply was.
Ethan stepped forward warily. "Who are you?"
"I am the Cosmurge," the figure replied. "An echo of balance. I catalog the breaking points of worlds and chart their aftermath."
Aelira stiffened. "You're a Rebalancer."
"No. But one comes. The Voidwalker was merely shadow. Its hunger persists, now unbound. You've set in motion the emergence of the First Axis—the fulcrum on which the multiverse may tilt."
The words struck harder than any blade. Ethan swallowed. "Then what do we do?"
The Cosmurge stepped closer. The air around him bent. "You anchor. You build. You choose a place, and from it, you will seed stability—or accelerate collapse."
The System chimed:
System Notification
World Anchor Initialization Required Stability Threshold: 7% Collapse Threshold: 20 Days
Initialize Anchor Site?
[Yes / No]
Ethan stared at the prompt. Behind him, the Wraithling pulsed. Before him, the cosmos writhed.
"Where?" he whispered.
Aelira's hand slid into his. "Where it began. Where Kaelen fell. The ruins. The Scorchfang Citadel."
Ethan nodded slowly.
Anchor Site Selected: Scorchfang Ruins Recalibration Process: Initiated Estimated Stabilization Window: 7 Days
The wind shifted. Above them, one of the trembling stars detached from its constellation. It fell in silence, trailing memory-fire. It did not burn when it landed. It simply waited.
And in that moment, Ethan knew: the stars were watching.
They remembered.