The atrium dissolved around Tatsu in a ripple of starlight, and the next simulation took hold. He blinked as the world reassembled itself into a hollow expanse of inverted stars and pulsing orbits. This was not the Ecliptic Sanctum. This was something older, stranger.
"Welcome to the Gloaming Maw," Alaric's voice echoed through the void, disembodied. "Not even I understand the full shape of this region. It draws fragments from collapsed timelines and broken celestial maps. It hungers."
The ground beneath Tatsu's feet pulsed with translucent veins of stardust, each step echoing with the cries of memories he didn't recognize as his own. Massive stone observatories floated overhead, cracked open like skulls. Constellations twisted unnaturally in the skies, some screaming as they devoured each other. Time itself buckled and folded like molten metal.
Tatsu braced himself. Aegis was already adapting. Its plating receded in some places, revealing soft pulsating tendrils that shifted with his thoughts. He no longer flinched at the changes.
A figure appeared in the distance, Kio. Younger. Laughing.
Tatsu didn't approach. He waited.
The clone stumbled forward, bleeding from the eyes, repeating a phrase: "Why did you leave me?"
He struck it down with a flick of his wrist.
No hesitation. No grief.
From somewhere deeper in the Maw, Alaric watched.
"He's changing faster than I anticipated," Alaric whispered, standing alone in the Observatory of Null Angles. Stars mapped themselves in real-time across the glass around him, forming constellations that shouldn't exist.
The mimic lounged in the corner, wearing Vorian's face this time. "Of course he is. He's becoming efficient. Like you."
Alaric ignored it, pressing his fingers to his temples. Tatsu was learning not just to survive, but to predict pain. To measure loyalty in outcomes. Not emotions.
Was this what I wanted?
A voice echoed back. It's what you needed.
He turned away from the stars and toward the next simulation seed. There would be no comfort there. Only results.
The Gloaming Maw presented no singular threat, it was the threat. Memories attacked. Regrets manifested. Shadows of his possible futures whispered treason into his ears.
A clone of Lira screamed his name as she was devoured by a black sun overhead. He didn't break stride.
Another self appeared, a version of him with kinder eyes, less armor. "There's still time to change," it begged.
Tatsu tore it apart with the Aegis.
The suit purred in approval.
What followed was not just trial, but training.
Over and over, Tatsu was pitted against dilemmas that punished emotion and rewarded calculation. Rescue one ally and lose five. Lie and win a war. Kill now, or let ten die later. The Gloaming Maw did not test strength, it cultivated control.
He learned to ask not what is right but what works. He began recording simulated outcomes in his memory as if tallying ledgers. Weakness, sentiment, and even hope became variables to manipulate.
The Aegis responded. It grew leaner, sharper. Less armor, more edge.
Deep beneath the Bastion, Lira decrypted another vault. The mimic's voice leaked through the gaps in the code like oil.
"He's slipping away from you. From everyone. Soon he won't need you."
She shut it out and pressed deeper, unlocking a crystalline file: a star map drawn by Alaric long before the war. The signature was clear. Alaric had known about the Gloaming Maw. He'd avoided it until now.
"Why send him there now?" she whispered.
The answer hit her before she finished the sentence. Because he knew it would break something. Or someone.
Tatsu reached the end of the region, a colossal star-forge that vomited heat into a void that could no longer feel it. Inside was a throne of glass and bone.
Alaric's voice returned. "Sit, if you dare. All sovereigns must sit. Even if only to burn."
Tatsu approached slowly. He did not kneel. He sat.
The forge ignited. The Aegis screamed. Memories burst behind his eyes, every death he'd caused, every life he'd traded.
He didn't flinch.
When it was over, he stood.
The throne crumbled.
So did something in him.
Back in the real atrium, Tatsu emerged shaking. Not from pain, but from clarity.
Alaric waited.
"I understand now," Tatsu said quietly. "Maps aren't for the lost. They're for those willing to sacrifice to be found."
Alaric nodded. "And what did you sacrifice?"
Tatsu looked down at his hands. "Mercy. And certainty."
Alaric turned away, hiding the flicker of grief in his expression. The mimic, unseen, grinned.