The return across the bridge was shorter. Or maybe Arin was just too wired to notice the passage of time. The shard in his chest pulsed faintly, like a second heartbeat, in perfect rhythm with Vakya's distant hum inside his mind.
Lira walked beside him in silence. She hadn't spoken since the last guardian. Arin didn't press. She had her own thoughts to wrestle with—and maybe her own truths to face.
When the Seraph's Wing came into view, Talon was standing outside the ship, arms crossed, helmet off. That was the first red flag—Talon never stood still unless something was wrong.
"You two took your sweet time," Talon said, but his voice lacked the usual bite. His eyes were scanning the void beyond them. "While you were gone, the Rift shifted."
Arin frowned. "Shifted how?"
Talon pointed.
Where before the Rift had been a fractured veil of dark matter and gold lightning, now it was… breathing. Not literally, but the pattern of its energy pulses moved like the inhalation and exhalation of some colossal, invisible beast. Entire segments of the anomaly flexed and twisted, revealing flashes of structures within—arches, corridors, impossible cities suspended in nothing.
And beyond that, something else moved. Something massive.
Arin's skin went cold. "That wasn't there before."
Lira squinted into the Rift. "Is that… a fleet?"
Not ships, exactly. Shapes—some sleek like arrowheads, others vast and jagged like broken planets—drifting in formation, cloaked in the Rift's light. Every so often, a ripple of dark energy passed over them, distorting their outlines like heat over desert sand.
Vakya's glyphs surged: Barrier weakened. They come.
Arin felt the shard in his chest resonate harder, sending a tremor up his spine. It wasn't fear—it was recognition.
Talon slammed his helmet back on. "So, bad news is we've got incoming. Good news is I kept the engines warm."
Arin shook his head. "We can't just run. If the barrier's weakening, they can follow us out. This isn't about us anymore—it's about what comes through that Rift."
Lira stepped toward him. "What's your plan, then? Because unless that shard came with a manual, we're still outgunned."
Before Arin could answer, the Seraph's Wing's proximity alarms screamed. A ripple surged through the Rift, and one of the massive arrowhead shapes broke formation, angling toward them at impossible speed.
"Move!" Talon barked, sprinting for the cockpit.
They were barely strapped in before the ship lifted off the crystalline platform. The bridge and guardians fell away beneath them as Talon threw the throttle forward. The crystal shards of the Trial's domain blurred past—and then the Rift swallowed them whole.
The arrowhead wasn't a ship. It was alive.
Its surface was plated in something between bone and metal, run through with molten veins like those in the Trial's floating islands. At its front, a cluster of eyes—too many, all unblinking—fixed on the Seraph's Wing.
It opened its mouth. The light inside was the same as the shard's.
Vakya's glyphs flared so bright Arin had to squeeze his eyes shut: It seeks the key. Refuse.
The creature exhaled—not fire, not plasma, but a wave of distortion that bent the space between them. Talon cursed, jerking the ship into a barrel roll that barely skimmed the edge of the blast. The space behind them folded inward, collapsing into a sphere of silent darkness before bursting in a shockwave of golden sparks.
"That would've been us," Lira muttered.
Arin's hands moved on instinct, accessing the shard's pulse through Vakya's link. The hum deepened, and suddenly he saw—no, felt—threads connecting the creature to something deeper in the Rift.
"They're tethered," Arin said. "Not ships—extensions. Something bigger's controlling them."
Talon didn't look away from the controls. "Fantastic. Let's make it angry enough to call its friends."
"Not yet," Arin said. "We can use this one. Follow the tether—straight to the source."
Talon blinked. "You want me to chase that thing?"
"Yeah," Arin said. "If we can find the core, maybe we can—"
Before he could finish, a second ripple surged across the Rift. The fleet shifted formation, and the city-like structures inside the anomaly pulsed brighter. It wasn't just alive—it was waking up.
Lira leaned forward. "We're running out of time."
The shard flared hot in Arin's chest. Vakya's final glyphs burned into his thoughts: The Trial was not the end. The core decides.
Arin understood. The shard wasn't a weapon—it was an invitation. And whatever waited at the Rift's core would decide whether to close the gate… or open it forever.
"Punch it," Arin said. "We're going in."
The Seraph's Wing dove into the Rift, chasing the arrowhead beast toward the pulsing heart of an awakening giant.
And for the first time since leaving the Trial, Arin wondered if they were running toward salvation—or into the mouth of something that could swallow the galaxy whole.