The stars had gone quiet again.
Steven Lethal floated on a broken shard of moon rock, staring at the wreckage of Outpost Thalos. Once a thriving station orbiting the Olan System, now it was just floating debris—twisted beams, blackened husks, and flickering consoles choking on dying code.
A small piece of metal scraped past his boot.
He crouched, placing a hand on the cracked command panel.
"Codex," he muttered. "Scan the remains. Show me what happened."
A glow lit beneath his fingertips. Arcane runes spiraled across his arm like veins of light. The Starcaster Codex, bound to his soul, obeyed instantly.
> [Initiating Echo Pulse… Retrieving temporal residue…]
The air shimmered. A holographic ghost of the past came alive in front of him.
Screams. Sirens. Station lights flickering red. People running through smoke.
And then—the rupture.
A dark glyph bloomed in midair, like a living wound in space. It pulsed once, and everything stopped. The light. The sound. The people.
Gone.
The illusion faded.
Steven stood slowly, his expression hard.
"That's the third system this cycle."
"Who the hell is erasing them?"
> They're not just killing.
They're wiping memory itself. As if these places never existed.
A low hum buzzed behind him. The Codex flashed a warning in his vision:
> [WARNING: Dimensional Rift Forming…]
Steven turned.
A red tear opened in the fabric of space, crackling like electricity over broken glass.
From it stepped a Techno-Priest Enforcer—tall, robed, face hidden beneath a shifting screen of sacred machine-code. Its voice was cold and without emotion.
"Steven Lethal. Unregistered anomaly. Use of arcane power is in violation of Technarch Law Protocol 7-A."
"You always show up late." Steven sighed. "Just missed the fireworks."
"Surrender your soul-bound Codex and prepare for reformatting."
"Nah." He lifted his hand.
A glowing sigil spun into life above his palm.
"Spell Protocol Seven. Void Lance."
The energy that formed crackled with power not seen in centuries—a pure beam of star-born magic, shaped by will and rage.
The priest tried to react. Too late.
The spell struck like a comet.
The enforcer burst into fragments of glowing circuitry and dust.
The rift fizzled out.
Steven exhaled, brushing stardust off his coat. The silence returned—but this time, it felt heavier.
He tapped the Codex.
A star map unfolded in front of him—dozens of systems, their icons blinking red one by one. [ERASED]
Only six remained.
"They're closing in."
"Whatever this force is… it's not just hunting people."
"It's rewriting the entire damn universe."
The Codex pinged again. A signal. Strange and faint—but encoded in something ancient. Something only a Starcaster would recognize.
Steven's eyes widened slightly.
"…That glyph…"
"No one's used that language since the Order fell."
He looked to the stars.
"Looks like I'm not the only one left."
Aether sparked around him as he began to cast.
Blue and gold magic tore open a rift—his own.
He didn't hesitate.
He stepped through.
---
To be continued…