The vessel that descended from the sky wasn't just a machine.
It was a warning.
Shaped like a man, forged from hollow voidsteel and draped in layers of synthetic flesh, the construct hovered over the remains of Velmaar. It scanned the ruins without eyes, whispered data through a tongue that wasn't made for sound, and then locked onto Nova's fleeing form.
And it moved.
Faster than any known Dominion engine.
Faster than memory.
*----------------------*
Nova activated his final phase-jump module. The device sputtered — half-burnt, nearly overloaded — but it managed one last tether to a pre-encoded destination.
He vanished just as the Vessel's palm lit with a beam of fractal energy.
The world behind him fractured. Velmaar, the City Between Worlds, was consumed in a soundless implosion.
*--------------------*
When Nova reappeared, it was night.
Cold.
He was kneeling on black sand under a moonless sky, surrounded by titanic statues of faceless beings whose names had been erased long before the Dominion was born. The stars above him twisted in unnatural constellations. He recognized none.
This was the Cradle Expanse — the burial site of the original Ascendants.
Here, the air remembered wars no one recorded. Bones of creatures the size of cities rested half-submerged in the obsidian dunes.
Nova's gauntlet flickered with a low signal.
Obsidian Throne: 3.2 clicks west.
He didn't hesitate.
He walked.
And the dunes whispered his name.
*---------------------*
The walk took longer than it should have.
Time distorted in the Expanse. Hours stretched. Distances curled. Twice, Nova nearly crossed his own footsteps, despite never turning.
Eventually, the sand gave way to a plateau of broken black stone.
At its center was the Obsidian Throne — jagged, asymmetrical, ancient. It wasn't a seat.
It was a scar in the shape of authority.
Woven around its base were fossilized cables and collapsed gate-anchors, evidence that someone had tried — and failed — to remove it long ago.
Nova approached cautiously.
And then it spoke.
But not aloud.
Not in sound.
In memory.
"Nova Revenant… son of the drowned sky… you were never meant to return here."
The voice wasn't Patro's.
Nor was it his own.
It was something older.
"This throne remembers me," Nova whispered.
He reached forward. His hand hovered inches from the surface of the black structure.
"Do you remember what I did?"
"You tried to stop the gate from opening. You failed."
A flash of pain. A memory not his.
Nova falling through fire. A battlefield with no sky. Patro's eyes — glowing, not human. The sound of everything unraveling at once.
Nova pulled his hand back, shaking.
"Why did I forget this?"
"Because Patro erased it. He broke the timeline into pieces and scattered them. You are living in one of those pieces."
"Then I need to put it back."
"You can't."
"I will."
*----------------------*
Suddenly, the ground cracked.
From beneath the throne, a glyph rose — circular, etched with silver patterns and ancient Dominion runes no longer taught.
It was a Gate Seal.
To activate it would unlock the next Anchor.
To activate it would reveal the next path.
But it would also summon the Warden of Obsidian.
Nova had no choice.
He placed his gauntlet into the seal.
The world screamed.
*-------------------------*
A tower of black fire erupted from the plateau, spiraling upward into the night sky like a beacon. Sand and ash roared away in every direction as the Obsidian Throne cracked open.
And from within it emerged the Warden.
A construct of molten bone and shadowsteel. Wings of broken light. Its face a mirror that showed Nova not his reflection — but his failure.
It spoke with every voice he had ever heard in agony.
"You will not pass."
"I've heard that before," Nova said.
He activated the twin anchors on his wrists — Eden-4 and Velmaar's echo. A pulse of dual-frequency energy surged through him, lighting up the symbols etched across his armor.
"This time, I'm not alone."
He charged.
*----------------------*
The battle was not fought in one place.
Each blow from the Warden displaced reality — one moment they fought above the throne, the next inside a collapsing Dominion cathedral, the next on a battlefield in a memory of a war that hadn't happened yet.
Nova's strikes were calculated, precise — but the Warden remembered him.
It knew every move.
Every hesitation.
But Nova remembered something too.
He remembered Eden-4. He remembered the Archivist's words. He remembered the truth behind the glyphs.
He remembered why he was chosen.
"You fight like a ghost," the Warden hissed.
"Because that's all you left me to be," Nova replied.
And with a final surge of unstable time energy, he drove both anchors into the Warden's chest.
The mirror-face shattered.
The construct howled and collapsed into a spiral of broken time threads.
Nova collapsed, coughing.
But the throne was open.
And behind it, a hidden chamber began to glow.
*--------------------*
Inside the chamber was a device unlike any he had seen before — a spherical construct hovering in anti-gravity, its surface etched in hundreds of languages and equations.
It pulsed with something… alive.
This was not a throne.
It was a Path Engine.
A remnant of the first timeline.
"This can realign the split," Nova whispered.
He approached.
But just as he placed his hand near the surface, a shadow fell across the chamber entrance.
Someone had followed him.
Not a Vessel.
Not a Warden.
A man.
Dressed in corrupted Dominion robes. His eyes — artificial, flickering.
"Hello, Nova," he said.
Nova stepped back, heart pounding.
"Patro."
Chairman Mark Patro stepped fully into the light.
He hadn't aged.
He wasn't supposed to be here.
Not yet.
"You shouldn't exist in this branch."
"Neither should you," Patro replied. "But here we are."
He smiled.
And behind him, the gate began to open.
*-----------*