The sky wasn't falling.
It was unmaking.
Alexander stood on the Ark's shattered observation deck, boots crunching over broken glass, wind howling through ruptured bulkheads. Around him, reality frayed like old cloth—stars winking out not in sequence, but in clusters, as if someone were snipping threads from a tapestry.
He could feel it in his bones.
Not fear. Not even rage.
Absence.
Transcendence wasn't just deleting places or people. It was deleting the idea of them. And with every erased memory, the alliance's grip on existence weakened.
David lay unconscious in Scarlett's arms below, breathing shallow, his tiny chest rising like a dying ember. The seventeen Lunas held the resonance net together, but their light flickered—strained, thinning.
They were losing.
And Alexander… had done nothing.
He'd commanded fleets. Led werewolf packs through hell. Fought gods and monsters alike.
But this?
This wasn't a fight you won with claws or cannons.
It was a war for meaning.
