Adrian blinked outside the Origin Capital.
For a moment, he lingered in the silent void, watching from afar as the massive formation shimmered above the capital. Golden-white light pulsed across seventy worlds.
He didn't know what he would face at the edge of the galaxy.
He didn't know how long it would take to return.
But he knew one thing for certain, the Origin Capital was safe.
His people were growing stronger every day. Draven drilled the armies, Septimus and Selena expanded the archives, Kael fortified the fleets.
Origin fleets guarded the spacelanes.
Varik and others managed the endless flow of trade and knowledge. Thousands of contracts finalized daily, minor clans establishing roots, embassies rising across the construct.
And there were others. Kaelith, Lady Seris, even Azrael, who would stand if anything dared threaten the clan.
Adrian turned his gaze back toward the endless dark.
"Time to move."
Then he stepped forward and vanished.
He didn't need ships or nexus gates. His space domain bent the void, hurling him light-years with every blink. Stars blurred past, constellations dissolving into streaks of light.
After hundreds of such transitions, Adrian emerged into the northern void.
Even from this distance, he could see the edge of their galaxy, a dark region where not many stars even existed. The void there looked thinner, emptier, as though something had scraped it clean.
And at the start of that edge, he saw massive sectors.
Each one was an entire star system, heavily fortified, with millions of warships and fleets stationed. Defensive formations stretched between planets.
No empire truly owned these sectors. They were managed jointly, rotated command every few years.
Adrian's node pulsed softly, projecting Gary's coordinates.
The point was far beyond even these fortified borders, inside the Edge.
To reach it, he'd have to pass through restricted sectors.
And he had no clearance.
He opened the route Kaelith had given him, a narrow path threading between two patrol grids.
He slipped into it.
Instantly, the environment changed. The void here was wrong.
Space didn't flow naturally. It twisted, buckled, folded back on itself in jagged angles. Cracks split open randomly, bleeding darkness before snapping shut.
Here, the fabric of the void wasn't stable. Jagged cracks split open randomly, collapsing then reforming in new places.
Starships couldn't survive here. Even automated probes would be shredded within seconds.
"No wonder they never built sectors here," Adrian muttered, stabilizing the distortions with his Space Domain.
Every few seconds, the folds shuddered, enough to tear a starship apart. Spatial currents surged violently, ripping at his domain.
But with each ripple, Adrian bent the void and re-threaded it around him, passing through safely.
He was only able to do this because he had a space domain. To others, this would be an extremely dangerous path.
Hours passed.
The distortions intensified. Space folded three, four, five times over itself in places. Adrian adjusted constantly, his domain flexing to accommodate the chaos.
Then his node pulsed.
› Zone Boundary Crossed.
› Entered the Edge.
Adrian stopped.
The void ahead looked different. Darker. Not empty, but hollow, as though something fundamental had been stripped away.
Stars were sparse here, scattered like dying embers.
Adrian's gaze swept across the expanse.
This was the Northern Edge. The graveyard Kaelith warned him about.
"So this… is the Edge."
Adrian's voice was barely a whisper in the void.
As he moved deeper, the emptiness gave way to strangeness. Floating geometric fragments drifted past, structures that followed no architectural logic he recognized, their angles wrong, their surfaces shimmering with colors that had no name.
Not of this galaxy.
A current of water flowed between distant stars, defying every law. It moved like a river through the vacuum, neither freezing nor boiling, simply existing where it shouldn't.
Adrian checked Gary's coordinates again. It was still deeper.
He frowned, pushing forward through the distorted space. How had the Celestials even traveled this far into the Edge? Without space domains, they could have been torn apart.
The coordinates grew closer, and then, he saw it.
A colossal, jagged structure floating amidst the hollow void.
It looked alien, broken, like the skeleton of something vast that had died millennia ago.
Adrian drifted closer, his gaze sharpening.
Symbols carved into the surface.
His eyes widened.
The language of mana.
But these weren't the fragmented, incomplete phrases Lexaria had deciphered. Some of these symbols were perfect, whole, unbroken, radiating clarity that made his Source seed hum in recognition.
Not every symbol was perfect. Many were broken like the ones that lexaria had, but the perfect ones… It made sense…
Lexaria had built an empire on fragments scavenged from the Edge. But seeing it himself, standing before those kinds of treasures, felt different than just knowing.
He moved closer, his domain brushing against the structure's surface.
And then he felt it.
A shadow domain, spreading through the void.
Adrian stopped.
A middle-aged man floated near the structure's base. His eyes were closed, his expression calm, but the domain around him was controlled.
Adrian stepped closer, crossing the threshold of the domain—
And the man's eyes opened.
For a heartbeat, they simply stared at each other.
Then recognition flashed across the man's face.
"Adrian?"
Gary floated upright, disbelief rippling through his voice.
He'd received the message from Septimus and the others, telling him help was coming. But that had been less than a week ago.
"You—already?" he muttered, almost to himself. "When we came here, it took us months just to reach this place. And you…"
His gaze swept over Adrian, truly seeing him now.
The young man who came from Earth and built a clan that now pulsed at the heart of galactic trade.
A silence settled between them.
Two generations, colliding across time.
Adrian floated forward, bowed his head, and said quietly, "Elder Gary."
For a moment, Gary just stared. This young man, carrying humanity's legacy across the stars.
And then, unexpectedly, he laughed.
It was a sound rough with age and wonder, echoing through the void.
"All these years…" he said, shaking his head. "We thought we were Earth's last hope. We swore we'd find a way to protect it, but we were swallowed by the galaxy instead. We became ghosts chasing a promise."
He looked at Adrian, pride and disbelief mingling in his voice.
"But it seems… humanity didn't need saving after all."
Adrian lifted his head, meeting Gary's gaze.
"No." His voice was steady, certain. "Without you twelve, I would not even exist today. You all guided us here. And with that, we didn't just survive, Elder."
"We built a home. A clan. And a capital that belongs to every human who ever looked up at the sky and dreamed."
Gary closed his eyes briefly.
When he opened them again, there was warmth in his gaze that no void could swallow.
"Then maybe," he said softly, "all those years we spent out here weren't for nothing."
He floated closer, placing a hand on Adrian's shoulder.
"It's good to finally see it, boy. Earth's flame didn't die out there… it just learned how to burn across the stars."