The lower layers of the Elysion Station were saturated with the sharp scent of grease, metal, and static electricity. Twenty-seven-year-old Stela Vorn realized it the moment she plunged the pale blue veins on her left arm—the strange patterns she inherited from the Lumin race, the meaning of which she did not know—into the tangled guts of an Omni-Droid. Outside, artificial daylight filtering through the titanium shutters turned the airborne dust motes into golden particles. This was her home: a place lost among scrap heaps, forgotten space junk, and faulty technology that only she could repair. The warning "Aether Gates: Critical Stability Loss!" rising from the portable holoprojector flickered before her eyes. A repairwoman with no identity, she thought with a bitter pang. Just someone who holds the pieces together.
Then, the world shattered.
It was not a tremor. It was a rupture. Light rained down from the ceiling; bolts of violet and electric blue lightning lashed the walls, melting the metal. The blue veins on Stela's wrists suddenly glowed like embers, making her scream in pain. Alien images flooded her mind: Crystal towers shining under twin suns… A howling desert wind… And then, a bone-chilling scream. The very fabric of reality was being torn like cloth. The Storm Gate Incident had begun.
As she ran, the familiar grey corridors of Elysion began to deform. Titanium floors melted away, giving way to the phosphorescent, dancing mists of the Interstice. This was neither space nor time; a sea of nothingness where the laws of physics died, and matter flowed like a dream. Her breath hitched. As a wave of energy swept her away, she instinctively reached out—a silvery, vibrating beam shot from her fingertips, vaporizing a massive girder that was collapsing upon her.
"No!" Stela gasped, looking at her hands with shock and terror. Did I do that?
A silhouette appeared from the shadows. A man with a hard jawline, a soldier's posture, and eyes that held traces of deep experience—and a familiar fear. His coat collar was pulled up. This was Rais Dorran. He roughly pulled Stela behind a pile of wreckage, his voice a raw, sharp whisper:
"Don't look back! That gate opened because of you, Vorn. The ones pursuing you… they bring things worse than death."
Stela resisted, her gaze fixed on her glowing wrists:
"Who am I to–"
"You," Rais cut her off, his eyes locked on Stela's burning veins, *"are the one the Interstice called. And now…" * Behind them, as reality shattered like a mirror, his voice thundered: "It's time to go!"
The ancient-looking device on Rais's wrist flared. An Aether Gate—resembling a black hole, but with fragments of severed memories and unborn futures dancing inside instead of stars—opened in the void before them. Stela turned one last time: Elysion station was dissolving as if acid had been poured over a painting, the familiar rusty brown of the junkyard replaced by the terrifying neon greens and deep space violets of the Interstice. Two realities were intertwining in a deadly dance.
Rais shoved her.
The fall… was infinite. She was falling into a void, a nothingness, an everything. And Stela Vorn—scraps master, lost hybrid, unwitting weapon—found herself for the first time in the cold, living darkness of the Interstice. Beyond the fractured horizons of reality, the secrets of her past and the shadows threatening her future lay in wait. She heard Rais follow her, his voice swallowed by the roar of the vortex:
"Survive, Stela! You are starting to understand!"
The darkness swallowed them. Answers and greater questions awaited beyond the fragmented horizons.