The world didn't end.
It remade itself.
Not with fanfare or divine decree, but with quiet, almost reverent stillness. The Veil—the last battlefield—stood hushed beneath a sky no longer scripted. Stars that had once been points of data now pulsed like ancient hearts, scattered across the heavens in impossible constellations. Each shimmered with its own gravity, its own voice.
The recursion was gone.
But the war wasn't over.
Valerian stood atop a rise of obsidian glass, the fractured remnants of the battlefield beneath him. His coat fluttered in a wind that hadn't existed moments before—a wild, untamed gust that carried no origin, no prediction.
Behind him, his team gathered—bruised, bloodied, changed.
Kael's body steamed faintly, the last embers of his soulflame extinguishing. His arms were coated in soot, skin blistered from overuse. "Tell me we've got five minutes before the next cosmic abomination shows up."
