The Drift Age had begun.
With the war between the Architect and the Firstbreaker ended, and the balance restored, the multiverse was finally… quiet. Not still, but alive in a way it hadn't been for millennia. The Helix Storm became a mobile hub for peacekeeping, research, and exploration, drifting through stable realms to aid reconstruction.
Kael was gone—his essence dissolved into the Drift itself. Yet, whispers of his presence echoed through the stabilized rifts. Multiversal travelers sometimes claimed to see him in dreams, or catch glimpses in mirrors where no reflection should be.
Elara led the team now.
Astra served as chief chronoseer, monitoring the delicate flow of time in and out of aligned worlds. Korr had become a reluctant diplomat, using brute honesty as a strangely effective negotiation tool. Lira maintained the Drift Core with obsessive care, determined never to let it fall out of sync again.
Then came the anomaly.
It appeared as a ripple—a missing realm.
Not destroyed.
Not dead.
Just… absent.
"Realm 19-Zeta?" Astra asked, staring at the scans. "It was here yesterday. A stabilized echo-node with three minor cultures. No signs of destabilization or attack."
Elara leaned over her shoulder. "Gone?"
"Like it was never there."
Lira brought up temporal logs. "This isn't decay. This is deletion. Something removed it across all known vectors."
That word—deletion—echoed through the chamber like a death sentence.
Korr crossed his arms. "We just beat the worst threats existence has ever seen. What the hell could do this?"
No one had an answer.
So they went looking for one.
The Helix Storm adjusted course and passed into Deep Drift—uncharted multiversal depths beyond the old borders of Fracturefront. These were the oldest layers, where forgotten timelines slept and impossible realms blinked in and out of recognition.
Their instruments began to fail.
Not from damage—but from silence.
No readings.
No signals.
Not even entropy.
It was as if they were sailing into a void beyond existence.
"I don't like this," Lira muttered. "Even entropy leaves a signature."
Then they saw it.
A sphere, suspended in the nothing. Colorless. Featureless. Vast.
Not orbiting anything. Not existing in any traditional way. But undeniably there.
Elara leaned forward. "Scan it."
Astra tried.
Failed.
"It's not ignoring our probes. It's erasing the signals after we send them. Like it's rewriting cause and effect."
Lira backed away from the console. "No. That's not deletion. That's negation."
Korr frowned. "Negation?"
"Like the Firstbreaker… but older. Cleaner. More efficient."
The ship trembled slightly.
Not from impact.
From fear.
Or something deeper.
Something like instinct, warning them to leave.
And then a single signal emerged from the sphere. A pulse. Repeating. Ancient.
One word, rendered in the primal language of existence itself:
"Return."
The crew stood frozen.
"Is it calling us?" Elara asked.
"No," Astra whispered. "It's warning us."
The sphere pulsed again.
Kael had balanced the Drift.
But beneath it… something else had always waited.
Not for power.
Not for war.
But for the end of all stories.