The sky above the Edge of Beginnings was not a sky at all.
It was a memory of light diffused and fractured, caught forever in the moment before dawn could fully commit to being. No sun had ever risen here. No moon had dared to follow.
And at the center of this forgotten realm stood a gate older than time, yet never opened.
A gate made of rootless stone and songs that had never been sung.
Zeirion Althar approached, flanked by Elyra and the Voidbinders. Their armor shimmered with temporal residue, woven from events that had almost occurred but were ultimately denied.
The land beneath their feet cracked not from pressure, but from recognition as if even reality knew who walked upon it.
"This place," Elyra whispered, "it was supposed to remain unformed."
Zeirion said nothing. His gaze was fixed on the gate.
On its arch were inscriptions, impossibly fluid glyphs that shifted when not looked at, reshaping meaning in response to the observer's past. Every name he had ever worn flickered across them in a blink:
The Void-Crowned. The Starlight Butcher. The Silent Redeemer.
"Who carved those?" Elyra asked.
Zeirion stepped closer. "No one. The gate remembers what it fears."
With a motion, he extended his hand, and the sigil within his palm the one etched into his being when he shattered the Spiral began to glow.
The gate shuddered.
Not open.
Not closed.
It simply began to… become.
Elsewhere
Aralya stood at the helm of the Serevin, the Astral Navigators' star ship that glided on the memory tides of lost timelines. Below her, the Rift of Unspoken Years screamed a fracture in the firmament where entire centuries had once been erased to preserve the illusion of peace.
The crew worked in reverent silence.
Then something moved.
Not in space.
In regret.
"Captain!" called one of the Navigators, pointing. "We're being hailed. By something that doesn't exist."
Aralya's eyes narrowed. "Display."
The viewing prism ignited with impossible light.
A face appeared. Or rather faces, overlapping and contradicting: a child, an elder, a storm, a crown of thorns and stars. A voice emerged, echoing across all frequencies and yet beneath hearing:
"You should not be looking."
Aralya leaned forward.
"And yet we are."
The image flickered violently. Reality around the Serevin quaked.
"Turn back. The womb sleeps. Do not wake it."
Aralya's smile was cold and calm. "Tell your master that Sovereign Zeirion has already broken the lock."
The faces screamed.
And the Rift trembled open.
Back at the Edge of Beginnings
The gate was open now not like a door, but like an understanding. It revealed a landscape of inversion a realm that had been aborted from existence and had nursed that rejection like fire. Skies bled upward. Mountains floated as regrets, falling in reverse.
Zeirion stepped through, and time stuttered.
A presence waited.
Not visible.
Not heard.
But sensed as a weight, an expectation.
The Womb Without a Name had noticed him.
"I can feel him watching," Elyra whispered, her fingers trembling slightly.
Zeirion did not blink. "Let him watch."
Then he turned to her.
"When we reach the heart, you will stay behind."
"What?" she protested.
"This realm corrupts identity. You are too rooted in now. I… am not."
"You'll die."
Zeirion's eyes narrowed. "I've done that before."
He stepped further into the un-place.
Every inch they moved, memories threatened to erode. The Sovereign's name tried to slip from existence. Elyra's form flickered. The Voidbinders began to weep from the nose and ears.
They had arrived at the Threshold of the Unborn Sovereign.
There, embedded in a cradle of negative stars, hung a cocoon of unlight, pulsing with latent hatred of existence itself.
"Not long now," Zeirion said.
The Womb was waking.
And when it did, it would not be to scream.
It would be to erase.