A pulse of energy still crackled in Orion's veins as the silence settled over the ruined ship. The Voidbound Stalker was gone, but its presence lingered like an imprint on reality itself.
Lyra hadn't let go of his wrist. Her grip was steady—like she was afraid he might fade away if she did.
He didn't blame her.
Because for a moment, he had felt it too.
A pull.
A presence beyond the veil of normal existence.
Something vast, cold, and aware.
The ship's flickering emergency lights cast eerie shadows across the corridor. Lyra exhaled sharply, shaking her head. "You're gonna have to start explaining things, Orion. Because that wasn't normal."
Orion took a shaky breath. "I know." He hesitated, his mind still reeling. "I don't—"
A tremor ran through the structure beneath them. Not from the ship itself. From something deeper.
The Core inside him pulsed in response.
Danger.
Lyra's gaze snapped upward. "What now?"
Before Orion could answer, the ship lurched violently. The air itself rippled, space twisting into an unnatural spiral.
A doorway was opening.
Not a mechanical hatch. Not a breach in the hull.
Something else.
Something not meant to exist in this plane.
Something watching.
Orion's breath caught as the space in front of them peeled away, revealing a vast, impossible void.
And within it—
A figure.
Not fully formed. Not fully real. A silhouette of shifting starlight and abyssal darkness.
And yet… Orion knew, somehow, that it was looking directly at him.
Then, it spoke.
Not in words.
In thought. In emotion.
"You are incomplete."
A pressure crashed against Orion's skull, as if a thousand voices whispered inside his mind at once. He staggered, gripping his head as flashes of something—memories? Prophecies?—seared into his consciousness.
A world devoured by an endless rift.
A throne of obsidian and fire.
A name—his name—spoken by a being that should not exist.
His knees buckled.
Lyra caught him before he collapsed. "Orion!" Her voice was sharp, grounding him, pulling him back to the present. "What's happening?"
Orion's vision cleared, the presence fading, retreating back into the void.
But before it vanished completely, one last whisper coiled through his thoughts.
"You will return to us."
Then, in an instant, the breach sealed itself.
The ship was silent once more.
Only the echo of those words remained.
And Orion knew—
This was only the beginning.