The journey to the Edge of the Known Universe was not a simple one.
Orion and Lyra stood in the cockpit, watching as the ship's coordinates recalibrated for a sector few had ever dared to enter. Vek had provided a set of coordinates—fragmented, incomplete, like a puzzle that refused to fit together.
"The Nameless Vault doesn't exist in a fixed place," Lyra muttered, scanning the data. "It drifts. No recorded star charts can track it."
"Then how do we find it?" Orion asked.
Lyra exhaled, tapping a command into the ship's interface. "We don't." She glanced at him. "It finds us."
The engines hummed as the ship veered toward the abyss, a region of space devoid of stars. No planets, no celestial bodies. Just a void so dark it felt like they were staring into the absence of existence itself.
Orion shifted uneasily. The feeling in his chest—the strange pulse in his veins—had only grown stronger. Something was out there, waiting.
And then—
Reality twisted.
A rupture in space opened before them, not like a wormhole but something else entirely—a wound in the fabric of the universe. From within, eerie tendrils of light and shadow flickered, pulsing in a rhythm that matched the unnatural thrum in Orion's bones.
Lyra's hands tightened around the controls. "We just got invited in."
Orion swallowed. "No turning back now."
The ship plunged forward.
The moment they crossed the threshold, everything changed.
---
The Vault was not a structure. It was a concept made real.
Orion stepped onto something that felt like stone but shifted like liquid under his boots. Above him, an impossible sky churned—a mixture of deep-space darkness and flowing, golden constellations that rearranged themselves at will.
The space stretched infinitely, yet felt suffocatingly close.
The Keeper was waiting.
He stood at the center of it all, draped in flowing, void-black robes that seemed to blend into the space around him. His face was obscured—shifting between forms, sometimes skeletal, sometimes human, sometimes something unrecognizable.
Orion exhaled sharply. The pulse in his veins intensified.
The Keeper turned to face them.
"You are fractured, traveler."
His voice was not a sound, but a presence that settled deep within Orion's mind.
Orion squared his shoulders. "I need answers."
The Keeper tilted his head, as if amused. "Many do. Few are willing to hear them." His gaze—or what passed for one—slid over Orion, studying something unseen.
Then, he spoke words that made Orion's blood run cold.
"You are no longer what you were."
Orion clenched his fists. "What does that mean?"
The Keeper's shifting form flickered, the space around him warping with his presence. "You have touched something beyond mortal comprehension. It is unraveling you."
Lyra stiffened beside him. "Can it be stopped?"
The Keeper let out something that could have been a laugh. "You ask the wrong question." His gaze bore into Orion. "The real question is—do you want it to be?"
A cold weight settled in Orion's chest.
Something deep inside him whispered—No.
And that terrified him.