The journey to the Blackmoon Trenches was long and perilous. Once considered a dead zone, the region was a dense, starless stretch at the edge of the Carthian Expanse—where all signals died, where even the most advanced ships went dark without warning.
Kael's command ship, The Obsidian Wraith, had to be fitted with a prototype gravity-stabilizing core and a psychic dampener—technology scavenged from the ruins of a Watcher-aligned syndicate. Even with all precautions, the closer they came to the coordinates, the more the crew reported strange phenomena.
Voices in their heads.
Time distortions.
Dreams that felt like memories from someone else's life.
Kael ignored them all. His mind was focused. If the Temple of the First Eye truly existed, it could hold the keystone—the device or artifact through which the Watchers initiated their control across timelines.
But they weren't alone.
A ship was already there.
The Ghost at the Edge of Light
Hovering near the gravitational edge of the trench was a colossal vessel—jet black and devoid of any visible insignia. Its structure was unlike anything Kael had seen before. Smooth. Organic. Not built, but grown.
"No known registry," Talia said, reviewing the scans. "It's not transmitting anything. No crew heat signatures either."
Kael narrowed his eyes. "Dead or waiting."
They chose not to dock. Instead, they descended directly into the trench in stealth mode. At its center was an enormous crater—the remnants of a forgotten asteroid impact. Beneath it, buried under layers of tectonic ice and metal, was the temple.
And the door opened before they touched the surface.
As if it had been waiting for Kael.
Inside the Temple
The walls were not stone.
They were memory—living architecture carved from encoded crystal, pulsing with data that flowed like blood through the corridors. The interior was vast, too large to exist within the trench they had entered. Space folded in on itself. Gravity shifted with thought.
And in the center of the temple stood a monolith.
A triangular obsidian pillar with a single golden eye carved into it—the First Eye.
Kael stepped forward.
Suddenly, the room shifted. Light bent. Shadows melted away, revealing specters of the past—visions, memories, not his own.
He saw his father kneeling before the Watchers.
He saw his brother injected with nanocodes to ensure obedience.
He saw himself, as a child, standing at a mirror where his reflection smiled back without him moving.
"Kael."
The voice came from all around.
Talia whipped around, gun raised. "Who's there?"
And then a figure appeared.
Not through doors.
Not by walking.
But as if he had always been there.
Eras Dominus.
The Architect Speaks
Tall, ageless, wearing robes that shimmered with quantum phase patterns, Dominus was a contradiction—simultaneously ancient and futuristic. His eyes gleamed with synthetic gold.
He smiled at Kael like a father greeting a son who had finally come home.
"You've come far," Dominus said. "Further than anyone expected. Even me."
Kael raised his weapon. "And now I end you."
Dominus didn't flinch. "Kill me and nothing changes. The system rebuilds. Another takes my place. Another cycle begins."
Kael hesitated.
Dominus raised a hand—not in threat, but to reveal a key. It wasn't metal. It was alive—a neural code embedded in a pulse crystal.
"This is the Master Switch. It can end it all. Every simulation, every control node, every secret timeline we seeded. You can burn the Watchers to the ground."
"Then give it to me." Kael demanded.
"With a price," Dominus said.
He turned and pointed to the monolith.
"To wield this key, you must merge with the Eye. Become the counterbalance. You will lose yourself. Or perhaps... become something greater."
Talia stepped forward. "Kael, wait. There has to be another way."
Dominus turned to her. "There is none. Your friend here is the only anomaly in 10,000 years who has not obeyed our system. He is the glitch. The virus. The cure."
Kael clenched his fists. "Why? Why create me at all?"
Dominus looked at him with what could almost be regret.
"We didn't. You created yourself. Every controlled outcome has a 0.001% chance of divergence. You are that .001. And now you must choose: become the next ruler of a broken machine… or break the machine forever."
The Merge
Kael stepped to the monolith.
His hand hovered over the eye.
Visions struck him like lightning—entire galaxies collapsing, kings rising and falling, futures rewritten like scripts in a play.
He screamed—but kept his hand on the eye.
Then… silence.
A moment of stillness.
And then everything exploded in light.
Outside the Temple
Talia was thrown back as a shockwave erupted from the temple, blowing back sand and light.
When she looked up, Kael stood at the top of the stairs.
But his eyes were no longer just human.
Golden light flickered within them.
He held the key.
Dominus was gone.
His voice echoed one last time: "You are no longer the anomaly, Kael Drayven. You are the author."
Epilogue: The First Rewrite
The Obsidian Wraith departed the Blackmoon Trenches, leaving the buried temple in silence.
Across the galaxy, systems blinked. Files vanished. Secret networks collapsed. Vaults unlocked. The Watchers' influence began to unravel.
And Kael—Kael rewrote the future line by line.
He didn't erase the past.
He made sure no one could ever control it again.