Back aboard the Celestial Veil, the silence was suffocating.
The crew was alive. The forge was destroyed. Veyrix had been defeated.
And yet, something lingered—like a shadow coiled in the corner of the room. It wasn't just the physical strain from battle; it was the echo of a deeper revelation that none of them could voice yet. The Starcore, now dim and seemingly docile, hovered silently above the navigation console, pulsing slowly like a slumbering god.
Bai Ling leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching Li Yan.
"You heard something back there," she said quietly.
Li Yan didn't answer right away. His eyes were locked on the Starcore, as though searching it for a name he couldn't forget.
"I heard... a name," he finally said. "Not Veyrix. Someone else. Something worse."
Bai Ling's expression tightened. "Say it."
Li Yan's voice was barely a whisper. "The Crimson Architect."
Tala immediately responded through the speakers, her voice more cautious than usual. "Cross-referencing. That name appears only once in pre-collapse data clusters from the lost colonies. No visual records. Just a phrase."
"What phrase?" Bai Ling asked.
"She builds stars to watch them die."
A chill swept through the room.
Li Yan rose from the pilot's chair, his movements stiff but focused. "She's still out there. Veyrix was a soldier. But she's the designer of this... cleansing. If the Obsidian Directive is a weapon, she's the one who designed its code."
Tala continued, "Coordinates attached to that phrase are fragmented, but traceable. The source points toward the edge of the Perseus Void. The dead zone."
"No ships come back from there," Bai Ling said.
"Then it's exactly where we need to go," Li Yan replied.
---
Two days later, the Celestial Veil emerged from hyperspace, facing an expanse of cosmic silence.
The Perseus Void wasn't just empty—it was devoured. Whole star systems hung in ruin, lightless and collapsed, like bones in a cosmic graveyard. Debris fields swirled like stormclouds. Ghost ships floated, powerless and cold. The very air—or what passed for space here—felt wrong.
"This place is a scar," Bai Ling whispered. "Like something clawed the universe open."
Li Yan stood at the viewport, the Starcore at his side. "And she's in the center of it."
Suddenly, Tala's systems flared. "Unidentified signal. It's broadcasting an ancient human frequency… modified with an alien code signature. Triangulating now."
A holographic projection filled the bridge.
A woman's silhouette—tall, draped in crimson veils, her face hidden beneath a mask of interwoven starlight—emerged.
"Greetings, Starcore bearer," her voice echoed, delicate but dangerous. "You have awakened the eye. You've made your move."
Li Yan narrowed his eyes. "Are you the Crimson Architect?"
A low hum like a thousand ticking clocks filled the air.
"I am the one who designed the end," she replied. "And I am ready for your arrival."
The transmission cut.
No coordinates. No map.
But Li Yan felt it.
A pull.
The Starcore flared to life again, revealing a path—a hidden slipstream, twisted and narrow, leading into the dark.
"You sure about this?" Bai Ling asked, already bracing herself.
"We don't get to turn back," Li Yan said.
---
The slipstream tunnel spat them out into the heart of the Void.
Here, reality bent.
Planets orbited invisible suns. Stars reversed in motion. Gravity sang in chords. And there, suspended in the center like a jewel in a spider's web, was the Architect's domain: The Crucible—a mechanical world built into the remains of a collapsed supernova.
The surface was all crimson glass and black steel, pulsing with an unnatural rhythm. Towers stretched toward the sky, shaped like spirals and claws, and at the center stood a cathedral of light.
As they approached, defense systems awoke—drone fleets, plasma mines, sentient warbeasts. But the Starcore flared again, and the defenses faltered, recognizing the bearer.
The Crucible opened.
They landed.
The ground hissed beneath their boots.
Bai Ling checked her blaster. "Feels like we're walking into a dream someone had just before they died."
Li Yan stepped forward. "She wants to talk."
---
The inner chamber was a hall of memories.
Projections hovered in the air—faces of ancient civilizations, their triumphs, and their destruction. Each vanished with a whisper, leaving only dust.
And then she appeared.
The Crimson Architect descended from a beam of refracted light, her feet never touching the ground. Her mask shimmered with every word.
"You carry the flame," she said, circling Li Yan. "Yet you wear it like a chain."
"You made the Directive," he said.
"I made a solution," she replied. "The galaxy is a virus. A cycle of birth and war. I wanted peace."
"Peace through extinction?" Bai Ling spat.
The Architect turned. "I offered a new order. The Council refused. So I waited. And now... the Starcore returns to me."
"No," Li Yan said, lifting the Starcore. "It chooses me."
"Then prove you deserve it."
She snapped her fingers.
The chamber transformed into a battlefield—an illusion made real. Suddenly, Li Yan stood alone in a shattered cityscape, storms howling, his memories pulled from his past. Shadows of old enemies, broken friends, and fallen allies formed from smoke and rage.
This was her test.
To hold the flame, he had to survive himself.