The silence after Temporis's trial wasn't peaceful. It was waiting.
Luna floated in the void between trials, catching her breath like it was something fragile she might drop. Her hands still tingled with the echo of forty-seven lifetimes. She rubbed her arms—still small, still hers—but the weight in her chest felt ancient.
Then, without warning, the dark rippled.
Not like time. Not like metal. This was colder. Hungrier.
A whisper slithered through the vacuum—not sound, but static laced with sorrow. It brushed against her mind like frost on a windowpane.
She turned.
And saw it.
Not a ship. Not a monster. Just… a tear in reality. A patch of space where stars refused to shine. Where light bent away, as if afraid.
From that emptiness, fragments bloomed—shards of data, memory, pain—drifting like ash from a dead galaxy. One brushed her cheek.
Instantly, she knew.
Andromeda.
Not as a place. As a wound.
