The Event Horizon
The void of space was no longer a silent vacuum; it was a canvas of screaming energies and fractured light. The Aurelian Eclipse shuddered under the impact of Malakor's opening salvo—a concentrated beam of "anti-mana" that sought to unravel the very molecular bonds of the ship's hull.
Alistair Thorne stood at the center of the bridge, his feet braced against the vibration. He didn't look like a boy; his shadow, cast by the flickering holographic displays, was long and predatory. Around him, the crew of the Vanguard moved with practiced precision.
"Shield status!" Alistair commanded.
"Forward arrays at 60% and dropping!" Thrain roared from the engineering pit, his hands blurred as he adjusted the mana-valves. "That black ship isn't just firing at us, Alistair. It's eating our barrier. The bastard is siphoning our mana into his own reserves!"
"Administrator," 0-RA's voice was sharp, a digital staccato. "The enemy vessel is utilizing a Void-Singularity engine. It operates on the principle of localized entropy. If we continue standard engagement, we will reach a total power failure in 4 minutes and 12 seconds."
Alistair's eyes narrowed. "Standard engagement was never the plan. Thrain, decouple the primary mana-core from the shield generators. Redirect all output to the Sovereign Engine."
"Are you mad?" Kaelen shouted from the tactical station. "Without shields, that next beam will cut us in half!"
"It won't," Alistair said, his voice dropping to a terrifyingly calm whisper. "Because we won't be where the beam is hitting. We're going to perform a sub-spatial fold within the planet's atmosphere."
The Sovereignty of Physics
Alistair closed his eyes, tapping into the neural link with 0-RA. In his mind's eye, the universe ceased to be matter and became a series of complex equations. To perform a fold of this magnitude without a Sky-Gate required a calculation that would fry a standard Arch Mage's brain.
But Alistair wasn't standard. He was a synthesis of two worlds.
The spatial distortion required for a "Blink-Jump" of a 500,000-ton dreadnought could be expressed as:
\Delta S = \int_{t_0}^{t_1} \frac{\Phi_{aether}}{\sqrt{1 - \frac{v^2}{c^2}}} \cdot \nabla \Psi_{void} \, dt
Where \Phi_{aether} represents the ship's mana-density and \Psi_{void} is the external interference from Malakor's engine.
"0-RA, synchronize the pulse," Alistair chanted, his hands weaving a Tier 7 spell-circle that encompassed the entire bridge. "Execute: Dimensional Shear."
Outside, the Aurelian Eclipse didn't move forward. It vanished.
Malakor's beam of dark fire passed through the space where the ship had been a microsecond before, striking the moon of Orizon and carving a hundred-mile crater into its surface.
A heartbeat later, the Aurelian Eclipse reappeared directly behind Malakor's ship, the Entropy.
"Point-blank range! Fire everything!" Alistair ordered.
The dreadnought's mana-cannons erupted. Forty-eight beams of pure, white-hot Aether struck the Entropy's rear thrusters. The void-ship groaned, its dark aura flickering like a dying candle.
The Boarding: A Waltz of Steel and Shadow
"They're launching pods!" Elowen warned. She stood by the bridge doors, her Aether-Rifle glowing with a sickly green light.
"Malakor isn't going to win a ship-to-ship battle. He's coming for the core. He's coming for you."
"Let them come," Alistair said, unsheathing the Obsidian Star-Cutter. "Mina, activate the 'Alistair's Kiss' dispersal in the corridors. Kaelen, lead the Knights to the hangar. Elowen... stay with me."
Elowen's eyes flared. A look of pure, unadulterated joy crossed her face—the kind of joy only a predator feels when its territory is acknowledged. "I will not let a single shadow touch your shadow, Alistair."
The ship shook as Malakor's boarding craft slammed into the upper deck. The hiss of depressurization was followed by the sound of heavy boots and the crackle of Void-magic.
Alistair and Elowen waited in the grand corridor leading to the bridge. It was a wide, marble-floored hall lined with statues of the Thorne ancestors.
The doors at the far end exploded.
Malakor stepped through the smoke. He was taller than before, his skin pale and etched with glowing purple veins. Behind him stood a dozen "Void-Wights"—corpses of fallen knights reanimated by shadow-matter.
"You've grown, Alistair," Malakor said, his voice echoing in the hall. "But you still cling to this toy of a ship. You build walls of steel, yet you don't see the rot in the foundation."
"The only rot I see is the man who couldn't succeed in one life, so he decided to poison the next," Alistair replied.
Malakor laughed, a sound like glass breaking. "You think this is about revenge? No. I found the Gate, Alistair. I saw what lies on the other side. Earth isn't a memory. It's a tomb. And I am the one who holds the key."
He raised his hand, and the Void-Wights lunged.
Elowen didn't wait for a command. She moved with a speed that defied elven biology. She didn't fire arrows; she was the arrow. She blurred through the wights, her daggers—coated in Mina's time-reversing toxin—slicing through their necks.
As she struck, the wounds on the wights didn't bleed. They regressed. The shadow-matter holding them together was forced back into a state of non-existence. They collapsed into piles of dust before they could even swing their rusted blades.
"Stay back, shadow!" Elowen hissed, her face contorted into a mask of yandere fury. She stood between Alistair and Malakor, her aura expanding until it filled the corridor. "You dare breathe the same air as him? You dare look at him with those dead eyes? I will pull your soul out and feed it to the void you love so much!"
Malakor swiped his hand, sending a wave of dark force toward her. Elowen flipped backward, her movements graceful and lethal. "Alistair, he's mine! Don't interfere!"
"He's too strong for you, Elowen!" Alistair warned, stepping forward.
"No!" she screamed, her voice cracking. "I am your shield! If I cannot kill this dog for you, then I have no right to stand by your side! Stay back, my King! Watch me!"
She threw her bow aside and drew a pair of curved short-swords. Her mana flared—a brilliant, emerald green infused with Alistair's silver light. She engaged Malakor in a flurry of strikes that was so fast, the friction began to scorch the air.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Malakor parried her with his bare hands, his skin as hard as obsidian. "You're fast, little elf. But you're fighting for a ghost. Alistair doesn't love you. He uses you. He's a scientist; he views you as a high-performance tool."
"Then I am the luckiest tool in existence!" Elowen roared. She landed a kick on Malakor's chest, the mana-burst throwing him back.
But Malakor was done playing. He caught her next strike, grabbing her wrist with a crushing grip. He sneered, his eyes glowing. "Let's see how much he values his tool when it's broken."
He raised his jagged blade, but Alistair was already there.
The Arch Mage's Wrath
Alistair didn't use his sword to block. He used a Tier 6 Spatial Lock.
The air around Malakor's arm froze. The villain's blade was suspended inches from Elowen's throat, held by an invisible, immovable force.
"I told you once, Malakor," Alistair said, his voice a low, terrifying growl. "You will never touch them."
Alistair punched Malakor in the face. It wasn't a physical punch; it was a "Force-Compression" spell delivered through his knuckles. The impact sounded like a cannon going off. Malakor was sent flying through three reinforced bulkheads, disappearing into the depths of the ship.
Alistair turned to Elowen. She was breathing hard, her wrist bruised, her eyes wide. She looked at him with a mixture of shame and worship.
"I... I let him touch me," she whispered, her voice trembling. "I wasn't strong enough..."
Alistair reached out and grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at him. "You fought a Tier 7 Void-User and lived. That is enough. Now, go to the bridge. Coordinate with Thrain. The Star-Gate is opening, and I need the ship ready to move."
"Alistair—"
"Go!"
She bowed, her eyes lingering on him for a moment longer than necessary—a look of such intense, terrifying devotion that even Alistair felt a chill. Then, she vanished into the shadows.
The Gate of the Ancestors
Alistair walked toward the edge of the boarding breach, looking out into the void.
The Old Earth Star-Gate was no longer dormant. It was spinning, the rings of ancient metal glowing with a blue light that matched the color of the oceans of a world Alistair hadn't seen in decades.
"Administrator," 0-RAspoke. "The Gate is broadcasting a signal. It's an SOS. But not from the past. It's from... now."
"Explain," Alistair said.
"The coordinates for Earth were not lost, Alistair. They were hidden. Earth was placed in a 'Time-Bubble' during the first Void-War. To the outside universe, thousands of years have passed. To Earth... it has only been fifty."
Alistair's heart hammered against his ribs. If that was true, there were people still alive—or at least, the remnants of the civilization he knew.
Suddenly, the Entropy—Malakor's ship—ignited its engines. It didn't fire on the Aurelian Eclipse. It accelerated toward the center of the Gate.
"He's making a run for it!" Thrain's voice came over the comms. "Alistair, if he gets through first, he can collapse the tunnel behind him!"
"Not if I'm on his hull," Alistair said.
He didn't wait for the ship. He leaped into the vacuum, his mana-shield flaring blue. Using the gravity-wells of the spinning gate as slingshots, Alistair propelled himself through the void. He landed on the spine of the Entropy just as the ship hit the event horizon.
The Descent
The world turned inside out.
Alistair felt his soul being stretched across light-years. In the tunnel of the Star-Gate, he saw flashes of his previous life: a woman laughing in a park, a glass of wine on a mahogany desk, the cold sting of a bullet.
Then, he saw the new life: Seraphina's smile, Elowen's fierce eyes, Thrain's forge.
He realized then that he wasn't just a man from Earth reborn in magic. He was the bridge. He was the synthesis.
The Entropy burst out of the other side of the tunnel.
Alistair looked up.
Hanging in the darkness was a planet. It was Earth, but not as he remembered. It was encased in a massive, crystalline shell—a planetary shield made of Aether-Tech and ancient AI logic. Around it, a fleet of derelict ships from a dozen different civilizations lay in a graveyard of cold steel.
"We're home," Alistair whispered.
But as he looked at the crystalline shell, he saw a crack. And emerging from that crack were thousands of Void-Monsters, larger and more terrifying than anything he had seen in the Aurelian Empire.
Malakor's ship headed straight for the crack.
"Warning," 0-RA signaled. "Malakor is broadcasting a 'Command Code'. He isn't trying to save Earth. He's trying to wake up the weapon that destroyed it."
Alistair stood up on the hull of the enemy ship, his obsidian sword glowing with the light of two worlds.
"0-RA, signal the Aurelian Eclipse. Tell them to follow the trail. Tell Seraphina... I'm going in."
Alistair dove toward the surface of the planet.
The Second Arc was ending, and the final war for the soul of two universes had just begun.