While the Council debated the purification of Kael's drift echoes, something darker was waking beyond the edge of the Lattice.
A remnant older than the Architect.
The Firstbreaker.
Buried in myth, whispered only in forbidden archives, the Firstbreaker was the being that cracked the first realm from the void, shattering the unity of the proto-universe. Even the Architect feared it—and wisely sealed it beyond time.
But Kael's sacrifice, and the destabilizing echoes, had echoed beyond the lattice. And the seal… had weakened.
A realm long thought erased—Null-Void Prime—flickered into existence again, like a phantom limb returning to a ghost. It pulsed with deep red entropy, reality unraveling within its own skin. And from its broken heart, the Firstbreaker stirred.
Its voice rumbled through realms like a buried earthquake. "Driftbearer… drift again..."
On Earth-X34, Lira and Elara arrived at the next known echo—a child curled beneath the rubble of a fractured moon, glowing blue with Kael's signature.
But as they approached, the sky ruptured. Black lightning split the stars. And a claw of pure void tore down from the heavens, erasing an entire mountain range in silence.
Elara froze. "That's not the Architect."
"No," Lira said. "It's the Firstbreaker."
Kael had saved the multiverse once—but now, two ancient forces were using him as a battlefield. The Architect to rebuild.
And the Firstbreaker to destroy everything.