The team emerged from the collapsing Codex into raw multiversal space—chaotic, formless, and violent. Stars blinked into existence and died within seconds. They were beyond the edges of mapped realms, adrift in the Breakline.
Astra clutched the containment drive. "The root is intact."
"But Kael—" Elara stopped herself. She didn't want to say it. He'd bought them time, but the Firstbreaker had entered the Codex.
Korr scanned the expanding rift behind them. "He didn't just break the Codex. He consumed it. He's growing stronger."
Lira turned to the group. "We have the root. That means we can find the other echoes and stabilize them."
"But now he knows what we're doing," Elara said grimly. "He'll come for them."
"And he'll follow," Astra added. "Through every drift, through every echo."
They activated emergency coordinates and jumped back to the Spiral Nexus.
The moment they landed, the Nexus pulsed red—defensive wards strained.
"Massive entropic wave incoming," the AI warned. "Reality breach—Sector-9."
On screen, a ripple of absolute void tore through a mid-tier timeline. In seconds, it collapsed. No survivors.
Elara gritted her teeth. "He's marking the echoes. Hunting them."
"We split up," Lira said. "Form teams. Each squad takes a fragment location. We intercept, stabilize, and bring them back. The root can act as a beacon. It'll draw them in if they're close enough."
"And the ones that are already corrupted?" Astra asked.
"We fight."
Elara tapped into the root core and injected the signature into the Nexus lattice. Dozens of coordinates lit up—each echo pulsing like a star.
"Ten left," she said. "And one shot to get them."
But the Firstbreaker had other plans.
Far beyond, in the darkened heart of collapsed timelines, he whispered into the corrupted fragments, speaking in Kael's stolen voice.
"Come home... come break."