The darkness that erupted from the shard wasn't merely the absence of light—it was a presence, a weight that pressed against reality itself. Arthur felt it pass through him like a cold wind through cobwebs, stripping away everything that made him himself. His last coherent thought was of Jyn, alone in their apartment, probably tinkering with some salvaged tech while waiting for parents who would never come home.
Katie's scream cut off mid-breath as the wave hit her. Her body didn't fall—it simply evaporated, unraveling at a molecular level as the shard's consumed her. The monitoring equipment captured it all in horrific detail: the moment when two of the Confederacy's brightest minds were reduced to streams of consciousness, pulled inexorably toward the shard's infinite darkness.
Marcus ran. His youth and instincts served him well, carrying him toward the emergency exit before his brain could process what was happening. He made it three steps before the secondary wave caught him, lifting him off his feet and slamming him into the reinforced wall with enough force to shatter every bone in his body. He died instantly, a mercy compared to what happened to Chen.
The older assistant had frozen, his years of experience with dangerous tech telling him that sudden movement often triggered worse reactions. He stood perfectly still as the energy washed over him, as his suit's materials began to break down, as the very air around him turned to poison. The shard's emanations reacted with the Crystalist Core's residual energy, creating a localized field of pure entropy. Chen aged decades in seconds, his body consuming itself in fast-forward decay. He managed one strangled gasp before collapsing into dust and bones.
The shard itself had transformed. No longer dark, it now pulsed with a sick light that seemed to come from somewhere else, somewhere wrong. Within its crystalline structure, two new forms took shape intertwined streams of energy that might have been the consumed souls of the dead, might have been something else entirely. They pressed against their prison-like hands against glass, desperate.
The Crystalist Core, its purpose served, cracked down the middle with a sound like breaking bells. The release of energy should have leveled the building, but the shard absorbed it all, growing brighter than before. The laboratory's failsafes kicked in too late—emergency protocols activating to contain a disaster that had already occurred.
Fire erupted from overloaded systems, spreading through the facility with unnatural speed. The shard's influence turned simple combustion into something more volitile, flames that consumed not just material but information itself. Research data, personal logs, three years of meticulous documentation. All of it burned with a completeness that left only ash in its wake.
The explosion, when it came, could be seen from Aegis's outer housing A pillar of amber light that punched through the observatory ruins and into the night sky, visible for miles in every direction. Those who witnessed it would later describe it differently—some saw fire, others saw darkness, a few claimed they saw portals. The one thing they all agreed on was the feeling it evoked: profound, existential, death .
Part III: Recovery
Commander Thalen of the Aegis Guard stood at the crater's edge, his weathered face grim behind his respirator. The dawn light did nothing to soften the devastation—where the laboratory had been, only glazed earth remained, fused into patterns that reminded him uncomfortably of neural pathways.
"Radiation?" he asked his lieutenant, a young woman named Serra whose technical expertise had earned her a field promotion.
"Negative, sir. But..." she hesitated, checking her instruments again. "There's something else. The quantum signature is all wrong. It's like reality itself is scarred here."
Thalen had seen enough in his forty years to know when he was out of his depth. The Confederacy liked to pretend it understood the world, that its oligarchs and technocrats had everything under control. But sites like this reminded him that they were all just children playing with forces beyond comprehension.
"Sir!" One of his scouts called from the crater's center. "You need to see this."
They descended carefully, the glazed earth cracking under their boots with sounds like breaking teeth. At the impact point, two things had survived: a containment pod, its surface marked with emergency protocols, and the shard itself, sitting in a perfect circle of untouched ground.
"The pod's active," Serra reported, scanning it with every instrument she carried. "Life signs inside. One occupant, juvenile, approximately ten years of age."
"The Veys had a son," Thalen said quietly. He'd known Arthur peripherally—the man had done contract work for the Guard's technical division. Brilliant, driven, and ultimately foolish. "Open it."
The pod cracked open with a hiss of preserved atmosphere. Inside, curled in the fetal position, lay a boy with dark hair and his mother's sharp features. Jyn Vey's eyes opened slowly, unfocused and confused.
"Mom?" he whispered. "Dad?"
Thalen knelt beside the pod, his expression softening. "Easy, son. You're safe now."
But even as he said it, his attention was drawn to the shard. Up close, he could see new markings etched into its surface—coordinates in a notation system he didn't recognize, and two names in simple script: Arthur Vey. Katie Vey.
"What do we do with it?" Serra asked, her instrument readings going wild as she approached the artifact.
"Seal it," Thalen ordered. "Level Seven containment. No one touches it without authorization from the Confederacy council itself."
As his team worked to secure the shard, Thalen helped Jyn from the pod. The boy moved mechanically, shock written across his young features. But there was something else in his eyes—a depth that hadn't been there before, as if he'd witnessed something that had aged him beyond his years.
"Where are my parents?" Jyn asked, though his tone suggested he already knew the answer.
"There was an accident," Thalen said carefully. "I'm sorry, son."
Jyn's gaze drifted to the shard as the containment team locked it away. For just a moment, Thalen could have sworn he saw it pulse in response, a flicker of recognition between boy and artifact. Then the moment passed, and Jyn was just a child again, orphaned and alone.
The Voss family's response came within hours—a small army of lawyers and technical specialists descending on the site like carrion birds. They documented everything, collected samples, and issued statement after statement absolving themselves of any responsibility.
"The clients were explicitly warned about dimensional anchor interactions," their lead representative, a cold woman named Director Marsh, stated for the record. "All safety protocols were documented and provided. This tragedy, while regrettable, was entirely preventable had the warnings been heeded."
Thalen wanted to punch her. Instead, he focused on practical matters—arranging for Jyn's care, filing his reports, trying to make sense of a senseless loss. The boy would be placed with a foster family in Aegis, given support and counseling. The shard would be studied, carefully, by people who hopefully knew better than to repeat the Veys' mistakes.
But late that night, as Thalen stood guard outside the containment facility, he heard something that made his blood run cold. From behind seven layers of dampening fields and reinforced barriers, the shard was whispering. Not in words, exactly, but in impressions that bypassed the ears and spoke directly to the mind.
It spoke of doors and keys, of worlds beyond the veil of reality. It spoke of Nepheos, though Thalen didn't know that name yet. Most of all, it spoke of hunger—a vast, consuming need that had been fed but not satisfied.
And somewhere in Aegis, in a foster home that smelled of antiseptic and false cheer, Jyn Vey lay awake listening to the same whispers. They came from within, from the part of him that had touched the shard in those final moments before the pod sealed. His parents were gone, but they weren't entirely absent. He could feel them sometimes, trapped between heartbeats, calling from a distance that had nothing to do with space.