The void had gone quiet.
Too quiet.
Kael stood upon what was once a horizon — now nothing but dust and fractured constellations suspended in slow collapse.
Each broken shard of starlight whispered his name, faint and trembling.
> Kael... Kael... Kael...
It wasn't adoration.
It was recognition.
The stars remembered.
He looked up — and for the first time, the sky looked back.
> [System Notice: Unknown Network Detected.]
[Attempting Connection to— "The Astral Archive."]
The air hummed, vibrating with code that wasn't meant for mortals. Sigils unfolded across the void, drawing impossible symbols that spun around Kael like a forgotten language begging to be read.
And then a voice — ancient, broken, filled with static — spoke from beyond the stars:
> "You are the anomaly that survived equation collapse. The one who redefined hunger."
Kael's throat tightened. "Who are you?"
> "We were what came before the System."
The stars dimmed.
Their light bled into forms — silhouettes of colossal beings with countless eyes, their bodies woven from galaxies, their wings scattering entire realities like dust.
The Ancient Devourers.
Each spoke in unison, their voices thunder and silence both:
> "We tried to change the equation. We became the equation."
Kael stepped back, but the void itself pressed him forward, as if forcing him to see.
He saw their end — how each Devourer was consumed not by failure, but by memory itself.
Each became a story the System couldn't delete — but couldn't acknowledge either.
> [System Override Warning.]
[Unauthorized data presence detected.]
Kael clenched his jaw. "You're still here… trapped in the stars."
The beings flickered. "No, Kael. We are what remains after the stars. You're not the first to escape the void's hunger. You are simply the last one it will allow."
A tremor split the darkness.
The constellations collapsed, revealing a vast eye of silver light — not hostile, not kind, simply awake.
> [System Lockdown Imminent.]
[Access Level: Forbidden — Ω.]
Kael raised his hand toward it. The light burned his skin, rewriting his very essence, but he didn't look away.
"Then tell me," he whispered, voice raw, "what happens when the stars remember more than the gods who made them?"
The eye blinked.
And the universe answered with silence — a silence heavy enough to break creation.
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