The Chronomancer Elder provided Kai and Roric with a means of transit unique to the Sunken Spire: a Temporal Folding Sphere. It was a shimmering, fist-sized orb that promised to compress the vast distance to the nation of Astral Echoes into a single, effortless step.
CHRONOMANCER ELDER: "The Astral Echoes are not concerned with time, but with space. They reside on the geometric edge of Aethel, where reality is thin. The Sphere will bypass the physical distance, but beware the Spatial Flow. Their mathematics are built on dimensions you cannot perceive."
Roric, still adjusting to the present moment, checked his watch—which now displayed five different times simultaneously. "I miss walking. At least walking made sense."
Kai held the Temporal Folding Sphere and his golden focus shard. The gold pulsed with the heavy, stable rhythm of causality. He knew that even if he achieved perfect synchronization with the Spatial Flow, the Chronomancers saw him as a temporary variable. He had to move quickly.
He activated the Sphere. It didn't explode or roar; it simply created a perfect, silent black sphere of nothingness ten feet in diameter. It was a hole ripped directly through three-dimensional space.
Roric: "That's not a door, Kai. That's a void."
KAI: "It's the shortest distance between two points, Roric. Step in."
Roric hesitated, then shrugged with industrial resignation. "If I die, tell Lin to sell my Mecha schematics to the highest bidder." He stepped into the void.
Kai followed, stepping out of the pressurized reality of the Sunken Spire and into the bewildering realm of the Spatial Flow.
The world inside the rift was a kaleidoscope of impossible geometry. There was no up or down, only a lattice of shimmering, multi-colored lines representing spatial dimensions. He was falling through a fractal diagram.
His mind, now accustomed to viewing the underlying code of reality, instinctively mapped the spatial data.
Three Dimensions: Standard. Four Dimensions: Temporal. Fifth Dimension...
The fifth dimension here wasn't time; it was possibility—the geometric space of all parallel worlds stacked together. The Scourge had been playing with high-level mathematics.
Suddenly, a wave of Spatial Static slammed into them—a soundless shockwave that pulled at their physical forms.
Roric: "I'm stretching! My legs feel like they're twenty feet long!"
Kai gripped his golden shard, channeling the Temporal Flow. He knew that to navigate space, he had to anchor their timeline perfectly.
He focused on the probability of Physical Coherence in Three-Dimensional Space. He willed their existence to be perfectly defined and non-elastic.
P(textCoherence)= 100%
The Spatial Flow accepted the command. The static was neutralized. They fell faster, stabilized in their own perfect geometric shell.
A moment later, they tumbled out of the rift and onto a hard, polished floor.
They were inside the Astral Echoes—a massive, perpetually rotating station built on the exact geometric center of the planet's magnetic poles. The walls were transparent, showing the raw, star-filled void of space.
The inhabitants, the Astro-Mathematicians, were thin, robed figures who floated gently through the corridors. They paid Kai and Roric no mind, their attention fixed entirely on complex, three-dimensional holographic equations that filled the air.
An Astro-Mathematician Elder, a woman with eyes that shimmered with the color of deep space, glided toward them.
ASTRO-MATHEMATICIAN ELDER: "Welcome, Weaver of Prismatic Flow. Your arrival was predicted at T + 0.003 seconds after the stabilization of the Temporal Core. Your entry was inefficient, however. You wasted two full pico-meters of potential spatial displacement."
KAI: "My apologies. I'm here to stabilize the Spatial Anchor. Where is it?"
The Elder gestured toward the station's central axis—a pulsating sphere of pure energy that generated the entire station's gravity and orientation.
ASTRO-MATHEMATICIAN ELDER: "The Spatial Anchor is the station itself. The Scourge is not attacking it with chaos or rot. It is attacking it with dimension. It is trying to fold Aethel into a Zero-Point Sink—a dimension of pure, total absence."
The Elder pointed to a shimmering tear in the station wall—a flaw that had nothing to do with physics.
ASTRO-MATHEMATICIAN ELDER: "To stop the Sink, you must enter the Sixth Dimension. But unlike Time, the Sixth Dimension is not linear. It is the infinite volume of all possible spaces. And to enter it, you must be truly empty of your own physical coordinates."