It was raining.

  One could see the rain falling, yet none of it touched the ground.

  Blood, however, remained.

  Inside the ruined cathedral, Orin Bastion stood alone.

  This was not how it was meant to unfold. He was supposed to meet his team here — to survey the newly formed rift beneath the foundations.

  Instead, only the carcasses of the beasts he had slain surrounded him.

  A shift in the air.

  Another wave.

  “They’ve isolated the space,” Orin muttered as he reloaded his relic.

  The weapon flickered in his hands. Once elegant, once priceless, it now looked like scrap barely holding form.

  Bang.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Boom.

  The cathedral shook.

  But the creatures adapted. They learned.

  The rain fell harder.

  Still, it did not touch the ground.

  Pressure gathered inside him.

  Not from the monsters.

  From within.

  “Not yet,” he breathed.

  He reinforced it.

  His structure tightened.

  Persistence.

  The last beast fell.

  Silence returned.

  Then

  Crack.

  The relic collapsed in his hands.

  He felt it immediately.

  Too much.

  He had reinforced too long.

  His internal Verum lattice began to fracture.

  The rain trembled midair.

  “...I’m sorry, Mira.”

  His knees gave way.

  Darkness surged in from the edges of his vision.

  And the rain finally began to fall.

  Years before the cathedral drowned in blood.

  Before the rifts multiplied.

  Before space learned how to isolate itself.

  Before Orin Bastion discovered what it meant to endure too long.