Space trembled.
Not from impact, nor from warships.
From presence.
I felt it long before our sensors did—like the breath of a god brushing against the edges of thought. Cold, relentless, wrong.
The Griever King had arrived.
[ALERT: DIMENSIONAL BREACH DETECTED]
Location: Edge of the Solus Veil
Coordinates: [ERROR] – Spatial Flux in Progress
Estimated Threat: Omega-Level
Classification: Psionic Apex – Griever Lineage
Historical Note: Entity encountered during Final Collapse. Presumed destroyed.
"He wasn't destroyed," I whispered. "Just sleeping... like everything else."
In the War Hall, holograms projected space like a living map. A red storm churned at the edge of our solar boundary—where reality bent into folds, like paper pulled into an unseen vortex.
"How long until breach?" I asked.
Vel'Sarei checked the astrolock array.
"Seventy-eight hours at most. Possibly less. This isn't a mindless rift—it's a controlled fold."
"And the entity?"
"It's not coming alone."
Later, I accessed the Watcher's deep archives.
Buried within unindexed files, hidden behind blood-sealed encryptions, I found what I was looking for:
A battle.
Old. Ancient. Played across a decaying planet torn by psionic gravity.
The First Heir faced something that looked like a man—if men were made of decay and sorrow, with wings of torn thought and a crown of screaming stars.
"You wore light like armor," the thing hissed. "But it never covered your fear."
The First Heir didn't respond.
He simply unleashed Auraxis and drowned the sky in fire.
Even then, the Griever King didn't die.
He was sealed—broken into thought-fragments and flung into subspace.
But now he was reassembling.
And I was his beacon.
"He's coming for you," Alis said later that night as we walked the balcony of the Sky Citadel.
"You called him."
"No," I said quietly. "I awoke, and he remembered his hate."
She took my hand. "Then we remind him what hate buys him."
Preparations began at once.
Planetary Shields: Reinforced.
Orbital Cannons: Charged.
Auraxis: Reforged and stationed in geosynchronous defense orbit.
Fleets: Summoned. The Sky Armada would gather.
But I needed more than just war.
I needed an edge.
I turned to my Graviton Forge, activated for the first time.
Raw planetary ore, hyper-compressed, glowed in the fabricators.
"What are you making?" Reina asked, sneaking in like a shadow.
"Something new," I said. "Something the stars haven't seen in an age."
"A gift?"
I smiled. "A warning."
[NEW CONSTRUCT IN PROGRESS: AETHERLANCE ARMOR v1.0]
Properties: Anti-Psionic Latticework, Starcore Frame, Dimensional Anchoring, System Sync
Estimated Completion: 41 Hours
Status: 19% Complete
Primary Feature: Lance of Origin – A weapon tied directly to my mana core.
It wouldn't just protect me.
It would define the battlefield.
As the sun set on the third day, the stars bent.
A shadow breached the Solus Veil, visible from the naked eye across half the hemisphere.
A twisted construct of thoughts, bones, and voidstone—forming into a throne, carried by psionic gravity.
Upon it sat the Griever King.
No armies.
No heralds.
Only him.
And the broken laughter of a god returned.