The cosmos screamed.
Reed felt the sound before he heard it—a harmonic resonance that existed in the spaces between existence and nothingness, older than the first consciousness that had dared to dream of meaning in the void. The Wounded Sage's cosmic awareness recoiled from the frequency like flesh from flame, recognizing something that predated every assumption about the nature of reality itself.
The dimensional barriers around the Eternal Citadel shuddered under the weight of a presence that transcended every threat they had ever faced. This wasn't the chaos of uncontrolled void interaction or the instability of consciousness plague. This was something that had existed in the spaces between spaces, waiting with infinite patience for the conditions that would allow it to feed.
