The Rift swallowed them whole.
Outside the Seraph's Wing, there was no up or down, only shifting layers of light and shadow, currents of matter and time folding over each other like ocean waves. The ship's instruments jittered and blinked—altitude readings sliding into impossible negatives, speed measurements flipping between light-years per second and zero.
The arrowhead beast was a streak of bone-white ahead of them, weaving through currents Arin couldn't see until they were already passing them. Each course correction from Talon was sharper than the last, his gloved hands locked so tight on the controls his knuckles popped.
Arin didn't need the instruments to feel they were descending. The shard in his chest thrummed heavier with each turn, syncing with something deep in the Rift.
Lira's voice cut through the cockpit. "I'm counting seven more of those things in the periphery. They're not following—they're escorting."
Arin's gut tightened. "We're being brought in."
The Rift's layers thinned until they burst into a massive clearing—a spherical void suspended in the chaos. At its center floated something so vast Arin couldn't grasp its scale.
It was a heart.
Not metaphorical. Not symbolic. A colossal, pulsating structure, thousands of kilometers wide, wrapped in black crystal veins and threaded with rivers of molten gold. It beat slowly, each pulse sending shockwaves through the Rift. The tether from the arrowhead beast connected directly into one of its crystalline arteries.
Lira's voice dropped to a whisper. "That's alive."
Vakya's voice was a pressure in Arin's skull, the glyphs coming faster than he could process: Core of the Threshold. Lifeblood of the Seal. Judge of Worth.
"Judge?" Arin asked aloud, though the question wasn't for anyone in the cockpit.
The heart's surface shifted. Openings appeared, forming a perfect circular aperture, and from within spilled a light unlike the rest of the Rift—cool, white, and impossibly calm.
Talon slowed their approach. "Do we… knock?"
Before anyone could answer, the arrowhead beast dove into the aperture and vanished. The escorting beasts peeled away, disappearing back into the Rift currents, leaving the Seraph's Wing alone before the opening.
Arin's shard pulsed faster. Enter, Vakya urged.
Lira glanced at Arin. "You're sure about this?"
He shook his head. "Not at all."
They passed through the aperture.
For a moment, there was nothing—no motion, no sensation of movement. Then the cockpit windows lit with a vista that didn't belong in this universe.
They were inside the heart.
But the "interior" wasn't flesh or crystal—it was a city. A sprawling, tiered expanse of floating platforms, towering spires, and bridges of light, all suspended in an endless white void. Streams of molten gold ran through channels carved into the city's foundations, disappearing into vast chasms and reappearing in distant towers.
Everywhere Arin looked, there were figures. Not entirely human—tall, thin, with elongated limbs and faces obscured by masks of shifting glyphs. They moved in silence, their robes trailing threads of liquid gold, never looking directly at the ship but never unaware of it either.
The Seraph's Wing descended onto a circular platform that rose to meet them, its surface patterned with the same interlocking runes as the shard.
The moment Arin stepped out, the shard in his chest pulled like a magnet toward the city's highest spire.
A voice—not Vakya's—spoke in his head. This one was colder. Older.Bearer of the Final Key. You stand before the Heart That Watches.
Arin looked up at the spire. At its peak, a figure stood alone, masked like the others but taller, its mask etched in deep crimson instead of gold.
"You brought me here," Arin said aloud, unsure if his voice would carry. "Why?"
The Seal is dying, the voice replied. What waits beyond it hungers. Only the Key can choose to bind it again… or let it feed.
Lira stepped up beside him, her hand drifting toward her weapon. "And what if the Key decides neither?"
The voice didn't hesitate. Then all will be devoured, and your choice will be meaningless.
Talon muttered, "So no pressure."
The masked figure raised one arm. Golden threads rose from the ground, wrapping around Arin's wrist, not restraining but guiding. The shard in his chest burned, and for a heartbeat he wasn't standing on the platform anymore—he was standing above the galaxy. Stars wheeled below him, and beyond them, something stirred. Something with too many eyes and a mouth that was not a mouth.
It looked at him.
Arin staggered back into his own body, gasping. "I saw it. The thing beyond the Seal."
Vakya's voice returned, fainter than before: You now know why the Rift breathes.
The crimson-masked figure descended the spire in long, gliding steps. When it stood before Arin, it extended a hand. In its palm floated a sliver of crystal identical to Arin's shard—only this one was cracked.
This was the First Key, the figure said. It chose to open, and the Rift was born. Yours is the Last.
Lira shot Arin a sidelong glance. "So the fate of everything is in your chest. No big deal."
Arin swallowed hard. He had thought the Trial was the end of his proving ground. Now, standing in the heart of the Rift, with the weight of the galaxy literally inside him, he understood—everything up to this point had only been preparation.
The voice spoke one final time: The Seal will break with or without you. The only question is whether you will shape what comes after.
And somewhere deep in the white void, the sound of the heart's next beat began to change.