Cherreads

Chapter 21 - The Shattered Nexus

The sky above Astralis cracked like glass.

It began with a sound—a deep, resonating hum that rolled across the heavens. The kind of sound that didn't just pass through your ears, but sank into your bones. Lucien had heard many strange and mystical things since his awakening into the Ascension Protocol. But this… this was different. It was not magic. It was not technology. It was reality itself protesting.

He stood atop the highest spire of Nexus Prime, the floating city of knowledge and convergence. Below, thousands of Ascendants—new and veteran—moved in frenzied rhythm. Whispers of the Celestial Fracture had spread like wildfire after the events of the Forbidden Trial in the Ethereal Sanctum.

"Another rift has opened," said Nya, stepping beside him, her robes whipping in the storm of spatial instability. Her violet eyes glowed with telemetry runes. "Third one today. This time… it wasn't summoned. It just… tore open."

Lucien remained silent, watching the crimson-silver crack yawning open in the sky. A bleeding scar in existence. Behind it, swirling chaos, filled with echoes of worlds not meant to be seen.

"I don't think this is caused by any Ascendant," Nya continued, her voice lowering. "This is something deeper. More ancient."

Lucien clenched his fists. "Protocol…"

A translucent interface flickered into life in front of his eyes. He hadn't summoned it, but the Ascension Core had become increasingly autonomous. Its voice—normally synthetic and neutral—now carried an undertone of urgency.

"Warning. Dimensional integrity compromised. Nexus Core destabilizing. Root cause: Proto-origin event—unquantifiable."

He stared at the line: Proto-origin. It wasn't a word the Protocol had used before.

Was this related to the Origin Protocol? The mythical first seed of Ascension?

He descended the tower in silence, passing through data-riven hallways where holograms flickered violently. Deep below Nexus Prime, in the Ascendant Cradle, ancient relics and preserved knowledge pulsed with chaotic energy. Seers and Technomancers struggled to contain the dissonance.

"Commander Lucien," said a young Ascendant, barely ranked Bronze. She bowed. "The Spatial Weavers are requesting your authorization. They believe they can temporarily stabilize the fractures, but it would cost thousands of ether cores and…"

"No," Lucien interrupted. "We're not patching over a growing hole in existence. I need answers. Real ones."

"But sir, the instability is spreading to Core Realms. Even the Trial Sanctums are—"

"I said no."

The girl stepped back, eyes wide. He wasn't angry at her—he was angry at the lie they'd all believed. That the Ascension Protocol was stable, knowable, and ultimately human-controlled.

He activated the Grand Nexus Map. Thousands of points of light representing sanctums, trials, and gateways shimmered before him. But now, dozens were flickering, and some had gone dark entirely.

"The Origin Layer…" Lucien whispered. "I need to go deeper."

"You mean the Null Floor?" Nya asked from behind. "It was sealed centuries ago after the Great Collapse. Even the Technarchs deemed it too unstable. The flow of Ascension energy there is corrupted."

"That's where this all began. That's where it ends."

Nya hesitated. "If you go alone…"

"I'm not going alone."

He raised his hand and summoned a glyph encoded in pure Ascendant will. It pulsed, activating a deep, hidden connection.

Seconds later, two flashes lit the chamber.

Kaelith emerged first—Lucien's former rival, now begrudging ally. His blade shimmered with Voidsteel, and his eyes held the same haunted determination. The second was Valis, the Whisper Monk, whose bond with fate threads allowed him to navigate collapsing realities.

"You're calling us back," Kaelith said, brushing frost from his cloak. "What's the mission?"

Lucien didn't turn. "We're going to the Null Floor. We're going to find out what's underneath the Protocol."

Valis tilted his head. "You believe the Protocol is built on something older?"

"I know it is," Lucien said. "And if we don't uncover it now, there won't be a world left to ascend."

Descent into Null

The Null Floor wasn't accessed by portals or teleportation. It was folded away, intentionally erased from standard traversal paths. It took Valis's fate-bending, Nya's spatial engineering, and Lucien's direct override of three Forbidden Keys to breach it.

As the access tunnel uncoiled, they were met not with darkness, but a gray light—colorless and cold, as if emotion had been filtered out of the air.

"What is this place…" Kaelith muttered.

They stepped into an ancient chamber that seemed to extend infinitely. Massive stone monoliths floated, inscribed with pre-Protocol runes. At the center stood a throne—but no figure sat upon it. Instead, a cocoon of data and crystallized energy pulsed, suspended in time.

Lucien's Ascension Core pulsed violently. It was being overridden.

"Admin override detected. Entity: [UNKNOWN]. System failing to quantify subject."

Nya scanned the cocoon. "It's… not human. Not a being. It's code. Living, recursive, proto-sentient code. This is the heart of the Protocol… but also its prison."

Kaelith approached it. "Do you think this is the Origin?"

"No," Lucien whispered. "This is what the Origin locked away."

Suddenly, the cocoon cracked.

A shriek—not of sound, but data being torn—erupted. The monoliths vibrated. Glyphs rewrote themselves.

Valis stepped back. "The threads are snapping. Lucien—we shouldn't be here."

But it was too late.

The cocoon shattered completely, and from it rose a figure.

No face. No eyes. Just a human-like silhouette made of flowing script and fractured reality. It spoke in all languages and none.

"You brought me home. At last."

Lucien stared. "Who… or what are you?"

The entity tilted its head.

"I am the Unwritten. The Possibility that was abandoned. The first Ascendant before Ascension had a name."

Reality rippled. Across the layers of the Nexus, fractures began appearing in mirror.

Because in waking the Unwritten, Lucien had broken a truth that held the Protocol together.

The Protocol was never meant to be completed.

And now it would complete itself—by consuming all other possibilities.

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