The Dominion changed as Aiden moved through it. What had begun as corridors of glass and light twisted into great canyons of shifting crystal, their walls breathing with faint luminescence. Every few steps, the air vibrated in response to his pulse, as if the world itself listened to his heartbeat.
He descended along a slope of mirrored stone, each reflection showing him in a slightly different form: older, younger, broken, whole. He stopped looking after the third time one of the reflections moved without him.
The hum around him deepened. The Dominion didn't sleep, it watched.
He reached what looked like a chasm carved from solid night. When he dropped a fragment of glowing stone over the edge, it fell for what felt like minutes before vanishing into a pulse of blue light. A bridge unfurled in response, grown from threads of energy, thin and alive.
"Right," he muttered. "That doesn't look unstable at all."
Still, he stepped forward. The bridge flexed under his weight but held, pulsing faintly with each step. Halfway across, the hum changed pitch, lower, sharper, almost metallic.
Something was waking.
The walls around the chasm trembled. From the crystalline surface, shapes began to peel away, humanoid, angular, their forms made of fractured light. Each one burned with hollow eyes and carried a blade that wasn't forged but sung into existence.
Constructs. Guardians.
Aiden tightened his grip, light flaring along his arm like a reflex. His right hand burned, the Dominion's power threading down to his palm, forming a blade of his own, pale, unstable, but solid enough.
When the first construct leapt at him, the bridge shook violently. Aiden pivoted, the two blades meeting with a sound like thunder striking glass. Sparks of light rained across the void.
The construct moved fast, too fast, but its strikes were predictable, rhythm bound. Aiden ducked under a swing, drove his knee into its chest, and slashed upward. The blade tore through its torso; the creature burst apart into shards that dissolved into the bridge.
The others didn't hesitate.
He counted six, maybe seven more, each emerging from the walls like ghosts stepping out of mirrors. The bridge pulsed red under their feet, reacting to the battle.
Aiden's breath came in sharp bursts. His body felt alien, the Dominion's energy flowing through him like molten light. When he swung his weapon again, the glow spread up his arm and into his chest. For an instant, he saw where the next strike would come from, before it happened.
He moved accordingly, blocking, twisting, striking. Every impact sent ripples across the air, as if the Dominion itself felt the conflict.
But power came with cost. The more he drew on it, the more his vision blurred, edges warping. The hum in his head grew louder, voices whispering in unison, tones without words, but full of longing.
You fight against your own shadow.
The thought wasn't his.
He staggered as another construct struck, the blade grazing his side. Pain flared, hot and real. The wound glowed, light leaking out like blood. He forced himself upright and retaliated, driving his sword through the construct's core.
It shattered, but the bridge screamed beneath him, a deep, echoing sound that carried through the chasm. Cracks spidered through the light.
"Not good."
He sprinted, leaping over a fallen shard as the remaining constructs gave chase. The bridge trembled, sections collapsing into the glowing abyss. Aiden jumped the last ten feet and rolled onto solid ground as the bridge disintegrated behind him, collapsing into silence.
The hum steadied. The Dominion exhaled.
Aiden lay still for a moment, staring up at the translucent sky. Tiny points of light drifted above him, souls, or memories, or fragments of whatever the Dominion remembered. He wasn't sure anymore.
He sat up, pressing a hand to his wound. The light there had already begun to seal it, threads weaving across torn flesh. It was healing him, but not naturally. The energy felt foreign, hungry.
"You're keeping me alive because you want something," he said aloud, his voice rough.
The Dominion answered with silence, but the ground beneath him shimmered. Lines of light traced symbols across the floor, forming patterns like constellations. As he touched one, the world shifted again.
He found himself standing in a massive chamber, circular and endless. At its center floated a sphere of light the size of a building, rotating slowly. Within it, shapes moved, figures, faces, fragments of the beings he'd seen in his visions. The architects of the Dominion.
Their voices came like overlapping whispers:
"Our creation devoured us."
"The light remembers."
"Balance must be restored."
Aiden approached, drawn despite himself. "Then show me how."
The sphere pulsed, and the chamber darkened. Energy surged outward, wrapping around him like a storm. His feet left the ground as symbols burned across his skin, embedding themselves into muscle and memory.
Pain tore through him, deeper than any wound. His vision fractured into overlapping scenes: the fall of the old world, the birth of the Dominion, and the city of Ares trembling under the same fate.
Then he saw Lira again, only for an instant. She stood among survivors, her eyes turned toward the sky, whispering his name.
He gasped. "Lira..."
The vision snapped away.
Aiden hit the ground hard, the chamber dim and quiet again. But something inside him had changed. His blade was gone, replaced by light burning along his veins. He could feel the Dominion's current, the flow of its power, and the path leading deeper, toward its core.
He rose slowly, breathing through the lingering ache. The air smelled of metal and ozone.
In the far distance, the hum shifted again. Not a heartbeat this time, but something heavier like the turning of a colossal engine beneath the world.
The Dominion was waking further.
Aiden flexed his hand, light flickering across his knuckles. "If this is what you are," he muttered, "then I'll see how deep you go."
He stepped forward, the floor reforming beneath his boots, building a new path toward the sound. Each step carried him closer to the core and to the truth of what the Dominion wanted from him.
Above him, the faint echo of Ares' fracture pulsed once, answering his movement.
He didn't look back.