The shoreline had once been a straight line of steel and sand. Now it was a fracture: long ribs of concrete thrusting from shallow water, ships rotting where the tide could not decide whether to claim them. The sky hung low, bruised purple. Wind carried the taste of salt and iron.
Aiden stood at the edge of what used to be a port. The dome behind him was a dull glow over the horizon, the city's hum too far to hear. Before him stretched the sea—flat and gray and wrong.
The System murmured in his mind.
[Destination: Western Expanse – Coordinate Vector E-9][Distance: 1,820 km][Medium: Marine – Hazard Level: Extreme]
He adjusted the strap of his pack. "Extreme is fine."
He walked forward.
The first steps broke rusted chains, then salt water swallowed his boots. He drew a long breath and let his body settle into the rhythm of the Primordial Breathing Technique. When he exhaled, energy condensed around him like invisible armor. The Aegis Loop on his wrist shimmered; the sea pushed back but could not claim him.
He stepped again, and the water accepted him up to the knees, then the waist, then no further. Each stride carried him farther from shore, the surface bending under his weight but never breaking. Waves rolled away as though reluctant to touch him.
When he was a kilometer out, the dome was only a fading outline. The sea ahead deepened into a slow swirl, the color shifting from gray to a darker blue that drank light.
[Entering Zone: Abyssal Shelf][Warning: Mutant presence detected.]
Aiden stopped. The surface below pulsed once, a ripple that felt more like breathing than motion. Then the water parted.
The creature that rose was not a simple beast. It was a column of muscle and armor, eyes like molten glass. Its body coiled up through the waves until it stood level with him, its mouth a cathedral of teeth.
For a moment, they watched each other. The creature's mind pressed against his—ancient, alien, intelligent enough to know hunger and curiosity were different things.
"You guard the deep," Aiden said softly.
The sea answered with a roar. The wave hit him like a wall.
He didn't resist. He sank with it, following the pull down. Pressure built around him; darkness turned heavy. At a hundred meters, light vanished. At two hundred, color died. At five hundred, sound itself seemed to dissolve.
His eyes adapted, not with sight but with comprehension. The water was a network of motion and density, each current a thread he could read.
The beast came again, jaws opening wide enough to eclipse him.
He raised his hand. The Obsidian Edge bloomed into existence, its black surface flaring with muted silver veins. He didn't swing. He simply moved the blade an inch, and the sea obeyed.
The creature's charge broke apart as if cut from inside. It shuddered once, body folding back into the dark.
[Target Neutralized: Abyssal Leviathan – Class B][Reward: 3,000 System Points]
Bubbles streamed upward from the wound like ghosts. Aiden drifted beside it, breathing steadily.
Then he felt it: a pulse below. Not from the corpse, but from the trench beneath. A rhythm. A voice too deep for sound.
The Gate Fragment in his pocket burned cold. Its light seeped through fabric, lines of runes crawling up his arm.
[Subspace Vector E-9 Located.][Coordinates Confirmed.][Anchor Activation Imminent.]
Aiden sank lower, letting the pressure fold around him. The trench yawned beneath, a wound in the planet stretching into infinity. At its center, something glowed—a ring of pale light, its edges blurring into distortion.
He reached the edge and hung there, suspended by will alone.
"The Lightless Span," he breathed.
The water inside the ring was still. Not silent—still, like the concept of motion had been erased. The surface shimmered like glass made of shadow.
The System whispered:
[Warning: Entry will terminate planetary synchronization temporarily.][External realm environment: unstable.][Recommended: Aegis Loop – active, Silence Spindle – reinforced.][Proceed?]
He smiled. "Of course."
The instant his fingertip touched the dark surface, the world inverted. Up became down. Sound became distance. The sea vanished.
He fell through light that wasn't light.
It was like descending through pages of a book written in every language and none. Shapes drifted past him—memories of civilizations, stars birthing and dying, the shadows of creatures large enough to hold moons like toys.
The System's voice struggled to maintain coherence.
[Crossing boundary of Planetary Layer.][Entering Subspace Corridor 3.][Dimensional Shear: high but tolerable.][Stabilizing...]
He slowed. The descent softened until he floated, weightless, inside a tunnel of black glass. The walls pulsed with faint symbols—star maps, equations, fragments of thought.
A figure waited ahead.
Not a projection this time—a woman, translucent, her outline flickering like static. Her eyes were calm, ageless.
"Bearer of the Blade," she said, voice soft as dust. "You should not be here yet."
"Then why open the path?" he asked.
"Because the Verse forgets, and someone must remember." She raised her hand, and between them a vision unfolded: endless galaxies threaded together by silver light, each pulse a world, a civilization, a Verse. Beyond them loomed a darkness so vast it made the galaxies look like sparks.
"That is the Span," she said. "The space between light and its absence. The place where forgotten realities fall. You call it Lightless, but it is alive."
The vision shrank, collapsing into the shard of light that floated between them. "This fragment is one of many. Each gate you wake will draw attention—from allies, from predators, from those who believe the Progenitor Line should remain buried."
Aiden reached toward the shard. "What happens if I gather them all?"
Her expression turned distant, sad. "Then the Verse begins again. Or ends properly. We never learned which."
The shard sank into his chest. The light spread through him like liquid metal.
[Gate Fragment (2/9) acquired.][New Function: Spatial Step – limited interdimensional traversal.]
The woman's outline began to fade. "Go back, Aiden Cross. Grow until this place no longer frightens you."
"Who are you?" he called.
Her answer came as she vanished. "I was the last human who thought she understood infinity."
Then there was only dark.
He opened his eyes to sunlight. The sea stretched beneath him, calm and endless. He was floating above the surface, the water untouched by his shadow. Behind him, the trench was gone—only a smooth expanse of glass-blue waves.
The System spoke again, steadier now.
[Return Complete.][Synchronization: 59%.][Spatial Step: integrated.][Note: Planetary realm stabilization successful.]
He exhaled. "So that's the Span."
The horizon burned faintly with sunrise. He looked toward it, the weight of distant stars humming behind his ribs.
Far below, something vast shifted in the depths—a remnant of the ocean's old king rolling over in its sleep. For the first time, the presence did not feel hostile. It felt curious.
Aiden smiled down at it. "Keep sleeping. I'll come back when I know what I'm doing."
Then he took a step—and space folded around him. The sea blinked away. The next instant he was standing on the cliff above Base City, the dome gleaming in morning light as if nothing had happened.
Behind him, the air shimmered for a heartbeat. A ripple of lightless energy rippled outward, unseen by anyone but the sky itself.
And above that sky, in the cold halls between universes, old watchers turned their gaze toward a single name newly written into their records:
Aiden Cross — Human — Anomaly class: Infinite.