Consciousness returned to Roewi as a slow, painful tide. There was no cosmic awareness, no hum of infinite power. There was only the dull, metallic ache in his bones and the sterile smell of the Starseed’s life support. He was lying on the deck, having slid from his chair. Every muscle protested as he pushed himself up, his body feeling impossibly heavy, a prison of fragile flesh and bone.
The viewport showed a silent apocalypse.
The Reality Engine was dark, a dead crown around the red giant Carthax. Its impossible geometry was now just inert, black metal, scarred by the chaotic, frozen evidence of its final moments, rivers of solidified crystal, twisted spires of gold that had melted and reset into nightmare shapes. It was a corpse, but a vast and terrifying one.
Beyond it, the Crown’s
