The sky over Earth didn't turn gold or silver. It turned a deep, brilliant emerald, a colour that didn't belong to the spectrum of a dying sun. From the three Nodes—the frozen peak of the Spire, the obsidian pyramid in the Wasteland, and the Vane tower—pillars of light shot upward, piercing the clouds and meeting at a single, impossible point in the upper atmosphere.
The clouds didn't just move; they swirled into a massive, shimmering vortex, a celestial drain that looked like it was swallowing the stars themselves. This was the bridge.
"Go!" I broadcasted to every frequency. "The Gate is open! Go now!"
The sound that followed was the sound of a world breathing for the first time in centuries. In the North, the heavy obsidian gates groaned open, and the thousands of refugees began t
