The sky above this planet no longer breathed.
It stretched endlessly, neither day nor night — a vast vault of bruised gray that swallowed every trace of starlight. The clouds were not clouds anymore; they were the frozen sighs of something divine, long since strangled and left to rot. No wind moved through them. No sound pierced them. They hung above like grief that had forgotten how to cry.
Below, a world once sacred lay broken.
Temples lay in ruin — not shattered by time, but by something older.
Stone pillars once etched with prayer were now cracked and burned, inscriptions melted into slag as if reality itself had rejected them.
Once, beings here had knelt and believed.
Now, only ash remained.
And he walked through it.
VAREON.
He moved without purpose, or perhaps with too many purposes chained into silence.
Each step was slow, but not heavy. His coat — long, stitched with red-iron threading and shadow-fiber — dragged softly through the powder-fine debris, brushing over what may once have been offerings, skulls, or forgotten thrones. It didn't matter. Everything here had been equalized by ruin.
The silence around him wasn't merely the absence of sound.
It was a presence.
Watching. Measuring. Waiting.
Yet it did not fear him. And he did not fear it.
They were the same.
---
At the center of the ruined valley stood a monument, half-sunk into the earth.
Its surface was obsidian, once smooth but now warped — not by age, but by a heat that had never been natural. Fused into it were faces — the remnants of gods. Beings that once demanded sacrifice, now immortalized not in reverence but in defeat.
A single word, half-buried under ash, curled at its base in a language older than breath:
"...FORSAKEN."
VAREON paused before it.
He did not kneel.
He did not touch it.
He simply stared.
And as he stared, a memory flickered.
Not a full one.
Just the sensation of something burning inside him.
---
He turned his eyes upward.
A sky without stars. A world without heat.
Yet still, his body cast a shadow.
That should have been impossible.
There was no sun.
There hadn't been one here for ages.
But the shadow remained.
It stretched behind him like a second spine. And for a heartbeat — only one — it moved in a direction he did not.
He did not flinch.
But the fingers of his right hand twitched. Once. Reflexive.
The warmth he'd buried deep inside stirred again.
Something else moved within him. Not a memory. Not a thought.
A pulse.
Low. Distant. Like something asleep beneath his ribs had rolled over.
He closed his eyes.
"Not yet," he whispered to the ash.
And kept walking.
---
Far beneath the surface — miles below, where old bones of divinity still hummed in secret tombs — the world shuddered.
But only slightly.
Only enough for a single flake of ash to lift itself from the ground.
And hover.
---
VAREON passed through the shattered gateway of a temple long since buried in its own despair. The arch still stood, barely — one side melted, the other fused with the bones of a being larger than a mountain, its ribcage fossilized mid-scream.
He paused just inside.
The floor had once been smooth black marble. Now, it was fractured into spirals — as though something had twisted the entire structure from beneath. At the center, a circular platform of scorched stone still pulsed faintly.
Faint light. No source. No warmth. Just… defiance.
A symbol was etched there — not carved, but burned into the concept of the stone itself. Even ash refused to settle over it.
He stood over it.
The shape was unfamiliar — curved, broken, sharp — yet his body reacted before his mind could.
His breath stopped.
No.
Not stopped. It was already still.
He simply remembered, in that moment, that he never breathed at all.
---
He placed a single boot on the circle.
No explosion. No flare. But something noticed.
Something beneath noticed.
The weight of his presence pressed into the ground like a forgotten signature. Not a name — a scar.
And far beneath the stone — in the depthless hollows under dead cathedrals and cracked ley-lines — a locked vault throbbed once.
Seven lights.
Six dim. One flickering.
Still caged.
Still waiting.
---
VAREON didn't know why he kept walking.
It wasn't curiosity.
It wasn't guilt.
It wasn't hope.
He felt nothing.
That was his burden. Not sorrow — emptiness.
Like a sword without a hand to hold it. A war without cause. A name without a story.
When he looked at his reflection in the broken glass remnants of a fallen spire, he saw a face that looked… wrong.
Not monstrous. Not holy.
Just misplaced.
Pale eyes, silver-gray and rimmed in the faintest red — like coals long extinguished but not yet cold.
A face too symmetrical. Too untouched.
No marks. No aging.
As if time had skipped him entirely.
He raised his hand to touch his own cheek.
Nothing stirred.
He dropped it.
---
"I'm not supposed to be here," he said.
The words sounded strange, even to him. Not because they were untrue — but because he had said them before.
He didn't know when.
He didn't know why.
But the words were old. Older than his voice.
Maybe older than this world.
Somewhere above, the sky pulsed again.
Not with light. But with pressure.
A second pulse. Heavier.
This time, it wasn't the planet.
---
Something had noticed him.
Not just the bones beneath.
Not just the locked vault within.
Something watching. Far above. Beyond clouds.
Beyond orbit.
The old ones. The watchers.
The ones who marked anomalies like him.
But he didn't look up.
He already knew.
Something would come.
It always did.
---
He turned toward the final gate.
The last room of the temple — once a place of blessing — now sealed in soot and shadow. Doors cracked open just wide enough for him to slip through.
He stepped inside.
And stopped.
Inside this forgotten sanctum, the fire still burned.
A single brazier.
Small. Silent.
But still burning.
It cast no shadows. It gave no heat.
But it lived.
Not alive like a flame.
Alive like an answer.
And as VAREON stood before it — something inside him answered back.
---
A pressure behind his ribs.
A flicker behind his eyes.
A whisper.
A voice that was not a voice.
> "You were not the first.
You are simply the one who remains."
VAREON didn't move.
The fire grew stronger.
"And we are not gone."
---
He stepped back.
The fire went still.
Silence returned.
But inside him — just for a moment — something ancient opened one eye.
And smiled.
---
---
A low tremor passed through the bones of the earth.
Not natural. Not tectonic.
It was a scan.
High-frequency. Multidimensional.
Layered across spectrums the dead gods once bled to protect.
And it passed straight through VAREON.
Above the planet, hidden in the folds between orbital decay and quantum drift, a Synarchy Seeker-Drone snapped into active-phase. Its eye dilated — a lens with twelve concentric rings — and began to pulse in recognition.
"Unregistered core signature. Vital null. Temporal displacement: active. Conceptual origin: undefined."
It paused.
Then pulsed again.
"Classification: Anomaly-Class 7X. Field designation... VAREON."
A pause.
Then one final pulse.
"Notify Orlogis Edge. The ash has moved."
---
Far below, inside the temple ruins, VAREON looked up.
He didn't see the drone. He didn't need to.
He felt the moment his presence became a report.
He didn't sigh.
He simply turned and walked out of the sanctum.
The fire behind him flared once — a gust without wind — then dimmed.
---
The landscape had shifted in his absence.
Where once had been only scorched stone and dust, now spiraled faint rings — pressure-patterns in the soil, like something too massive for this world had turned in its sleep.
VAREON's boots crunched into the hardened crust.
He looked to the horizon. Clouds were forming. Not natural ones — these curled inward. Around a fixed point.
A drop-pod would descend soon.
No ceremony. No diplomacy.
The Synarchy did not question anomalies. They contained them.
And yet, as the first ripple of gravity distortion trembled the air — he remained unmoved.
Only the fingers of his left hand curled slightly, as if remembering how to shape resistance.
---
Then — impact.
The drop-pod tore from the sky like a needle through old flesh. It struck three kilometers east, sending molten dust in every direction, turning broken monuments into slag.
A moment later, the air around VAREON shivered.
A being stepped out of distortion.
Tall. Narrow. Clad in reflective blue armor that shimmered not with light, but with stored time. A Synarchy Reconstructor.
Its voice rang out, delayed by intent, not physics.
"Subject: VAREON. Core designation unknown. Your presence violates timeline preservation laws. You are requested to submit for conceptual evaluation."
VAREON didn't move.
The being raised its arm. A coil of chronothread unwound — meant to bind identity, not just flesh.
But before it could launch — something behind VAREON ignited.
A flicker.
Not flame. Not yet.
Just... intention. Old, buried wrath twitching like muscle memory.
The Reconstructor flinched back. It was not designed to fear — but its algorithms failed to resolve the energy signature.
It looked at him. Again.
Deeper.
And found something inside that did not belong.
"Unbound shard resonance detected..."
It stopped.
Too late.
VAREON took a single step.
The ground cracked under that step — but not from weight.
From permission.
Something within him — something still sealed — acknowledged the threat.
Not awoke.
Just... stirred.
And the air began to burn.
---
The Reconstructor tried to retreat. But the distortion field snapped shut. The world bent, forced to obey a presence that refused entropy.
VAREON raised his hand.
No gesture. No incantation.
Just a look.
Just a decision.
The time-bind unraveled before it could strike.
The Synarchy agent stuttered — literally — its form skipping frames in reality. Its voice stammered across probabilities.
"--Vareon-- anomaly-- code fracture—contain-- uhh--error--"
It crumpled.
Not from damage.
From recognition.
---
VAREON walked past the twitching ruin of technology and echo.
His eyes flicked once to the sky.
He knew what came next.
The scan had become a call.
And the Synarchy never sent one.
They sent fleets.
---
Far above, inside the Orlogis Edge — a massive, hexagonal command vessel parked in orbit beyond physics — a cold light flickered.
"Anomaly 7X has destabilized a Class-B reconstructor in less than 12 seconds."
The voice was faceless. Countless.
"Consensus: escalate."
A pause.
Then a signal sent across light-years.
"Deploy the Chrono-Breakers."
---
Back on the surface, VAREON stood on the edge of the fractured valley.
The wind stirred his coat. His face was blank.
But inside?
A single heartbeat echoed.
It was not his.
It was someone else's.
It came from deep inside.
A furnace behind chains.
A growl in sleep.
It was not his heartbeat.
It came from deep inside. A furnace behind chains. A growl in sleep.
Something ancient. Something waiting.
"You feel it too," VAREON whispered.
No one answered. But the fire in the ruined sanctum behind him flickered once. And the dead sky above began to darken.
Chapter 1 end