Time had no meaning - not here, not anywhere, not anymore.

For the lonely ascendant, the first and only of her kind, time blurred together into one long, arduous night. Days passed, even weeks, and still she had no concept of how long she had been submerged in her duty so tirelessly or how much longer it might go on. She did not need to eat, or sleep, or feel. She only wandered aimless and hopeful through the rift, desperately searching for what had been promised. It was the only thing that kept her going, moving forward as time and time again she was disappointed by her fruitless search.

It was here, somewhere.

She had promised.

There was no room left in Alkaid’s mind for doubt, not since it had been seared away in one glorious, blazing moment. Promises were not made that could not be kept, but there was still so much room left to wonder how long her pilgrimage might take her. There were no guides left to steer her in the right direction and no wise, old minds to tell her that she was on the right path. She was guidance, she had to lead the way.

“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for.” The admission was soft, spoken to no one.

The ascendant’s bright, citrus eyes stared out into the field of crystal mountains and broken shards. It was the same in every direction, as far as she could see. Somewhere behind her, she knew, were the remnants of the Knight Academy - but everywhere else? It was a sea of swarming darkness, of lost and hungry souls, of the kind of despair that swallowed someone whole and it stretched on and on and on. If she had been someone more human, she had no doubt that she would have gone insane after so long within the forgotten world. Even as something greater, she thought she might be treading precariously close to that precipice regardless. The status of her mental health was not her concern though, not when weighed against the stakes at hand. With the knowledge of what this meant to the Negaverse, to Metallia herself, Alkaid forced one heeled foot in front of the other and plowed through the fields of crystal like an automaton. With every graceful fall of her feet, she had to resist the urge to retreat into her mind while her body did the work. The need to hibernate and conserve energy was not a new one but here, where her energy replenished itself as quickly as it was spent, it was nothing but a bad habit. If she gave in to the temptation to shut down, she might miss something. There were always clues to the things that once were, few though they were and hard to notice besides. Sometimes it was just the shape of a crystal that eluded to a core of man carved material, or a space cleared of crystal entirely and too methodical to be random formation. Sometimes she had the nagging feeling that she was imagining it all.

So the scene spun on with the solitary Ascendant, a blip in the expanse of the rift. Time continued to pass her by and the world around her continued to sprawl out into an unending maze. It repeated upon itself, over and over, always the same. Had she not seen that same rock before?

No.

Her own thought struck her so hard that she stopped dead in her tracks, one foot partially lifted for her next step. No, she had definitely never seen that knee-high rock before, half-grown over with crystal. For a few moments she was locked in place, tracing the outline of it over and over again with her eyes, as if to reaffirm what she knew she saw. Was this a figment of her own delusion, or had this once, very long ago, been something else? Alkaid felt that familiar, human thrill begin to fill her as she took her first step toward the unlikely clue and the sensation only rocketed as she dipped closer to inspect it. She reached out one hand to brush her fingers gingerly across the surface, tracing a set of clean, etched lines too perfect to be the result of natural corrosion. They spiraled outward, away from a core that had been drilled clean through and left only partially exposed by the parasitic gem that had consumed so much of what was left of this world. As her gaze swept upward and beyond the first clue, she realized something startling:

There were others.

As far as she could see, strung out in two haphazard but parallel lines, were dozens upon dozens of the very same rock. They were replicas forming what she assumed had once been a pathway of some kind, though it had been disturbed and broken in several places by the skirmish here. She stood up slowly, rising back to her full height, and stared out at the foggy distance for any sign of what this would lead her to. It was impossible to guess, but she had no doubt that this was the beginning of the end of her search. This was the way. There was no hesitance in her stride as she began to follow the remnants of the pathway, studying and taking in even this small glimpse of human life. She tried to imagine what greater image they had once belonged to, what it all might have looked like to new eyes once upon a time. It was all but impossible to know - there was too little remaining to guess at what grandeur the war had destroyed and the rift had then swallowed.

The path trailed on and on, longer than Alkaid had assumed it would at first glance, and soon her attention drifted away from the stone at her feet and settled on the view of the rift beyond. It looked no different than any other view of the rift. Crystals of various shapes and sizes jutted through the earth like a boneyard, and what little light the rift offered was dim and murky. The only key she had was the pathway, endless and lonely among the empty rift surrounding it. The horizon beyond was filled with tall, jagged peaks of the same crystal, indistinguishable from one another at first. Yet, it didn’t stop Alkaid, her fervor renewed by her discovery, from studying them for any sign of a difference, any disruption that might point to a clue. The minutes ticked by without a change to the landscape, one sheet of crystal no different from the next, until one of those jagged peaks came more into focus. The tip was not a rough, thin spike of gemstone but instead what appeared to be a rounded dome, if somewhat obscured as all things were by the parasitic mineral. Alkaid’s heart leapt, figuratively, as she realized she was not just staring at one more mundane piece of the rift’s nature. This was what the pathway had been leading her to. Her pace quickened as she followed the last few yards of the trail, until she stopped dead the moment her heel struck stone.

Bright, orange eyes snapped down to the offending foot even as she took another step. It wasn’t the muted sound of heels on hard earth but instead the dull, gritty thud of a stiletto point on pavers. All around her it stretched out, the crumbling remnants of a circular courtyard, spanning as far as her eyes could see. She drank in every piece of the image, from the muted red of the brick to the crawling fingers of purple crystal wedged into the gaps along the outer edges. And there, dead center among the crumbling picture of civilization, was the masterpiece for which it had all been created.

The broken tower.

Every sense honed in upon it, stark and regal against the endless monotony of the rift beyond. Her feet moved forward without her consent, drawn to it like a moth to a flame, each heel striking the stones below with the rhythm of her victory. Even from a distance she could tell that it was just as abandoned as every other part of the rift, forgotten by time and people alike. It took no time at all to locate the entrance: an archway and its broken door, hanging half off of the rusted hinges. One delicate hand reached out and swung it sideways and even Alkaid, as far removed from human irritations as one could be, grit her teeth at the shrill, screeching sound of protest it gave. Even if that attracted youma far beyond her strength to control, she would be damned before she turned back now. She mounted the winding, stone staircase and followed it slowly upward, taking care to inspect the quality of stone as she passed. It seemed safe and stable, or at least more so than the deteriorating door would have led her to believe.

Another open archway stood guard at the top, though she paused just before she reached it, struck by a familiar sight. With the dim lighting inside of the tower she could just barely make out the rusty smear of old blood across the stone, swallowed into the pores and held against the test of time. She traced the trail of it with her eyes, following it through the arch to its origin - a dark lump stretched over the floor. A skeleton preserved in the last motion of life by the crystal that later consumed it, but dead long before the chaotic magic could warp the soul into one of Metallia’s desperate youma.

The pale woman moved forward across the threshold, drawn by curiosity toward this lost soul, with words passing her lips before she had even realized she’d spoken.

“Who are you, silent one?”

But the moment she entered the room, the moment she gave voice to her presence, the tower came to life.

Above her, light flickered into existence, slow and unsure at first, as if the magic had been woken from a deep slumber. One by one, tiny dots of light twinkled into place, until billions of points spattered the glimmering, domed ceiling. Alkaid’s eyes widened slightly as she stared up at the dazzling scene, her mind all at once piecing together what great wonder she was staring into. The night sky, recreated in perfect replica, so real that she was sure this was a magic more refined than any technology the humans boasted in this era. The skeleton at her feet was forgotten as she crossed to stand on a wide, circular dais at the center of the room. The lights above her stirred as she took the stage, whirling and narrowing in on a single point of light. The motion was delayed and stuttered, but slowly the vision cleared to show Alkaid a sight she knew far too well - her star. Not just as it had once been, but as it was, broken and charred and haunting. The image washed her in a dim, red light, unlike the gentle dappling of the starry sky before.

A sense of pride began to fill her as she stared up at the sight of her homeworld, hanging heavy in the dark space that surrounded it. The tower knew who she was. It recognized her with nothing but her presence. She had found what had been promised, even if she had yet to fully understand what it was.

Quickly, she glanced around the room for anything that might tell her what the purpose of this tower had been. At the far end of the dais was a podium, shattered down the center like a great weapon had cleaved it in two. She had no doubt that it served some function, but as she approached, it was obvious that it was in need of repair and that, unfortunately, was not a skill she possessed. The room was stark and empty in contrast, with no decoration except the poor, unfortunate soul lying prone across the stone floor. She abandoned the wonder that was the dais and crossed back to the skeleton that had originally drawn her attention. As she stepped down to the floor, the vision above her zoomed back out to the perfect, undisturbed image of space that gave the room a gentler glow. Even that soft, enchanting light couldn’t chase away the stark realization that whoever this lost being had once been, they had died here.

“Who are you?”

She asked aloud, again, of a soul long lost, but stooped down by the skeleton’s side as she did. There were a few scraps of tattered clothing, too deteriorated to give any clues, but not much else other than the crystallized bones themselves. She assumed it had once been a human, though half of the skull was hidden where it lay against the stones. Whoever this had been, they’d curled in upon themselves, clutching at a wound in their belly as their life slipped away.

No, not a wound.

That protesting doubt struck her again and she leaned closer, staring at the bony hands. It wasn’t a wound that this person had died protecting, but something still there. Without even a breath uttered for respect of the dead, Alkaid reached out and pried at the hands with her own, gritting her teeth together with the effort it took to force apart a position they’d held for thousands of years. The plates of her arms strained and groaned against one another, threatening to slip loose like a fault line. She ricocheted backward as the object pulled free suddenly, sending her stumbling over her own feet and ultimately landing her on her rear with a graceless thud. Irritation swelled through her as she fought to see her prize through a tangle of dreads and cape material, looking for all the world like a petulant, pouty child. At least there had been no one around to see her fall and, once she was finally settled, the emotion fled as quickly as it came.

The object in question was a gemstone - not the translucent, purple crystal that grew and consumed everything else in the rift, but a chunky shard of something that reminded her of moonstone. It was white around the edges with a deep, dark blue core, speckled with glittering pinpricks of light that reminded her of imitation stars. Her gaze swept up instantly to the true vision of the cosmos overhead and, though she didn’t know how, she had no doubt that the two were connected.

“What secrets have you been keeping here, silent one?”

And how, she wondered, would they be revealed?