They called it Nullith Prime.
In every star map, every digital archive, and every astrocartographic memory of the Pre-Cadence era, Nullith Prime did not exist. It wasn't hidden—it was unwritten. A blank space between constellations, a deliberate gap in galactic logic, where gravity bent in silence and light refused to echo.
Kael stared at the incoming visuals as the Echohound dropped out of void-space.
"Nothing," Nira said, her voice brittle. "There's literally nothing there."
"No," Kael replied, narrowing his eyes. "There's something. We just haven't earned the right to see it yet."
He tapped his wrist module—the gift from Caleos—and an anomalous frequency crackled through the console.
The screen shifted.
In the heart of the void, a ripple formed—like a black flame folding inward—and slowly, a planet materialized.
But not like any world they had ever seen.
Nullith Prime was a jagged sphere of unfinished geometry, its mountains fractalizing mid-formation, its oceans blinking between states of gas and fluid. Trees grew sideways. Cities flickered like bad memories. The entire planet pulsed like a living thought still being written.
Rax leaned in. "This place… it's unstable."
Lira turned to Kael. "How do we even land on a planet that hasn't decided what it is?"
Kael whispered, "Carefully."
Descent was like falling into a dream.
The Echohound's systems short-circuited on entry, not from resistance, but from cognitive interference—the planet was thinking back at them.
For every maneuver Rax made, the planet responded—mountains shifted beneath, clouds formed faces in warning, lightning drew symbols in the sky.
By the time they touched down, they were surrounded by a landscape that looked like a child's collage of different worlds.
"Did this place pull from our memories?" Nira asked, stepping onto soil that changed color with every footstep.
"No," Kael said. "It pulls from the author's intent."
Lira knelt beside a strange stone that hummed in resonance with her voice.
"This place wasn't created. It was... suggested."
Their path was marked by memory-riddles etched in the wind.
Every step forward required truth. The air itself tested their resolve—asking questions not with sound, but with guilt.
Kael felt it first.
A rush of cold through his spine.
Suddenly, he was elsewhere—back in the burning streets of Veridia, during the second Resonance Uprising. Civilians screamed. Cadence drones rained melody-shaped bullets. And there stood Kael—young, afraid, holding the detonator that would collapse the bridge and seal off the enemies.
But there were still people on it.
He'd pressed it anyway.
He saw their faces now. Heard the music of their last breath.
He fell to his knees.
The vision broke.
Kael gasped as Lira grabbed his shoulder. "You okay?"
He nodded. "The planet's making us relive our worst edits."
"I hate this place already."
But they pressed on.
Eventually, they reached the Centerline—a spiraling tower made entirely of unfinished code. The air around it shimmered like corrupted source files, bleeding letters into the wind.
This wasn't architecture. It was narrative.
"The Shard's inside," Nira confirmed, scanning the frequencies.
"But there's no door," Lira muttered.
As if in response, the tower spoke.
"Only the one with fragmented truth may enter."
Kael stepped forward, voice steady.
"I am fragmented."
The tower split open like a book mid-sentence.
Inside the tower, time fell apart.
Kael found himself walking across pages—literal parchment beneath his feet—each one describing moments of his past in unsettling detail. Every mistake. Every lie. Every broken promise.
He reached a chamber where the Shard hovered, suspended above a pedestal of crystallized silence.
It was different from the others.
This one… resisted being known. It blurred in his vision. Its existence was only partial.
Kael approached carefully.
Suddenly—a presence filled the room.
From the shadows stepped a figure draped in robes stitched from punctuation—pauses, commas, em-dashes.
Its face was a swirling blank page.
"I am the Erased," it said. "I was the protagonist before you were even a plot device."
Kael froze.
The Erased moved closer. "I was meant to save this universe. But I questioned the narrator."
"And they deleted you?"
"They rewrote me into a warning."
Kael raised his weapon. "I'm not here to erase you."
"But you will. The moment you take that Shard, my story ends."
Kael stared at the hovering Shard.
"What happens if I let it stay here?"
"The Cadence wins. This Shard holds the last blueprint of Unwritten Realms—worlds not yet authored, where rebellion could still be born."
Kael exhaled. "Then I have no choice."
"I know."
The Erased nodded, stepping back into the darkness willingly.
Kael reached forward, fingers brushing the surface of the Shard—
And the universe blinked.
Explosion of thought.
Kael saw everything.
Not just galaxies—but drafts of galaxies.
Not just people—but possible people.
His mind expanded past the fourth dimension into edit-space—where narrative decisions shaped physics.
He saw how Caleos had been tempted. How the Cadence had woven itself into moments of weakness. How Vakya, the living language system in Kael's DNA, had been designed to overwrite these intrusions—but only if the host accepted the cost.
He saw his own rewrite—his death and rebirth in the Echofire incident.
He saw Nullith Prime as it truly was: the backspace key of the universe.
A place where forgotten possibilities became real.
Kael woke up on the Echohound.
The Shard was embedded in his wrist.
Lira sat beside him. "You were out for three hours."
"What happened to the planet?"
Rax replied, "Gone. It vanished the moment you passed out. Like it was never there."
Kael stared at the stars outside.
"We're running out of time," he said.
Nira nodded. "Then let's write faster."