There was no floor beneath their feet.
The moment they passed through the gateway, Kael and his team were suspended in a space that rejected physics—stars spiraling above, below, and within. Floating islands of obsidian twisted in slow, impossible motion, linked only by threads of runelight that moved like veins across a slumbering god's body.
Tessia caught herself mid-air, landing on a drifting shard of black stone.
Dren landed beside her with a grunt. "I hate this place already."
Kael stood at the center of it all. The shard—the one gifted by the dying Construct—hovered above his palm, spinning slowly, leaking faint pulses of blue-black aether.
Zarith collapsed to his knees. "It's not just a ruin," he whispered. "This is a memory… no, a spine. A backbone of the world."
Sera helped him up. Her voice was calm, but tight. "Then what broke it?"
Kael didn't answer.
He stepped forward, and as he did, the space around them responded. Runes activated mid-air. Structures formed where there were none. Obsidian bridges unfolded like glass origami, connecting isolated platforms to a spiraling center far in the distance.
It resembled a cathedral built by equations—perfect symmetry, but corrupted by something primal.
"The Obsidian Axis," Kael murmured. "This is where the Fold began."
"The Fold?" Thorne echoed.
"The multiversal breach. The first fracture. Whatever ripped through the Interlace to touch Exarune… it started here."
As the team moved forward, a voice echoed—not spoken, but written across their senses.
Welcome to Axis Core.
You walk the bones of collapsed realities. Step true, or become thread for the Loom.
Kael stopped walking.
"That's not a threat," he said quietly. "That's a rule."
Suddenly, one of the side bridges retracted—Dren barely leapt to safety.
Tessia pointed upward. "Watch the sky."
Above them, hundreds of runes began aligning in spinning orbits, forming an eye-like pattern in the void.
A test was coming.
[ Initiating Worldstrand Simulation ][ Trial of Thread-Origin Confirmed ][ Rendering: The Earth that Could Not Be ]
The obsidian platform beneath their feet shifted—and in an instant, they were no longer in Exarune.
Instead, they stood in the middle of a futuristic city—towering buildings, neon lights, collapsed skyways. But it was warped. Dead. As if the world had evolved and decayed in a single breath.
Tessia touched the wall of a glowing structure. "This is… a version of Earth?"
Kael's eyes narrowed.
"No. This is my Earth."
The shard in his hand pulsed violently.
And from the horizon, figures emerged.
Not human.
Not even biological.
They walked like memories that refused to die—fragments of beings that should've never crossed over. Their eyes blazed with logic, their limbs fused with corrupted Interlace strands.
Kael clenched his fist. "The Axis is testing our origin against its decay."
"Then what's the goal?" Sera asked.
"To survive," Kael replied.
The city rumbled.
The test had begun.
[ END OF CHAPTER 21 ]