The crystalline shard pulsed in Jax's grip, its icy glow carving spectral patterns into the cavern walls. The echoes of his battle still lingered—the abyssal tendrils writhing as they dissolved into nothingness, the sickly hum of shadow dissipating into eerie silence. He exhaled, his breath unsteady but his resolve burning hotter than ever.
Two fragments in hand. Two pieces of a truth lost to time. But the labyrinth was far from done with him.
The ground beneath him shuddered.
Jax spun, his instincts sharpened by the endless gauntlet of cosmic trials. From the ruined chamber's depths, a rift tore open in the air—a seam of crackling void-energy yawning like the hungry maw of an ancient beast. The air thickened, heavy with the scent of scorched metal and something far older, something wrong.
Then came the voice.
"Seeker of the Forgotten, do you truly believe you walk forward? Or have you merely stepped deeper into your own undoing?"
The words scraped against his mind like serrated metal. He had heard whispers before—echoes of the past, remnants of lost souls trapped within the fabric of this forsaken place. But this was different. This voice was not an echo. It was watching.
The rift expanded, and from its depths, something stepped forward.
Not an echo. Not a shade. But a being of pure entropy.
Its form was liquid darkness, shifting, stretching, twisting between humanoid and something beyond comprehension. Eyes—if they could be called that—drifted along its formless mass, cold pinpricks of hunger. Its presence gnawed at the very air, unraveling light itself in a halo of void.
Jax felt his pulse hammer in his throat.
He had faced shadows. He had fought horrors. But this was something worse. This was the embodiment of what never was—the Void Unmade, a manifestation of every forgotten fate, every abandoned destiny, every erased possibility that had been cast into oblivion.
And it had noticed him.
"You carry stolen fragments," it intoned, its voice layered with a thousand forgotten tongues. "Return them. Or be unmade."
Jax clenched his fists. The shard's light was the only thing holding back the crushing weight of the entity's presence. The words of the Archivist burned in his mind:
"True knowledge is not merely remembered—it is reclaimed."
This thing—whatever it was—wanted to erase history itself. And Jax refused to let that happen.
He raised his plasma rifle, the barrel humming to life. "If you want them," he growled, "come and take them."
The void-being moved.
Faster than thought.
A black tendril lashed out, striking the ground where Jax had stood a fraction of a second before. The sheer force shattered the stone, sending razor-sharp debris flying. Jax dove, rolling into a crouch as another tendril whipped toward him. He fired—three rapid shots—each one striking true.
For an instant, the void recoiled. But then, impossibly, the wounds healed.
No blood. No resistance. As if time itself rewound the damage.
Jax barely had time to react before the entity surged forward, its form folding around him like a collapsing star. Darkness closed in, suffocating, devouring. His mind screamed as the edges of his consciousness blurred, unraveling at the seams.
This was it.
This was erasure.
Then—
The shard burned.
A pulse of light erupted from his grasp, flaring so brilliantly that even the void-being recoiled. For the first time, it shrieked—an unnatural, discordant wail that split the air. Jax gasped, dropping to one knee as the overwhelming pressure lifted.
The shard was no mere relic.
It was a weapon.
Through the haze of pain and exhaustion, understanding dawned. The fragments weren't just records of lost history—they were keys to fighting the abyss itself. Echoes of what should have been.
He wasn't meant to just reclaim the past.
He was meant to rewrite it.
Jax staggered to his feet. His vision swam, but his resolve solidified. The entity reformed, its shifting mass roiling with barely contained rage. The next attack would be stronger. It would not underestimate him again.
But neither would he.
Summoning every ounce of strength, he thrust the shard forward. The symbols along its crystalline edges flared, resonating with a power beyond mortal comprehension. The void-being hesitated—just for a fraction of a second.
And Jax ran.
Not away.
Through.
With a roar, he plunged into the heart of the entity, the shard's light exploding outward. The abyss screamed, writhing as reality reasserted itself. The formless dark rippled, struggling against the impossible force—
And then, it shattered.
The void-being collapsed inward, its existence unraveling as if it had never been. Jax tumbled forward, hitting solid ground as the rift sealed behind him. Silence followed.
Real. Tangible. Silence.
For the first time in what felt like lifetimes, the labyrinth was still.
Jax forced himself upright, muscles trembling. His breath came in ragged gulps, his skin slick with sweat. But he was alive.
And he had won.
The second shard pulsed gently in his palm, its glow steadier now—as if recognizing his worth.
The labyrinth remained. The trials ahead would be even deadlier. But as Jax gazed into the ever-shifting corridors, his grip tightened around the relic.
He was no longer a wanderer lost in the ruins of time.
He was a seeker of truth.
A forger of destiny.
And whatever lay ahead—whether gods, nightmares, or the abyss itself—he would face it.
And he would win.