I stepped squarely before the voidscull, allowing a strip of light to fall upon what sat inside, and glimpsed a slice of the traitor’s mask. Slowly, through the drifting dust mixed with memory, I reached out to the fairings, placed my fingers into the crack, and touched the inner edge. Both halves slammed open, revealing the long-dead stowaway. The final resting place of the being whose consciousness I shared.

My third prior. A Scythin queen called Jecca.

I stumbled backward over the hardened entrails, my gaze locked upon the desiccated husk of the fugitive. Collapsing down against the far wall, memories boiled up from their abyssal reach, swallowing me entirely into the world of the Scythin, making me witness to an understanding.

Ancient, inviolable, they were the first juggernaut.

A thing that roiled, inexorable, through the skins of infinite worlds.

Immune to consequence.

Oblivious to suffering.

Unconsidering.

An apex unmatched.

The ultimate creation.

The testing blade.

Set free across spacetime.

Life without bounds.

Unbridled being.

Coursing through membranes meant to hold others.

Original and continuous.

Feeding on the flesh of thought.

One and all, at once.

I saw the world of Jecca, played out in reflections imprinted on the cord that we shared. Then, a change of scene.

A whirling vortex in a mist of others. Communing. From their hearts the Twenty-Seven draw forth metallic prongs, each the same but different, then at once strike them upon the surface in a ring above the spire. A chord resonates in a language that speaks to the Universe, with each prong contributing its distinctive tone. Twenty-seven Notes resonate to twenty-seven tilting fins at the edge of the ship’s body, drawn wide. A carnivorous flower. The Bloom of God. A chord amplifies from this stellar mouth, a thundering radio burst, calling to stars and roping them in upon the frequency’s wavelength. Fuel gathered, the singing Notes are touched to the spire itself, drawing the stars inward, weaving their fissile bodies together, directed to a pinprick in the dimensional fabric. Spacetime itself shudders. The needle hooks the weft of sentience and the void itself is pulled taut.106

The ship spins like a top, drawing the galaxy inward by the warp of thought, as if it were the cloth upon which the stars were sat. The Scythin devour the raw matter of consciousness as their ship spools it up. And as that which holds everything together feels their dominion, all begins to burn. The fire that birthed the Universe reignites at the galaxy’s edge and collapses inward, this time bringing death. Imbalance invites the dimensions to communion, and the gate is open. The ship slips through and is gone. All consumed in the vacated dimension, only cold remains.