THIS IS A BOOK OF LORE. IF YOU ARE NOT INTO THE VOT UNIVERSE, THEN DON'T READ THIS BOOK.

  YOU WILL THINK YOU WANT TO READ IT BUT DO NOT. IT WAS NOT MADE FOR YOUR EYES.

  The stars were dying. Once radiant beacons scattered across the tapestry of the cosmos, they now flickered like the final gasps of a suffocating fire. One by one, they were snuffed out—consumed by a creeping darkness that spread from the outer rims of known existence. The Void had awakened. Not as a force of nature, but as a predator… hungering, watching, remembering.

  Among the ruins of forgotten constellations, shattered remnants of Celestial worlds drifted like bones in the bloodstream of the universe. Broken. Burned. Beautiful, in a way only tragedy could be. This was not the ending anyone had envisioned. This was something older, deeper. This was prophecy mistaken for myth… until it screamed back into reality.

  And above it all, orbiting what was once called Earth, the last great Bastion floated like a lighthouse in a drowned world. Inside its command hall—part cathedral, part war room—the silence was tense, sacred even. Towering windows stretched across the curved walls, allowing the last rays of a dying star to spill golden light onto the silver and obsidian tiles below.

  Director Orvik stood at the head of the chamber, shoulders squared beneath a cloak that shimmered like the ocean in stormlight. His face bore the age of a thousand lives, though his body did not. Scars invisible to the eye ran deeper than memory. Behind him stood the flags of the three Runic Teams, The Seekers, The Militia, and The Slayers with President Jack Dunsmore. Dr. Sanchez. The surviving leaders of the Seekers and Militia. And the Slayers—those still able to stand, and one barely alive, suspended in a healing cocoon of Stroma-tech. The room carried the weight of names no longer spoken—Mackiaveli. Shadowfeather.

  Orvik's eyes scanned them, knowing that no words could give justice to the losses they had endured. But something greater loomed, something older than their pain. Something they needed to understand… now.

  "I guess it’s time you know who I really am," Orvik said, his voice low, edged with centuries of grief and resolve. "And how Erebus… how the monster we feared would never return… became the master of the Black Sun Veil."

  And just like that, silence reigned again. As Orvik spoke again, the room around everyone transitioned into the past memory.

  “The universe wasn’t always dying. There was a time, long before these halls, before the Bastion, before mortal governments stitched together interstellar alliances—when gods and men walked side by side. Not in dominance, not in chains… but in Symbiosis.”

  “It was an age of rebuilding. The war against Kronos had ended. Tartarus had become his tomb. Erebus had vanished into the Veil. And for the first time in eons, there was peace. Worlds were reforged. The Sentients—what few remained—merged willingly with mortals, creating the first true Demi-gods. Not born, but chosen. Forged through will and union. Together, they healed broken stars, rebalanced the orbits of shattered realms, and silenced the last echoes of the Veilstorm.”

  “It was glorious. But peace has a price. And time… always collects its debts. They called it the Age of Symbiosis. Not just an alliance—no, that word was too clinical. It was a renaissance. A reawakening. A moment in the grand cosmic script when gods and mortals stepped beyond hierarchy and into harmony. No longer titans towering over men or mortals kneeling in temples, but partners. Equals—if only in spirit.”

  “The gods offered fragments of their essence—small, precise slivers of power too potent to be held directly, but just enough to awaken something divine within a mortal soul. These weren't weapons. They were bonds. A Symbiote was not a parasite. It didn’t dominate. It shared. It merged. And for the lucky few who could handle it, it became the foundation of an entirely new being—neither god nor man, but something forged in the space between.”

  Director Orvik, though he had not revealed it then, had been among the first. Chosen—or perhaps, claimed—by Poseidon. Not through ritual. Not through ceremony. It was a meeting of resonance. Of pain. Of purpose. Poseidon's essence didn’t speak at first. It waited. Tested. Observed. Like the ocean itself—never rushing, but always present.

  At first, Orvik thought he had been given a gift. Over time, he realized it was a burden wrapped in destiny. And it changed him. It changed them all. But the one who changed everything was her. Her name was Atara. Born during the high arc of Symbiosis, she was the first mortal to host a Symbiote without fragmentation. Not a borrowed fragment—she was born in resonance. A living embodiment of perfect union.

  She wasn’t Poseidon's host like Orvik. She was Poseidon's will incarnate—fluid, strong, compassionate, and terrifying when she needed to be. But she was more than that. She was the harmonic bridge. The very thing the Curator had once whispered was foretold in the echoes of the Universal Tree. Atara was supposed to lead them into the next evolution. Which made her the most dangerous threat to Erebus. And so… she vanished.

  There was no explosion. No great battle. No heroic stand. One morning, she was leading a terraforming initiative on the edge of a blue dwarf system. By evening, the only thing left behind was the ghost-trail of her Symbiote’s resonance—twisted, shattered, drained. Not dead… violated. Something had broken her bond. Extracted it. It was a message. Erebus had returned.

  He didn’t come in shadows. He didn’t need armies. His return was marked by a frequency—a low hum that the Stroma began detecting in corrupted hosts. A sound that didn’t belong in the living world. It wove into the background of reality, slipping into dreams, thoughts, the edges of prayers. Resonance manipulation.

  Erebus had found a way to rewrite the very connection between mortal and god. Where once there had been Symbiosis, now there was distortion. Echoes became parasites. Hosts became addicts. And fragments of the gods turned on their own will.

  By the time the High Council realized what was happening, ten Ascendants had already fallen. Once-heroes now stood as twisted shadows of themselves—powers intact, identities erased. They did not rage. They obeyed. And they obeyed him.

  The Nasu, still bound within Lethe, began to stir. Erebus, always patient, had been whispering through the cracks. Not with rage or threats—but with truths twisted just enough to sound comforting.

  "She abandoned you."

  "Gaia lied."

  "You were meant to lead, and they feared you for it."

  To Halal—once the Morningstar—it wasn’t manipulation. It was freedom. Vindication. His mind, long eroded by pain and isolation, latched onto Erebus like gravity to mass. The Nasu began appearing in dreams across the galaxy—offering gifts. Knowledge. Wisdom that bent reality. Revenge dressed as redemption. Many accepted. They didn’t know it was him at first. The Shadow Rider wore many faces, spoke in forgotten tongues. But once the resonance was rewritten… it was too late. The Veil trembled. Inside the Bastion’s war room, Director Orvik’s voice faded for a long moment. The silence returned—not dead, but heavy.

  Alive. Like something was still listening. He looked at the men and women before him—not as a general to soldiers, but as a man who had lost and lost again. Seekers. Slayers. A President. A Scientist. And a young warrior, barely alive, clinging to the machines that hummed quietly beside his bed. He thought of Atara. He thought of Poseidon—still within him, quieter now than ever. Maybe grieving. Maybe watching.

  "The truth is..." Orvik said, voice low, steady, "Erebus didn’t just corrupt the Veil. He became it."

  The Bastion’s lighting dimmed slightly, as if the structure itself recoiled. Another star died beyond the horizon. Orvik didn’t look up at first. He just stared at the floor—at the reflection of the dying light on polished obsidian tiles, as if searching for something he’d long lost.

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  “I thought we could contain it,” he said finally. “We traced the corrupted resonance, mapped its spread, isolated host after host. We even severed a few before the transformation completed.”

  He lifted his gaze, eyes like crashing tides, ancient and tired.

  “But it wasn’t enough. We were patching holes in the hull… while the ship was already under the sea.”

  A sharp beep from the cocooned Slayer’s vitals echoed through the chamber. Dr. Sanchez flinched. Dunsmore’s jaw tightened. The others remained silent, bracing for the truth they sensed was coming. Orvik stepped forward, his cloak parting slightly, revealing the Stroma-node embedded at his sternum—dim, barely glowing.

  “The Veil has evolved,” he said, voice grave. “It’s no longer just a barrier or a prison. Erebus has made it... a transmitter. It pulses with corrupted frequency, designed to mimic the resonance signature of dormant Symbiotes.”

  A few in the room gasped. One of the Militia generals cursed under his breath.

  “You mean—” Sanchez started.

  “Yes,” Orvik cut in. “Symbiosis itself is now at risk. The Veil can fake a connection. It can disguise itself as a Symbiote… and bond with a host.”

  He let the silence swallow the revelation. It hit like a collapse of reality. Everything they were, everything they believed—the very foundation of their ascension—was now a potential lie.

  “And we wouldn’t know,” Dunsmore muttered. “We could be training... arming them. Right now.”

  Orvik nodded slowly. “We’ve already lost three Ascendant candidates to silent corruption. They showed perfect harmonics. Passed all the trials. Until one of them tried to access the Well... and nearly tore a hole through reality.”

  He walked to the center of the room and pressed his palm to a console. A holosphere bloomed above them—an intricate web of nodes and energy flows. In the center, one glowing thread pulsed erratically.

  “There’s only one bond left that predates the Veil’s evolution. One that’s still pure.”

  The glowing thread rotated, expanded—and zoomed in on a sleeping figure in a containment chamber, hidden deep beneath the Bastion. A woman. No older than twenty. Her hair shimmered faintly in the light, and veins of dormant energy ran beneath her skin.

  “Her name is Lyra,” Orvik said softly. “She hasn’t awakened yet. But she’s not just bonded. She’s resonant. Like Atara was.”

  The room erupted into motion. Dunsmore stood up. One of the Seekers looked like he’d seen a ghost. Dr. Sanchez began pulling up her own Stroma-link data.

  “Why wasn’t this brought to the Council?” the Militia general demanded.

  “Because the moment Erebus learns she exists,” Orvik said, eyes hard, “he’ll come for her. Not with armies. With whispers.”

  He turned back toward the image of Lyra, his voice softening.

  “She’s our last clean frequency. The last note in the symphony that hasn’t been rewritten. If she falls, the entire Ascendant program falls with her.”

  Sanchez’s voice was sharp. “And if she doesn’t wake up?”

  Orvik turned, his expression unreadable.

  “Then we lose the light,” he said. “And all we’ll have left… is the view of stars dying.”

  The room was still as a tomb.

  Director Orvik let the weight of his last words settle. No one dared break the silence, as if even the walls were listening.

  “Lyra,” he said again, slower this time. “Is one of Poseidon’s Nereids. A Seer. The last of a very specific kind.”

  He walked toward the holographic image of the girl—no, the woman—sleeping beneath Bastion’s surface. A pulse of faint light glowed at her chest, in perfect rhythm with the oceanic resonance signature displayed behind her. It shimmered in patterns that only a few in the room could fully understand. And two of them weren’t speaking yet.

  “She’s like Dr. Sanchez?” asked Dunsmore, cautiously. “Another Seer?”

  Orvik turned, exhaling a slow breath. “In a manner of speaking.”

  His voice lowered, changed. Less director now. More... divine. Something deeper in him stirred—Poseidon's will, bleeding through the seams of his human form.

  “There are two kinds of Seers in this universe. Those who listen to time… and those who guide it.”

  His eyes moved to Dr. Sanchez.

  “And she,” he said, his voice edged with a strange reverence, “is the second.”

  Dr. Sanchez flinched slightly. Then, slowly, almost deliberately, she turned to face him. Her face was calm, but her eyes were a storm barely contained.

  “I told you,” she said softly, “not to do this.”

  “You knew it was coming,” Orvik replied. “You’ve always known.”

  Another silence. Tighter this time. The kind of silence that knew something ancient was rising to the surface.

  President Dunsmore stepped forward, confused. “What the hell is going on?”

  Orvik nodded toward Sanchez. “This woman… this scientist, this diplomat, this woman you all know as Dr. Sanchez... is not who you think she is.”

  He turned to the room, his voice echoing now, layered with something otherworldly.

  “She was once known as Stacy Moore—yes, that Stacy Moore. The billionaire. The founder of MooreCorp. The visionary behind the Stroma Labs expansion into multi-dimensional exploration.”

  Gasps rippled through the chamber.

  “Many of you believed she died during the collapse of the Europa Rift. A public tragedy. A heroic loss. But she didn’t die. She transcended. Or rather... she returned.”

  Orvik’s gaze darkened. “Returned to who she truly is.”

  He turned slowly.

  “Her real name… is Seraphina Lior. Or Sera Lior. A Nereid Seer. A traveler between dimensions. One of Poseidon’s most ancient companions.”

  The entire room tilted. Even the walls seemed to lean into the confession.

  “She’s been on assignment in Lethe—in the outer rift of the Black Sun Veil—working covertly to track the Nasu's influence and Erebus’s manipulation of dimensional bleed-throughs. The truth is, without her, we would have never detected the corrupted resonance patterns that turned three of our Ascendant candidates. She’s been keeping this war from coming to our doorstep longer than any of you know.”

  Everyone stared at her now. Seraphina. Dr. Sanchez. Stacy Moore. All the same woman. A woman with more identities than they had fingers. And yet, she stood quiet. Composed. She simply smiled, ever so slightly, and said:

  “Well. Now that the cat’s out of the interdimensional bag…”

  Orvik almost smiled. Almost.

  “I kept it from you,” he said, “because even here, even among this group, knowledge can be a virus. The more people who know the truth of her, the more likely Erebus finds her. Finds Lyra. Finds us.”

  Dunsmore recovered first. “So what you’re saying is… she’s a goddamn operative?”

  “I’m saying,” Orvik said carefully, “she is one of the last original Nereids still operating outside of corruption. And she’s more than an operative. She’s a compass. A mirror. And a weapon.”

  A low hum buzzed from the holosphere. The image of Lyra pulsed again, her vitals responding as if stirred by the conversation.

  “She and Lyra are connected,” Seraphina said finally, stepping forward. “All Seers are. Through the Sea Between Realms. The Veins of Echo. You can think of it like… an interdimensional frequency. Each Seer is a harmonic echo of a greater will. We call it the Mother Resonance. And Lyra is its last unbroken thread.”

  Orvik nodded. “Which means if Erebus severs her—if he twists her, corrupts her resonance as he did the others—he won’t just turn another Demi-god. He’ll take control of the entire harmonic chain.”

  “He’ll rewrite Symbiosis itself,” Seraphina said quietly. “From the inside out.”

  The implications hit like an orbital bombardment.

  Forget armies. Forget politics. This was about fundamental law. The very math and magic that made gods and mortals one. If Erebus succeeded, there would be no more Sentients. No more Symbiotes. Only puppets. Only him.

  Orvik walked to the edge of the platform and looked out the great window toward the field of dying stars.

  “We’re no longer dealing with a war of territory,” he said. “We’re in a war of resonance. Of reality itself. And to win it... we need Lyra to wake up. And we need Seraphina to guide her.”

  Sanchez—Seraphina—crossed her arms, her expression unreadable.

  “You know she’s not ready.”

  “No,” Orvik agreed. “But she’s all we have.”

  A pause. Then:

  “She had a vision,” Seraphina said. “Three weeks ago. While in sleep state.”

  Orvik turned. The others leaned in.

  “She saw the Veil open,” she continued. “She saw a version of herself—not this version—but another… corrupted. Not by Erebus directly, but by something beneath him. Older. Hidden even from the Sentients.”

  That hit Orvik harder than he expected. “Older than Erebus?”

  She nodded once. “Something from before the first resonance. Something Erebus fears.”

  Dunsmore stepped back. “You’re telling me there’s another threat?”

  “No,” Seraphina said. “I’m telling you… there might be a key to undoing Erebus’s corruption.”

  Orvik’s eyes narrowed. “In Lethe?”

  “In Lyra,” she said. “But the only way to reach that key... is to enter her dream.”