Age of the Singulars: The Path Beyond Light

Atlas opened his eyes to a world too quiet, with the hammer’s echo still in his chest. He was lying in a dome of glass and steel, surrounded by humming instruments and notes pinned in neat rows. The sting of broken armor pressed into his ribs. The last thing he remembered was Kharon’s hammer falling like a star. He pushed himself upright, muscles tight with rage. Not at his wounds, at the fact he had been pulled from the battle. He didn’t need saving. He was Titan born, heir to the Celestial Throne. And yet, standing across the room, steady and silent, was the one who had done it.

Hana Quinn.

Pathfinder Zero.

Civilian by birth, singular by nature.

In the silence between worlds, a pulse, a rhythm older than creation, calling to those who did not belong. From flame and ruin, From the broken veil, From the edge of human memory, From the ones who lasted. Four threads, scattered through time, now began to move, a convergence older than destiny itself.

ACT I — Pride and Pulse

The vessel rose from the base camp in silence, cutting a clean line through clouds that did not resist. Below, the dome shrank into starlit memory a circle built for return, now left behind. He did not expect company. He did not ask for it. He had been alone before. He would be alone again.

But the silence aboard the ship grew strange.

Weight settled in the air between systems. The kind of stillness that followed presence, not absence. Not threat. Not accident.

Choice.

Atlas walked down the narrow corridor, the ship’s lights shifting softly across metal that seemed to breathe on its own.

Hana was there, seated near the navigation core, calm, deliberate. Her pack was ready, her tools in order, the shard glowing faintly beside her like it understood why she had come.

The descent began as the planet’s nightside unfolded below them, a world stripped of warmth, buried beneath layers of glassed stone and fractured vaults. Elyon Prime’s forgotten hemisphere did not welcome ships.

Pillars of ancient construction jutted from the crust like broken fingers. At the center: the remains of a celestial citadel, long collapsed inward, surrounded by a perimeter of silent towers. This was not a ruin. It was a boundary.

ACT II — The Path Beyond Light

ACT III — Into the Hollow

Atlas felt the pull toward her the way a tide feels the moon, slight and constant, impossible to deny.

She didn’t explain. She didn’t apologize. She only turned the monitors toward him. Star maps, scans, and field logs filled the screens. At the center of it all: a dark shard she had taken from the Temple of Convergence. It pulsed faintly now that Atlas was near.

She had seen something she didn’t understand, but couldn’t ignore.

A pattern began to activate after she extracted Atlas. “It only responded when you arrived.”

The shard’s surface revealed a symbol burned into the data; an eclipse crowned with light. It matched the ones Hana had recorded during her earlier encounter with the Omen.

Atlas’s breath caught. He had seen that mark before, Nymera: The Queen of Solar Shadows, Atlas turned toward the exit. The choice had already been made.

She had boarded before launch, silent as a thought waiting to be spoken. She’d seen the patterns, followed the signs, and traced the symbol that led here. Whatever Nymera kept in the dark, she would face it too.

Atlas didn’t question her. No demand for answers, something unspoken held in the air between them, like gravity finding its center, they both knew it was meant to be this way, though neither dared to say why. The vessel continued without hesitation, its course untouched by the fact of two aboard instead of one.

The vessel passed over the last ridge. And for an instant, there was no signal; just absence. Instruments failed without protest, and gravity turned sideways, shifting. As if something below them had rewritten the rules of the universe.

Atlas reached for control, but the ship had already begun to defy logic, Hana’s eyes tracked the descent in silence and calm, her body braced before the ship even tilted. She had seen this in data before, when certain structures refused to be mapped. Zones that were not broken, but protected. This broken place did not want to be entered. Below, the stone opened; A hole in the world, vast, perfect, circular, filled with absence, like memory traveling space.

Alarms blinked to life, silent and confused. Altitude data fractured into static. Atlas locked into the command rail and forced the propulsion core into override. Thrusters surged, Delta force countermeasures kicked in, Full power!.

And for a breathless instant the vessel roared against the pull.

And the world swallowed them whole.

To Be Continue...