Syl'thessara made her exit from the plane of existence that was supposedly her prison with the grace of someone stepping through a door they had always known was unlocked.

The boundary between her confinement and freedom parted before her seamlessly!

Outside, the void greeted her with its familiar emptiness, but even here, the pretense of imprisonment was maintained.

Countless invisible obsidian-silver chains wrapped around the plane she had just exited, their links forged from condensed regret and solidified consequence.

They gleamed with the kind of light that only became visible when one wasn't looking directly at them…a perfect metaphor for the nature of her captivity.

The chains could no more hold her than a drawn circle could contain the concept of circles, yet they remained, testament to a Fable that required her to be prisoner even when she was not.

She looked around with a serene expression of sorrow that had been worn so long it had become her default state, like a mask that had fused with the face beneath.

The vast emptiness of stellar bodies stretched in all directions, each point of light a reminder of how much existence there was and how little of it mattered to her anymore.

'Could a Nexus Deviation Point have possibly occurred here?' The thought drifted through her consciousness with the weight of rhetorical questions asked in empty rooms. 'This barren stretch of seas where even hope had learned not to visit? The only lineage of any significance was the one we stunted…Adrastia.'

The name settled in her thoughts like a stone in still water, sending ripples through memories she had tried so hard to let sediment.

She thought of that man. The only man who could have potentially emerged from these Star Seas with his grand weavings of existence intact.

The First Adrastia Emperor King, whose power had been like watching a sun decide to become more than mere nuclear fusion. He could have reshaped reality itself if given time, could have transcended the games the Nar'Thyss played.

But she had helped destroy him.

The thought came with its familiar companions…guilt that had worn grooves in her consciousness from repetition, self-loathing that had become so comfortable it was almost like a friend!

She had done worse than merely betray him.

She had done nothing for the rest of his progeny. Their progeny. Because with him, she had created a child that she was forced to treat as an abomination by the Nar'Thyss, forced to strip of everything that connected him to their shared lineage.

The Second Adrastia Emperor King had been her child, and she had crippled him of his birthright as a Nar'Thyss with her own hands.

It had been the only thing she could do to negotiate for his life and freedom…remove from him the very thing that made him special, that made him hers.

The Nar'Thyss had agreed to let him live, but only as something less than he should have been, something that would never threaten their narratives.

But that was years ago. Centuries. Millennia. Time lost meaning when every moment was identical in its misery.

Her son had perished, as she knew he would, as they all did. From him had come a grandson…the Third Adrastia Emperor King.

Then he too had fallen, and another rose, and another fell, the cycle continuing with the reliability of entropy itself!

She had watched for a while, each death a fresh wound on scars that never quite healed. But eventually, she had stopped watching.

Because she knew that even from her pain, especially from her pain, the Nar'Thyss Constellations were feeding.

Her suffering was not private…it was performance, generating narrative energy with every moment of regret. So she had chosen the only rebellion available to her: she had stopped caring, or at least stopped showing that she cared.

Now she was to investigate if these Star Seas held anything of concern? The absurdity of it made her want to laugh, if she remembered how laughter worked.

She shook her head ruefully at the cosmic joke of it all. Even now, even knowing the futility of her actions, she was bound by the Nar'Thyss.

The chains that couldn't hold her physically held her through something far stronger..the narrative weight of her role in their Fable.

She was the Betrayer, and betrayers did what they were told by those they had chosen over love. So she could only continue.

As for where she should start her pointless investigation...

She wondered how her line of progeny would be doing now. Should she perhaps peer into the Lineage of Adrastia again? What cycle were they on? Eighth? Ninth? She had deliberately lost count, but she could easily find out.

She could see.

She took a step that covered light-years, disappearing in a trail of starlight that painted brief beauty across the void.

Her power was unfathomable compared to others in these Star Seas…she was, after all, partially responsible for keeping them weak.

She left. And…

A second after she left, the calm trail of starlight she had created shimmered with disturbance that suggested arrival rather than departure.

Near the spot she had vacated, two terrifyingly powerful beings materialized with the casual violation of reality that marked true authority.

Their auras were similar to hers…not in type but in magnitude, the kind of presence that made space itself stand at attention.

They appeared as men slightly older in age, though age was a costume they wore rather than a condition they experienced.

Their prime frozen at the moment of their greatest triumph. Their skin glittered with celestial brilliance that looked crystalline, as if formed from multiple Regulations compressed into something that merely appeared to be flesh.

Light didn't reflect off them so much as negotiate for permission to exist in their presence.

The first stood with posture that suggested he had never encountered a situation he couldn't command.

His robes were woven from captured auroras, shifting through spectrums that told the story of his rise to power!

This was Aurelius Luminos, the Light That Casts No Shadow, Founder of the Infinite Radiance Sovereignty!

His very existence was a statement that darkness was merely light that hadn't been properly motivated yet.

Beside him stood his antithesis and complement.. Vexthar Voidborn, the Absence That Defines Presence, Founder of the Void Dominion Empire.

Where Aurelius blazed, Vexthar absorbed. His form seemed to pull light into itself without ever becoming brighter, a walking event horizon dressed in civilization's finest achievements.

Together, they represented the fundamental duality that had shaped the Star Seas for eons uncounted!

They looked at the space where Syl'thessara had departed from, their gazes cloudy with the kind of knowledge that came from seeing too much of what was possible.

Aurelius sighed….a sound that caused nearby asteroids to alter their orbits, as his eyes shimmered with the Regulation of Destiny.

The patterns he saw there, the threads of what would be, had taken on configurations he didn't recognize.

"I fear that a change has occurred to alter everything, old friend," he said, his voice carrying the weight of someone who had thought himself above surprise discovering he was wrong.

Vexthar's expression didn't change, it rarely did, but the darkness around him deepened in what those who knew him would recognize as concern!

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