Nolan purposely calmed himself with energy from the ring, wondering how Jun hadn't sensed its presence when it was sitting in plain view beside his dantian. Pushing the thought from his mind, he decided to throw the old man a bone after thinking about what he had been through, though Nolan still hadn't forgiven him for attempting to steal his body. If Uncle Grey hadn't been there to help, then he’d have wound up trapped within the glade as a spirit for eternity, unable to seal his mind and unable to end his life due to the massive amounts of energy that would have constantly nourished his soul.

  "Listen man," said Nolan, who walked over to stand beside the sitting ghost. "That teleportation arrayment worked, and your friends made it to that other world. That's how we got here. We used the same method as that Halvin guy did."

  Jun's eyes shone with an odd mixture of hope and melancholy, though these soft features melted away like ice on a sunbaked road. "You…you willingly came here?" The man startled them by falling into a sudden frenzy, jumping up to scan his surroundings with feral eyes. "The teleportation arrayment—you closed it, right? Tell me you've closed it!" Before he could move around much more, he crumpled to the ground and began seizing as if he were in the midst of being electrocuted.

  "It's closed," said Nyla, thinking quickly. "Why are you so worked up?"

  Once he had recovered and calmed down, Jun sat up again with an angry frown. "This barrier"—he motioned around them—“could break at any time! If the teleportation arrayment is open when that happens, then all of our sacrifices will have been for nothing!"

  "Hold on," said Uncle Grey, whose eyes narrowed as if he'd just comprehended some disturbing truth. "How long was this barrier designed to last?"

  "A few thousand years at most. I have no idea how much time has passed, so it could very well collapse at any moment!"

  "That can't be," said Nolan. "I hate to be the one to tell you, but millions of years have passed since you sealed yourself here. Like, every grain of sand on a beach represents a thousand years. That's how long."

  "No, it can't be—" Jun stopped talking and looked down at the ground, his mind doing visible summersaults. "That's just not possible. From the moment we cast it, the barrier began to shrink. The only way it could still be here is if somebody’s been maintaining it all this time, but just creating the thing required hundreds of millions of sacrifices. I was here when the darkness descended. I sensed everyone else die!"

  "What, are you saying that there might be someone—"

  "Enough of this topic," said Uncle Grey, who had the uncomfortable look of somebody that suspected they were being watched. "This darkness you talk about, what is it? What exactly happened here?"

  "That's the real question," said Nyla. "Not only that, but how did you all know about it? You make it sound like everybody was killed in a matter of moments."

  "Answer that as well," said their teacher.

  Everybody stared at the mind-boggled spirit with the same degree of anticipation, anxious to finally learn about how Nia met its incomprehensible demise. Once Jun finally pulled himself together, or at least appeared to have done so, he took a steadying breath.

  "It all started when the stars began to disappear."

***

The truth behind the mysterious world's downfall was far more troubling than they could ever have imagined. Jun didn't know everything about what had unfolded during Nia's final days, but he knew enough to paint a clearer picture for Nolan and his companions.

  As a leader of a Hegemon Sect, Jun had spent most of his time in the most populous and influential city of his world, which was called Neo-Nia. At some point in the months leading up to the ancient Armageddon, somebody in the city had pointed out that a famous star—the apparent equivalent of the North Star on Earth, and the largest celestial body that they were aware of—was no longer visible in the night's sky. Some took it as an ominous omen, but talk of this strange phenomenon began to die down after a few weeks of the star's disappearance. At least, that had been the situation for the common folk. As for the top echelons of Nian society, they had immediately noticed that the celestial disappearance wasn't limited to that single star.

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  A week after the mysterious happening, the night's sky seemed virtually unchanged. Only, this was simply a deceiving impression to those with poor vision. To Jun and his contemporary peers, they had noticed with rising alarm that hundreds of stars had discreetly vanished from their sight. These, they soon realized, were the most distant ones, and thus the most difficult to see. On an explored world that was much more populated than Venara, perhaps only a few thousand people were able to read the changes in the heavens.

  Nobody had any idea as to what sort of phenomenon was taking place, but they could hardly ignore it. Within a week's time, more and more people were becoming aware of the situation, because more and more stars began to blink out of existence. Within another handful of days, the change was visible to anybody with working eyes. That was when Halvin, the leader of the Blackstar Sect and the Overseer of the Winterlands—a title awarded to Nia's most powerful cultivator alongside the most energy-rife region on the planet—sent out an urgent summons to all of the world’s most prominent individuals. This included members of the renegade sects that were constantly warring with Jun's forces and those of his allies.

  Halvin, who was technically the first person that Nolan had encountered in the glade, had been the only one to notice that their world was in immediate danger. Apparently, he'd had a special status in Nian society, and was able to convene a meeting of all of the world's most powerful people on a whim if he chose do, which he did soon after he'd made the grave realization. Once everyone had gathered, he and Actius—one of his prodigeous disciples and the most famous of the only five that he had ever taken in—had worked together to set up a grand arrayment that bent light in such a way as to allow all of those present to see the situation deep within Infinite Space.

  Hearing the old spirit’s tale, Nolan had to remind himself that the lowest labelled cultivation stage in their world had been Genesis, and that it could only be imagined how powerful the individuals summoned by Halvin would have been. Still, Jun admitted that none had ever seen such a close-up view of any of these distant suns, and so distinct was the sight that Halvin had showed them that a few planets had been visible orbiting the great star. The sight that they had beheld was one that left the respected assembly drained of all colour and full of indescribable dread.

  "And that was when we noticed something strange," said Jun. "The space behind the star that Halvin showed us was completely black. Not the same sort of blackness that we were used to seeing on normal nights. This was a whole new breed of darkness. On one hand, it possessed such depth that it distracted from the star itself. On the other, it appeared to move as if it were alive."

  "What," said Nolan, "like the interstellar medium? The matter and whatnot in the space between stars?"

  "As expected of Halvin's student," sighed Jun, a bit of reluctance to his admiration. "It's impressive that you know that there are objects between stars. Still, if you're referring to the celestial clouds that made up much of the night's sky, then no. How can I put it? It seemed as if the void itself had come to life. As if the empty darkness of Infinite Space were animated, like a cloud of colourless smoke with its own free will."

  Nyla spoke up, her voice quiet. "What happened to the star?"

  "It was consumed by the darkness, gone within a blink of the eye."

  "That can't be," muttered Uncle Grey, who pinched at his bearded chin in a ponderous manner.   "Are you implying that all of the missing stars in your sky fell to the same fate? Do you know how unimaginably vast the space between stars is?"

  "I don't know how you managed it, but I'm under your contract. I can't lie to you."

  "Maybe they were all individual instances?" offered Nyla, her dark eyes deep in thought. "You know, limited to that region of Infinite Space?"

  "It has to be that," agreed Nolan.

  Recalling some of the simpler course material that he'd learned in astronomy class, the closest average distance between stars was about seventy billion kilometres, and that was only in the densest clusters. So, if Nia was within one of these clusters then the stars in its forgotten sky were probably very close, which meant that the theoretical blanket of darkness would have been much smaller than if it were in a similar galactic neighbourhood as Earth. If that were the case, and there really was some sort of pervasive energy floating around out there in the void, then its size was unfathomable.

  It could have been a black hole, he thought, though he doubted that Nia would have remained intact after being consumed by such a cataclysmic astronomical object. No, whatever had happened out there was something that had never been observed by the scientists of his home world. Just hearing about it made Nolan’s heart race, for it wasn’t every day that he learned of such an important discovery, especially one that only a handful of people were privy to.

  Jun shook his head. "Halvin showed us many areas of the distant heavens. Whatever this blackness was, it washed over our corner of Infinite Space like a stormy wave over a small boat. It…it was as if it were erasing all things in existence."