The Celestial Administrative Core was no longer a pristine, blindingly white monument to universal bureaucracy. It was a sprawling, infinite graveyard of corrupted source code and pitch-black, Abyssal density.
The massive, geometrically perfect rivers of liquid starlight that had managed the logistical incubation of a billion galaxies had been completely, flawlessly subjugated. They now flowed with a heavy, viscous, iridescent darkness. The towering, three-dimensional obelisks of absolute celestial metal pulsed not with the sterile white hum of the System, but with the terrifying, heavy heartbeat of a terrestrial anomaly that had successfully eaten the universe's administrative privileges.
Ren stood perfectly still on the invisible, localized floor of the void.
