The High Sanctum of the Void-Citadel was silent, save for the rhythmic, wet thrumming of the ship's biological walls. In the center of the room, Kane sat cross-legged, suspended three feet off the deck by a swirling vortex of violet gravity.
In his lap lay the fragment of the Aeon-Staff. It didn't look like wood or stone; it looked like a piece of a frozen scream, pulsing with a pale, cold light that made the shadows in the room crawl away in fear.
"Sully," Kane's voice was hollow, echoing as if he were speaking from the bottom of a well. "Seal the Sanctum. Don't let anyone in. Not even Vance."
"Sarge, your vitals are flatlining," Sully's voice crackled over the comms, thick with worry. "The fragment... it's eating your bio-rhythm. If you go under now, I might not be able to pull you back."
"I'm not going under, Sully," Kane whispered, his eyes closing to reveal twin pits of absolute black. "I'm going in."
Kane didn't "meditate." He collapsed his consciousness into the bone-fragment.
The physical world vanished. The Citadel, the stars, and the broken moon were replaced by a world of white fire and black ink. He was standing on a floor of liquid glass that stretched into infinity. Above him, the sky wasn't a sky—it was a Library of Stars, billions of glowing spheres of data swirling in a slow, agonizing spiral.
[WARNING: SOUL-SPACE BREACHED] [ACCESSING FORBIDDEN DATA: THE CHRONICLES OF THE GARDEN]
"So," a voice rumbled, sounding like the shifting of tectonic plates. "The latest 'Hunger' has finally found the back door."
Kane turned. Standing behind him wasn't the Reaper, but a towering figure made of glowing geometric shapes—a First-Gen Arbiter, older and more massive than the one he had killed.
"Who are you?" Kane growled, his Void-Archon armor manifesting in the soul-space, though it felt thin and fragile here.
"I am the Librarian of the Void," the figure said, a thousand faces flickering across its diamond-shaped head. "And you, Kane of Earth, are the 14th Iteration. You are the fail-safe. The reset button. The virus designed to eat the universe when the 'Harvest' becomes too heavy to carry."