Chapter 95

• The Ember Meridian was the loneliest of the five anchor points — a vast, still dimension of ancient volcanic plains and skies the color of cooling metal, empty of inhabitants, populated only by the deep structural energy that kept the Nexus Lock's fourth pillar stable. Team Omega arrived through the gate in silence and spread out immediately, Nyx at the point with her void-enhanced blades drawn, Kaidan running temporal calibrations, Reya pressing her Reality Anchor ability outward in a widening circle.
• For exactly four seconds, nothing happened.
• Then the First arrived — not through a gate, not through a rift, but through the air itself becoming questionable. The Ember Meridian's reality didn't crack. It simply became, in certain localized areas, uncertain. Patches of ground that might or might not be there. Sections of sky that were contemplating no longer being sky. The volcanic plains, ancient and utterly indifferent to the preferences of beings who required solid ground, began to oscillate.