Chapter 98 The Stellar Labyrinth

• The journey to the Wellspring of Creation was a voyage into the unknown. The holographic map, their only guide, depicted a path that took them far beyond the charted cosmos, through regions of space where the laws of physics were said to bend and break. As they left the familiar glow of the Web of Light behind them, a profound silence settled over the ship. It was not the oppressive emptiness of the Oblivion Engine or the chilling vacuum of the Shroud of Starlight, but the vast, expectant stillness of true cosmic frontier.
• The first few weeks were a blur of deep space travel, the familiar rhythm of the ship's engines a comforting constant. Kael's sensors, however, were reading increasingly strange data. Energy signatures were flickering in and out of existence, and the very fabric of spacetime seemed to be fluctuating. The cosmic map, once a clear path, now shimmered with an eerie, unstable light, its guiding line a twisting, unpredictable ribbon.
• "Approaching the first anomaly," Kael announced, his voice tense. "The map is calling it the Stellar Labyrinth."