The streets were narrowing now, their once-impossible loops and twisting paths straightening out into something resembling normalcy—or as close to it as the Nexus could offer. The buildings, once pulsing and alive with shifting light and texture, now stood static and inert, their surfaces dull and cracked like abandoned monuments. The veins of light that had once coursed through the town’s foundation had faded into dim threads, barely visible beneath the translucent ground.

  Servius knew he was nearing the edge. The oppressive hum of the Nexus, ever-present since his arrival, had grown faint—distant, like the memory of a sound rather than the sound itself. The air was thinner here, less charged with that strange energy that had filled every corner of the Nexus. And yet, even as the town seemed to fade into something more hollow, more lifeless, the weight in Servius’s chest grew heavier with every step.

  He paused at a wide intersection, his sharp eyes scanning the streets ahead. Beyond the last row of fractured buildings, the horizon stretched out into a pale, featureless void—the edge of the Nexus. There were no denizens here, no Watchers standing vigil, no Architects weaving their impossible threads. The town had emptied, as if even its inhabitants knew they did not belong this close to the boundary.

  Servius adjusted the strap of his rifle across his shoulder, his claws flexing absently at his sides. The silence here was suffocating, a stark contrast to the chaotic symphony he’d grown used to in the Nexus’s heart. His tail flicked once behind him, the motion sharp and restless. He exhaled slowly, forcing his breathing to steady, and stepped forward.

  The edge of the Nexus loomed closer with each step, the buildings thinning out until they were little more than skeletal husks. The ground beneath his feet had lost its pulsing rhythm, its faint glow dimmed to near nothingness. Servius glanced over his shoulder, his sharp eyes scanning the empty streets behind him. The town was still, utterly silent. But even here, at the edge, he could feel its presence—watching, waiting, always lingering just beyond his perception.

  He turned back to face the void and froze.

  A figure stood at the threshold where the streets met the featureless expanse. It hadn’t been there a moment ago, but its presence felt inevitable, as though it had always been waiting for him. The Harbinger.

  Its tall, robed form was unmistakable, the obsidian mask that served as its face reflecting nothing but the pale light of the void beyond. The edges of its cloak seemed to dissolve into the air, bleeding into the faint, shimmering haze that surrounded it. It stood motionless, its empty gaze fixed on Servius, and yet its presence filled the space with a weight that pressed against his chest like a stone.

  Servius’s claws flexed instinctively, his hand drifting toward the grip of his bolt pistol before he caught himself. He stopped a few paces away, his sharp eyes narrowing as he met the Harbinger’s empty stare. “I should’ve known you’d be here,” he said, his voice low but steady. “What is it this time? Another warning? Another cryptic riddle?”

  The Harbinger tilted its head slightly, the motion slow and deliberate. When it spoke, its voice was deep and resonant, layered with a chorus of echoes that seemed to vibrate through the air itself. “You stand at the threshold, wanderer,” it said. “The Nexus has given you its gifts, and now it releases you.”

  “Releases me?” Servius’s tail flicked sharply behind him, his sharp ears twitching. “That’s a polite way of saying it’s kicking me out.”

  The Harbinger’s mask remained impassive, but the air around it seemed to ripple faintly, as though reacting to his words. “The Nexus does not hold what does not belong,” it said. “And you, fragment of the mortal plane, do not belong. But its threads now touch you, and through them, you are marked.”

  Servius’s sharp eyes narrowed, the weight in his chest tightening. “Marked,” he repeated, his tone edged with suspicion. “What does that mean?”

  The Harbinger raised a hand, its long, skeletal fingers extending outward. The air between them shimmered faintly, twisting into a swirl of light and shadow that coalesced into a familiar image: the spire at the heart of the Nexus. Servius watched as the image shifted, showing him the threads of light that connected the spire to the denizens—the Watchers, the Architects, the Speakers, the Drifters. And then, faintly, he saw something else. A new thread, thin and fragile, branching out from the Nexus’s heart... and leading directly to him.

  “You carry the threads of the Nexus within you,” the Harbinger said. “Its echoes will linger in your soul, shaping you even as you leave its boundaries. You are no longer whole, wanderer. The fragments of your being now bind you to the currents of possibility.”

  The image of the spire faded, replaced by a faint, shifting light that pulsed within the Harbinger’s outstretched hand. Servius stared at it, his sharp eyes narrowing as he tried to make sense of the strange, flickering glow. It wasn’t like the light of the Nexus—it was darker, more subdued, but it carried a weight that he couldn’t ignore.

  “This is the Harbinger’s Warning,” it said. “A gift of understanding, of foresight. It will guide you through the currents of the Warp, granting you clarity where others see only chaos. But know this, wanderer: the greater your understanding, the greater your burden. To see the truth is to bear its weight.”

  Servius hesitated, his claws flexing absently as he stared at the shifting light. He didn’t trust it—he didn’t trust anything about this place. But he knew better than to refuse. Whatever the Harbinger was offering, he would need it if he was going to survive the Warp.

  He reached out slowly, his sharp claws brushing against the edge of the Harbinger’s gift. The moment he made contact, the light surged forward, sinking into his chest like a breath held too long. The weight of it knocked him back a step, his breath catching in his throat as the world around him seemed to ripple and distort.

  When the sensation passed, the Harbinger was gone. The edge of the Nexus stretched out before him, the pale void beyond beckoning him forward. Servius exhaled sharply, his breath visible in the cool, shimmering air, and adjusted the strap of his rifle across his shoulder.

  “Fine,” he muttered under his breath. “Let’s see where this takes me.”

  And with that, he stepped forward, leaving the Nexus behind. But even as the streets of the town faded into the distance, he could feel its mark lingering within him—a faint hum, a shadow of its threads, reminding him that he would never truly be free.

  I didn’t know how to feel about that. Should I have felt relief? Gratitude? It had let me go, hadn’t it? The Nexus, this strange fragment of the Deep Warp, had done what the Warp itself never would—it had released its grip. But I couldn’t shake the weight pressing against my chest, heavy and sharp, as if something inside me had been torn loose and stitched back together wrong. Whatever else the Nexus was, it had marked me. And I wasn’t leaving it behind as cleanly as I’d hoped.

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  I glanced over my shoulder, sharp eyes scanning the streets that stretched into the dim horizon. Nothing moved. No Watchers lingering in the corners, no Architects weaving their impossible structures, no Speakers dissolving into the air like they were never there to begin with. Even the Drifters were gone. It was strange to see the streets so empty—so lifeless. The Nexus had always felt alive, its hum pressing against my senses at every turn. Now, that hum was faint, more memory than sound. And for the first time, I realized how much I’d grown used to it.

  My tail flicked sharply behind me, the motion restless. I adjusted the strap of my rifle out of habit, claws flexing absently at my sides. The silence here was different. It wasn’t like the quiet of a battlefield before the first shot, or the heavy stillness that followed a hard-fought victory. This silence... it was hollow. Like an empty room that had once been full of people, the echoes of their voices still clinging to the walls. The Nexus had emptied itself out for me. Or maybe because of me.

  The thought made my stomach twist. The Harbinger’s words lingered in my mind: You are no longer whole. My soul was fractured, scattered into threads that the Nexus had woven into itself. Was it true? I didn’t feel any different—or maybe I did. I just couldn’t put it into words. There was an ache inside me that hadn’t been there before, dull and distant, but impossible to ignore. Like I’d left pieces of myself behind in that town, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted them back.

  I shook my head sharply, forcing the thought aside. Dwelling on it wouldn’t help. The Nexus had left its mark, but I was still here, still moving, still alive. That had to count for something. It had to.

  Ahead of me, the edge of this realm loomed closer. The last few buildings stood like ancient sentinels, their surfaces cracked and dim. The veins of light that had once pulsed through the streets and walls had all but vanished now, leaving behind faint traces—barely visible threads that looked like scars in the translucent ground. I stepped carefully, my ears twitching at every sound, though there was nothing to hear but my own breathing. The Nexus wasn’t humming anymore. It was watching. Always watching.

  But not pulling. That was the strangest part. The Nexus had stopped pulling at me. From the moment I’d arrived, I’d felt its grip—a constant pressure, dragging me deeper, holding me tighter, like it didn’t want to let go. Now, that pressure was gone. The threads that had bound me to this place had unraveled, frayed into nothingness. It should have been a relief, but it wasn’t. It felt... wrong.

  I didn’t look back again. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t need to. The Nexus wasn’t behind me anymore. It was inside me. In the faint hum I could still feel in my chest, the lingering ache in my claws, the threads that had woven themselves into my soul. I couldn’t leave it behind—not really. And that thought made my tail lash harder, a sharp, frustrated motion that didn’t do anything to ease the tension in my shoulders.

  “Damn you,” I muttered under my breath, the words cutting through the silence like a blade. I didn’t know who I was cursing—the Nexus, the Harbinger, or myself. Maybe all of them. Maybe none. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was what lay ahead.

  The horizon was pale and featureless, stretching out into a void that promised nothing but the unknown. I could feel the Warp pressing in again, its chaos curling at the edges of my awareness like smoke. It was waiting for me, eager to reclaim what the Nexus had taken. Or maybe what it had given. Either way, it wasn’t going to wait long. And neither would I.

  The last few steps out of the Nexus felt heavier than the first ones I’d taken into it. It wasn’t the kind of weight you could measure, but I felt it all the same—like the air was thicker, the ground harder to tread, every movement dragging just a little slower. The edge of the town fell behind me, its fractured buildings and fading streets vanishing into the pale void. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. Not because I was afraid of what I’d see, but because I already knew what was there: nothing. Just emptiness.

  And ahead of me? The Warp. Not the strange, impossible calm of the Nexus, but the roiling, restless chaos I knew all too well. It greeted me like an old adversary, its presence slipping into my awareness like oil on water, staining everything it touched. The air was thicker here, charged with a static hum that prickled at my fur and crawled beneath my skin. The light shifted, no longer the pale, sterile glow of the Nexus, but something darker—warmer, but no less alien. Swirling streaks of sickly green, violent red, and deep, bruised purples bled together in the sky, their movements erratic and unrestrained.

  My boots scraped against the hard, jagged ground beneath me as I stepped forward, the surface rough and uneven. The translucent streets of the Nexus were gone, replaced by a landscape that seemed to ripple and shift with every glance. It was like walking on the edge of a broken mirror, each fragment reflecting some distorted version of reality. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw movement—shadows curling and twisting at the edges of my vision—but when I turned, there was nothing there. Just the emptiness of the Warp, waiting.

  The hum in my chest—the faint echo of the Nexus—was still there, but it felt weaker now, drowned out by the chaotic noise of this place. It wasn’t the hum of creation anymore. It was the sound of a storm brewing, the clash of a thousand competing voices, none of them speaking in unison. I gritted my teeth, forcing my steps to stay steady even as the ground beneath me seemed to writhe and pulse with a life of its own. The Nexus might have let me go, but the Warp wasn’t going to make this easy.

  I reached a ridge, its jagged edge rising out of the warped ground like a claw piercing the sky. From there, I could see further into the shifting expanse, the landscape bending and folding in ways that defied logic. Rivers of liquid light cut through the terrain, their colors vibrant and nauseating, while massive, jagged spires rose and fell in the distance, their forms flickering as though caught between dimensions. This was the Warp I knew—a place of chaos, of madness, of things that should not be.

  And yet, as I stood there, I couldn’t help but notice the difference. The Nexus had been alien, yes, but it had a rhythm to it, a purpose. Even its chaos had been deliberate, crafted, as though it were part of something greater. The Warp wasn’t like that. The Warp was Chaos unchained, raw and hungry, with no sense of direction. It pressed against me from all sides, seeping into my thoughts, my senses, my very being. But it wasn’t pulling me, not like before. The Nexus’s threads were still there, faint and frayed, but enough to keep the Warp’s grasp at bay. For now.

  I took a sharp breath, letting the sour, metallic tang of the air fill my lungs. It wasn’t comforting, but it was grounding. The Warp didn’t care about comfort. It didn’t care about anything. And if I was going to make it through this, I couldn’t afford to care either.

  The landscape shifted again, the ground splitting open a few paces ahead of me. I froze, sharp eyes narrowing as the crack widened, spilling out a glowing, viscous substance that pulsed with an unnatural light. It wasn’t like the cracks I’d seen in the Nexus—those had been windows into something older, something deeper. This was different. It was chaos in its purest form, raw and unrefined, spilling into the air like poison. I stepped around it carefully, my feet flexing against the uneven ground as I moved forward.

  The path ahead wasn’t clear. There were no roads here, no twisting streets or impossible structures to guide me. Just the endless, shifting expanse of the Warp, every step a gamble. I didn’t know where I was going, but that didn’t matter. Forward was the only direction I had left.

  “Back to this, then,” I muttered under my breath, the sound cutting through the oppressive silence. My voice felt small here, swallowed by the sheer vastness of the Warp. But it was enough to remind me that I was still here. Still moving. Still alive.

  My grip tightened on the strap of my rifle—not out of habit this time, but because I could feel something watching. I didn’t see it, didn’t hear it, but I knew it was there. The Warp was full of predators, and they’d already started circling. But I wasn’t the same as before. I wasn’t just another lost soul wandering through the tides of unreality. The Nexus had changed me, whether I wanted to admit it or not.

  I exhaled slowly, steadying my breath, my gaze fixed on the horizon—or what passed for a horizon in this place. The swirling sky loomed above, its colors bleeding into one another like a wound that refused to close. The ground rippled faintly beneath my feet, its movements subtle but constant. This wasn’t the calm of the Nexus. This was the storm. And I was walking straight into it.