Chapter 2: A Dying Star.

Author's Note:

Damn, I really like how this chapter turned out! Let me know what you think!

The next chapter will be up this weekend, and I promise to post two chapters on the same day since we missed today's update. The release might be on Sunday, but I'll do my best to finish them earlier.

Either way, drop your thoughts and ideas for the story—I’d love to hear them!

The Abyss Stares Back

Chapter 2: A Dying Star.

Caelum Hayes.

The Void.

The Void was silent.

Not in the way an empty room was silent, filled with the distant hum of machinery and the whisper of breathing. Not even in the way space itself was quiet, where sound could not travel, the mind could fill the absence with its own noise.

No, the Void was truly silent—a place where the laws of existence frayed, where even thoughts felt like they drifted too far, stretching at the edges before snapping back into place.

I had never feared it.

But I respected it.

I stood at the observation deck of my Orbiter, watching the unnatural Rift that had pulled me off course. It floated in the dark expanse, shifting and writhing as if it were alive, a wound in reality that pulsed with breath.

It was wrong, even by Void standards.

"Ordis, scan it again."

A flicker of golden light rippled across the console as my Cephalon processed my command. His voice crackled through the comms, the usual static of his fragmented mind held at bay by the seriousness of the situation.

"Operator, scans continue to return... inconsistencies. There is no record of a Rift behaving like this! And may I remind you that the last time we encountered such an event—YOU ALMOST DIED!"

I exhaled through my nose. Ordis was not wrong.

But I had come too far to turn back now.

"Noted. Give me a breakdown."

"The Rift is unstable. Composition—approximately 89% Void energy, 6% unknown stellar mass, and 5% data corruption! It is... changing, Operator. Every moment it remains open, its frequency shifts as if something on the other side is trying to stabilize it!"

Something on the other side.

I didn't like that.

I adjusted the grip on my rifle, fingers curling over the trigger out of habit rather than necessity. The Void had many dangers—unknowable, ancient things lurking at the edges of existence—. Still, I had spent my life mastering them.

Still, I had the creeping sensation that this was different.

"Ordis, has any other Tenno responded to the alert?"

"Negative! The Lotus has issued a quadrant-wide lockdown. No ships are permitted to enter the Rift."

Then I was alone.

Not unexpected. Not the first time.

I reached forward, pressing my palm to the command panel. My Warframe—sleek, battle-worn, primed with the strength of centuries—stood at attention in the chamber below, waiting for my arrival.

I knew what I had to do.

"Prep for breach."

Ordis hesitated. "Operator, I STRONGLY recommend—"

I cut the transmission.

The Rift loomed before me, pulsing, hungry.

Then, the storm began.

A deep, resounding boom echoed through the ship—not sound, but pressure like something had shifted inside reality. The Orbiter shuddered violently. The Rift pulsed, expanding outward in a blinding surge of white-gold light. A wave of raw Void energy slammed into the ship, sending warning sirens screeching through the comms.

Ordis screamed. "O-O-O-O-PERATOR! SYSTEMS—FAILING—" His voice fragmented, shredded into broken static.

I had faced Eidolons, Grineer fleets, and Infested swarms. But there was nothing here.

Nothing was attacking the ship.

Yet the walls buckled inward as if the fabric of reality was trying to crush us into nothingness.

"Ordis, what’s happening?!"

"WE—WE—WE ARE NOT MOVING! THE UNIVERSE IS MOVING AROUND US!"

The Rift pulsed again. The ship lurched. A jagged tear of golden-white light ripped through the hull—not metal, not a physical impact, but a wound in existence itself.

Then I felt it—pain.

Not a wound. Not a bullet or blade.

Something peeled into me at a level deeper than flesh. Like my body and my Warframe were being pulled apart at the seams.

I staggered, transference flickering, my link to the Warframe cutting in and out. My vision blurred, and the edges of reality folded.

The Rift collapsed.

Not closed. Collapsed.

The space where it had been imploded inward, dragging everything into an absence beyond the Void. The Orbiter was already too deep inside to escape.

I forced out one last command. "Ordis… keep us together."

Then, the world vanished.

There was no motion. No light.

Not even the Void.

This was somewhere else.

I saw flashes of places that never existed: a battlefield where the dead rose and fell endlessly, a city that spiraled inward upon itself, every street leading to the same point, a tower that reached into the sky and yet stood upside down. Time stretched. My body… did I still have a body?

Ordis was pulling me forward through something vast and unseen.

Then—

A light.

A sun.

The Orbiter tore free from the storm’s grip, sent hurtling through the Void of space, its hull barely holding together. Alarms blared, flashing red across every console. No contact with the Lotus. No known star maps.

A planet appeared on the sensors.

Ordis' voice crackled weakly through the comms.

"O-o-o-operator… We have reached… a familiar gravitational body. Scanning for… for…"

He hesitated.

I forced myself up, pain lancing through my body. "Ordis, report."

Silence. Then—

"Operator… this is Earth. But not… our Earth."

My breath slowed. A cold, painful realization settled in my chest.

I was not where I was supposed to be.

I could feel my blood flowing, warmth leaving my body in slow pulses. My thoughts were hazy, slipping between awareness and the creeping dark. Pain clawed at every nerve, but worse than the pain was the realization—I had never felt this before.

Warframes didn’t feel pain, not like this.

I knew my body well enough to understand the truth. I was beyond saving.

"What’s happening, Ordis?" I choked out, my voice raw. Each word burned in my throat.

I spat a glob of blood, feeling what little strength I had drained away with it. With a struggle, I forced myself to move, twisting my body just enough to get a glimpse of my surroundings.

The Orbiter was in shambles.

A thick Void barrier flickered across the ruptured hull, holding back the vacuum of space. If it weren’t there, I’d already be choking on nothingness, my body crystallizing in the frozen Void.

I wasn’t sure how long the barrier would last.

"Operator—" Ordis’ voice crackled, the usual glitch cutting through its speech. "We… we have entered the orbit of… this Earth’s moon! But the ship—damage sustained—scanners compromised—I-I-I cannot get clear readings!"

The Cephalon’s hesitance was rare. Ordis was nervous.

I sucked in a slow, shallow breath, dragging myself toward the nearest Wall. Every movement was like forcing shattered bones through broken flesh. I was lightheaded—losing too much blood too fast.

Memories flashed behind my eyes, blurred and distant, too fast for me to focus on.

I was dying.

"Explain properly," I grunted, gripping the Wall for support. My fingers trembled against the cold metal.

Silence.

Then, Ordis’ voice returned—quieter this time.

"Operator… there is something here. Something… big."

I felt the faintest prickle at the back of my mind, the instinct I had honed across countless battles. A hunter’s awareness. A presence watching.

"What do you mean 'something'?" My voice came out lower, weaker.

Another pause. A flicker of static. Ordis was thinking. Processing.

"Operator… there is a massive construct moving in high-altitude orbit. It is… not of Sentient, Orokin, or Infested origin."

My breath hitched.

Even in my failing state, that was a problem.

"Define 'construct'."

"Size estimate… over fifteen feet tall. Composition—unknown. Reflective metallic plating, yet partially organic. Generating a passive gravitational disturbance." Ordis’ voice glitched again. "I… I am uncertain, Operator, but… it appears to be watching us."

I forced myself to keep breathing. Slow. Steady.

Even without proper scans, Ordis had picked up something unnatural.

And it was watching.

"Show me."

A flicker of golden static danced across the shattered screens, the remaining display systems barely functional. What appeared next on the broken monitor made my chest tighten.

A figure—massive, white, serene in shape yet deeply unnatural. Beautiful.

A pair of glowing silver eyes.

The image blurred, static swallowing the screen before it cleared again, showing a slow, deliberate head tilt.

I trusted my instincts, honed after centuries of battle. I had felled humans, I had felled monsters, I had battled gods when no one believed in us… I killed gods and proved their blood could flow like the rest of us.

“That thing isn’t watching us,” I groaned, forcing the words through the pain. “It’s looking behind us.”

The Orbiter shuddered violently; the universe reminded me I had more immediate problems.

"Ordis, search for a safe place to land," I ordered, my voice weak. I was slipping. Every second that passed, I could feel the edges of my awareness fraying, my vision narrowing.

There was no hesitation in Ordis’ response. Despite the damage, the Cephalon obeyed without argument.

"Initiating planetary scan… scanning… scanning… atmospheric compatibility—within acceptable ranges! Adjusting trajectory!"

The ship lurched as Ordis adjusted our descent. I let my head fall back, eyes slipping shut as the ship's systems struggled against gravity, heat, and failing hull integrity.

I didn’t know where we were going.

I didn’t care.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

The landing wasn’t gentle.

The Orbiter crashed down hard, skidding across uneven terrain before finally grinding to a stop. I felt the ship groan beneath me, barely holding together. Everything was too quiet. No alarms. No atmosphere breaches.

That was never a good sign.

Forcing my aching body to move, I turned my head—just slightly. The viewport showed a landscape that was not Earth. The terrain was harsh, unfamiliar, and empty.

A dead planet.

I sucked in a slow, painful breath. I was still bleeding out.

And then—

Rap. Tap. Tap.

I froze.

That sound… Rell. My brother.

My fingers twitched, but I had no strength to grab my weapon.

A shape shifted in my peripheral vision.

He was already inside the Orbiter.

Leaning against the ruined Wall, arms crossed, looking at me with something that was both amusement and sadness.

A perfect copy of me.

But wrong.

His grin was too broad, his eyes too bright, flickering with void energy potent enough to chill my blood.

"Well, kiddo," the Man in the Wall murmured, voice light, mocking, almost fond.

He tilted his head, studying me.

"Look at you now. Bleeding. Dying. Such a shame. I thought you were better than this."

I didn’t answer. Didn’t waste my breath.

"Oh, don’t be like that," The lidless eye sighed, pushing off the Wall and taking a slow, casual step forward. He crouched beside me, his too-bright eyes searching mine.

Then he smirked.

"Hurts, doesn’t it?"

I clenched my jaw. The pain was already unbearable—his words just added salt to the wound.

"You used to be untouchable," he mused. "A god among mortals. A ghost on the battlefield. But now? Look at you. Just another dying soldier."

There was something in his tone—mockery, but also something else.

Something too close to grief.

I exhaled slowly, forcing my mind to focus. I knew the being before me since that fateful day in the Zariman 10-0. He had always been with us, whispering in our ears and showing up whenever he wanted. The Observer, The Lidless Eye, The Man in the Wall… The Indifference.

I knew his games. I knew his twisted sense of humor.

But I also knew he owed me.

And I was going to collect.

"You still owe me a favor."

The words came out weak, but the effect was immediate.

The Man in the Wall froze, his grin fading just slightly.

Then, after a long pause, he chuckled. A soft, dark sound made my feeble body shiver even as I tried to control it.

"Ah… so you remember."

I swallowed back the pain. “I do.”

His grin returned, but it was sharper now, something hungry behind it.

"Alright, kiddo," he murmured, voice almost affectionate. "What do you want?"

I took a slow, shallow breath. My vision blurred, but my voice was clear.

"A successor."

His expression didn’t change. Not at first. But there was something in his eyes now.

Something like understanding.

And then, for the first time, the Man in the Wall did not smile.

The ship’s lights flickered.

The air grew heavy.

"You really want to do this?" he asked. Not mocking now. Serious. “You know what you are asking of me, Kiddo?”

I closed my eyes, my body failing, my blood pooling beneath me.

"Yes."

There was a long silence.

Then—

A hand on my forehead. Cold. Unnatural. The missing finger on his hand reminded me of my duties. The only thing stopping him from becoming more. So long the indifference is missing a digit, it is confined to the strands of Khra.

A whisper, curling into my mind like smoke.

"Then let’s find you a kiddo of your own. You know you just have to accept my deal."

Slowly, I crushed the strands of caution and regret filling my head. I nodded.

And the world went dark.

The Great Indifference.

The Void trembled.

Not with fear. Not with anger. But with change.

Something was breaking, unspooling at the seams, its fragile threads fraying in ways that delighted and saddened him all at once. Such things were always inevitable, yet he watched anyway. He always watched.

He lurked in the periphery, where thought bled into unreality, where perception twisted upon itself. No shape, no proper form. Not yet.

Instead, he existed, slipping between layers, brushing against the frayed edges of a warship clinging to existence as it was swallowed into the abyss. The Voidstorm churned, devouring, consuming. It should have been nothing more than another lost vessel, another shattered soul drifting into the endless night.

But this was different.

The first of them, wasn’t he? The strongest. The leader. The war god of a dead empire, cast into the dark like a forgotten relic. How… entertaining.

The Man in the Wall did not feel pity, not in the way others would understand it. But he knew loss; he understood its weight in ways mortals could never grasp. How often had he watched these creatures fight, break, fade away? How many more times would he watch?

Endless. Always. Forever… and Never.

And yet, as he loomed over the Tenno’s broken body, he felt something sharp, sweet, cold. A cocktail of emotions. Amusement, curiosity, regret. Ah, how fragile they all were.

He had seen this Tenno at his peak—the unyielding will, how he conquered the impossible, and how his presence alone had reshaped the battlefield. He had been a force of nature, a will beyond measure.

And now, he bled.

There was something beautiful about it.

The Man in the Wall had always found their contradictions fascinating. Warframes—the mighty, untouchable weapons of gods—piloted by children who once cried to nightmares. But this one had long since stopped being a child. A warrior. A legend.

And now, a dying man.

A shame, really.

The Void buckled. Reality twisted inward, folding over itself like a wound trying to heal improperly. The ship was being sucked in, dragged through the collapsing storm. It should have ended here.

But The Great Indifference was not done watching.

He followed, slipping through the cracks, folding into the space between spaces where even time held its breath.

The world was… dull.

A frayed little reality, hollow in ways that would have amused him had he not already seen a thousand like it before. Weaker. Less refined. A world teetering on the edge of ruin, not from something more, but from its own creatures desperately tearing at one another.

Still, he followed. The ship—if it could even be called that anymore—tumbled through the atmosphere, its ruined hull burning, failing, falling. His dear little war god wasn’t long for this world.

But then, something fluttered.

A presence reached out, brushing against the periphery of His awareness.

Ah. What’s this?

It hovered in the sky, a delicate thing of white and silver, singing a song of madness that rippled across reality. He tilted his head, watching it as it watched him in return—a curious little thing.

He had seen creatures like this before—false harbingers, echoes of something greater that thought themselves beyond understanding.

This one… it thought it was fear incarnate. A Hope Killer.

He almost laughed.

He had eaten things far worse than this before.

With idle amusement, he watched as the construct stirred, turning slightly toward the ship. She had noticed something unnatural outside the design of her fragile little game. But The Lidless Eye knew precisely what happened. The construct was blind. Oh, she could feel the changes. Of that, he was sure. But she could not see them. She never would, lest her fragile mind would shatter.

Her song did not reach him.

It never could.

Still, he found her adorable, like a fledgling mimic grasping at something far beyond its reach.

He dismissed her entirely.

There was no contest here.

The only reason he did not devour her then was because of simple disinterest.

Instead, he turned his attention back to his dying Tenno.

Pain. Blood. Weakness.

Ah, how mortal he had become.

The Man in the Wall watched, crouching beside him, mirroring his shattered form deliberately. He could be laughing, mocking him. Yet, there was a flicker of something else—something he did not often entertain.

Regret?

No. That was a lie.

Not regret. Something… adjacent.

It had always been inevitable, hadn’t it? The war, the cycle, the slow, creeping end of everything. Even gods died. Even the Titans crumbled. And now, so did his dear war-god.

"Well, kiddo."

The words came easy, effortless, gentle even.

Mockery? Perhaps. But not entirely.

He knew the Tenno had nothing left, and his mind was already moving past the pain and loss toward something greater.

A last request. A final debt.

The Man in the Wall tilted his head, considering. He could refuse, of course. He could let this Tenno rot and slip into the abyss like all the others before him.

And yet…

How could he deny such a delicious little bargain?

How could he refuse the chance to continue simply… continue?

His lips curled into a grin, a sharp thing that made his dear Tenno shudder.

"Then let’s find you a kiddo of your own."

With the barest flick of his hand, the universe shifted.

The moment he willed it, the universe opened before him.

Not in the way mortals saw it—trapped in the small, linear prison of cause and effect, bound by the crawl of time, past and future. No, the Man in the Wall did not see the universe. He felt it.

All of it.

A thousand possibilities, a thousand fates.

He let them slip through his fingers like threads of gold, each strand of existence shimmering and unfolding at his whim.

He saw the teeming insects of this world, scurrying, devouring, surviving. Their lives are brief, their stories small. Yet each one carried the weight of something greater, their struggles shaping the fragile future of this little multiverse.

He felt the tides of war, the distant pull of the so-called Endbringers, and the swirling madness of parahumans breaking their own reality with mere will. A thousand tragedies played out at once, the echoes of fear and hatred staining the fabric of this world.

He could hear the smallest of whispers and the loudest screams, from the cosmic hum of dying stars to the silent, broken sobs of a girl locked in darkness, covered in filth, her mind splintering beneath the betrayal.

How poetic.

This world was built on suffering, on the desperate, bleeding need to be more.

Yet there was something beautiful in all its chaos, fire, and ruin.

A song of defiance. A ballad of hatred.

A melody of those who refused to break.

He felt them all. The warlords and the beggars, the dreamers and the killers. The ones who clawed at the dark and the ones who let it consume them.

But he was not looking for them.

He was looking for one.

The threads of fate twisted, weaving together, snapping apart, reforming anew. He let the countless possibilities slip past him, filtering through them with the ease of a god picking through creation.

Then—

He found him.

A boy.

Not special. Not yet.

But there was something hidden beneath flesh and blood and the tangle of human pain.

A spark. A familiar kind of rage, raw and festering. A deep, untapped hatred for weakness, a yearning to be more.

Ah.

He recognized that feeling.

The same fire burned in the heart of every Tenno before they became legends.

The boy knelt on the floor of a store, his back against the leg of his attacker, his face bruised, stomach bleeding, just like his dear Tenno. His hands shook, not from fear but from sheer, burning rage.

The attackers had broken him before they even touched him. By mere words.

His mother had betrayed him with her decisions.

He had been set on a path of failure, forced to struggle beneath a world that would never love him.

And yet, he was still here.

He is still fighting in his own way.

The Man in the Wall tilted his head, watching the boy’s soul flicker and churn, shifting between despair and defiance.

Yes.

Yes, he would do.

He let his grin widen. Oh, he was already feeling excitement. A little plaything he could mess around, with no Rell to cover for him for hundreds of years.

The universe recoiled as he reached forward, his presence pouring into reality, his will wrapping around the boy like an unseen hand.

Nate Vasquez.

A child, a mortal, a broken thing.

But all weapons started as unforged steel.

And the best Tenno had always been broken first.

The Man in the Wall let out a low, delighted chuckle, his voice curling through the world's edges like smoke.

"Welcome to the game, kiddo."

And with a mere thought, he poured his essence into the boy.

It was not fire or lightning. Not something grand or dramatic, not a pillar of light that shattered the heavens.

No, it was subtle. It was something and nothing at the same time. It was simply... The Void.

A ripple in the air, a shudder in the fabric of existence, something so faint that the universe barely noticed.

But Nate Vasquez noticed.

He gasped—a sharp, rattling breath as if he had been drowning and only now breached the surface. His body tensed, every nerve alight with something foreign, invasive, endless.

The Void seeped into him, threading through his veins, slipping between the gaps of his thoughts. Not forcefully. Not violently. Like an old companion settling into a long-forgotten home.

His breathing evened out. The pain that had racked his body moments ago faded—not gone, not fully healed, but dulled. Manageable. His heartbeat slowed, then steadied, an unnatural rhythm syncing itself with something greater.

There were no golden markings, no scars of divinity, no clear sign of transformation.

But if someone were to look very closely, they might just notice.

His pupils, just for an instant, reflected something that wasn’t there. Not light, not the world around him, but something deeper. The cold shimmer of the Void. A trick of the light, gone the moment one tried to focus on it. His shadow seemed… different. No longer, not darker, but wrong in a way the human brain couldn’t define. His movements, when he stood, were just a little too fluid. A little too precise.

The Great Indifference smiled, watching as the boy stirred, the world around him none the wiser.

Then, like a whisper fading into the wind, He was gone.