After the Stars

Six months had passed since the Unmaking ceased, and Alexia had learned to hate silence.

She stood atop the Obsidian Spire—a tower she'd carved from crystallized void-matter at the heart of what had once been the multiversal nexus. Below her stretched an endless expanse of grey wasteland punctuated by the skeletal remains of dimensional gateways. No wind stirred the ash-covered ground. No birds sang. Even the cosmic background radiation had been muted to barely perceptible whispers.

The war was over. They had won.

But victory, Alexia discovered, could taste remarkably like defeat.