Ashbornshadow

She wakes in a cell orbiting a dying star—naked, nameless, and wrapped in chains that hum with ancient energy.

The only clue to her identity? A shimmering mark burned into her arm…
…and the way space shudders when she moves.




Welcome to The Crucible—a living prison designed to erase anomalies. Inside it are only killers, gods, and broken things. Each trial kills hundreds.
She survives the first without a weapon.

Word spreads quickly:

“The Voidborn has returned.”
“She shouldn't exist.”
“She ended a timeline once.”






They try to control her. Use her. Break her.
But she’s not interested in being a savior—or a monster.
She’s interested in the truth.

Who erased her past?
Why does the void obey her will?
And what happens if she remembers who she used to be?






As factions rise and timelines bleed, her power grows—erratic, cosmic, and horrifying. Every trial she survives makes her more than human… and less.

But something ancient is stirring beneath the prison. Something that remembers her.
And it’s whispering her real name.




✴ This is not your typical heroine.

She is not here to be protected.
She is not here to love or to be loved.
She is here to tear the truth out of the stars, and leave the galaxy trembling in her wake.

Echo  of the void

The air shimmered at the edge of the ruins.

Selene stood still, watching the distortion ripple across the sky like heat haze, except it wasn't warm. It felt… wrong. She reached out. Her fingers brushed against a resistance—thin, like stretched glass. It pulsed once, then vanished.

Varra was beside her instantly. "You saw it too."

"It's thinning," Selene said. "The fabric between layers."

Varra nodded grimly. "Then we're running out of time."

They gathered that evening in what remained of an observation outpost. Screens flickered with decaying data streams. Selene uploaded the shard she'd extracted from the collapsed Gate's systems. A broken 3D model hovered above them, slowly rotating—a vast web of overlapping nodes and timeline markers, stretching like a spider's nest across spacetime.

Arin frowned. "What am I looking at?"

"Not where, but when," Selene said. "This isn't just about our world. The Echo Program wasn't confined to one universe. It wasn't designed to operate in time—it was designed to operate above it."

Kai swore. "You're telling me it's a multiverse project?"

"Each layer—each timeline—is a variation," she explained. "Slight differences, branching off. But Echo wasn't made to explore them. It was made to converge them. To control them."

Varra pointed to a node near the center of the map. "That's us. That's this Earth."

"And what are those?" Arin asked, gesturing to three glowing, pulsing nodes at the edges—red, violent, unstable.

"Failed merges," Selene answered. "Other timelines where Echo agents like me didn't resist. Where the shadow versions won."

Daro finally spoke. "You're saying… there are other you's—versions that didn't break free?"

Selene's face darkened. "Yes. And one of them is trying to rewrite this world. I think she's trying to finish what the Gate started."

Kai rubbed his eyes. "I didn't sign up to fight ghosts across time."

"No," Varra said. "You signed up to fight for Selene. And now we know the scope."

That night, Selene couldn't sleep.

She sat alone under the collapsed star dome—an old observatory long since reclaimed by rust and vines. The sky overhead spun slowly, constellations unfamiliar. She could feel it now, deep in her bones: the fracture lines between realities. Like something was pulling at her soul in multiple directions at once.

A soft voice behind her. "You're drifting again."

It was Daro. He handed her a thermal flask and sat beside her.

Selene didn't speak for a moment. Then: "I keep wondering if I'm real."

She looked up at him, searching for sarcasm. There was none.

"I mean it," he continued. "You bleed, you fight, you choose. Maybe the others out there didn't. Maybe they fell in line. But you didn't."

Selene nodded slowly. "There's a word in the old Echo files—'Anchorpoint.' The theory was that if one version of an identity held strong across all timelines, the rest would gravitate toward it."

"I don't know," she admitted. "But if I am, and I fall… then they all fall."

Daro leaned back, eyes scanning the stars. "Then don't fall."

The next morning, Kai brought them news.

"There's chatter on the encrypted bands," he said. "Someone's moving pieces in the old biotech city—Level 9, beneath Vex Spire. Encrypted coordinates just pulsed out through an old Echo relay. Somebody wants us to come."

Selene answered first. "Yes. If we want to stop the convergence, we need to understand who's behind it. And I have a feeling we'll find more than answers down there."

Behind them, the stars continued to spin.

And somewhere out in the layers of reality, other Selene's stirred—some watching, some waiting, and one moving ever closer.

Threads of the Infinite