EQUINOX || The Catalysts Series, #3

equinox

prelude

Andromeda Sector remains in ashes.

That's the most of what Lena can tell, from the grounds of its border—an energy barricade circulating the entire zone ever since the explosion that had it destroyed. The rift—a dimensional opening between their world and a demon realm—was the cause of it, the demons that were tearing through from it stronger than even the S-Class can manage.

And now as Lena gaze upon the purplish force field and beyond it, she isn't sure if there is anything left in there at all.

Her gaze drops to the ground, where her boots meet dirt ground. Andromeda may be the one sector that's abandoned, but that doesn't mean the surrounding area is as ghostly. The buildings around her are worn down and not financed as compared to the ones in the Static—the bricks old and crept with dirt, the glass windows long since destroyed and shattered. Electricity does not reach the few buildings teeming the borders of Sectors Andromeda and Bellatrix. The lone buildings here are, Lena realises, populated with squatters, even if Andromeda Sector is so close.

Lena wonders about the people here who have made thisu official space their home—if they were once occupants of the destroyed Andromeda Sector. While she has heard the reports from the authorities regarding the dispatch and allocation of Andromeda's residents to their new homes, she can't entirely be sure because the sector was long quarantined before Lena herself arrived in the City of Leatia. And, judging from the presence of children in this area, there are families here, living off this run-down place. If it's to do with the fall of Andromeda, it's unclear.

The sight is another awakening for Lena. She has been given a proper suite of her own in Sector Eridanus and, studying in Arcane Academy which is located in the Static, the lavish buildings and lifestyles there have all this while deluded her into imagining the City of Leatia to be flawless and above imperfections.

But Lena has been wandering around the City of Leatia these past few days—and only as she encounters these areas does she realise problems the City has: injustice and inequality amongst ability users, and poverty.

She's willing to bet these people hiding out here are either low level ability users or have none at all.

Her fingers curl, nails digging into her palms. At the sight of these areas, these people, something uneasy unfurls within her chest. Lena thinks about how she might have been one of the people here, if it isn't for Arcana; worse still, she considers how she might have brought this upon them, with what she now know her abilities can accomplish. And even if she has lost her memories weaving the universe this way, she cannot help but feel responsible for everything for she herself holds what determines the makings of the world.

Only nearly a week ago, Lena discovered her abilities are more than what meets her eyes on the surface. Her abilities, what they might seem, enable her to see random visions that form on the surface of glass objects. And yet, Lena has since learnt that she can phase through glass, transversing through the space in between so long as she has a glass medium placed somewhere. But the images across glass she sees serve more than mere visions, and glass objects are more than mediums: she soon discovered that the scenes that shift and appear on glass are actually worlds within—dimensions. And being able to pass through that very medium makes her a trespasser of universes, realms.

Those worlds, Lena comes to realise, are not limited to their own. They act as branches of existences across the universe, of different realities or states the world might be in. Hence the reason she had somehow accidentally travelled a short distance back in time on two occasions recently. There was also this one time, now she recalls, that she'd unintentionally—she is still eternally grateful for that fateful timing—sent a deadly explosion away into some random realm when it was at the brink of eliminating all of them on the Aerotrain. She'd thus saved the situation and everyone involved, without realising she did back then. That means that other than herself, objects can be sent spiralling into the unknown abyss, too.