Years passed. Or perhaps it was centuries. Time flowed differently now, measured not by the turning of suns or the cycle of seasons, but by the slow drift of galaxies and the birth and death of stars. They traveled.
Their vessel was not a ship of metal or crystal. It was a small, self-contained bubble of reality, woven from Rhys's own divine will and Emma's precise mental control.
Inside, it resembled the quiet, comfortable study of a scholar, lined with bookshelves filled with data crystals gathered from a hundred different worlds, a soft, warm light emanating from no discernible source.
Outside the bubble's transparent walls, the infinite, vibrant tapestry of the reformed cosmos flowed past them – nebulae like spilled paint, rivers of starlight, the dark, quiet emptiness between galaxies.
