The Wandering Territories received him mid-air above the multicolored sea, his emergence point selected through THE Infinite Step with the specific attention to positioning of a being who wanted to observe the full scope of what he was returning to before committing to a direction.
What he observed was comprehensive.
His Apeiron had all been collapsed. Every single one, their signatures absent from the surrounding space except as the residual warmth of recent Kilonova detonations that still lingered in the ambient substrate like afterimages of light. They had not gone quietly!
The Gilded Ones scattered across the region in their thousands wore the consequences of the detonation chain on their expressions and in the visible depletion of their Infinity reserves, the beings who had been nearest the collapse points showing the specific hollowness of entities whose primary cultivation substrate had been forcibly evacuated and had not yet replenished.
