Continuation: "Inheritors of the Stars"
For three centuries, Xingtong's golden points of light drifted through the cosmos, eventually converging into a hazy nebula suspended high above the Guardians Alliance Headquarters. Known as the "Eye of Hope," this nebula projected Xingtong's phantom whenever any civilization faced a crisis—sometimes appearing as a warrior wielding the Sword of Source Code, sometimes as a gentle mentor stroking the starry sky, but most often, she simply flickered quietly, guarding those fledgling guardians the way a mother watches over her children.
In the 301st year of the Alliance's establishment, an unprecedented phenomenon known as "Dimensional Fading" began to spread. First, the stars in the fringe universes lost their color, and then the physical world gradually grew transparent, as if the entire dimension were being tuned into a state of "non-existence." When the first reconnaissance team transmitted back footage showing a team member's hand passing straight through their spacecraft's console, the new Alliance leader—the guardian from the mechanical universe, Lady Gear—urgently activated the emergency protocol left behind by Xingtong.
"This is 'Concept Erasure,'" Xingtong's phantom manifested in the Alliance Council Hall, her outline blurrier than ever before. "Some entity is fundamentally negating the concept of 'matter,' wiping out an entire dimension as easily as deleting a computer file."
Chapter 251