The stargate jump felt like being hurled into a torrent of light. For fifteen seconds, the concepts of time and space blurred beyond recognition, leaving only countless vivid splashes of color and piercing shrieks of energy streaking past the edges of their awareness. When the Dawnbringer shuddered violently and burst out of the jump corridor, everyone on the bridge finally recovered from that weightless dizziness.
Beyond the viewports lay not the Dust-Hidden Star's dim skies, but a suffocating sight.
An immense ring, formed from countless wrecked pieces of metal and crystal, hung silently in the cold void. Its scale defied imagination, its diameter large enough to encompass several planets. Its structure was intricate and precise; even scarred as it was now, traces of its former glory remained. This was the Ring of Oaths, the sacred place where the Seven Great Civilizations had sworn a blood covenant a thousand years ago.
Yet that sacred place had become a deathly silent tomb.
The ring's main structure had broken in several places. Enormous metal beams twisted out into the void like the bones of a dying beast. Vast stretches of its protective crystal shell had peeled away, exposing the blackened framework beneath. Countless fragments of every size slowly orbited the main structure like planetary rings. Among them drifted innumerable shipwrecks of different designs-starlit hulls resembling those of the People of the Stars, heavy, ancient-looking stone warships, sleek alien vessels with an organic appearance, and, most numerous and conspicuous of all, the distinctive black or dark red wreckage of Ōtsutsuki Clan warships.
The scars of battle were horrifying. Energy burns, enormous gashes, and craters left by explosions all testified to the ferocity of the battle once fought here.
"The Ring of Oaths... how could this happen..." Elder Mochen staggered and caught himself against the