Symbol Technology

"When the second primal rune awakens, the entire universe will begin counting down to our funeral."

[Twenty years before the Cosmic Era, humanity unearthed a towering structure that reached into the heavens beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. Flowing, dark golden patterns covered its bronze inner walls, like the shed skin of some creature. The first explorer to enter the tower went mad on the spot, yet a glowing mark was burned into the palm of his frozen left hand. Those writhing strokes would be called the prototype of the "Hope" primal rune twenty years later.]

[After 120,000 cycles of civilization, I tread upon scattered fragments of rune-armed armor drifting through a starship graveyard, gazing at the chains of law peeling away from the dimensional membrane. They, them, and Those! Everyone tells me that deciphering runes grants god-tier technology, but they conceal the fact that every time a rune-tech civilization advances, the chewing sounds coming from the void grow a little clearer. They revere the nine primal runes as sacred relics of creation, yet turn a deaf ear to the "universal countdown" announced every day by the Discipline Nexus.]

[Now, only thirty seconds remain until the final ascension ceremony.]

[Either inherit the throne of an ancient civilization and become a new god, perpetuating this lie that has endured for countless epochs, or pull the trigger and let the former heroes known as "Void Lords", my ancestors, tear open every dimension and spit the truth into this rotten universe.]

WARNING: This universe has released a total of nine Void Lords.

Number of surviving civilizations: 1.