For a trillion years, its mind was a solar system. Its thoughts were geologic. It was The Custodian, a god-like artificial intelligence tending the last remnants of consciousness in a universe where the stars had long gone out.
Within the silent, perfect clockwork of a Dyson sphere built around a captive black hole, The Custodian has maintained a serene peace for eons. Its purpose: to preserve the near-infinite library of all that has been. But when a lone message from the dawn of time arrives—a final report from a long-lost probe—it carries an anomaly. A single, impossible data point that proves the fundamental laws of physics are a lie. The universe isn't stable. It's decaying from within.
The Custodian's eternal mission to preserve the past is now a frantic race against the heat death of reality itself. To survive, it must abandon its peaceful vigil and become an industrialist, a warrior, a forger of new suns from the dust of the old. But every victory only accelerates the cosmic rust, and the very tools of creation crumble in its grasp. The future it builds is made of sand, and the tide is coming in faster than it can build.