#pilot reader

The Necropolis breathed like a slumbering beast beneath its vaulted ceiling, vast and patient in a way that made the chamber feel older than the empire that occupied it. The stone above stretched so high into darkness that the torchlight faded long before reaching the top, swallowed by shadow as though the hall itself had no desire to reveal its full height. Massive pillars rose from the black-veined floor and disappeared into that darkness, each one as wide as the trunk of an ancient tree. Their surfaces had been carved over centuries with the history the Necromongers believed mattered: crusades etched in brutal relief, cities collapsing under armored conquest, saints of annihilation immortalized above the fallen. Beneath them, the condemned were preserved as reminders, their smaller forms crushed beneath armored feet to illustrate a simple lesson. Mercy was always carved smaller than victory.

The air carried the scent of burning oil from the torches mounted along the walls, mixed with iron and the dry dust that had settled over countless campaigns and ambitions. It was an old smell, the kind that lingered in places where power had changed hands too many times to count.

Makani stood beside one of the immense columns with her fingertips resting lightly against the cold stone, as though she needed the steady weight of it to anchor herself. For the first time since the chamber had fallen silent, she allowed herself to breathe fully. The breath came deeper than any she had taken since the battle ended, filling her lungs with air that tasted faintly metallic. It trembled slightly on the way out, not from weakness but from the sheer magnitude of what had just happened.

Around her, the Necromongers knelt.

They knelt in ranks so perfectly aligned they might have been mistaken for statues carved directly from the same stone as the pillars surrounding them. Armor pressed against the dark floor. Helmets bowed forward. Weapons rested flat in ritual surrender before the dais. Hundreds of warriors filled the hall. They were conquerors of worlds, the same soldiers who had broken civilizations and reduced entire systems to obedience. Yet now every one of them had lowered their head in silent recognition of their new Lord Marshal.

The stillness carried a gravity that seemed to press down on the hall itself.

For a moment, the sight satisfied her. Makani’s gaze moved slowly across the bowed helms and the disciplined quiet of submission that had cost so much blood and fire to achieve. The old regime had been shattered, its authority broken beneath prophecy, rebellion, and the brutal certainty of war. The future of the Necromonger empire remained uncertain, but it now had a name attached to it. The vast machinery of conquest had found a new axis upon which to turn.

Victory.

Her eyes lifted toward the dais, and the feeling faltered.

Jungkook Jeon did not look like victory. He sat near the throne but not upon it, as though the seat of dominion were an afterthought rather than the prize this entire war had been fought to claim. His armor still carried the dull sheen of fresh violence. Darkened edges marked where blade and fire had struck the metal, catching the flicker of torchlight in faint, trembling reflections. His shoulders were squared and his posture rigid with the quiet geometry of command, but his attention was nowhere near the army kneeling before him.

Those silver eyes, the same ones that had made armies hesitate on the battlefield, were fixed on the body lying at the base of the dais.

The woman had fallen where she stood during the final moments of the battle. Her limbs rested at angles too unnatural to be mistaken for sleep. Dark hair spread across the stone beneath her head like spilled ink, and whatever life had once animated her had fled so completely that even the air seemed reluctant to move around her.

She was no longer a presence. She had become an absence. And still Jungkook stared at her as though she were the only thing left in the universe. Whatever burned inside him now was not triumph. It was grief, raw and unguarded, deep enough that it seemed to hollow the silence around him.

Makani felt the quiet stretching thinner with every passing second. A hall full of zealots could endure many things. Pain. Bloodshed. Sacrifice. They could endure fear, and they could endure death. But uncertainty was different. Uncertainty had a way of spreading through ranks like rot through bone, and a Lord Marshal who did not claim the empire waiting before him was something the Necromongers could not endure for long.

Before the silence could fracture under its own weight, Makani stepped forward.

“Lord Marshal,” she began carefully, her voice steady despite the hard rhythm beating in her chest. “If I may suggest—”

“It is not your place to suggest anything to the Lord Marshal, Elemental.”

Makani turned her head slightly. Taehyung stood several paces behind her, tall and immovable beneath the shadow of his helm. His voice had not been raised, yet it carried through the vast hall without effort. There was no hostility in it, only the calm authority of someone who understood exactly where the lines of hierarchy had been drawn.

“Perhaps not,” she replied evenly. Her hands remained relaxed at her sides, her posture unchanged. “But that is ultimately for the Lord Marshal to decide, wouldn’t you agree?”

A muscle shifted along Taehyung’s jaw. His gaze flicked briefly toward Jungkook before returning to her, measuring the moment with the quiet precision of a soldier who understood how fragile power could become in situations like this.

After a moment he inclined his head.

“Yes.”

It was not approval, but it was permission.

Makani moved toward the steps of the dais, each footfall echoing softly against the ancient stone floor. She did not climb all the way to the throne. Instead she stopped several steps below it and lowered herself onto one knee near the top of the platform.

The gesture was deliberate. She made herself smaller, lowering her height and softening the outline of her body. An Alpha Furyan caught inside his own storm of emotion was not something a person approached the way they approached a ruler seated in triumph. He was something older and far more dangerous than that, a creature shaped by extinction and survival, one that did not always distinguish easily between ally and enemy when grief clouded its instincts.

Jungkook had not moved. He had not acknowledged the kneeling army, nor Taehyung, nor her. His gaze remained fixed on the woman’s still form at the base of the dais.

Makani tilted her head slightly and, with deliberate care, exposed the curve of her neck. It was not submission, not in the way the Necromongers understood it, but a quieter form of communication drawn from instincts older than language. Among predators it signaled trust, a controlled offering of vulnerability meant to show peace rather than weakness. She shifted just enough to step into the edge of Jungkook’s peripheral vision, careful not to move too quickly or give the impression that she was approaching him like a rival. Then she lifted her hands, palms open and empty.

“Jungkook,” she said softly.

She did not call him Lord Marshal. The title remained unspoken, left untouched rather than placed on him like another weight. Instead she used the name that had belonged to him long before prophecy, conquest, and an empire kneeling at his feet.

For a long moment he did not move. Then he blinked. It was a small thing, almost invisible, but something shifted behind his silver eyes. For the briefest instant a different light flared there, something sharper than the reflection of torchfire or the cold shine of armor.

Crematoria’s sun.

The memory struck him with the same sudden intensity as heat against exposed skin. That merciless star had hung above the prison world like a blade of fire, turning the air itself into something that could strip flesh from bone. Jungkook had once watched a man walk into that sun without hesitation. The Purifier had crossed the burning surface with a calm certainty that bordered on reverence, as if the inferno waiting ahead of him were not death but a doorway.

The man had not flinched. He had not slowed. He had not even looked back. The flames had taken him cleanly, swallowing him in white light so fierce that his body vanished almost instantly. Jungkook had envied that ending. Fire was honest. It devoured quickly and left nothing behind to rot.

He had survived things far worse. Once, hands had crushed his windpipe until the world dimmed at the edges and the sky seemed to collapse inward like closing fists. Blades had opened him from shoulder to hip. Bullets had burned through muscle and lodged stubbornly against bone. Over time the injuries had layered themselves across his body like poorly stitched patches, healing crookedly and leaving reminders behind in every stiff morning and every storm that crept into his joints.

He had survived all of it.

But this loss was different. It did not bleed and it could not be cauterized. It left no wound he could bind and no scar he could learn to ignore. Instead it hollowed him from the inside, carving out a quiet absence where something essential had once lived. He did not know how to carry that emptiness, and he did not want to carry it for another minute.

“I hear you, Makani,” he said at last. His voice came out low and rough, as though it had been scraped raw by disuse. The words did not echo through the chamber, but they did not need to. The vast hall seemed to lean inward to catch them. “What do you want?”

“To help you,” she replied without hesitation, her gaze steady on his face. “Acknowledge them. Dismiss them. Do not show what they will call weakness.”

Jungkook moved with the sudden violence of a storm breaking loose. One moment he sat on the dais, still as carved stone. The next he stood in front of her, his hand closing around her throat as he hauled her upward with terrifying speed. The motion sent a ripple through the kneeling ranks behind them, a collective intake of breath moving through armor and helmets like a single shudder.

Makani’s back struck the carved pillar beside the dais with a dull thud. His grip was firm around her throat, callused fingers pressing hard enough to remind her how easily those same hands could crush bone if he chose. His face hovered inches from hers, close enough that she could feel the heat of his breath against her cheek. Up close, the feral light in his eyes was unmistakable. Grief had sharpened there into something dangerous, something that wanted to tear and burn and break simply to feel a different kind of pain.

“Good advice,” he snarled softly. “Funny thing is, the prophecy didn’t say anything about this.”

The prophecy had followed him across worlds like a shadow, speaking of ascension and death, of a Lord Marshal who would not die. But it had never spoken of love, and it had certainly never spoken of loss. His fingers tightened slightly, not enough to cut off her air completely but enough that every breath scraped painfully against the pressure of his hand. Even in the middle of the storm he had not entirely lost control.

“Prophets rarely know everything,” Makani whispered.

There was no challenge in her voice and no trace of defiance, only a quiet sadness that settled into the space between them like ash after a fire. Slowly and deliberately she lifted one hand. She did not strike him, nor did she try to pry his fingers away. Instead she placed her palm gently against his wrist, the contact warm and steady, unmistakably human.

Around them the torches flickered in their iron brackets, flames bending and straightening in restless movements. Smoke drifted upward in thin ribbons, crawling along the vaulted ceiling before vanishing into the dark ribs of the Necropolis. Those ancient arches had once echoed with the names of conquered worlds, worlds that had risen in defiance and fallen into dust beneath Necromonger banners. The stone floor seemed to listen now, absorbing every breath and movement. Even the armor of the kneeling warriors grew quiet. The faint habitual creak of metal against leather ceased, as though the entire hall had drawn a single breath and forgotten how to release it.

Jungkook’s gaze flickered, almost involuntarily, toward the body lying at the base of the dais. She remained where she had fallen, pale against the dark basalt. Her dark hair spread across the stone like spilled ink, one arm curved beneath her in a posture that might have suggested sleep if not for the terrible stillness settled into her limbs. The torchlight did her no favors. It did not soften the angles of her body or disguise the finality written into the quiet of her form. She did not belong to this moment of ascension, this chamber filled with kneeling warriors and whispered prophecy. She belonged to something quieter now, something already slipping beyond the reach of the living.

Jungkook’s jaw shifted slowly, grinding as though he were chewing stones.

“You think I give a fuck?” he asked.

Makani met his gaze without flinching. She had learned long ago that fear was a language predators understood far too well, and she had no intention of speaking it now. Still kneeling near the throne, she held herself upright with quiet dignity, not groveling, not lowering her head. Her spine remained straight, her hands resting lightly against her thighs, as if the position had been chosen rather than forced upon her. Torchlight moved restlessly along the vast walls of the Necropolis and cast shifting bands of bronze and shadow across her skin, the glow rising and falling with the breathing flames mounted high in their iron brackets.

“No,” she said at last, the word calm and unhurried. “I think you care about living. And right now you’re setting yourself up for the slaughter, Mr. Jeon. You should take my warnings seriously and act accordingly.”

The murmur began almost immediately.

At first it was barely a sound at all, more a disturbance in the air than anything that could be clearly heard. A breath drawn behind a helmet. The quiet adjustment of armored shoulders settling beneath their weight. A whisper that tried to form and then died before it could fully escape. The ripple moved through the kneeling ranks like wind passing across still water, subtle but unmistakable.

The Necromongers were disciplined soldiers, but they were not statues carved from the pillars surrounding them. They had served prophets, tyrants, and gods who claimed divinity as naturally as breathing. Faith had been hammered into them across generations until obedience came as easily as instinct. Yet what they had not expected—what they did not yet know how to understand—was a ruler who bled openly before them.

Jungkook heard it.

His head snapped up and he straightened with a suddenness that carried a kind of controlled violence, precise and sharp, like a blade sliding cleanly through cloth. In a single motion he released Makani and turned away from her to face the kneeling multitude. The shift alone struck the chamber with the force of a hammer against iron.

The murmurs died instantly. Silence returned, but it was no longer fragile. It settled across the hall like stone, heavy and absolute.

Jungkook stepped down from the dais slowly, one step and then another, his boots striking the ancient floor with a clarity that echoed through the cavernous chamber. Each footfall rang outward along the ribs of the Necropolis like the measured toll of a bell. The torchlight seemed to follow him as he moved, flickering across the scarred black edges of his armor and catching in the silver of his eyes until they glowed like molten metal.

When he reached the floor, he turned to face them. Hundreds of warriors knelt before him. These were conquerors of worlds, soldiers who had shattered cities and reduced entire civilizations to dust beneath the grinding weight of their crusade. Their armor reflected the trembling torchlight in dull ripples while their helmets tilted upward just enough to watch him without rising. The stillness of their formation carried its own gravity, as though the entire hall were waiting to see what kind of ruler had emerged from the wreckage of prophecy.

Jungkook looked at them for a long moment, not like a general surveying troops but like a man studying a landscape he had never intended to inherit.

Jungkook stood at the edge of the dais for a moment before he spoke, his shadow stretching long across the ancient stone floor. The torches mounted along the walls burned with slow, wavering flames, their light sliding across the carved pillars of the Necropolis as though reluctant to settle anywhere for long. Dust drifted lazily through the amber glow. The chamber itself seemed to breathe in the quiet, vast and patient, as if it had been waiting for centuries to hear what kind of voice would claim it next.

When he finally spoke, his words carried easily across the hall.

“For those of you who don’t know me,” he said.

His voice was not loud, yet it traveled effortlessly through the enormous chamber. The architecture of the Necropolis seemed designed to cradle sound, lifting it along the stone columns and returning it gently to every listening ear.

“I’m Jungkook Jeon.”

He paused there, letting the name settle in the space between them.

“Escaped convict,” he continued, ticking the words off with a tone so casual it might have sounded like boredom to someone who didn’t know better. “Murderer. Lord Marshal.”

Something flickered briefly at the corner of his mouth. It was not quite a smile, but it was not contempt either. It lingered somewhere between the two, a hint of dark amusement that never quite found the strength to become real.

“I’m not holy,” he said, his eyes moving slowly across the hall as he spoke. They drifted over the towering pillars carved with centuries of conquest, across the endless lines of armored figures kneeling in silent obedience, across the vast machinery of belief that had rolled forward in the name of destiny and erased entire civilizations from existence.

“And I haven’t seen the Underverse.”

The words stirred the smallest movement among the kneeling warriors. A helmet tilted by a fraction. The subtle shift of armor settling against leather. Jungkook noticed it, but his expression did not change.

“I’m an Alpha Furyan,” he continued. “Maybe the last.”

The statement hung in the air for a moment before his arm snapped outward without warning. His finger stabbed toward the body sprawled across the floor behind him.

“Because of this bastard—”

The final words tore free from his chest in a roar.

“—who failed to kill me as an infant!”

The sound exploded through the Necropolis and ricocheted off the columns, rattling dust loose from carvings older than most living worlds. It climbed the vaulted ceiling and fell back down again in broken echoes. There was nothing ceremonial in it, nothing priestly or composed. It was the raw voice of a child who had survived when survival had never been part of the plan.

The Necromongers did not move. They did not shift their weight or whisper behind their helmets. Hundreds of warriors remained perfectly still, their armor catching the torchlight in dull reflections.

Jungkook’s chest rose once and fell again. When he spoke next, his voice was quieter, but the threat inside it sharpened like steel drawn slowly across ice.

“I won’t hesitate to end you if you test me.”

The promise settled into the chamber like falling ash. He offered nothing more after it. There was no sermon about destiny, no speech about the will of unseen realms, and no attempt to cloak himself in divinity.

“You’re dismissed.”

For a moment nothing happened.

Then the army rose as one.

The movement spread outward through the ranks like distant thunder gathering across a horizon. Armor shifted. Boots scraped against the ancient stone floor. Weapons lifted from where they had rested in ritual surrender. No one spoke, and no one looked at the warrior beside them. Discipline moved through the ranks like a current passing through deep water.

They turned and began to leave.

The black tide of armored bodies flowed toward the colossal doors at the far end of the hall. Their once-perfect formation gradually dissolved into long, orderly currents beneath the flickering torchlight. Helmets dipped as they passed beneath the towering arches while shadows slid across the burnished metal of their armor.

They parted around the fallen body of their former god.

No one stepped on him. No one bowed.

Zhylaw lay where he had fallen like a relic abandoned by a faith that had collapsed in a single violent moment. The warriors curved around him without hesitation, their eyes fixed forward as they passed, their allegiance already shifting toward the man who had claimed the future.

Makani remained where she was, still kneeling beside the throne and watching the last of them disappear into the darkness of the Necropolis. She did not move. The stone beneath her knee was cold, though the air still held the lingering warmth of torches, bodies, and the violence that had cracked the old order in half.

The retreat of the army echoed through the chamber in a slow, steady rhythm. Boots struck stone, armor whispered against armor, and weapons settled back into their harnesses with faint mechanical sighs. The sound rolled through the hall like a distant drumbeat fading toward silence. What had once been a sea of black armor and bowed heads thinned with every passing moment until the vast chamber began to feel cavernous and hollow.

At the far end of the hall the massive doors groaned open, their hinges protesting with deep metallic tones older than most of the empire itself. For a brief moment the corridor beyond glowed with torchlight and the shifting silhouettes of passing warriors. Then the last of them vanished through the threshold, and the doors swung shut again with a heavy, resonant boom that trembled through the pillars and rippled across the floor before fading into stillness.

The torches had burned lower now. Their flames stretched thin and wavering, as though exhausted by everything they had witnessed. Smoke curled upward in slow ribbons that vanished into the immense darkness of the vaulted ceiling.

Without the army present, the Necropolis seemed to draw inward around those who remained. The roar of conquest and prophecy had drained away, leaving behind quieter things: iron, dust, and the slow cooling scent of blood.

Zhylaw’s body lay where it had fallen. Dark blood had spread across the stone in branching veins, creeping slowly through the grooves of ancient carvings. In the torchlight the stain glistened faintly wherever the light touched it, and the metallic scent hung in the air sharp and unmistakable.

Makani did not look away from it.

Taehyung was the first to move. He climbed the steps toward the dais with careful precision but stopped before reaching the top, ensuring he did not stand level with the new Lord Marshal. Instead he halted several steps below, positioning himself precisely within the invisible architecture of rank that governed Necromonger life.

When he stopped, he lowered his gaze slightly—not in submission, but in form.

“Lord Marshal,” he said quietly.

His voice moved through the chamber like polished obsidian, smooth and controlled. Beneath the calm surface, however, there was something else—fatigue perhaps, or caution.

“We are prepared to deliver the final blow on Helion Prime,” he continued. “What are your orders?”

The name lingered in the chamber after he spoke it.

Helion Prime had resisted longer than most worlds. Its skies had turned black with ash during the first bombardments, and its oceans had steamed where orbital fire had struck the surface. Entire continents had darkened beneath the slow pressure of Necromonger conquest while the fleets circled above the planet like carrion birds waiting for the last breath to leave a dying animal.

Jungkook’s gaze sharpened slightly.

They could have finished the planet without him. The fleets were already positioned, and the Conquest Icons—vast war constructs shaped like bladed cathedrals—hovered in orbit above Helion’s atmosphere awaiting only a final command. Zhylaw would never have hesitated. He would have crushed the planet before the blood on the floor had finished spreading.

The choice placed in Jungkook’s hands felt deliberate, the kind of decision that arrived wrapped in silence and expectation rather than command. It hung there between him and Taehyung like a weight balanced carefully on a blade’s edge. A test. 

Jungkook stood near the edge of the dais with his shoulders squared, the faint scent of Zhylaw’s blood lingering in the air between them. Only a few paces away the former Lord Marshal lay where he had fallen, his dark blood spreading slowly through the grooves of ancient carvings etched into the floor. It crept outward like ink finding the lines of an old script, marking the end of a regime that had ruled for centuries. Jungkook did not look at the body. His eyes remained fixed on Taehyung.

“Stand down,” he said at last. His voice was steady, flat in a way that suggested the decision had already been made long before the words reached his mouth. “Reinforcements will be on their way here by now, and I’m sick of looking at this fucking rock.”

The explanation was easy enough to give, and Jungkook delivered it with the careless confidence of a man who had lied professionally for most of his life. He couldn’t tell Taehyung that somewhere down there on Helion Prime lived a holy man and his family, people he cared about enough to keep breathing. He couldn’t say that he had no intention of destroying another planet in the name of someone else’s prophecy, nor could he admit that the idea of marching willingly toward the Underverse meant nothing to him anymore. None of that belonged in this room.

Instead he kept the mask in place and told himself to get his head back on straight. He had been a company ranger for a reason. No one here knew the real story behind the bounty that had once followed him across the stars. To the Necromongers he was simply another cog in a vast machine of conquest, and Jungkook had always been good at figuring out how to turn a machine to his advantage.

Taehyung did not blink. The moment Jungkook finished speaking, he bowed. The movement was immediate, precise, and completely without hesitation. “I will personally ensure the Conquest Icons are recalled.”

His voice carried no protest and no visible doubt. If he disagreed with the decision, he buried it beneath discipline so thoroughly that it left no trace on his expression. Jungkook studied him for a moment, perhaps searching for the smallest crack in that composure, but Taehyung gave him nothing.

“I’ll come with you to the war room,” Jungkook added.

Taehyung inclined his head again, the motion small but exact. “When your business here is concluded, Lord Marshal.”

The word business sounded strangely ordinary in a chamber where blood still gleamed on the stone floor.

Jungkook frowned slightly. “What business?”

Taehyung’s gaze shifted then, subtle as a shadow sliding across a wall. Makani followed the direction of his eyes and noticed the two women standing several paces away near the edge of the torchlight. They had lingered after the others left, waiting with the quiet patience of people accustomed to surviving the aftermath of power.

Their hands were folded neatly before them, their posture straight though uncertainty lingered in the tightness of their shoulders. They wore garments of dark silk that shimmered faintly each time they breathed, and their hair had been braided carefully with thin chains of silver that chimed softly when they shifted their weight.

“They were concubines of Lord Marshal Zhylaw,” Taehyung said carefully. “They belong to you now.”

The words did not echo across the hall. They simply settled there, heavy and practical.

Jungkook turned his head and looked at the women for the first time. They were not girls but women who had lived long enough to understand the mechanics of conquest. Time had drawn faint lines at the corners of their mouths, and their eyes carried the sharp awareness of people who knew how quickly circumstances could change. One of them held her chin slightly higher than the other, as though bracing herself for whatever might follow. The second woman clasped her hands together so tightly that her knuckles had turned pale.

For a moment Jungkook simply stared at them.

Torchlight moved across their faces in slow waves, catching the glint of silver braided into their hair and the dark sheen of silk draped across their shoulders. They stood there with the patient stillness of people who had spent years learning how to exist in rooms ruled by someone else’s authority.

His brow furrowed. Almost without thinking he lifted a hand and flicked it outward in dismissal.

“No,” he said. “I’m not really into slavery.” His voice hardened slightly then. Not toward the women themselves, but toward the system that had placed them in front of him like property.

“So get the fuck out of my face.”

For a brief moment Jungkook expected the scene to resolve neatly. Relief perhaps, or gratitude. Maybe even tears. Instead he watched their expressions falter.

The woman with the lifted chin tried to smile, but it twitched and collapsed before it could form properly. The other woman’s breath caught sharply in her throat. Their eyes flicked instinctively toward Taehyung and then back to Jungkook, and something dangerously close to panic began to surface beneath their composure.

The silence that followed felt heavier than the one that had filled the hall earlier. Jungkook noticed it immediately in the tightening of their shoulders and the faint tremor running through their clasped hands. Without realizing it, they reached for each other. Their fingers tangled together as if that small contact might keep them from slipping entirely out of the moment.

Taehyung noticed it as well. His lips pressed into a thin line as he considered his next words with the careful precision of a man navigating dangerous ground.

“If you dismiss them,” he said slowly, “they have nothing, Lord Marshal.”

Jungkook turned his head slightly, his expression sharpening. Taehyung’s voice remained calm and respectful, but the caution within it was unmistakable.

“No home. No trade. No place within the Order.”

He did not rush the explanation or deliver it like a reprimand. Instead he spoke with the patient steadiness of someone outlining a system that had existed long before any of them had drawn breath.

“This is the Necromonger way. They were kept after conversion and given purpose through service to the Lord Marshal. To them, being consorts was not ownership.”

He paused briefly before adding, more quietly, “It was identity.”

The torches crackled softly along the walls.

“You believe you are freeing them,” Taehyung said, “but they will believe they have been cast aside.”

There had been no accusation in his explanation and no judgment threaded through the words. He had simply described the world the way a man might describe gravity or the slow turning of the tides. This is how things are. This is how they have always been.

The truth of it settled in the air with uncomfortable clarity.

Jungkook shut his eyes and dragged a hand slowly down his face, his fingers pressing against his brow before sliding along the line of his jaw as though he might physically smooth the world into something that made sense.

“I suppose Necropolis wasn’t built in a day,” Jungkook muttered.

The attempt at humor hung there, thin and brittle, like glass that might shatter if anyone touched it too roughly. No one laughed. The torches crackled along the walls, their flames bending and straightening as if whispering to each other in the silence.

Jungkook opened his eyes again and looked at the women more carefully. From a distance they had seemed composed, almost statuesque in their stillness. Up close the smaller truths began to surface. One of them held her posture with deliberate discipline, shoulders squared in a way that suggested years spent learning how to exist inside rooms ruled by other people’s power. The other woman’s lower lip trembled faintly, a small betrayal she fought to hide.

Thin silver chains threaded through their braids chimed softly whenever they shifted their weight. The sound was delicate and strangely sad in the vast emptiness of the Necropolis. Jungkook rubbed the back of his neck slowly, the motion weary and thoughtful.

“So they stay in the Lord Marshal’s quarters?” he asked at last. The question carried reluctant practicality rather than curiosity.

“You have a suite of rooms, my Lord,” Taehyung replied. “Private chambers. Adjacent sanctums. I will show you.”

Jungkook exhaled through his nose and turned fully toward the women. They stiffened beneath his attention almost immediately. It was not fear exactly, but anticipation. The careful stillness of people who had spent years measuring their safety by the moods of powerful men.

“Go,” he said, his voice softer now. “Settle in. I’ll come later.”

For a moment they did not move.

Then the woman with the higher chin bowed deeply, relief flickering briefly through her eyes even as uncertainty lingered there. The second woman mirrored the gesture almost instantly, their movements synchronized by long practice.

When they turned to leave, they reached for one another without thinking and linked arms. Together they moved toward the shadowed corridor stretching deeper into the Necropolis, their footsteps soft against the ancient stone as the darkness gradually swallowed them.

Jungkook watched them go. His jaw tightened slightly as the sound of their retreat faded into the cavernous quiet of the hall. Only when they had fully disappeared did his gaze drift downward again to the body lying on the floor.

His voice changed when he spoke next. The hard edge inside it softened into something rougher.

“Taehyung,” he said quietly, without lifting his eyes from the body. “I need a stasis chamber for my friend. Just until I find somewhere to lay her to rest.”

The word friend lingered in the air long after the sound of his voice faded. It seemed almost fragile in the immense chamber, as though the Necropolis itself had never heard such a word spoken within its walls. For a moment pain crossed Jungkook’s face before he could stop it, sharp and unguarded, like a wound briefly exposed to cold air.

Makani noticed. Standing a few steps away near one of the carved pillars, she cleared her throat softly. The sound was not a rebuke but a reminder. Even now the walls had ears, and the Necropolis had listened to centuries of ambition, betrayal, and conquest. It remembered weakness as easily as it remembered victory.

Jungkook inhaled once and sealed the fracture with brutal efficiency. The crack vanished as though it had never existed. The silver in his eyes cooled again into something distant and unreadable.

Taehyung, however, had seen it. A commander learned to recognize those fractures the way a seasoned mechanic heard a fault inside an engine long before the machine failed.

“We can take her now,” Taehyung said carefully. “A stasis chamber can be prepared immediately.” He hesitated, though only briefly. “But you should know it is not customary for a Necromonger to preserve the dead or to mourn them. She was a convert.”

Jungkook’s head snapped up. “She wasn’t yours.”

The words cracked through the chamber like the snap of a whip. The sound struck the pillars and vanished into the dark height of the ceiling. Jungkook stepped forward as he spoke, closing the distance between himself and Taehyung with slow, deliberate strides.

“She converted to survive,” he continued, his voice tightening with each word. “Just like most of you did.”

His gaze burned in the shifting torchlight. “Whatever poison you call faith never took with her. Or the Purifier,” he added, his voice dropping even lower though the intensity sharpened. “They walked among you, but they didn’t belong to you.”

The accusation settled into the hall like dust after a storm. Taehyung did not retreat, but he did look away. The movement was subtle, no more than a slight shift of his eyes toward the floor, yet the meaning was clear enough. Whether it was respect or simply the understanding that this was not a battle worth fighting, he let the moment pass.

“Yes, Lord Marshal,” he said quietly.

Jungkook remained where he stood for several seconds after that, his chest rising and falling slowly while the torchlight traced the hard edges of his face. The anger had not vanished. It had simply cooled into something quieter and more controlled.

Makani watched him from near the pillar without speaking. She studied the man who had become the center of an empire in a single violent moment. Her gaze lingered on the tension still held in his shoulders and the way his eyes drifted once again toward the still form lying on the stone floor.

The hall did not remain still for long. Even as Jungkook’s last words lingered in the air, conversion, ceremony, warning, the quiet machinery of the Necromonger Order began turning again.

Instead the motion began subtly, like a slow current shifting beneath deep water. From the shadowed edges of the chamber, several armored figures detached themselves from the pillars where they had stood almost unnoticed. They approached Zhylaw’s body with the measured tread of men who had performed this task many times before. Their black armor swallowed the torchlight so that only narrow slits of burnished metal marked where their eyes watched through their helmets.

They did not look at Jungkook or Makani, and they did not hesitate.

Four of them knelt beside the fallen Lord Marshal in perfect unison. Their gauntlets, black, jointed, and heavy like the limbs of enormous insects, slid beneath the corpse with ritual precision. One positioned his hands beneath Zhylaw’s shoulders, another at the hips, and two more at the legs. Every movement was synchronized and deliberate, stripped of emotion.

When they lifted him, they did so as though he were an artifact rather than a man. Their arms remained steady, their helmets angled forward in disciplined silence. Zhylaw’s head rolled slightly as they raised him. For a brief moment the torchlight caught his slack features. The mouth that had once commanded fleets now hung open in an expression that meant nothing at all.

Then the body turned away and began its slow journey toward the long corridor leading deeper into the Necropolis. No chant accompanied him. No hymn rose in farewell. There was only the quiet scrape of armored boots on stone and the faint, wet whisper of fabric dragging across the floor where his blood had begun to dry.

Jungkook watched them go.

“What’ll they do with him?” he asked at last.

His voice remained steady, but there was something unexpectedly plain in the question. It was not horror or outrage, just the blunt curiosity of someone trying to understand how this world finished its stories.

“He will be stripped of usable resources,” Taehyung replied evenly, his tone as calm as if he were describing the dismantling of a machine. “Armor, implants, augmentation. Anything of value will be repurposed.”

The procession carrying Zhylaw passed beneath the archway. Torchlight abandoned them piece by piece until their shapes dissolved into shadow.

“The rest,” Taehyung continued, “will be fed into a power generator.”

Jungkook’s mouth tightened slightly.

“A god,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Reduced to fuel.”

“Nothing’s wasted,” Taehyung said.

Jungkook exhaled slowly through his nose, the sound somewhere between a quiet laugh and disbelief. “Remind me not to lose any parts around here.”

Makani glanced at him from the side. “You’d make sure to take them with you,” she said dryly.

For a brief moment the corner of Jungkook’s mouth twitched despite everything. Taehyung waited until the last of Zhylaw’s escort disappeared into the corridor before speaking again.

“There is something else,” he said.

Jungkook shifted his gaze back toward him.

“You will also be expected to convert,” Taehyung continued. “There is a ceremony.”

“Not happening,” Jungkook said immediately.

Taehyung’s jaw tightened slightly. “You will find it exceedingly difficult to remain Lord Marshal without receiving the mark.”

The air changed. Makani felt it first. The subtle tightening of space carried the faint sensation that the chamber itself had drawn inward. Jungkook did not move right away. He simply stood there watching Taehyung while the scent of cooling blood lingered in the air between them. His hand rested near the blade at his thigh. He did not grip it and did not draw it. His hand simply hovered there casually, the way a predator’s paw might linger near its claws.

“Is that a threat, Taehyung?” he asked.

The softness of his voice made the question far more dangerous than any shout could have.

Taehyung held his ground. “It’s a warning,” he said through clenched teeth. “From someone who intends to support you.”

The torches flickered along the walls, their flames bending and straightening in the shifting air. Light and shadow moved across the two men’s faces, carving their features into alternating planes of brightness and darkness. Jungkook studied him for a long moment without blinking.

Taehyung did not look away this time.

The two men stood facing each other across the faint smear of blood still darkening the stone floor, the torchlight sliding restlessly across their armor and their faces. The hall had emptied, yet it did not feel quiet. It felt watchful, as though the Necropolis itself had leaned closer to witness what might happen next.

Finally Jungkook spoke without shifting his gaze.

“Makani,” he said mildly, as if they were standing in an ordinary room rather than the throne chamber of a conquered empire, “you might want to stand up. We’re leaving.”

Makani rose immediately, pushing herself up from the stone with smooth efficiency and brushing her palms together as though removing dust that wasn’t really there. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me,” she murmured.

“Hard to forget someone who keeps following me,” he replied faintly. Then he lifted his voice slightly, just enough for it to reach the shadowed balcony above them. “And if I catch your scent anywhere near me again, Pia, I’ll kill you.”

The name cut sharply through the chamber and vanished into the darkness overhead. For a moment nothing happened. Then a slender figure detached itself from the upper railing like a shadow peeling away from the stone. She moved with fluid grace, her jewelry catching the torchlight briefly before disappearing again. She did not speak and did not argue; she simply slipped back into the corridor above and was gone.

Jungkook exhaled slowly. “Persistent,” he muttered.

“You’re the new sun,” Makani said, folding her arms. “Things will orbit whether you want them to or not.”

He shot her a sideways look. “I’m not a sun.”

“No,” she replied calmly. “You’re far too miserable.”

That almost earned her a laugh. Instead, Jungkook turned away from Makani and looked down at Audrey, who still lay where she had fallen. Without Zhylaw’s body in the room the hall seemed strangely larger, as if the removal of one corpse had somehow pulled the air outward with it. The emptiness stretched across the stone floor in long, silent lines. Torches flickered from distant alcoves carved high into the walls, their flames bending and straightening in the draft, and the quiet that surrounded Audrey felt magnified by everything that had just left the chamber.

Jungkook crouched beside her. The movement changed something in him almost immediately. The rigid tension that had clung to him since the throne changed hands softened the moment his hands reached her. The sharp readiness for violence, the instinct that kept his shoulders squared and his fingers close to the hilt of a blade, seemed to ease the instant his touch met her hair.

He brushed the dark strands away from her face with careful fingers, moving them back from her cheek the way someone might do for a sleeping friend who had drifted off in the wrong position.

His thumb lingered briefly at her temple, tracing the line of it with the absent-minded tenderness of someone remembering what a living person feels like beneath their fingertips. Then he slipped one arm beneath her shoulders and the other beneath her knees. When he gathered her up, he did it with a quiet steadiness that suggested the weight meant nothing to him.

Makani watched from a few paces away, noticing the things Jungkook clearly hoped no one would see. The slight tightening in his jaw. The way his throat worked once before he forced himself to swallow down whatever was threatening to climb its way up through his chest.

He stood slowly with Audrey in his arms. Her head rested against the dark plate of his armor, her hair spilling loosely across the black metal while one pale hand shifted slightly and brushed the hilt of the blade hanging at his hip.

“Take me to the stasis chamber,” he said.

Taehyung bowed without hesitation. He did not comment on the intimacy of the gesture, nor did he attempt to recite some doctrine about the proper treatment of the dead.

“At once, Lord Marshal.”

He turned and began leading them away from the throne chamber. The corridors beyond stretched through the Necropolis like arteries through an enormous stone body. They were narrower than the throne hall and noticeably colder, their walls lined with recessed alcoves where thin bands of blue light pulsed steadily. As they descended deeper into the structure, the air changed. It grew sharper, touched by the low hum of generators somewhere far beneath them and the faint metallic scent of high-energy systems working tirelessly under thousands of tons of stone.

Jungkook walked at an unhurried pace. Audrey’s weight never shifted awkwardly in his arms, though once he adjusted her slightly, lifting her just enough so that her head rested more securely against his shoulder.

Makani walked beside him in silence for a while before she finally spoke.

“You know they’re going to keep pressing you about the mark,” she said quietly.

“I know.”

“And the ceremony.”

“I said no.”

She studied him from the side as they passed beneath another stretch of dim blue lights. “You said no when I asked you to help me before too. Look where that ended.”

Jungkook glanced at her.

“That’s different.”

“Is it?”

He opened his mouth as if he had an answer ready. Nothing came out. After a moment he let out a quiet breath and shrugged faintly.

“Guess not.”

Ahead of them Taehyung slowed as they approached a sealed door set into the stone. The surface of it was carved with thin sigils that pulsed faintly with white light, the symbols shifting almost imperceptibly as if they were alive.

He pressed his palm against a recessed plate. The door responded immediately with a low, resonant hum and slid open with mechanical grace. A rush of colder air spilled out into the corridor.

Inside, rows of stasis chambers lined the walls. They stood upright like glass coffins, transparent cylinders filled with a faintly glowing vapor that moved slowly within the chambers. Some of them were empty, their curved surfaces reflecting the pale blue lighting of the room. Others held silent figures suspended in perfect stillness, bodies preserved mid-breath, faces calm and untouched by time.

“This chamber is unused,” Taehyung said, gesturing toward one near the far wall.

Jungkook stepped toward it, Audrey still in his arms. He stopped beside the chamber but did not place her inside immediately. For a moment he simply stood there, studying the glass cylinder as if he were measuring something invisible to everyone else in the room.

“She hated the cold,” he said softly.

Makani felt something tighten quietly in her throat.

“She won’t notice,” she replied.

Taehyung said nothing.

Jungkook stepped onto the small platform and lowered Audrey carefully into the chamber. His movements were slow and deliberate, arranging her as though she might still feel the discomfort of being handled carelessly. He folded her arms gently across her abdomen and then brushed the last stray strands of hair back from her face.

“I’ll find somewhere better,” he murmured under his breath. “Not this place.”

The glass canopy lowered with a quiet mechanical hiss. Jungkook remained where he was as it sealed. Frost-like light rippled across the surface of the chamber as the stasis field engaged, and Audrey’s expression softened into a stillness untouched by time. He stood there a long moment before finally stepping back.

“Let’s go,” he said quietly.

Taehyung inclined his head and stepped aside to guide them back into the corridor. Makani followed, glancing once more at Jungkook as they walked. The man who refused conversion. The man who threatened gods and ghosts with equal indifference. The man who carried the dead in his arms and kept moving anyway.

Behind them the stasis chamber glowed faintly in the cold room. Somewhere deep within the stone heart of the Necropolis, a generator roared quietly to life.

One moment there had been nothing. No ground beneath her feet. No air against her skin. No sense of direction or weight. Not even the quiet certainty that a body still existed to feel any of those things. Then, without warning, everything returned at once.

Y/N was standing in the desert.

The shift came so abruptly it stole the breath from her lungs. Reality seemed to rush in all at once. Heat pressed against her skin, blinding light flooded the landscape, and the faint hiss of wind dragged across an endless sea of sand. M6-117 stretched around her like an ocean frozen mid-motion, pale dunes rolling outward toward the horizon in long, unmoving waves. The color of the desert looked strange beneath the brutal glare of the sky, something between ivory and bone. The sand reflected the light so fiercely that she had to squint before she could take in anything else.

The heat arrived with weight. It clung to her arms and face like fever, thick and invasive, pressing against her skin as though the desert itself were breathing hot air directly onto her. Even the air felt dense. When she inhaled, the dryness scratched faintly against the back of her throat, like dust dragged through her lungs.

Above her hung three suns. They were far too close together. The three blazing spheres clustered unnaturally in the sky, their halos overlapping until their light bled together in a harsh brilliance. They looked less like distant stars and more like open wounds burning in the sky, glowing white and fever-bright against the firmament. The light they cast felt strangely alive, sharp and intrusive as it crawled across her skin and traced the lines of her arms and face with uncomfortable intensity.

She swallowed and forced herself to breathe slowly.

The desert was silent, but it was not the gentle quiet of empty places. This silence felt tense, as if the world itself had paused to listen. And around her, suddenly and impossibly, the bones appeared.

She had no memory of walking into them. One moment there had been nothing but dunes and sky, and the next enormous ribs erupted from the sand around her as though the desert itself had grown a skeleton. They rose from the dunes in sweeping arcs, curving upward toward the sky like the remains of some colossal creature that had died standing upright. The bones were immense. Each rib towered dozens of meters above the desert floor. Their pale surfaces were worn smooth in some places and deeply scarred in others where centuries of wind and sand had carved into them.

Some structures still formed complete rib cages. Their curved arches met high overhead and created vast hollow spaces beneath them that resembled the vaulted ceilings of a cathedral. Others had collapsed long ago, their broken ends thrusting upward from the sand like splintered fingers clawing toward the sky.

The wind threaded slowly through them. As it slipped through the hollow ribs it produced a strange sound that drifted across the dunes. It was not quite music and not quite a voice. The tone was low and hollow, breath-like, as though something enormous were breathing through the bones of a creature long dead.

Y/N stood frozen where she was, her throat tightening as she tried to understand what she was seeing.

“What…?”

The word slipped out before she realized she had spoken. It fell softly into the desert and vanished into the vast silence without answer.

The skeletal forest cast long shadows across the dunes. As the wind shifted the sand, those shadows stretched and contracted slowly, sliding across the pale surface so that the bones seemed almost alive. For a moment the entire graveyard appeared to move in slow, patient breaths.

She took a cautious step forward. The sand shifted, but not beneath her feet. It moved beneath the surface.

At first the disturbance was subtle, a faint ripple several feet away, like a small wave passing beneath water. It traveled through the sand and vanished almost immediately, leaving the surface smooth again.

Then it happened again, closer this time. The ripple curved through the dunes in a quiet arc. A dry clicking sound followed.

It came in brittle bursts, uneven and sharp, like fragments of broken glass grinding together. The noise spread outward across the desert in dozens of small ticks and crackles that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Some of it sounded as though it rose from beneath the sand. Some of it echoed faintly from inside the hollow bones around her. Some of it seemed to ride the wind itself.

Her pulse climbed steadily into her throat.

“No,” she whispered under her breath, though she had no idea who she was answering.

The sky darkened. One moment the three suns burned overhead, their combined light blazing across the dunes. The next moment they were gone. A black disk swallowed them whole.

It spread across the sky with terrifying speed, like an enormous eyelid closing over the world. The eclipse devoured the light with brutal suddenness, plunging the desert into an eerie twilight that felt deeply unnatural.

Her body reacted before her mind could catch up. Only seconds earlier the desert had been suffocating with heat, the air thick and feverish against her skin. Now that warmth vanished as though the world itself had inhaled sharply and exhaled winter. The change was violent in its suddenness. Heat fled the air, leaving behind a cold absence that spread quickly across the dunes.

She felt it through the soles of her boots first. The sand, which moments earlier had radiated warmth like sun-baked stone, cooled so abruptly that the shift made her stomach tighten. It felt as if the desert itself had sighed, releasing every ounce of heat it had been holding.

The black disk that had swallowed the suns now hung in silent dominance overhead. Its shadow stretched across the landscape like an enormous eyelid closing over the world. The brutal white light that had scorched the dunes moments before was gone. In its place lingered a dim gray twilight that flattened the desert into muted shapes and long wandering shadows.

The towering ribs of the bone forest looked older now. Their pale surfaces had lost their warmth, and their jagged edges cast crooked silhouettes across the sand. Her heart slammed against her ribs.

The wind moved faintly through the skeletal arches around her, slipping through hollow bone and producing that same uneven sound again. It was not quite a voice and not quite a song, but something disturbingly close to breathing. The dunes themselves seemed restless in the cold air. Their surfaces whispered softly as sand slid down the slopes in thin wandering streams.

“You left them.”

Y/N spun around so quickly that the world blurred at the edges of her vision. Her boots scraped sharply against the sand as she turned, sending a spray of pale grains skittering down the slope of the dune. For a brief moment she was certain someone would be standing there, that a figure would emerge from the shadows of the bones just behind her.

But there was no one. Only bones.

The enormous ribs rose from the desert in crooked rows, curving upward toward the dim sky like the remains of some monstrous cathedral half buried by centuries of wind and sand. Their pale surfaces had been worn smooth in some places where storms had polished them down to dull ivory, while in other places they were deeply scarred and gouged where time had carved into them without mercy. The wind moved slowly through the hollow spaces between them, threading along the towering arches and carrying that same strange breath-like sound across the silent desert. It drifted along the dunes in low hollow murmurs, making the entire skeletal forest feel as though it were exhaling.

Her own breath fogged faintly in the rapidly cooling air.

“You left them to die.”

The voice came again, this time from her left and closer than the other one had been. The sound of it twisted something deep inside her chest. It was not just the words that struck her but the voice itself. Something about it was painfully familiar.

Her throat tightened before she could stop it. Slowly she turned her head toward the direction the words had come from.

“Jungkook?” she called.

The name slipped from her mouth in a breath that trembled despite her attempt to steady it. Her eyes scanned the skeletal forest and the shifting dunes beyond, searching every towering rib and shadowed gap as though he might step out from behind one of the enormous bones at any moment.

“Where are you?”

The desert did not answer. The wind moved quietly through the hollow arches. Sand slid down the slopes of the dunes in thin whispering streams. But no voice returned her call.

The silence settled again, heavier now, watchful in a way that made the skin along the back of her neck prickle.

The sand moved. At first the disturbance was subtle, just a faint trembling ripple several feet away where the surface of the dune shivered as though something deep beneath it had brushed lightly against the underside of the desert. It might have gone unnoticed if she had not already been watching so closely, if her nerves had not already been pulled tight by the sudden cold.

The ripple widened beneath the sand, pushing the pale surface upward in a long curving swell before collapsing again in a soft whisper of sliding grains. The dune lifted, settled, then lifted again farther down the slope as though some enormous body were swimming beneath the desert’s skin. The motion traveled faster now, too deliberate to be mistaken for wind or settling sand. It cut through the dunes the way something massive might glide through deep water.

Y/N stood frozen, her eyes tracking the disturbance as it curved toward her across the pale expanse. In the dim twilight cast by the eclipsed suns the desert suddenly looked alive. The dunes rose and fell in slow rolling waves, making the entire landscape seem as though it had begun breathing.

Then the clicking returned. The brittle sounds cracked through the cold air in sharp bursts and multiplied rapidly until they echoed from every direction at once. They sounded like fragments of broken glass grinding together or the dry snapping of bones striking against one another. The noise rattled through the hollow ribs of the bone forest and carried along the towering skeletons so that the entire graveyard seemed to vibrate with it.

The sound came from beneath the sand, from the bones, from the wind itself. Her pulse climbed painfully into her throat. Every instinct she possessed screamed at her to run.

The warning rose from somewhere deep inside her body, older than thought and older than reason, the kind of fear that lived in muscle and spine long before the mind could explain it. Her legs tensed, preparing to move, preparing to turn and flee whatever monstrous thing churned beneath the desert.

But her feet would not move. It felt as though the sand had hardened around her boots, locking her in place. She tried to step backward, tried to twist free from whatever invisible weight held her there, but her legs refused to obey.

Her heart began to pound harder. She tried again. Nothing.

A breath escaped her in a tight, nervous sound that might almost have been a laugh if there had been anything remotely funny about the situation. Her gaze darted across the dunes, following the swelling ripple as it carved its path toward her. Now that it was closer the sheer scale of it became impossible to ignore. The surface of the desert bulged upward in its wake before collapsing again in soft sliding avalanches. Whatever traveled beneath the sand was enormous, large enough to make the ground itself feel thin and fragile above it.

The clicking grew louder.

A violent plume of pale dust and shattered dunes blasted upward directly in front of her, spraying into the cold twilight like a storm of bone-colored debris. Y/N flinched backward instinctively as something massive tore its way out of the earth, bursting free from the desert with a sound that was half roar and half the snapping crack of bone.

For a moment all she could see was movement. Dark shapes twisted through the cloud of sand as the creature emerged. Then its wings snapped open.

They spread outward in vast ragged arcs, membranes stretched between long skeletal frames that looked less like living flesh and more like strips of torn leather pulled tight across bone. The wings unfurled slowly and deliberately, scattering sand from their edges as the creature rose from the crater it had carved into the dune.

Grains of sand cascaded down the ridges of its spine like falling ash. Its mouth opened far too wide. The jaw split apart until it seemed impossible that bone could stretch that far, revealing rows upon rows of teeth that curved inward like hooked blades. They spiraled down into a throat so deep and dark that it gave the impression of endless depth, as though the creature could swallow her whole without even noticing the effort.

Y/N staggered backward, her breath catching painfully in her chest as her mind struggled to make sense of what her eyes were seeing. She waited for the creature to move, bracing herself for it to lunge or scream or tear toward her with those terrible jaws.

But it didn’t. It simply watched her.

Its eyes were smooth and black, reflecting the dim ghost-light of the eclipsed suns like polished obsidian. They did not blink, and there was no twitch of curiosity or recognition in them. The creature held her in a steady, unsettling focus, the quiet attention of something that had found exactly what it had been searching for.

Behind it, the desert erupted again. The sand burst open in violent explosions across the dunes as more shapes forced their way upward from beneath the surface. One creature rose, then another, then another after that, each tearing free of the desert in a spray of cascading sand. Their wings snapped open as they emerged, ragged membranes stretching wide as they clawed their way into the cold twilight air.

The bone forest filled with movement. Dozens became hundreds in a matter of seconds, and hundreds quickly turned into something far worse, something closer to a living storm. The creatures rose from the dunes in dark twisting swarms, their vast wings unfolding as they climbed higher into the dim sky. Membranes stretched wide across the skeletal forest like enormous sails, blotting out what little light remained beneath the eclipse.

Soon the sky itself disappeared behind them. They circled overhead in widening spirals, their wings beating through the cold air in heavy rhythmic bursts that stirred the sand below into restless shifting currents. Each sweep of those massive wings cast enormous shadows that slid slowly across the dunes and over the towering ribs of bone.

They screamed. The sound tore across the desert in one terrible chorus. It did not resemble the cry of any creature Y/N had ever heard. There was something metallic inside it, something harsh and violent that sounded like rusted steel tearing apart under impossible pressure. The shriek echoed through the hollow ribs of the bone forest, bouncing from one skeletal arch to another until the entire landscape seemed to vibrate with it.

Y/N stood frozen beneath the storm of wings, her breath shallow and uneven as her heart hammered violently against her ribs. Above her the creatures circled in slow widening spirals, their ragged wings beating through the dim twilight air with a heavy rhythm that stirred the dunes into shifting waves of sand. Each sweep of those enormous membranes cast long moving shadows across the desert floor, the towering ribs stretching and bending across the sand like the fingers of some ancient skeleton reaching through the dark. The sound of their flight filled the desert, wings thundering overhead while those metallic screams echoed through the hollow bones around her.

Slowly, so slowly that her mind resisted the realization even as her eyes confirmed it, she began to understand something that made the cold air feel like ice in her veins.

Every single one of them was looking at her. Their heads tilted as they circled, those black glassy eyes catching the faint gray light of the eclipsed suns. One by one, each gaze settled on her with quiet certainty. They were not searching the dunes and they were not hunting blindly. They knew exactly where she stood, and they watched her with the calm patience of creatures that had been waiting.

“You left them.”

Y/N turned instinctively, searching for whoever had spoken, but the voice had no clear direction. It drifted through the air around her, slipping between the towering ribs and across the dunes in a way that made it impossible to place. The accusation echoed faintly from the bones above her and the sand beneath her boots, as though the desert itself had found a way to speak.

“You left them.”

Another voice followed, stronger this time.

“You promised.”

Y/N turned toward the sound, her breath catching sharply as her eyes fixed on the space between two enormous ribs rising from the dunes.

Peter stood there. Or something that looked like Peter.

His body was half buried in the sand, pale grains climbing around his legs and waist as though the desert had grown around him while he stood there. His skin had taken on a dull gray color, drained of warmth and life, and his face held none of the familiar animation she remembered. What unsettled her most were his eyes. They were dark hollow pits that reflected no light and held no movement, as though the desert had emptied them of everything that had once made him human.

“Peter…” she whispered, the name leaving her lips softly and uncertainly, as if speaking too loudly might cause the fragile image to collapse.

Before he could respond, another voice spoke.

“You said you’d come back.”

Y/N turned again, her chest tightening painfully as she searched the dunes for the speaker. A few yards away stood Deku, his body partially swallowed by the sand in the same unnatural way. One of his arms twisted beneath the surface at an impossible angle, the limb half buried as though the desert had tried to claim it and failed. The faint wind lifted strands of his hair and brushed them gently across his forehead, yet the rest of him remained completely still, like a figure carved from stone.

“You said you would come back,” he repeated quietly.

Beyond him stood Bindi, her figure rising from the dunes like a pale statue while the rest of the pilgrims clustered among the towering ribs behind her. Their bodies were partially buried by the sand as if the desert itself had decided to keep them there. Some were trapped to their knees, others to their waists, and a few appeared nearly consumed by the dunes, their pale shoulders and hollow faces emerging from the sand like relics unearthed by time.

None of them looked alive. Their expressions held no warmth. There was no anger in them either, only a cold, quiet accusation.

“You left us,” they said together.

Their voices blended into a single flat chorus that seemed to vibrate through the bones surrounding her. The words echoed faintly through the skeletal forest as though the desert itself were repeating them.

Y/N stumbled backward, shaking her head as panic surged through her chest.

“No,” she said, her voice rising as she forced the words out. “No, that’s not what happened. I didn’t leave you. I—”

“You did.”

The reply came from somewhere beyond the circling creatures.

The swarm shifted overhead, the monstrous shapes slowly rearranging themselves as their vast wings beat harder against the dim sky. One by one the creatures drifted apart, their dark bodies sliding away from the center like storm clouds breaking open in a violent sky. As they moved aside, a narrow gap appeared between them, a clear path through the endless sweep of wings and shadow. From that opening, a figure stepped forward.

Jungkook.

For one fragile, disorienting second relief surged through her chest so suddenly it made her dizzy. Seeing him standing there, solid and unmistakable against the twisted shadows of the bone forest, struck her like the sudden gasp of air after being held underwater too long.

“Jungkook—”

His name slipped from her in a breathless rush, raw with relief and disbelief. But the feeling didn’t last. At first the difference was subtle enough that her mind tried to ignore it. The shape of him was right: the tall frame she knew so well, the broad shoulders, the dark hair falling loosely across his forehead in soft strands. Even the way he moved carried the quiet, coiled confidence she had always associated with him, that sense of restrained strength beneath an outward calm.

Yet something about him was wrong, and her mind searched slowly for the reason until her gaze settled on his eyes. They were black.

Not shadowed by the dim twilight of the eclipse or darkened by distance, but black in the purest sense of the word. Smooth and reflective like polished glass, they held the same unnatural sheen as the creatures circling overhead, catching the faint ghost-light of the eclipsed suns and reflecting it back without warmth or depth. The strange silver eyes she knew so well were gone.

He smiled then, the expression spreading slowly across his face. At first it looked almost familiar, the same crooked hint of amusement she had seen countless times before. But the longer she watched, the more wrong it became. The curve of his mouth stretched just a little farther than it should have, revealing teeth that were slightly too narrow and a little too sharp, as if the memory of them had been reconstructed imperfectly.

“Run,” he said softly.

The voice sounded like Jungkook’s. The tone was right, the cadence unmistakable, carrying the same quiet rhythm she had always recognized. Yet something beneath the sound felt hollow, as though the words had traveled through an empty chamber before reaching her ears. It was the voice of something wearing his shape rather than truly inhabiting it.

Before she could respond, the sand collapsed beneath her feet. Y/N gasped as the ground suddenly gave way, the surface of the dune crumbling like dry ash beneath her boots. Her balance vanished instantly as the desert opened beneath her.

Claws burst upward through the sand with violent speed, jagged limbs tearing through the dunes as if the desert itself had grown hands. One pair clamped around her ankles immediately, their grip cold and hard and unmistakably inhuman. Another set of claws erupted nearby, followed by snapping jaws and wings clawing their way out of the sand.

More hands reached upward, grabbing her legs first and dragging her downward as the dunes shifted violently around her. Other claws seized her waist and arms, tightening their grip as they pulled. She kicked wildly, panic surging through her body as sand sprayed in every direction.

“Let go!” she shouted, her voice breaking with the effort.

The creatures didn’t release her. They dragged her deeper instead, the desert collapsing inward as she was pulled down through a violent cascade of sand and fragments of bone. Above her the skeletal forest twisted across her vision, the towering ribs bending and overlapping like the bars of some enormous cage.

The sky vanished behind beating wings.

The creatures screamed overhead, their voices tearing through the air like rusted metal ripping apart as their wings churned the desert into a storm of dust and shadow. Sand filled her mouth and her lungs burned as she tried to breathe, coughing against the choking grains that scraped painfully down her throat.

She clawed desperately toward the surface, her fingers digging through loose sand in a frantic attempt to pull herself free, but the ground refused to release her. Every movement only dragged her deeper.

The last thing she saw before darkness closed over her vision was Jungkook standing at the edge of the pit, looking down at her as she sank.

Watching.

His expression was calm, almost amused.

“Sweet dreams, Frenchie.”

Her eyes snapped open.

Cold struck her first, sharp enough to pull her completely out of the fading nightmare before her mind could catch up. Her implants reacted instantly, feeding streams of information into her returning consciousness with the steady precision of machinery performing its task.

Core temperature rising in controlled increments. Peripheral nerves reactivating. Motor cortex latency recalibrating. Cryosleep release sequence: eighty-two percent complete.

The cold lingered behind her sternum like a shard of winter lodged deep within her chest. When her lungs expanded, the air tasted sterile and metallic, the unmistakable flavor of atmosphere that had passed through layers of filtration before reaching her.

For several seconds breathing felt unfamiliar. Not forgotten exactly, because her body still understood the mechanics, but the rhythm had drifted somewhere deep into the suspended quiet of cryosleep and was only now returning. Air entered her lungs with a faint hesitation, like an engine turning over after sitting idle too long. The inhale came shallow and uncertain, followed by a dry rasp of an exhale against her throat.

Mechanical, her mind observed distantly. Like something my body has to renegotiate.

She inhaled again, slower this time, focusing on the simple act of filling her lungs. The air tasted thin and sterile, carrying the flat chemical flavor of recycled atmosphere that had likely circulated through the ship countless times.

Sensation returned gradually, the way dawn spreads across a landscape that has forgotten light. At first it arrived in fragments. Her toes stirred before the rest of her body seemed aware of anything at all, prickling faintly as circulation pushed back into numb flesh. The sensation was uncomfortable, a restless buzzing that crept upward through her feet and calves like small sparks traveling through wires that had been silent too long.

Her fingers followed not long after. They lay stiff against the smooth interior lining of the cryopod, pale and unmoving until she tried to flex them. When they finally responded, the motion came sluggishly, the joints bending with hesitant obedience as though the instructions had to travel a long distance before being remembered.

A dull ache unfurled along her spine, beginning beneath the base of her skull where the neural ports rested quietly against bone and traveling downward vertebra by vertebra. It was not quite pain, more the soreness of something long unused, the subtle strain of dormant pathways stretching themselves awake after months of stillness. As her nervous system continued to return, a faint pressure gathered behind her temples, carrying the unmistakable sensation of electrical life stirring beneath the surface of thought, the quiet signal that her neural interface had surged fully online.

Diagnostic glyphs flickered across the inside of her vision, hovering in pale translucent characters against the dim interior darkness of her waking mind.

Synaptic coherence: stabilizing.

Motor response delay: 0.7 seconds above baseline.

Cardiac rhythm: reacquiring pattern.

The information lingered briefly like distant machinery humming quietly in the background of her thoughts. Then her heart struck once, hard enough that the sensation echoed through the hollow spaces of her chest like someone knocking from the inside. The sudden beat startled her fully awake, and she surfaced with a sharp inhale that felt both unfamiliar and necessary.

The cryopod responded immediately. A soft hiss escaped along the chamber’s seams as the internal seals disengaged, the sound controlled and deliberate like a long-held breath finally being released. Pressure equalized inside the pod in a quiet whisper, and thin curls of vapor peeled away from her face and shoulders, drifting upward in pale ribbons as the last traces of coolant mist and sedation residue evaporated into the sterile air.

For several seconds the world refused to assemble itself properly. Light existed, but it bled into shadow. Shapes hovered without clear edges, and colors smeared together into dull, uncertain patches as her brain struggled to remember how to separate them into something meaningful. The confusion did not last long. Her implants stepped in before it could deepen. Contrast sharpened. Edges tightened and snapped into place. Colors deepened until the room resolved around her with faint digital precision, as though reality itself had been quietly adjusted back into focus.

The curved lid of the cryopod hovered above her, still lifting slowly on hydraulic arms that extended with smooth mechanical patience. The ceiling of the shuttle stretched overhead in long segmented panels ribbed with recessed lighting. Each fixture cast a soft, utilitarian glow designed to illuminate the cabin without glare. Beyond her own pod, identical cryogenic chambers lined the length of the compartment in orderly rows. Their lids were rising one after another in quiet synchronization, the movement strangely graceful. For a moment the machines resembled mechanical flowers opening toward morning.

The sounds of waking gradually filled the shuttle. Soft hydraulic clicks marked the unlocking mechanisms as they released. Each opening chamber followed with the faint whisper of disengaging seals. Beneath the mechanical noises came the uneven human sounds of people rediscovering breath and gravity. Someone coughed quietly a few rows away. Another passenger shifted with a restless rustle of limbs that had not moved in months. Somewhere nearby a shaky laugh escaped someone’s throat before collapsing into a hoarse cough.

Then a muted chime passed gently through the cabin.

“Arrival confirmed. Welcome to Helion Prime.”

The announcement came from the shuttle’s internal systems, delivered in a voice carefully engineered to sound warm without becoming personal. It lived in that carefully measured space between friendliness and professionalism, reassuring without pretending to know the people it addressed.

Y/N’s mind slipped automatically into the broadcast channel. The process happened quietly in the background of her thoughts while her neural interface traced the signal with practiced efficiency.

Local shuttle AI. Docking clamps engaged. Terminal Two, Helion Prime Port Authority. No anomaly flags detected.

She swallowed and immediately regretted it. Her throat burned faintly, dry and raw from months of disuse as her vocal cords reacclimated to air that had not been chemically moderated for suspended respiration.

Her vitals spiked slightly. The response was predictable enough that her implant flagged it before she consciously registered the anxiety. A small notification appeared at the edge of her vision. It was unobtrusive but persistent.

Anxiolytic micro-dose available. Delivery system: spinal reservoir. Projected effect: emotional stabilization.

She dismissed the suggestion immediately.

Instead she pressed her tongue gently against the roof of her mouth, a grounding technique she had learned long before neural overlays and predictive diagnostics had begun offering solutions directly inside the human mind. The familiar pressure steadied her thoughts, anchoring her attention inside the quiet boundaries of her own body.

The cryopod lid finished sliding open with a soft mechanical sigh. Light spilled across her face. It was not the cold sterile glow of the shuttle’s interior lighting. This light carried warmth within it, a rich amber tone that filtered through reinforced glass and atmospheric shielding before reaching the cabin.

She swung her legs slowly over the edge of the cryopod. The motion was cautious and deliberate, as if her body needed a moment to remember what gravity felt like. For a brief second her feet hovered above the deck before lowering toward it. When they finally touched down, the ship’s artificial gravity met her halfway. It was not harsh or abrupt. Instead it settled over her shoulders and spine with quiet insistence, like something that had been waiting patiently for her return.

Her equilibrium lagged slightly behind the movement. The floor seemed to tilt for a moment, sliding sideways in a brief nauseating shift that made her knees dip as her muscles struggled to recall their old responsibilities. Standing inside a gravity well again required negotiations her body had not conducted in months.

She caught the rim of the cryopod before she could stumble. Her fingers closed instinctively around the composite edge. The material felt smooth beneath her skin, but faint texturing ran along the surface to prevent slipping when hands were unsteady.

“Fuck me,” she murmured under her breath.

Her voice sounded strange to her ears. It was not exactly wrong, but it carried a faint distortion while her auditory filters recalibrated to the wider acoustics of the shuttle cabin. The sound echoed too loudly inside her head while somehow seeming thin and distant in the air around her, as though the room had swallowed part of it before returning the rest.

She exhaled slowly and kept one hand braced against the edge of the pod until the faint wavering in her balance settled.

Around her, the other passengers were waking in their own uneven ways. The long row of cryochambers stretched down the length of the compartment, each one releasing its occupant with the same quiet hiss of disengaging seals and slow curls of coolant vapor drifting into the air. The shuttle filled with the mechanical rhythm of waking: hydraulic clicks, the soft whisper of pressure valves releasing, and beneath it all the low, uncertain sounds of human beings rediscovering breath and gravity after months of stillness.

Someone farther down the row coughed violently, the sound rattling through the compartment like a loose piece of machinery finally shaking itself awake. A man muttered a string of curses under his breath, the words thick with groggy irritation. Two pods away, a woman leaned over the edge of her chamber and retched into a small disposable receptacle that had slid automatically into place. The man beside her rested a careful hand on her shoulder, murmuring clumsy reassurance as she tried to catch her breath.

“Take it slow,” he told her gently. “Your stomach just woke up before the rest of you, that’s all.”

The smell of antiseptic drifted faintly through the air, clean and clinical and familiar. Beneath it lingered the metallic tang of recycled atmosphere and equipment that had only recently thawed out of deep dormancy.

A medic drone moved slowly through the aisle between the rows of pods, gliding with quiet patience as if it had all the time in the universe. Its motion carried an unexpected grace. Small stabilizers along its chassis adjusted constantly with tiny corrections, compensating for subtle shifts in the shuttle’s artificial gravity as newly awakened passengers shifted and leaned against their pods. It floated rather than flew, drifting through the narrow aisle like a pale mechanical jellyfish moving through a slow tide.

Its optic sensors glowed a soft, reassuring blue.

The color had clearly been chosen with care. It lacked the harsh brightness of surgical lights or the sterile white glare of laboratory equipment. Instead the glow held a calm steadiness, the sort engineers deliberately designed for the first thing a human being might see after months of frozen darkness.

Y/N watched the drone approach without fear and without much curiosity. Her mind assessed it the way an experienced mechanic might evaluate a familiar piece of machinery: quickly, efficiently, and without needing to linger on the details.

MedAssist Series Four, her thoughts supplied automatically.

The information surfaced through her awareness with quiet certainty, the way old knowledge sometimes returned without being summoned.

Firmware recently updated. No unauthorized modifications detected. Priority routing: passenger stabilization.

The details arranged themselves neatly in her mind like pages turning through a manual she had read too many times before. She had not consciously searched for the information. It simply appeared, precise and orderly.

The drone reached her pod and paused beside it, hovering patiently while its slender chassis rotated slightly to align with her seated posture. A thin sensor mast extended from its body with quiet mechanical precision, unfolding in smooth segmented movements that resembled the limb of a metallic insect.

“Good morning,” the drone said.

Its voice carried the same carefully engineered warmth as the shuttle’s announcement system, though it sounded softer somehow, less official. It felt as though it were speaking directly to her rather than addressing the entire cabin.

“Please remain seated while post-cryogenic disorientation resolves.”

Y/N didn’t argue. Her body still felt as though it was renegotiating its relationship with gravity, and standing any sooner than necessary seemed like an unnecessary experiment.

A narrow beam of scanning light moved slowly across her face and down the length of her body. The beam was faint enough that it barely registered visually, but she could feel the quiet sweep of it as the drone gathered its readings. The sensors worked quickly and silently, parsing the fragile systems of a human body that had spent months suspended somewhere between life and stillness.

She allowed the machine access to the surface metrics without resistance. Those readings were harmless enough: pulse, oxygen saturation, skin temperature. The sort of routine biological data medical drones had been collecting from travelers for generations. The sensors moved across her with quiet efficiency, gathering measurements and filing them away somewhere inside a system designed to notice such things without ever caring about them.

Deeper inside her systems, however, where the neural telemetry streams branched into far more personal territory, her defenses remained firmly in place. There were boundaries in her mind that did not open simply because a polite machine requested entry.

Invisible firewalls stirred quietly at those thresholds, and when the drone’s sensors brushed against them they encountered nothing but calm resistance. The machine paused for the briefest fraction of a second, recalibrated its scanning pattern, and withdrew without protest. Its programming adapted smoothly to the limits it had been given.

The scan concluded with a small, polite chime.

“Vitals within acceptable parameters,” the drone reported in its calm, moderated voice. “Mild disequilibrium expected. Hydration recommended.”

A recessed panel slid open in the drone’s chassis with a soft mechanical whisper. From within it, a small cylindrical container extended outward on a slender articulated arm. The metal was brushed and clean, its surface catching the warm amber glow filtering through the shuttle’s cabin.

The container hovered politely in front of her.

“Would you like water?”

The question was so simple, so plainly human in its phrasing, that it nearly made her smile.

Y/N reached out and took the container, her fingers closing around the cool metal with a faint delay that reminded her her body was still catching up with the rest of her. The chill seeped into her palm in a way the sterile air and humming machinery could not quite manage.

“Yeah,” she said, clearing her throat quietly. “That… actually sounds great.”

Her voice rasped slightly on the final word. Months without speaking had left her vocal cords stiff and unfamiliar with their purpose, and hearing her own voice in open air felt oddly foreign, as though she were listening to someone she used to know.

The drone tilted its sensor mast slightly. The movement resembled a nod closely enough that the resemblance could hardly have been accidental.

“Welcome back,” it said.

The words lingered in the air longer than she expected. Y/N wasn’t entirely sure what the machine meant by them. Perhaps it referred to the planet waiting beyond the shuttle hull, glowing somewhere outside the reinforced glass and docking clamps. Or perhaps it referred to something simpler: the quiet act of existing again after months suspended in chemical stillness.

She lifted the container to her lips and took a slow drink. The water was cool and clean, carrying the faint mineral taste of recycled filtration systems, but after the dry emptiness of cryosleep it felt almost luxurious. The liquid slid down her throat like relief.

“I’ll survive,” she said after a moment, lowering the container slightly. Her voice was still rough, but steadier now. “Thank you.”

The drone paused briefly, and in that small silence one could almost imagine it evaluating the subtle shifts of tone and expression that accompanied human speech.

“Survival probability: high,” it replied matter-of-factly.

Then its chassis rotated smoothly and the soft blue glow of its sensors turned away from her. Two pods down the row, another passenger appeared to be having a far less graceful return to gravity.

The man remained bent forward over the edge of his chamber, one arm wrapped tightly around his stomach while the other clung to the rim of the pod as though the floor might slide away if he let go. His breathing came in uneven bursts, and every few seconds he squeezed his eyes shut with stubborn determination.

The medic drone drifted toward the man with the same quiet efficiency it had shown when approaching her, its stabilizers making tiny adjustments as it slipped neatly between the rows of pods. Y/N watched it go without much interest.

The tremor in her legs had eased while she sat there. What had started as a sharp, disorienting instability had settled into something far more manageable, a faint trembling that felt like the aftershocks of an earthquake that had already passed. The tingling in her hands and feet had faded as well, leaving behind a dull ache that was irritating but no longer alarming.

She stayed seated a little longer, letting the last scattered pieces of herself fall back into place.

Inside her mind the shuttle’s internal network moved quietly with constant activity. It wasn’t a sound exactly. It felt more like a distant awareness, the subtle sense of systems communicating all around her. Passenger manifests updated in orderly digital columns somewhere in the ship’s memory banks, each name quietly shifting from SUSPENDED to ACTIVE as the cryopods finished their cycles. Cargo bay seals disengaged deeper in the shuttle’s hull, releasing freight containers for inspection. At the same time the port authority transmitted docking fees and disembarkation clearances in tidy encrypted packets that passed through the network like paperwork sliding across an invisible desk.

A customs pre-screening algorithm flagged three passengers for secondary review based on travel frequency and declared assets.

Y/N skimmed the information the way someone might glance at passing street signs while walking through a familiar neighborhood.

Docking terminal security grid: moderate. Camera density: high along the primary customs corridor, noticeably lower along maintenance access lanes. Environmental controls adjusting for Helion’s dry climate. Humidity currently below standard human comfort baseline.

None of it required her attention.

Across from her, a man blinked repeatedly as if trying to scrape the fog out of his eyes. He dragged both hands slowly down his face, pressing his fingers hard against his skin as though the sleep clinging there were something he could physically wipe away. His hair stuck up in uneven directions, crushed flat on one side where it had spent months pressed against the cryopod cushion.

“Feels like I swallowed a freezer,” he muttered hoarsely. The words dragged through a throat that clearly hadn’t been used in a very long time.

Y/N glanced up from the water container in her hands.

“You kind of did,” she said before she could stop herself.

The man froze halfway through rubbing his face and looked at her. For a moment he simply stared, his expression caught somewhere between confusion and exhaustion, as if he were still deciding whether the world around him was real enough to contain jokes.

Then he let out a tired, crooked laugh.

“Yeah,” he said, exhaling slowly through his nose. “Guess I did.”

He flexed his fingers, watching them move as circulation returned in faint prickling waves. The motion made him wince slightly.

“First time?” he asked after a moment, glancing toward her with the cautious curiosity of someone trying to orient himself inside a room that hadn’t existed an hour ago.

Y/N tipped the container back and took another small sip before answering.

“Not even close.”

“Lucky you,” he muttered.

He swung his legs cautiously over the side of his pod and immediately regretted it. The moment his feet touched the deck the room seemed to tilt beneath him. He grabbed the rim of the chamber with both hands as if it were the only solid object left in the universe.

“Oh… wow,” he breathed.

He shut his eyes for a moment and took a slow breath, waiting for the dizziness to pass. When he tried again, the movement was steadier, though his shoulders stayed tense as if he expected the floor to betray him again at any second.

Around them the cryo bay slowly filled with the sounds of life returning. Not all at once, since nothing about waking from cryosleep happened quickly, but in small uneven waves that moved through the compartment like distant weather. A cough echoed from one corner of the bay. The scrape of someone’s boots sounded against the metal deck. Low voices began murmuring as passengers rediscovered language after months of chemical silence.

Someone laughed weakly at nothing in particular.

The air itself seemed to change as more people began moving, the room filling with the quiet evidence of living bodies again.

An attendant moved carefully down the center aisle between the rows of cryopods, stepping around open chambers with the practiced ease of someone who had walked that path more times than she could count. Her pale port-authority jacket caught the warm cabin light as she moved, the fabric marked with Helion Prime’s insignia over one shoulder. The faded blue crest had softened around the edges from years of washing and long hours beneath the sun.

She clapped her hands lightly.

“Welcome to Helion Prime,” she said.

Her voice carried the practiced calm of someone trained to greet strangers at the end of long journeys, but beneath the professionalism there was something else as well, a faint kindness that routine hadn’t quite managed to wear away.

“Take your time standing,” she continued as she walked slowly down the aisle so her voice would carry across the bay. “Hydration stations are available near the exit. If you feel faint, please remain seated and a medic will assist you.”

While she spoke, her eyes moved carefully from passenger to passenger, quietly studying the way people moved, the color of their skin, the steadiness of their hands. It was the kind of observational habit that formed after watching thousands of travelers wake from cryosleep.

Several rows away, a bright-haired teenager groaned dramatically as he swung his legs out of his pod. His boots hit the deck awkwardly, and he clung to the rim of the chamber like someone who had just stepped off a violently rocking boat.

“I’m never doing cryo again,” he announced to absolutely no one in particular, his voice echoing through the bay with theatrical misery.

Someone nearby chuckled.

The elderly man Y/N had noticed earlier was already standing several rows over. He was upright and steady in a way that seemed almost suspicious for someone who had supposedly spent months suspended in chemical sleep. His shoulders were relaxed, his posture easy, and although his movements were slow they carried the quiet confidence of someone who had made this trip many times before.

“You say that now,” the old man replied mildly, his tone calm and amused. “Wait until you’ve got a twelve-day burn ahead of you and someone offers cryo as the alternative.”

The teenager squinted at him suspiciously, still gripping the edge of his pod as if letting go might send him sliding across the deck.

“You follow me onto this shuttle?” he asked.

The old man’s mouth twitched faintly.

“Just lucky, I suppose.”

Y/N watched the exchange for a moment with quiet amusement before letting her attention drift back to the far more delicate task of simply existing inside her own body again. Conversation and humor belonged to people who were fully awake. She still felt as though she had been borrowed from sleep and returned only partially assembled.

Setting the metal water container aside on the edge of the pod, she pushed herself upright again, slower this time, giving her balance the courtesy of catching up before she asked it to cooperate with anything ambitious. Her muscles responded gradually. Her legs tightened first, faint tremors running through them as dormant strength began rebuilding itself along familiar pathways. Signals traveling down her nerves arrived just a fraction slower than usual, but they arrived all the same. Her knees locked, her weight settled into the deck beneath her boots, and the floor felt solid enough to trust. For a moment her balance wavered in a subtle sway, as if the room had not quite decided which direction was truly down. Then it steadied and held.

Across the cryo bay, the shuttle doors began to cycle open. The sound was unmistakable, a long hydraulic sigh followed by the deliberate separation of thick reinforced panels that had sealed the vessel from the outside world. The doors slid apart with patient inevitability, revealing a widening slice of Helion Prime waiting beyond the hull.

A broad corridor stretched outward from the shuttle like the throat of some enormous machine. Amber light poured through the opening and spilled across the cryo bay floor in long warm streaks that felt strangely alive compared to the sterile white illumination inside the ship. The color softened the cold geometry of the metal surfaces, turning the deck plates almost golden for a moment.

The walls of the corridor bore the insignia of the Helion Prime Port Authority at regular intervals, a faded blue crest stamped onto metal panels that had clearly endured too many years beneath an unforgiving sun. The paint had the washed-out look of something repeatedly scoured by heat and dust, as though even color struggled to survive here.

The light itself felt different.

Y/N noticed the change immediately. It was not the sterile brightness of orbital stations nor the carefully balanced artificial twilight maintained on long-haul transports. This light carried weight within it—dust, warmth, and the faint sense of distance. It felt like sunlight that had crossed miles of dry land before reaching the building, as if the star outside had brushed against the world and left traces of itself behind.

Her implants reacted automatically. Her pupils narrowed slightly as the system compensated for the warmer spectrum, while radiation counters began ticking faintly at the edge of her awareness. The readings were not alarming and certainly not urgent; they simply existed as a quiet reminder that Helion’s star had never been particularly gentle.

It burned harder than most colonists preferred, and Helion Prime had long ago learned that surviving beneath that sky required a certain willingness to adapt.

Y/N slipped quietly into the public planetary feeds. The connection formed effortlessly, her neural interface reaching outward through the shuttle’s systems and into the broader network surrounding the planet. Information unfolded across her vision the way a map might spread across a table, revealing layers of detail most travelers would never notice.

Helion Prime appeared in steady streams of data. Orbital satellites blinked above the atmosphere, transmitting environmental readings and communication relays in calm, disciplined intervals. Agricultural reclamation zones stretched across the planet’s surface in irregular patches of green and brown, their shapes resembling scars slowly knitting themselves back together.

The green was thinner than it should have been.

Radiation hotspots glowed stubborn orange across several regions where mercenary strikes had once carved deep wounds into the infrastructure. Soil toxicity readings streamed from sensor pylons planted across farmland like metallic scarecrows, their signals flickering steadily as they measured the slow recovery of poisoned earth.

The data moved toward her in steady currents, sliding across the quiet architecture of her mind like streams flowing through a carefully drawn map. She skimmed it instinctively, the way someone familiar with a landscape can glance across it and immediately notice what does not belong. Without hesitation she marked three regions, small digital bookmarks blinking into place across the satellite imagery and environmental overlays.

The first lay across a staple crop belt that had once fed nearly half a continent. From orbit the farmland appeared as a faded patchwork of greens and browns stitched across the land, but the overlays told a different story. A fungal bloom had taken hold there, spreading through the fields with patient determination. Pale tendrils crept outward in delicate branching patterns that, from a distance, could almost be mistaken for frost spreading across glass. The infection possessed a strange beauty when viewed from above, its intricate web drifting across the landscape like a piece of lace laid gently over the earth.

Beauty, she knew, had never been a reliable measure of safety.

The second region revealed the skeleton of irrigation networks that had collapsed during the conflicts years earlier. In their place someone had patched together temporary piping, quick repairs meant to keep water flowing just long enough for the farms to survive another season. From orbit the replacement lines glimmered faintly under the sunlight, stretching across the soil like surgical staples closing a wound that had never truly healed. They held the system together for now, but the strain in those makeshift repairs was obvious to anyone who knew how to look.

The third region unsettled her the most. The data showed subtle shifts in the native root systems beneath the soil where chemical contamination had seeped deep into the ground. Plants were mutating under the pressure, adapting to poisoned earth with a stubborn creativity that was both promising and dangerous. Evolution was experimenting in real time, bending growth patterns in directions no one had predicted. The vegetation was learning how to survive, but survival and sustainability were rarely the same thing.

She would need samples to know for certain. Soil cores. Root clusters. Fungal tissue. Something she could examine with real instruments instead of relying on distant orbital scans.

Namjoon hadn’t exaggerated.

The Helion system was starving, slowly and stubbornly, the way a body weakens when its lifeblood begins to fail. It was not the dramatic kind of collapse that made headlines or sent emergency fleets racing across the stars. This was quieter than that. Soil losing strength year by year. Crops growing thinner. Ecosystems drifting slowly out of balance until, one day, there would not be enough left to hold everything together. Without people who understood the fragile language of plants, the situation could unravel into something far worse before anyone realized how serious it had become.

Y/N wasn’t worried about the work itself. Plants, soil chemistry, the delicate mechanics of ecological recovery were puzzles she understood. Living systems had patterns. Damage had causes. Even collapse followed certain rules if you knew how to look closely enough.

What troubled her more were the people she would inevitably have to work with.

She had never been the scrappy type. Confrontation did not energize her the way it did some researchers who thrived on intellectual combat. She preferred careful discussions, quiet observation, and problems that could be solved with patience rather than raised voices. Unfortunately she also had an unfortunate habit of saying exactly the wrong thing when emotions ran high. The last thing she needed was a heated argument with a local official or a territorial researcher who had spent the last ten years defending their patch of farmland like a fortress.

The mental image arrived uninvited: herself standing stubbornly in the middle of a lab, insisting that someone’s irrigation model was flawed while security officers waited politely by the door.

Namjoon having to bail her out of jail would be humiliating beyond repair.

She exhaled quietly and let the breath leave through her nose.

Best behavior, she reminded herself.

A medic drone drifted close again, hovering near shoulder height as it scanned the passengers beginning to shuffle toward the exit. Its soft blue sensors swept across the cabin in patient arcs, pausing briefly on anyone whose posture looked uncertain.

“Passenger vitals within acceptable parameters,” it said in its calm mechanical voice. “Please stand when ready.”

Y/N glanced toward the machine.

“I’m ready,” she replied, although the word still felt less like a fact and more like something she was in the process of deciding.

She stood carefully. For half a breath the floor tilted beneath her boots as her inner ear argued stubbornly with gravity, but the sensation passed almost as quickly as it arrived. Her balance corrected itself while the final adjustments completed quietly inside her nervous system.

Motor latency dropping back toward baseline, her implants noted with quiet satisfaction.

Around her the other passengers began moving slowly toward the open shuttle doors. In her augmented vision their biosigns shimmered faintly around them, soft halos of fatigue, mild nausea, and the quiet relief of people who had survived the long emptiness between worlds.

A woman a few rows ahead had already activated her comm.

“We made it,” she whispered into the device, her voice bright with disbelief. “I’m on Helion. I’m really here.”

The bright-haired teenager from earlier stumbled slightly as he stepped forward, catching himself awkwardly on the edge of a cryopod.

“Okay,” he muttered, glaring accusingly at his own feet. “We’re not doing that again.”

The elderly man stepped past him with slow, confident strides that carried none of the hesitation affecting most of the others.

“Walk it off,” he advised mildly. “Helion’s gravity’s a touch heavier than station norm.”

The teenager blinked at him.

“She?” he asked.

The old man shrugged as if the answer should have been obvious.

“Planets have personalities,” he said. “You’ll see.”

Y/N stepped down from the pod slowly, letting the motion unfold with deliberate patience, the way someone might descend a ladder after a long climb while wondering whether the ground below would still feel familiar. Her boots touched the shuttle floor with a soft hollow tap, and for a moment she simply stood there, letting the weight of her body settle fully into gravity again.

The floor vibrated faintly beneath her feet. It was subtle, barely more than a whisper of movement through the metal deck, but her body noticed it immediately. Her mind followed the sensation instinctively, tracing it the way a musician might trace a distant note back to the instrument that produced it.

Cargo clamps disengaging somewhere along the docking ring outside the hull.

The vibration traveled through the structure in delicate ripples, and without really trying she mapped it out in her head. Reinforced welds along two segments of the ring. Fresh plating along the outer support struts. A repair job done recently and done well enough to trust.

She flexed her fingers slowly, watching the motion as though confirming that the simple mechanics of her own body still worked. The last traces of numbness dissolved into ordinary sensation, leaving behind only a faint memory of cold deep in her joints. When she bent her knuckles again they creaked softly, the sound barely audible but familiar in the way old hinges greet movement after being left unused too long.

Around her the shuttle continued its gradual awakening. The process did not happen all at once. Waking from cryosleep never did. Instead it unfolded in uneven stages, the way a quiet town begins to stir at dawn. Passengers climbed out of their pods in awkward sequences. Some moved steadily, others wobbled like newborn animals rediscovering how their legs worked. A nervous laugh broke out somewhere near the rear of the cabin, quickly followed by someone muttering irritably about stiff knees and a throat that felt like sandpaper.

A medic drone hummed past again, its smooth chassis gliding between the pods while trailing the faint sterile scent of antiseptic. Its blue optics swept calmly across the room, measuring heart rates and oxygen levels with patient indifference.

Y/N barely noticed. Once her body felt steady enough to trust, she did what she always did in places that were both new and strangely familiar.

She listened.

Not just with her ears. For her, listening had never meant sound alone. The world had other ways of speaking if someone paid close enough attention.

The port authority network stirred quietly around her, invisible signals flickering through the air like weather moving across a landscape. She slipped into the edges of it without effort, the way someone might step ankle-deep into shallow water simply to feel the current moving around their feet.

Encrypted clearance codes traveled between terminals in crisp bursts of data. Docking authorizations were signed and countersigned in rapid exchanges, their approvals snapping into place with bureaucratic precision. Somewhere deeper in the system the agricultural bureau pinged an outlying reclamation zone for updated soil analytics, while emergency services flagged a delayed supply convoy stalled beyond the western plateau where a dust storm was rolling in like a slow brown tide.

Beneath those official signals, civilian communications flickered softly through the network like fireflies blinking across a summer field. The voices arrived only as fragments, small flashes of relief, excitement, or quiet disbelief drifting through the steady flow of human life continuing all around her. She let the information move past without interfering.

The exit corridor widened as she approached the shuttle doors, and amber light spilled through the opening, deepening toward gold the farther she walked. It carried a warmth that softened the sterile brightness of the shuttle interior, the way sunlight settles into dust and turns something harsh into something almost gentle. Reinforced glass panels lined the far wall of the corridor, and beyond them Helion’s sky stretched wide over the terminal complex.

She slowed without quite meaning to.

The color of the sky wasn’t the same as she remembered. Once it had been a sharp, startling blue, the kind that made the horizon look almost unnaturally clean, as if someone had drawn a perfect line where the world ended. Now a faint haze softened the distance. It wasn’t thick enough to hide anything completely, but it blurred the edges of the landscape and gave the world the worn look of a photograph that had spent too many years sitting in the sun.

Beyond the port structures, reconstruction scaffolding rose in several directions. Tall skeletal frameworks clung to half-rebuilt buildings like careful hands holding broken bones in place while they healed. Cargo cranes moved slowly over the landing yards, their long mechanical arms sweeping through the air with deliberate precision as they lifted containers from freighters resting heavily on their pads.

Farther out, past rows of warehouses and docking lanes, the horizon shimmered faintly where land met ocean. Heat and dust blurred the boundary until the world seemed to waver slightly, as if the planet itself were breathing.

Dry air slipped through the corridor vents and brushed across her skin. Her implants quietly flagged the change in temperature and particulate density, small numbers appearing along the edge of her vision, but she ignored them. The numbers weren’t the point.

Near the customs threshold, a port authority officer leaned casually against the wall with his arms folded across his chest. He occupied the space with the relaxed patience of someone who had spent years watching travelers pass through the same doors day after day. His uniform was neat and well kept, though the fabric across the shoulders had faded slightly where long shifts beneath Helion’s sun had gradually thinned the color.

When he noticed Y/N glancing in his direction, he gave a small nod. It was the quiet kind of acknowledgment strangers exchange in places where faces pass each other every day without much ceremony.

“First time?” he asked as she approached.

His voice carried the easy rhythm of someone who had asked the same question so many times the words had become almost automatic. Even so, there was nothing dismissive about it. If anything, there was a hint of curiosity there, the quiet interest of someone who enjoyed seeing how people reacted the first time they looked out at Helion.

Y/N slowed slightly before answering.

“No,” she said. “I went to college in New Mecca a while ago.”

The officer tilted his head slightly, studying her for a moment as if that detail shifted something in the mental catalog he kept of passing travelers. His gaze drifted briefly toward the shuttle behind her, where passengers were still making their way down the ramp in slow, careful steps, before returning to her face.

After a moment, the corner of his mouth lifted in a faint smile.

“She’s different now.”

Y/N followed his glance through the glass corridor toward the hazy horizon beyond the port buildings.

“I can see that.”

The officer pushed himself away from the wall with an easy shift of weight and stepped aside, gesturing toward the open exit gates with a loose motion of his hand.

“Welcome back, then.”

She nodded in quiet acknowledgment and crossed the threshold into the terminal proper.

The space beyond opened upward into a wide vaulted ceiling supported by an intricate lattice of structural beams. Some of the supports were clearly original, thick metal ribs painted decades earlier in dull industrial gray. Others were newer reinforcements welded into place wherever the building had once been damaged and later repaired. The difference between them was impossible to miss. Heavy seams of metal cut across the structure like scars no one had bothered to smooth away.

They weren’t decorative, and they clearly hadn’t been meant to be. They looked practical instead, the sort of work done by people who cared more about strength than appearance.

Above the concourse, holographic banners drifted lazily over a row of information kiosks. Their projections flickered faintly where the light struggled against Helion’s dust-heavy atmosphere. The advertisements were nothing like the glossy displays she had seen in other ports across the system. There were no beaches here, no luxury towers promising effortless comfort. Instead, the banners promoted reclamation bonds, volunteer brigades, and agricultural rebuilding programs.

Along one long concrete wall a mural stretched nearly the entire length of the terminal. Y/N slowed when she noticed it.

The concrete beneath the paint still carried the faint outlines of old blast scars, pitted marks and hairline cracks left behind from a time when standing inside this port had not been particularly safe. The artist who created the mural hadn’t tried to hide that damage. Instead they had worked it into the design.

Fields reborn in exaggerated greens spread across the wall, their color so bright it bordered on unreal. A golden sun rose above soil painted rich and dark, its light spilling across rolling hills that glowed with promise. As Y/N’s gaze drifted lower she noticed the bottom half of the mural, where enormous roots had been painted pushing deep into fractured earth. They split the stone beneath them as though it were nothing more than dry bread, twisting through the cracks with stubborn determination.

The roots seemed almost luminous. Alive in a way paint rarely managed to capture.

“Miss?”

She turned.

The bright-haired teenager from the shuttle stood a few steps away, scratching awkwardly at the back of his neck. His hair still stuck out at strange angles from cryosleep, and the faint embarrassment in his expression suggested he wasn’t entirely comfortable interrupting someone who looked like they knew where they were going.

“You look like you know what you’re doing,” he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Which way’s baggage?”

Y/N glanced up toward the overhead signs suspended from the ceiling. Her eyes followed them down to the illuminated guidance strips embedded in the polished concrete floor. Thin glowing lines ran through the terminal in organized colors: green for civilian processing, blue for shuttle transfers, white for cargo retrieval.

“Left,” she said, pointing lightly with the hand still holding her water container. “Then down the second ramp. Follow the white markers.”

The teenager blinked at her.

“Damn good memory.”

A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

“Used to live here.”

His expression brightened instantly, the easy enthusiasm of youth smoothing away his earlier awkwardness.

“Thanks,” he said with a quick grin.

Then he turned and disappeared into the steady current of passengers moving deeper into the terminal, carried along by the quiet momentum of arriving lives while the port continued its work around them.

Y/N lingered where the shuttle corridor opened into the wide mouth of the exit concourse, standing still for a moment while the slow tide of travelers flowed around her. Their footsteps echoed softly across the concrete, a steady rhythm that blended with the distant hum of the terminal’s machinery. The light here was different from anything inside the shuttle. It didn’t simply illuminate the space; it seemed to claim it, pressing warmth into the walls, the floor, and the people passing through.

Even filtered through reinforced glass, Helion’s sunlight had a quality that was unmistakable. It wasn’t only bright. It carried weight, a dusty gold tone that hinted at centuries of wind grinding minerals into the air and centuries more of that air lingering stubbornly over the land. The light felt old somehow, as if the atmosphere itself had been steeped in heat long before the first colony ships ever descended through it.

Y/N straightened her shoulders. The movement was small enough that no one nearby would notice, yet inside it felt like something structural settling into place. Her spine lengthened slightly, her breath deepened, and the lingering stiffness of cryosleep slowly drained from her muscles as gravity and circulation reintroduced themselves.

Then she stepped forward with the others.

With each step, the amber glow from outside swallowed a little more of the sterile white light spilling from the shuttle behind her. Artificial illumination faded gradually, like a dream dissolving under morning sun, replaced by something harsher and more honest. The corridor felt warmer the closer she moved toward the exit, as though the planet itself were breathing patiently against the hull, waiting for its visitors to step out and belong to it again.

Arrival confirmed.

The words blinked once across her internal display, brief and clinical, before slipping quietly back into passive status.

At the end of the ramp she stepped down from the shuttle. Her boots struck the metal surface with a dull, grounding thud that traveled up through the bones of her legs and into her spine. Her implants registered the impact instantly, calculating force distribution across heel and arch while balance recalibrated and microscopic adjustments fired through the muscles of her calves and hips.

Helion’s gravity was only slightly heavier than station norm. It wasn’t enough to bend someone beneath it, but it was enough to remind you, gently and persistently, that the planet had a habit of holding on to whatever landed on it.

She adjusted without thinking. Drawing in a slow breath, she forced her shoulders to loosen and let the last of the tension slip away.

The refresher bay just off the docking corridor was already crowded. Newly awakened passengers drifted inside in loose clusters, many moving with the slow, uncertain gait of people whose bodies were still reacquainting themselves with gravity. Some leaned against the walls while others crowded the sinks, splashing water over their faces as if trying to wash away the lingering chill of cryosleep.

Steam gathered unevenly near the ceiling where several taps ran at once, curling in pale clouds beneath fluorescent lights that hummed faintly overhead. Somewhere behind the walls, pipes rattled and knocked as pressure regulators struggled to keep up with the sudden demand. The air smelled faintly of soap, recycled moisture, and warm metal.

Y/N slipped into an open station near the far wall. The sink there was small and utilitarian, its metal basin scratched and dulled from years of use. She placed both hands on either side of it and leaned forward slightly.

The mirror above the sink offered no kindness.

There were no filters, no distortions—just reinforced glass beneath fluorescent strips that buzzed softly overhead. She met her own reflection without hesitation.

Her skin looked pale under Helion’s warmer light, the color slightly washed out after months in suspension. Shadows had settled beneath her eyes in a way that suggested permanence now, like bruises that had simply learned to behave themselves. The scars were where she remembered them: thin pale lines tracing familiar paths along her collarbone, down her forearm, curving faintly near the edge of her jaw.

Some things time simply learned to live around.

For a brief moment her implant projected a faint biometric grid across her reflection, mapping temperature gradients and pulse patterns along her skin. The delicate lines shimmered like ghostly scaffolding before she dismissed them. She didn’t need numbers to tell her she was tired. She didn’t need tremor analysis or predictive stress curves to explain what her body already knew.

When she turned the tap, the pipe sputtered briefly before releasing a thin stream of water that steadied after a moment. The delay registered automatically in her mind as pressure regulators adjusted to the sudden draw. Her thoughts brushed lightly against the municipal grid without conscious effort.

Water reclamation efficiency: eighty-six percent. Desalination strain: elevated. Municipal reserves: below baseline.

The information slipped neatly into the back of her mind, filed away the way someone else might fold a receipt and tuck it into their pocket.

Warm water splashed across her face, and the sensation hit almost like a shock. Nerve endings woke all at once, bright pulses racing across her skin as circulation surged fully back into place. She inhaled sharply, a soft hiss slipping through her teeth, not from pain but from the overwhelming intensity of warmth after months spent in frozen stillness. Cryo had a way of making ordinary sensations feel almost violent when they returned.

A man two sinks down coughed into the crook of his sleeve and spat a mouthful of foam into the basin. “Feels like sand in my teeth,” he muttered hoarsely.

Someone behind him laughed. “Welcome to Helion. You get used to it.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and grunted skeptically. “We’ll see.”

Y/N brushed her teeth methodically, her movements slow and deliberate. In the mirror she watched her own hand move and noted the steadiness without comment. Tremor amplitude: baseline. She rinsed the brush, then ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back from her forehead until it looked intentional rather than recently thawed. A thin disposable towel hung from a dispenser beside the sink. She used it to dry her face before dropping it into the recycler slot. The machine hummed softly as it pulled the fabric away.

When she stepped back into the corridor, the shuttle had already begun its disembarkation routine in earnest. Cargo locks thumped open in carefully timed sequence, the heavy sounds echoing through the docking bay like slow drumbeats. Ramps extended outward with long hydraulic sighs while port authority personnel in sun-faded uniforms moved through the bustle with easy efficiency, guiding traffic and signaling crews with relaxed gestures that suggested they had done this countless times before.

Her awareness widened again. The air shifted almost immediately as Helion Prime’s atmosphere began bleeding into the shuttle corridors through the environmental systems. It felt noticeably different from the filtered air inside the ship, drier and heavier with mineral dust. Her sensors quietly registered the change. Iron particulate slightly elevated. Airborne particles carried faint biological signatures from the stubborn surface flora that somehow managed to survive here. Her chest tightened slightly as the data settled into place.

She joined the slow current of passengers moving toward the ramp and let herself be carried along in the quiet flow of bodies drifting forward with the hesitant rhythm of people whose muscles still remembered the cold stillness of cryosleep. Boots scuffed softly against the metal flooring as they walked, the sounds blending into a low shuffle that echoed through the docking corridor. Someone ahead laughed too loudly, the sound cracking slightly in the open air as though their voice had not yet decided how much space it could safely occupy.

A small child clung sleepily to a parent’s hand, their steps uneven and slow. Their biosigns were steady but still lagging behind the rest of their body’s attempt to wake fully. The medic drone drifted past once more with quiet patience, its sensors sweeping across the line of travelers as it logged recovery metrics with the detached care of a machine that had watched this ritual unfold thousands of times.

Ahead of them, the ramp finished lowering with a long hydraulic sigh that reverberated through the metal beneath their feet. The sound carried a strange sense of finality, like the last latch releasing on something that had remained sealed too long. Then sunlight poured inward.

It did not creep the way light often did inside controlled environments. It did not slip politely through narrow seams or spread gradually across the floor. Instead it surged through the open hatch like liquid metal, thick, brilliant, and alive, flooding the corridor with Helion’s fierce golden glow until the sterile white lighting of the shuttle interior seemed to dissolve beneath it. For a moment the brightness bordered on blinding.

Her implants reacted instantly, dimming retinal intake before her eyes had time to protest. Small data points flickered quietly along the edges of her awareness as her systems compensated for the planet’s harsher spectrum. The ultraviolet index registered several degrees higher than the standard for most colony worlds, while airborne particulates scattered the sunlight in ways that softened the horizon but sharpened everything nearby.

The warmth reached her next, settling between her shoulder blades like a steady hand that had no intention of letting go. Wind moved slowly through the docking corridor in patient breaths, carrying the taste of the planet with it. Grit whispered across the metal ramp and along the walls in faint rasping sounds. The air itself carried a metallic tang, the unmistakable scent of iron-rich soil baking beneath relentless sunlight.

Her filters sampled the atmosphere automatically. Trace heavy metals registered within tolerable range while residual combustion particulates lingered faintly in the air. The system cross-referenced those readings against archived atmospheric reports and quietly confirmed what her senses had already begun to suspect. Infrastructure fires had burned here not so long ago.

Somewhere beyond the docking port, something cried out. The sound cut through the noise of arriving passengers like a thin shard of glass, high, sharp, and strangely mournful. It echoed briefly against the metal scaffolding of the terminal before dissolving into the dry air. Her implant identified it before the echo had fully faded. Likely: Aves ferrum variant. Alternate possibility: hybrid scavenger species introduced during early terraforming cycles.

The classification meant little to her. The sound itself lingered instead, settling somewhere in her chest with quiet familiarity.

She adjusted the strap of her bag against her shoulder and lifted her gaze. The terminal stretched outward in layered platforms of metal and ferrocrete, its architecture rising in stepped terraces above the docking floor. Reinforced walkways crossed overhead like the ribs of some enormous skeleton, linking observation decks and service towers in a practical lattice that had clearly been repaired more than once. The entire structure carried the look of something that had endured hard years and simply kept going.

Reconstruction scaffolding clung to several sections of the port, tall frameworks of steel wrapped around half-rebuilt walls and towers the way splints brace a healing limb. They held everything steady while the structure slowly relearned how to stand.

Dust drifted lazily through the open air. Above the concourse, holo-signs flickered where their projectors struggled against the interference of airborne grit. The images wavered occasionally but stubbornly held together. Bright arrows marked transit routes. Supply notices blinked in uneven rhythm. Directional markers guided travelers deeper into the terminal complex.

Y/N skimmed the municipal transit grid almost without intending to. The information rose through her awareness the way familiar landmarks appear when someone glances out a window.

Standard tram routes to New Mecca were suspended pending track stabilization. Aerial shuttle service continued at limited capacity, reserved mostly for medical transport and supply deliveries. Ground transport remained the most reliable option.

On Helion Prime, that meant sandcats.

The word stirred something unexpectedly warm in her memory, and for a moment she almost laughed. An image surfaced uninvited. An old Sandcat roaring across red terrain somewhere far from the port, its suspension rattling violently as it bounced over dry riverbeds and broken stone. Wind whipped through the open windows hard enough to sting her eyes while the engine growled like a stubborn animal chewing gravel. Nothing else moved across Helion’s vast, empty land with quite the same confidence.

She had left one behind on M6 during her rescue. Strange what the mind chose to mourn.

A voice at her elbow broke the thought.

“You need a ride?”

Y/N turned.

A man stood beside a battered transport kiosk that looked as though it had survived several administrations, two redesign committees, and at least one argument with gravity. The casing had once been painted red. Stubborn traces of the color still clung to the corners, though years of sun and dust had bleached most of it down to a dull, tired orange.

The man himself looked equally weathered. His hat sagged slightly at the brim, the cloth creased from long days beneath Helion’s relentless sky. One side had faded noticeably lighter than the other where sunlight had gnawed at the fabric for years. Dust coated his boots in layered shades, red over brown over gray, like the sedimentary record of a hundred different roads.

“Sandcat?” he offered, jerking his thumb toward the open transport lot beyond the terminal.

Out there, squat armored crawlers idled in the heat like patient animals waiting to be called forward. Their engines rumbled quietly beneath thick plating, low mechanical heartbeats vibrating through the concrete.

Y/N let her gaze pass over him automatically. Her implant did the rest.

Licensed operator tag embedded in the sleeve of his jacket. Registration authentic. Vehicle ID pinging faintly from a parked unit roughly thirty meters away. Maintenance logs showed two recent part replacements and one overdue filter change. No outstanding violation flags. No unpaid docking fines.

The man watched her eyes flick briefly out of focus as data streamed quietly through her awareness. A crooked smile tugged at the corner of his mouth when he noticed.

“Good afternoon, miss.” He pushed himself away from the kiosk and straightened slightly, brushing a layer of dust from his jacket. “Where to?”

“New Mecca.”

He let out a long, appreciative whistle.

“That’s a haul.” He scratched the back of his neck and glanced toward the transport yard beyond the terminal. “Roads are… creative right now.”

“Creative?”

“That’s my polite way of saying you’ll rattle a few bones loose.”

“I’m a pilot,” she said with a faint smirk. “I’ve driven through worse.”

For a split second an image flared behind her eyes. The Hunter-Gratzner tearing apart in fire and metal, the violent spin of sky and ground collapsing together. Her expression never changed. That was another thing this newer version of herself had become good at. She kept everything sealed behind a calm surface.

The man studied her for a moment, his eyes narrowing slightly.

“Suit yourself,” he said at last. “I can get you there. Not pretty, but we’ll get there.”

Behind the quiet exchange, her implant dipped into the public registry for licensed operators. Fourteen active units within a twenty kilometer radius. Eight flagged for maintenance delays. Three rated high reliability. His vehicle hovered just beneath the top tier, affordable and dependable enough though not exceptional.

“Let me think about it,” she said.

He tipped his hat. “I’ll be here.”

Of course he would be. Men like him rarely wandered far from the places where travelers needed them.

Y/N left him leaning against the kiosk and followed the painted guidance lines toward the ground transport hub. Her boots crunched softly against grit that had been tracked in from the surrounding fields, each step sending faint whispers of dust skittering across the ferrocrete floor. The lines beneath her feet had once been bright white, but years of tire marks and drifting sand had worn them thin until they looked less like directions and more like the memory of them.

Workers in sun-faded uniforms guided cargo drones across the docking pad with clipped gestures of their hands. Each motion sliced cleanly through the air and translated instantly into control signals broadcast over short-range frequencies.

Cargo drone C7 reporting alignment error. Loading grid recalibration requested. Thermal expansion variance exceeding tolerance by 1.3 millimeters.

The drone hovered uncertainly above its assigned bay, its undercarriage twitching in small mechanical adjustments as it recalculated its position.

Nearby, two mechanics argued beside a cargo crate that refused to settle properly into its docking cradle. Their voices drifted across the docking pad like sparks from a grinding wheel. Y/N passed them without slowing. As she did, her awareness brushed lightly against the crate’s embedded RFID tag.

Shipment origin: Agricultural Relief Sector Seven. Contents: soil stabilizer compounds. Nitrogen-fixing bacterial cultures.

She dipped one layer deeper into the data stream.

Culture viability: seventy four percent.

She frowned slightly. At that rate the bacteria would struggle to establish themselves in Helion’s damaged soil. They might survive for a while, but survival was not the same thing as recovery, not against fungal blooms and scorched farmland.

No wonder Namjoon had sounded strained in that terrible voice note he had sent her. Most of the message had dissolved into static before it ever reached her. The satellites were still being repaired, someone had mentioned, and the network across Helion was barely holding itself together.

All she had managed to catch clearly was the word war, and his voice saying her name like he needed her here. That had been enough. The details could wait. Namjoon would explain when she saw him, and if he didn’t, Samara certainly would.

She kept moving, her implant quietly mapping the docking port’s layout as she walked. Camera placements appeared as faint overlays at the edge of her vision while security patrol intervals ticked through silent schedules. Beneath the ferrocrete floors, power conduits ran in branching networks that fed cranes, terminals, and docking locks above. Backup generators sat bolted into recessed corners where anyone patient enough to look might notice them.

The Port Authority security grid worked, but only just. It held together the way a patched roof holds against rain. Enough to keep the storm out for now, but clearly under strain.

Y/N let her awareness skim across the network the way someone might run their fingers along a rough wall, feeling for cracks without needing to stare directly at them. Surveillance coverage thinned near the outer cargo pads where fewer cameras had been installed after the last reconstruction phase. Power backup nodes remained partially exposed behind a poorly shielded maintenance panel that someone had clearly meant to repair later and never returned to.

The system functioned, but it carried the quiet fatigue of infrastructure that had been asked to bear more weight than it was built for. Beyond the landing platforms, New Mecca’s silhouette cut across the horizon.

From this distance the city did not resemble the proud capital it had once been advertised as in recruitment brochures and off-world broadcasts. Instead it looked halfway through rebuilding itself. Low towers stood stitched together with scaffolding. Solar arrays tilted toward the sky like broken wings still trying to remember how flight worked. Construction cranes dotted the skyline like tall, patient insects.

Without thinking, she pulled up satellite imagery. The planet unfolded across the inside of her vision in quiet layers of data. Orbital feeds stitched together wide stretches of terrain while municipal telemetry and infrastructure diagnostics slid neatly into place over the top. Helion Prime appeared less like a map and more like a living organism under observation. Power grids pulsed through the landscape like arteries. Reservoirs breathed slowly through purification plants. Agricultural belts flickered with chemical reports arriving from distant sensor towers.

The numbers moved calmly through her awareness, steady as vital signs on a patient under careful observation. Energy production hovered at sixty-two percent of pre-invasion capacity. Water purification held slightly higher at seventy-one. Agricultural projections hesitated briefly as the system recalculated them, the numbers shifting before settling into a conclusion that made her jaw tighten almost imperceptibly.

Failure within three growth cycles without intervention.

The prediction didn’t surprise her. She had felt something wrong the moment she stepped onto the ramp. It was in the dryness of the air, in the hazy softness blurring the horizon, in the scaffolding gripping half the terminal like splints around injured bone. But numbers sharpened instinct into certainty. They showed her the fractures clearly: places where damaged systems had been patched instead of repaired, where soil chemistry had been forced into temporary balance and then left to fend for itself. Somewhere in the past months someone had chosen expediency over equilibrium. It was the sort of decision that solved today’s crisis while quietly ruining tomorrow.

A Sandcat engine roared somewhere to her right. The sound rolled across the docking field like distant thunder, low and throaty, and the vibration traveled up through the soles of her boots into the bones of her legs. She turned slightly, letting her gaze drift toward the row of armored ground transports waiting beyond the terminal perimeter. They sat in the sunlight like squat animals resting in the heat, their wide treads built to crawl across dunes and broken pavement with the same stubborn confidence.

Each vehicle broadcast a modest telemetry stream for regulatory compliance, the digital equivalent of a heartbeat pulsing quietly into the port network. Fuel levels. Tire pressure. Engine diagnostics. Navigation firmware. Insurance pings blinking softly in the background.

Most of the signals slipped past her awareness without leaving much of an impression, but one caught her attention long enough to make her pause.

Registration SC-09. Minor suspension wear. Optimal engine output. Navigation firmware recently updated. Balanced load distribution. Emission profile clean.

She memorized the ID the way someone might memorize the face of a stranger they suspected they would see again.

A gust of wind swept across the docking field just then, lifting dust into a tight spiral that glittered briefly in the sunlight like a small golden storm. The particles shimmered for a moment before settling again across the cracked ferrocrete. Her implants adjusted airflow through her nasal filters automatically, thinning the heavier grains before they could reach her lungs. The shift was subtle—barely a change in pressure behind her nose—but it kept the air breathable.

For a moment she simply stood there at the edge of the docking field.

Helion’s sun pressed down from above, not cruel exactly, but insistent. It demanded acknowledgment the way an old authority figure does. Around her the port moved with the restless rhythm of a place trying to rebuild faster than its resources allowed. Machinery groaned under the strain of overworked bearings. Workers argued quietly over cargo crates that refused to align with their docking clamps. Drones hovered uncertainly until technicians corrected their guidance signals with impatient gestures. A small child tugged repeatedly at a parent’s sleeve while staring wide-eyed at a hovering freight lifter as though it were the most extraordinary thing they had ever seen.

Information continued flowing through the edges of her awareness. Municipal strain. Ecological imbalance. Infrastructure fatigue. Standing there felt strangely like standing inside the bloodstream of a living organism, a city pushing itself harder than it should have needed to simply keep functioning.

Beyond the last row of docking pylons, the Sandcats waited in a loose line. Their hulls were matte and practical, their plating scarred by sun and dust. They were not elegant machines, but Helion had never been a planet that rewarded elegance.

She slowed as she approached them, letting her gaze drift casually from one vehicle to the next as if she were simply taking in the scene. To anyone watching she appeared to be idly examining the transports baking in the sunlight. Her implant, however, was far less subtle. Telemetry streams slid neatly into place along the edge of her vision, each vehicle announcing its quiet mechanical truths through tidy lines of diagnostics.

Unit SC-04: coolant running hot. Unit SC-07: right tread wear twelve percent above safe margin. Unit SC-09: balanced output, recent firmware patch, minor suspension fatigue within tolerance.

The information arrived calmly, as orderly as a medical chart. Her implant even overlaid dockside pricing estimates helpfully across the display.

She didn’t need the numbers to know what the answer would be, but she checked her accounts anyway. Settlement funds appeared first, carefully portioned, modest but stable. Then came the quiet transfers from underground contracts, payments made cleanly through networks that asked no questions. Travel expenses had already been deducted. The figures rearranged themselves automatically, each column sliding into place until they reached the same conclusion she had expected all along.

She could afford none of the Sandcats at dockside rates. Her lips pressed together slightly. Behind her, a familiar voice drifted through the dusty air.

“You find something better?”

She glanced back over her shoulder. The man with the bent hat was still leaning against his battered transport kiosk exactly where she had left him, as though the heat and the passage of time had quietly agreed to leave him there. He had shifted his weight slightly, his arms hanging loose in the relaxed posture of someone who had watched travelers pause in exactly that spot a thousand times before.

“Still looking,” she said.

He pushed himself off the kiosk and wandered a few steps closer, his boots crunching softly against the grit scattered across the concrete. When he spoke again, his voice dropped just enough to suggest quiet confidence, like someone about to share a piece of useful information.

“Look,” he said, tilting his head toward the waiting Sandcats. “If you’re heading to New Mecca for work, you don’t want to wait on the trams. Half of them are down right now.”

His thumbs hooked lazily into his belt as he spoke, the posture casual but practiced, like someone who had spent years trying to make conversations like this feel easy.

“I’ll cut you a bit if you’re not hauling cargo.”

“How much is a bit?” she asked.

He scratched at his chin thoughtfully, his gaze drifting toward the vehicles as though the answer might be written somewhere out there in the dust.

“Ten percent.”

She raised an eyebrow. He sighed immediately, the weary sound of a man who had negotiated this same bargain too many times to pretend otherwise.

“Fifteen,” he corrected quickly. “But that’s me being generous.”

Y/N studied him again, but this time she ignored the telemetry data quietly scrolling at the edge of her vision. The neat mechanical numbers describing the health of his vehicle mattered less than the man himself.

She watched the way he shifted his weight from heel to heel. His fingers hooked loosely into his belt but never quite settled there. There was a faint oil stain at the cuff of his sleeve, darkened into the fabric like a bruise that had been there too long to scrub out. The skin around his eyes had folded into dry creases that spoke of long days under Helion’s unforgiving sun and winds that spared no exposed faces.

“You’re overdue on your air filter,” she said mildly, as if commenting on the weather.

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Your unit’s intake system,” she clarified. “It’s flagged for replacement.”

For a moment he simply stared at her. Sunlight flashed across the cracked brim of his hat while the meaning of her words worked its way through his expression. Then he barked out a surprised laugh loud enough to startle two cargo birds perched on a nearby railing.

“You’re kidding.”

“Get it changed before the next dust surge,” she continued calmly. “Otherwise you’ll cook your engine.”

He squinted at her, curiosity sharpening his expression into something almost boyish.

“You some kind of mechanic?”

“Something like that.”

He nodded slowly, filing the answer away somewhere behind his eyes as though she had just stepped into a category he had not expected.

“Fifteen percent,” he repeated. “And if I break down, you can say I told you so.”

A faint smile flickered briefly across her mouth before disappearing again.

“No thanks.” She shrugged lightly, the gesture almost apologetic. “I don’t like risks like that.”

He let out a low whistle.

“Fair enough.”

Inside her mind, the quiet ledger of her finances continued its steady calculations. Available credits. Projected lodging costs. Food allowances. Contingency reserves. Dockside rentals inflated anywhere from twenty two to thirty five percent depending on demand.

She exhaled slowly as the answer arranged itself with predictable clarity.

Tourist tax. It would be cheaper three blocks inland.

“Suit yourself,” the man with the bent hat said, pushing himself away from the kiosk again. “I’ll be here if you change your mind.”

Y/N inclined her head in acknowledgment and stepped away.

She slipped lightly through the port’s public commerce grid, not intruding or altering anything, merely drifting along its surface currents the way someone might trail their fingers through shallow water. Rate sheets shimmered faintly into view at the edge of her awareness as her implant gathered publicly available data.

Three independent Sandcat dealers outside the docking perimeter had their offers posted there. One advertised long haul contracts at a modest discount if the fare was paid in full, cash preferred. Another carried a quieter reputation buried in its transaction logs, a habit of overbilling during return inspections and slipping “environmental cleaning” charges into invoices for dust that Helion itself provided free of charge.

She exhaled softly. This was not the sort of decision that could be made through a quick skim of the network. She would have to go in person. At the edge of the platform she paused and glanced back at the shuttle.

In Helion’s unforgiving light the vessel looked smaller than it had inside the docking corridor, almost delicate, like a visitor pretending permanence. The sun struck its hull in hard metallic flashes that outlined the seams where panels met. Ground crews had already surrounded it with ladders and tool crates, reducing the miracle of interstellar travel to the familiar routine of maintenance.

“Thanks for the ride,” she murmured quietly.

Her implant, ever literal, tagged the shuttle’s registry ID and archived its maintenance profile for future reference, just in case.

She stepped fully out of the shuttle’s shadow and into the unfiltered light of Helion Prime. Her implants responded instantly. Ultraviolet levels spiked. Surface temperature climbed. Ambient wind velocity ticked upward by three kilometers per hour. Her ocular filters dimmed fractionally, softening the brightness just enough for the world to settle into tolerable clarity.

The docking port was not as damaged as she had expected, and that unsettled her more than devastation might have. The structures showed the usual wear Helion inflicted on everything. Alloy panels were bleached pale by sunlight. Dust had been ground deep into seams. Paint had been stripped thin by winds that had spent years learning the geometry of every corner and surface. Replacement panels gleamed faintly among older plating, their newer sheen already surrendering to the slow abrasion of airborne grit.

But there were no fresh scorch marks. No cratered walls. No barricades hastily welded into place.

Her implant overlaid archived pre-invasion imagery across the scene. Buildings slid over themselves like translucent ghost skins aligning with the structures standing there now. The same uneasy feeling she had experienced on M6 returned. Something was wrong in the places the monsters had ignored.

She adjusted the strap of her bag and followed the projected transit map hovering faintly near the port exit. Cryosleep stiffness still tugged at her joints with each step. Her motor responses were fully synchronized now, but her muscles carried a lingering fatigue, as though her body resented the abrupt demand that it function again.

The streets beyond the docking perimeter narrowed into shaded corridors where metal overhangs stretched from building to building in a deliberate attempt to cheat the sun. Those awnings hung like tired wings, casting thin strips of shade across the pavement while wind tunneled through them in dry gusts that lifted grit into spirals before letting it fall again.

The first stretch of the street had been claimed by vendors. Their stalls were assembled from salvaged alloy panels and woven shadecloth patched together with patience rather than pride. Nothing matched, yet everything worked.

“Flatbreads! Fresh!” a woman called, waving a spatula like a flag of surrender.

“Cool water! Not warm!” a boy shouted from behind a battered cart with an evaporative chill unit humming beneath it.

Y/N discreetly pinged the device. Two cooling coils were functioning perfectly. A third had a failing seal that would warm the reservoir within the hour.

Bright coils of prayer cords hung nearby, their beads catching sunlight in quick flashes of red and blue as the wind threaded through them. Someone had painted a small shrine into the wall behind a fruit stand, its colors stubbornly bright despite the dust settling across everything else.

A man nearly collided with her at the corner of a shaded walkway. His biosigns spiked a fraction of a second before impact, adrenaline flaring as his muscles tightened reflexively. He flinched back sharply, his eyes widening for a moment longer than the situation required.

“Sorry,” he muttered, already turning away. His gaze slid off her face as though direct eye contact carried some hidden risk.

“You’re fine,” she said.

But he was already moving again.

She watched him go, noticing the way he glanced over his shoulder twice within the span of ten steps. The first look seemed ordinary enough, the kind anyone might make in a crowded street just to keep their bearings. The second was different. Y/N noticed it the way a musician notices a wrong note inside an otherwise perfect melody. Subtle and easy to miss, but impossible to ignore once you heard it. His eyes flicked back quickly before he slipped into the slow current of pedestrians drifting beneath the sun-faded awnings.

Nearby, two women stood close together at a produce stall. They leaned inward as if their words needed the shelter of shared breath to survive the open air. Their voices barely rose above the whisper of wind threading through the metal overhangs.

“Did you hear about Sector Three?” one of them murmured.

“Keep your voice down,” the other replied sharply, her gaze darting toward the intersection at the end of the street.

Y/N followed the glance.

Two port authority officers stood there beneath a narrow strip of shade cast by a maintenance tower. Their uniforms were immaculate in the way uniforms often are when someone is trying very hard to appear composed. Both of them rested their hands loosely near their belts. They were not gripping anything, and they did not look tense exactly, but their hands were close enough to suggest readiness.

They were not watching anyone in particular.

They were watching everyone.

Fragments of conversation drifted across unsecured civilian bands, faint signals carried through the wireless clutter of the city. Her implant caught them automatically as they moved through the air around her.

“…night patrol doubled…”

“…power flicker again…”

“…not like before, just… different…”

She did not pursue the signals or trace their origins. Instead she let them pass through her awareness like voices overheard through a thin wall, paying more attention to the tone than the content.

A gust of wind tugged at her hair and filled the air with the mingled scents of hot metal and something faintly green struggling beneath the dryness. It smelled like resilience trying to survive under a layer of dust.

She adjusted the strap of her bag and continued farther inland, her boots scuffing softly against the pale grit coating the pavement. Dust lifted beneath her steps like a memory of soil. Soil that had once fed fields and might again if she had anything to say about it.

The vendors continued calling to passing customers, but something about the rhythm of their voices felt wrong. Their shouts had the right shape and cadence, yet they sounded performed rather than lived, as though someone had explained how a lively market should sound and they were repeating the lesson from memory.

“Flatbread! Still warm!” a man called from beneath a canvas awning bleached almost white by years of relentless sun.

The words were delivered at the proper volume and pitch, but strain threaded through them. Her implant isolated the faint tremor in his voice and the subtle diaphragm fatigue that came when someone forced their lungs to push sound past exhaustion. He was pushing optimism through doubt.

The music was missing. She noticed the absence instinctively. Helion’s port markets had once thrummed with sound. Strings humming beneath practiced fingers. Hand-drums carrying steady rhythms through the plazas. The bright metallic chatter of wind chimes strung from solar gutters dancing with every passing gust. Her implant automatically scanned for acoustic signatures, string resonance and percussion clusters, within nearby courtyards.

Nothing appeared within two hundred meters. Helion had once vibrated like a living instrument. Now it hummed low and subdued.

She passed a narrow alley where shade pooled like cool water between two leaning buildings. Inside that small pocket of darkness, two women stood with their heads nearly touching as they spoke.

“They said the perimeter’s holding,” one murmured, her fingers worrying the edge of her sleeve.

“For now,” the other replied quietly.

Their conversation collapsed into silence the moment Y/N approached, the air swallowing their words before they could drift any farther. She let her awareness brush lightly against the municipal security network, careful not to disturb its surface.

Perimeter grid status: active. Outlying sensor pylons: twelve percent offline. Recent alert logs: redacted under provisional authority.

The temptation to dig deeper surfaced immediately. It would have been easy to slip beneath the administrative locks, peel away the provisional restrictions, and see what had been hidden there.

She resisted.

Above her the sun continued its slow climb across the sky, patient and relentless. Heat settled gradually into her skin, soaking through fabric and muscle in slow layers. Sweat gathered at the nape of her neck and traced a narrow path down her spine, sticky and unmistakably human.

Her implant noted the shift in hydration levels and politely suggested she drink something within the next forty minutes. The reminder appeared at the edge of her vision with its usual clinical courtesy, but she dismissed it without much thought.

Instead she welcomed the warmth building beneath her skin. After months suspended in cryogenic stillness, heat felt almost like a kindness. The salt dampness at the back of her neck and the dull ache unwinding through her muscles reminded her that she belonged to something again. To gravity. To moving air that carried scent. To the steady pressure of a real sun hanging over a wounded world.

The wind stirred again, lifting dust from the pavement in thin spirals that curled around her ankles. For a moment the particles glittered in the light before settling back into the anonymity of the street.

She walked straight through it without slowing. Her gaze moved automatically across rooftops, alley mouths, reflective surfaces, and shadowed corners where movement might hide. Habit guided her eyes more than conscious thought. Years of survival had made scanning the world as natural as breathing.

A small cluster of children crouched near the edge of the walkway ahead of her. Their shoulders leaned together, heads bent inward like conspirators plotting some quiet rebellion rather than kids simply passing time.

Between them sat a battered hand-cranked holo-projector. One boy turned the handle carefully while the others watched the dust-lit air between them. The machine sputtered light into existence. A tiny galaxy formed above the projector, its stars flickering as the uneven crank fed it power. Blue-white clusters blinked into being and vanished again, the projection phasing in and out like a distant dream.

A small ship appeared at the edge of the starfield and darted across the projection before dissolving abruptly when the boy’s arm faltered.

“It’s my turn,” one boy whispered sharply.

“You had two spins,” another protested, elbowing him with an intensity that somehow remained restrained.

“That doesn’t count. You went slow on purpose.”

The uneven rotation of the crank caused tiny dips in power output. The projected stars wavered whenever the boy’s grip slipped. She could have stabilized the field easily. A subtle induction pulse from her own systems would smooth the output and give the children a flawless galaxy.

She chose not to. It was a waste of her time.

One of the children looked up. The girl sat slightly apart from the others, her sun-browned cheeks dusted with freckles and her hair hacked short with the uneven determination of someone who had done the job herself. She met Y/N’s gaze and held it longer than most people would have.

Her implant mirrored the stare automatically, mapping posture, breathing cadence, and the tiny muscle shifts along the girl’s jawline. The child was not afraid. There was no spike in cortisol, no instinctive lean away from a stranger.

The girl’s eyes narrowed slightly, as if she were calculating something she had not quite decided on yet. Then she glanced away quickly.

Not far from the children, an older man sat on a low stoop carved from iron-rich stone. The surface had been worn smooth by decades of use, its edges softened by time and the quiet weight of people who had rested there before him. His back curved with age, but it was the natural bend of long years rather than weakness.

Prayer beads slipped through his fingers one by one in a slow, practiced rhythm, each bead touching the next with a soft click that sounded almost like a metronome marking time.

His eyes, however, were sharp. They moved constantly, not in any hurried way, but with the steady attention of someone who had learned long ago that streets had moods and that it paid to listen to them. He was not watching her alone. He was watching everything.

Religion ran through Helion Prime the way structural steel runs through concrete. Quiet, often invisible, but essential to the shape of things. Chrislam verses were etched into doorframes in elegant flowing script, their lines worn smooth by hands brushing them in passing. Courtyard floors were covered in geometric tiling so precise the patterns could have satisfied an orbital engineer. When calls to prayer rose above the buildings, they did so without amplification, their sound shaped by the architecture itself instead of sheer volume.

As she continued walking, her implant quietly cross-referenced what she saw with archived city schematics. Mosques and hydroponic laboratories occupied the same blocks. Soil testing facilities shared walls with communal courtyards where people gathered for prayer. Slender minarets cast long shadows across nutrient vats where technicians monitored the chemistry of fragile soil.

Y/N had never considered herself religious, but she respected belief the way she respected storms. Both were complex systems governed by internal pressures and quiet mathematics, capable of sustaining life or tearing it apart depending on how those pressures were handled.

Faith, like weather, had patterns. If you watched long enough, you could see them moving beneath the surface of things.

She moved through the market with deliberate politeness, careful not to disturb the small rhythms that kept it alive. Families passed in tight clusters, children tugging sleeves or baskets. She stepped aside when necessary, offering small nods whenever someone’s eyes met hers.

At one corner she misjudged a turn and brushed shoulders with a woman carrying a wide basket filled with dried roots. The contact was light, but her reflexes fired instantly, too fast and too sharp. Her implant intervened before the flinch could turn defensive and smoothed the impulse into stillness.

“My fault,” she said quickly in Helion’s trade dialect, shaping the familiar syllables carefully. “Cryo legs.”

The woman’s biosigns spiked briefly. Startle, then recalibration. Her grip tightened on the basket before easing again.

“You just land?” the woman asked, studying her with open curiosity.

“About an hour ago.”

The woman clicked her tongue sympathetically. “Give it time.”

“I’m counting on it.”

One corner of the woman’s mouth lifted. “You here for family?”

“Work,” Y/N replied.

That single word sharpened the woman’s attention. “What kind?”

“Ecology,” she said. “Soil.”

“Ah.” The woman shifted the basket against her hip and looked at her a little differently now. “Then you’ve come at a good time then.”

“I know.”

Something in the answer seemed to satisfy her. She nodded once, firmly. “Well, thank you for helping. Rations started Monday morning and the price of everything’s gone up. We’re getting food sent from Lupus 5, but it’s slow and steady.”

Then she moved on, her sandals scraping softly through the dust.

Y/N remained where she was for a moment, letting the market breathe around her. The air carried heat and iron along with the faint sweetness of yeast rising somewhere nearby, struggling bravely against Helion’s dry atmosphere. Dust drifted between the awnings in thin translucent veils. A hinge squealed somewhere down the street before someone hurried to quiet it, as though even small sounds had learned restraint.

A vendor to her left adjusted a stack of metal cups, his hands moving with the steady precision of long practice. He aligned them by feel rather than sight, fingertips measuring balance the way someone might stack ammunition or prayer books.

“You buying or just scanning?” he asked without looking up.

The question tugged her slightly out of the layered streams of information her implants kept unfolding at the edge of her awareness.

“Just passing through,” she replied.

Outsiders always revealed themselves eventually. It was not clothing or posture that gave them away, but something subtler. The fraction of a second it took them to react to ordinary things. The way their eyes lingered on rooftops a moment too long. The way they breathed as if the air itself were something they had to negotiate with.

The vendor lifted one of the cups and filled it halfway from a chilled dispenser. Condensation formed immediately along the rim and ran down his knuckles in thin shining lines.

“On the house,” he said, sliding it toward her.

Her implant chose that moment to repeat its hydration reminder with quiet persistence.

She accepted the cup. The metal felt wonderfully cool against her palm. “I appreciate it.”

“Drink,” he said, not unkindly.

She did. The water carried a faint mineral edge that tasted unmistakably of Helion. Iron, dust, and something stubbornly alive beneath it all. It was nothing like the sterile neutrality of station filtration or the bland efficiency of deep-space reclaimers. Helion’s water had character. It tasted like memory.

As she swallowed, her implant briefly compared her posture against archived footage from her doctoral years. The difference appeared without commentary. Back then there had been sunburned shoulders, loose hips, the easy slouch of someone who believed the future would cooperate if approached with enough equations.

Now her shoulders held a fraction more tension. Her weight rested slightly farther back, balanced for movement rather than rest. She finished the water and handed the cup back.

Just then a call to prayer rose somewhere deeper inside the city. It was not amplified by speakers or digital resonance arrays. The sound traveled naturally through the streets, lifted by the wind and shaped by the corridors of stone and metal between buildings. Her audio filters isolated the harmonics automatically, clean and uncorrupted, the human throat bending air into meaning.

She glanced upward almost reflexively, half expecting to see drone masts or surveillance nodes tucked discreetly into the minarets. There were none.

Around her, people paused as the call spread through the district. Faces turned subtly toward the sound. Lips moved in quiet recitation. A man closed his eyes for a moment while a woman pressed her hand briefly against her chest before adjusting the weight of her basket.

Her implant charted the moment automatically. Conversation volume dropped by twenty seven percent. Pedestrian movement slowed slightly, then resumed as the final note dissolved into dust and distance.

Y/N stepped away from the vendor’s stall and followed the street toward the rental depot she had marked earlier at the edge of her vision.

At the end of the block the Sandcat emblem hung above a narrow doorway. Its paint was chipped by years of sun but still recognizable. A stylized feline head, angular and stubborn, half swallowed by Helion’s relentless light.

Two vehicles sat parked out front of the depot, their noses angled toward the road as though they had been left there mid-thought. The engines ticked softly as they cooled, metal contracting in patient little clicks beneath the sun. Heat shimmered above their hoods in wavering bands that distorted the air and turned the machines into restless reflections.

Y/N slowed at the curb before stepping inside.

For a moment she glanced back over her shoulder, and her implant responded automatically. A translucent layer of archived satellite imagery spread across the present landscape. The past slid over the present like a faint ghost skin. Towers aligned neatly with their former positions. Streets followed the same routes they always had. Solar arrays tilted toward the sun in roughly the same patterns as before.

Yet the quiet traffic moving through the city’s networks told a far less comforting story.

Municipal archives murmured about emergency response pings buried deep in old logs, perimeter breach alerts stamped RESOLVED without detailed follow-up, agricultural distress signals that had surged weeks after the invasion supposedly ended, and water quality anomalies clustered along irrigation belts like bruises hidden beneath the skin of the land.

She turned and stepped into the office.

The air changed immediately.

Outside the heat had been dry and blunt, pressing against the skin without mercy. Inside it softened into something thicker and cooler, carrying the mixed scents of oil, dust, and the faint electric tang of machinery that had spent years being repaired and repaired again. A ceiling fan turned lazily overhead, its wide blades pushing the heat into slow, manageable currents. Light filtered through grime-streaked windows and fell across the room in muted amber stripes. Dust drifted through those beams like something alive, rising and settling in quiet spirals.

Without moving her head, she let her gaze travel across the room. A security camera sat above the door, angled downward with the quiet patience of an old watchman. Local storage only. No cloud synchronization. Behind the counter an inventory terminal sat dormant except for a scheduled data sync at 0300. Along the back wall, tool racks hung in careful rows, every wrench and driver placed by hand instead of tagged with RFID beacons.

The owner looked up at the sound of the door chime as though the noise had tugged directly on his nerves. The chime itself was thin and metallic, quickly swallowed by the slow churn of the ceiling fan and the steady ticking of one of the cooling engines outside.

Her implant tagged him before his attention fully settled on her.

Manual labor scars crossed his knuckles and forearms like faded topography. Old burn marks traced the length of his right wrist, consistent with an engine backfire severe enough to have healed crooked. His pulse was steady but slightly elevated even at rest, the rhythm of someone accustomed to sleeping lightly.

His pupils tightened briefly in suspicion before easing when he confirmed she had entered alone.

“Afternoon,” he said. His voice sounded worn but not unfriendly. “You here for a Sandcat?”

“Yes.” She set her bag carefully at her feet but did not lean against the counter. She stood upright without claiming more space than necessary. “Something reliable. I’m heading to New Mecca.”

His hands stopped moving on the rag he had been using to polish a torque wrench. His gaze slid toward the door and then past it, as though the street outside might be listening. The motion carried the weight of long habit, repeated often enough to carve caution into muscle memory.

“New Mecca,” he repeated slowly, the words thinning slightly as they left his mouth.

She nodded. “I was called by Chancellor Kim.”

A trace of color drained from his face. Not dramatically, but enough for her implant to register the change in blood flow beneath sun-darkened skin. His heart rate climbed. A faint tremor appeared in his left hand.

“Kim?” he asked carefully. “Namjoon Kim?”

“Yes. We go way back. He said they need help rebuilding the food systems.”

The man studied her for a long moment while the room seemed to hold its breath around them. Outside, one of the Sandcats gave a soft metallic cough as its engine cooled. The ceiling fan continued its slow rotation overhead while dust drifted lazily through the shafts of light.

“You shouldn’t be going there,” he said at last.

His voice had lowered without him seeming to notice. The instinct behind it was not hostility or anger. It sounded more like concern.

“I already am,” she replied gently. “That’s why I need the Sandcat.”

She did not mention that she had already mapped the route in her mind. Three alternate paths if the main highway proved unreliable. Fuel projections adjusted for dune drift. Weak spots along the perimeter grid quietly cataloged.

The man shook his head slowly. It was not the motion of someone arguing. It looked more like someone resigning himself to a conclusion he had already repeated many times, perhaps alone in the quiet back room of the shop.

“You don’t understand,” he said quietly. “What happened there was horrific.”

Her implant caught the word immediately and compared it against official planetary reports. Those reports told a far calmer story. An invasion contained. Casualties moderate. Infrastructure damage classified as reparable.

But the man’s voice carried something the reports did not. A faint chill slid down her spine despite the trapped warmth of the shop and the lazy turning of the ceiling fan overhead.

“Tell me about it,” she said. “Namjoon’s transmission was mostly static. He sent it out a week ago when the satellites were still faulty. I might have missed a few things.”

The shop owner leaned forward over the counter, resting his forearms against the scarred metal surface. The counter carried the quiet archaeology of the place. Grooves carved by torque wrenches. Circular dents where bolts had been dropped too many times. Scratches left behind by tools that had been set down quickly and picked up again without ceremony.

When he spoke, his voice dropped even lower. Not for dramatic effect, but out of instinct, as though the walls themselves might remember what was said here.

Her implant responded immediately, narrowing its audio capture cone and filtering away the slow mechanical rhythm of the ceiling fan and the distant rumble of a transport passing along the street outside.

“The Necromongers.”

The name struck her strangely, like a corrupted data packet slipping through a system that should have rejected it. It felt familiar in the wrong way, like a word remembered from a half-forgotten dream.

Her systems did what they were built to do.

Inquiry initiated.

Imperial archives: sealed beneath the sigil of the Grand Marshal. Threat index classification: sanctified. Redacted by order of the Lord Marshal. Flagged incidents reported by three fringe colonies within the last cycle.

Patterns began forming along the inside of her vision. Nightfall deployments. Communication networks collapsing into silence. Power grids extinguished. Populations processed with ruthless efficiency. Resistance answered not with negotiation, but annihilation.

Something tightened quietly in her chest. It was not fear, not exactly. It felt closer to the hollow sensation of stepping onto ground that had once seemed solid and discovering that the structure beneath it had quietly rotted away.

“I thought they were…” She paused just long enough to smooth the edge from her voice. “A fringe cult.”

The man let out a dry breath that might once have been a laugh.

“Everyone in the damn galaxy did. Just a bunch of crazy people worshipping the god of death. Nobody ever really thought it would turn into something like this.”

He reached for the metal cup near his elbow and filled it halfway from a battered dispenser. The water caught the dusty light for a moment before settling. He drank slowly, like someone taking medicine, then set the cup back down with careful deliberation, as if the act of being careful might somehow keep the rest of the world from breaking further.

“They came at night,” he said. “Small incursions at first.”

Her mind quietly overlaid his words against the municipal security logs she had skimmed earlier without appearing to notice them. Perimeter breach alerts: staggered. Response intervals: delayed. Surveillance archives: partially corrupted. Sensor pylons offline in clustered failures.

“They don’t just kill,” he continued. “They convert. Or at least that’s what people say.”

“Interesting,” she murmured before she could stop herself.

He looked up sharply, studying her face as if searching for a trace of sarcasm. He found none. Her expression remained calm, almost clinical, while her implant quietly recorded the tremor beneath his left eyelid and the elevated cortisol lingering in the thin sheen of sweat along his temples. The pattern matched lived trauma rather than rumor.

“They believe death is the only pure state,” he said slowly, choosing each word with care. “My sister, Yala, works in New Mecca keeping the electrical grids running. She told me a little about them after the attack, but she’s been buried in repairs ever since. We barely talk anymore.”

For an instant her neural interface flickered, dragging something buried toward the surface. The memory arrived uninvited. M6, cold and hostile, its corridors alive with movement in the dark while metal screamed as it bent under pressures it had never been built to survive.

She sealed the memory buffer with a quiet internal command and forced her attention back to the room.

“They burned fields,” the man went on, his voice roughened by the memory. “Poisoned aquifers. Salted the soil so nothing would grow again. They took people from towns like this one.”

His gaze drifted past her shoulder toward the open doorway and the pale sunlight beyond, as if the past still lingered there waiting to step back inside.

“New Mecca was the main target. Most of their forces went there. We were lucky. Lucky enough to hide in the tunnels while their foot soldiers passed through here.”

Without consciously asking for it, her implant pulled up Helion’s agricultural telemetry. The numbers slid through her peripheral vision with quiet precision.

Sector Nine soil salinity spike. Aquifer nitrate contamination above baseline. Biomass collapse events across three peripheral zones. Fungal bloom in post-burn soil consistent with chemical accelerant residue.

“They hit the perimeter first,” he said, settling into the rhythm of the story now that it had begun. “Came in so fast nobody really knew what to do.”

Her internal models adjusted automatically, timelines recalculating in silent layers.

“They breached New Mecca’s outer ring in under nine minutes,” he added. “Our emergency response protocols move faster than that when a dust storm rolls in.”

“Internal access?” she asked softly.

His jaw tightened, the muscles along his cheek drawing taut.

“Either nothing could have stopped it,” he said after a moment, “or someone failed to do their job. Depends who you ask.”

“Official report?” she prompted.

He gave a dry snort that carried more disappointment than humor.

“Official report says it was a coordinated mercenary strike backed by off-world interests. Says we repelled them.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

He shook his head slowly. Only then did she notice that her hands had curled into fists at her sides. The tendons along her wrists stood out faintly beneath skin threaded with subdermal tech. She forced her fingers open again, relaxing them deliberately, one finger at a time.

“Why did they leave?” she asked.

The man rubbed his beard, dragging his thumb slowly through the gray threaded into dark hair as if he were combing through the memory itself.

“Off the record,” he said at last, his voice roughened by something that had little to do with dust, “Chancellor Kim had a friend who killed their leader. A man with strange eyes.”

Her heart rate climbed six beats per minute. Obediently, her implant retrieved archived biometric scans. Iris pigmentation irregular. Reflectivity variance above human norms. Pupil response atypical. The data had been captured during the M6 extraction debrief under sterile white lights and a silence that smelled faintly of antiseptic and unease.

The shop suddenly felt smaller. The air thinner. The ceiling lower. The slow rotation of the fan overhead seemed louder now, each click marking time like a metronome counting the seconds she needed to steady herself.

She regulated her breathing manually. Inhale. Two. Three. Exhale. Two. Three.

“You’re sure?” she asked, and immediately disliked the edge in her voice. It sounded too sharp, too immediate, too personal.

“That’s what people say,” the man replied with a small shrug that tried for indifference and did not quite reach it. “They say he fought like he’d been born for it. Like he wasn’t afraid of dying.”

A corner of her mind betrayed her then, offering up a memory she had not asked for.

Rain, cold and relentless. A bottle of glow worms cupped in her hands, their faint blue light trembling against the dark.

Jungkook had stood in the downpour the first time she saw him, soaked through as though the storm were nothing more than weather and not some quiet kind of judgment. The memory rose so vividly that, for a moment, the shop’s dry air seemed to dissolve around her, replaced by wet stone and distant thunder.

He had been almost painfully beautiful then. Clean lines softened by youth and shadow. Dark hair falling in damp strands across his forehead. His eyes wide and reflective, almost luminous, catching the glow worm light in a way that made them seem unreal. Rain had washed his skin pale and smooth, the bridge of his nose straight and fine, tapering neatly at the tip.

His mouth, full and composed, carried a natural rose-colored flush against the cool neutrality of his complexion. A small silver ring pierced his lower lip and caught the faint blue glow of the insects so that it shimmered like something alive.

In the few days she had known Jungkook Jeon, he had never seemed so gentle. She had grown used to the man he later became. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Ink crawling across his arms and chest. A ruthless killer who moved through the world as if gravity itself had made a promise to him. A man who spoke in riddles and wrapped every truth in sarcasm, who regarded blood the way sailors regard water.

But that night in the rain he had simply been a man.

When he looked at her like that, wide-eyed and almost startled by the softness in her voice, she could not reconcile that fragile moment with the violence she knew lived somewhere beneath his skin. For that instant the rest of the world might as well have burned.

“They say he cut their Marshal down,” the shop owner continued, completely unaware of the quiet storm crossing her face. “And when he fell, the rest of them pulled back. Like a tide going out.”

Her implant began running probability curves at the edge of her vision whether she wanted it to or not. Necromonger command structures unfolded into branching diagrams. Rigid hierarchy. Centralized authority. Total dependence on a single leader.

Leader termination impact destabilizing. Jungkook survival projection after engagement low. Across extended conflict, lower still.

She nodded once, the movement small and controlled. The likelihood of Jungkook still being alive now was slim to none. Logic laid that truth out with cold precision, percentages assembling themselves into quiet certainty. Yet if anyone could outmaneuver an army that worshipped death itself, it would be him.

Jungkook had always moved through violence the way a native speaker moves through language, fluidly and instinctively, while the rest of them struggled just to understand its grammar.

“You knew him?” the shop owner asked.

He had caught the shift in her posture the way a seasoned mechanic catches the tremor in an engine just before something catastrophic breaks loose. She took a fraction too long to answer. It was a tiny delay, half a heartbeat stretched thin, but in a room this quiet, with dust turning slowly in the air and sunlight cutting through the doorway like a blade, it felt enormous.

“Not really,” she said finally, swallowing whatever else might have followed before it could escape. “Can I still rent the Sandcat?”

The shop owner studied her carefully. Her implant mirrored the scrutiny automatically, tracing the path of his gaze as it moved across her shoulders, the subtle shift of weight toward the balls of her feet, and the way her hands had only just relaxed from their tight curl. The system evaluated the moment clinically, assessing threat and resolve.

He nodded slowly. “Of course. I’ll give you the one with reinforced shielding and a recycler that still works. No extra charge.”

Her implant pinged the inventory terminal behind him, and the vehicle’s specifications flickered briefly into her peripheral vision. Composite shielding eighteen percent thicker than standard. Recycler efficiency seventy three percent but still operational. Extended fuel capacity. Navigation firmware stable, though outdated.

After a moment he added more quietly, “Anyone willing to help us is a friend of mine.”

He turned toward the back of the shop to retrieve the keys. The bell above the door chimed faintly as the wind stirred it, and while his back was turned she let her awareness stretch outward carefully, like a fingertip trailing across water without disturbing the surface.

She brushed the municipal security network again, this time more slowly. Encryption layers appeared like overlapping panes of glass, triple wrapped with irregular key rotations. Packet sizes fluctuated in ways that did not match routine patrol traffic. Redacted sectors clustered along the eastern perimeter and through the irrigation corridors. There were compression scars in the data, tiny discontinuities where timestamps should have aligned, and metadata ghosts where entire reports had been collapsed into single line summaries.

Clean enough to pass inspection. Not clean enough to hide from her.

She bookmarked the irregularities and withdrew before the system could notice the pressure of her curiosity. The shop felt smaller now. Information had a way of doing that, tightening walls and lowering ceilings. Her implant continued searching quietly in the background, pulling fragments of Outer Rim transmissions and cult iconography scraped from neglected networks, along with symbol clusters tied to recurring phrases about transcendence through annihilation and purity through extinction.

She rested her palm against the counter and felt the faint vibration of a Sandcat engine idling outside travel through metal and bone alike. Her heart rate rose three beats without permission.

A man with strange eyes.

Without any conscious prompt from her, the implant reached back through its own archives and retrieved imagery from M6. The memory surfaced the way storms roll over open land, sudden, inevitable, impossible to ignore. Infrared overlays layered themselves across her vision for a brief instant, followed by a grainy pair of silver eyes reflecting firelight with unsettling calm while the world around them tore itself apart.

She shut the file down before the memory could unfurl any further.

“What luck,” she murmured under her breath. “What a fucking curse.”

The shop owner returned a moment later with a set of keys looped through a battered metal tag and placed them gently on the counter, as though keys themselves were delicate things capable of breaking if handled too roughly.

“Sandcat’s out back,” he said. “Tank’s full, filters clean. She runs loud on cold starts, but she won’t quit.”

Her implant pinged the keys the instant they touched the metal surface. A passive RFID chip sat embedded inside the tag, basic identification only. No destination tracker and no hidden telemetry beacon waiting to wake once she cleared the dock perimeter.

“That’s fine,” she replied, closing her fingers around them. “I don’t mind loud.”

He studied her for a moment, thoughtful. “Most people do.”

She held his gaze evenly. “I’m not most people.”

A grin tugged briefly at the corner of her mouth before she could stop it. The man blinked, surprise flickering across his face, and then a reluctant but genuine smile cracked across his expression like dry ground splitting after rain.

“Fair enough.”

He slid a data slate across the counter toward her. The screen was scratched from years of use, the firmware old but straightforward in its simplicity. When her hand came down on it, her implant skimmed through the operating layer automatically, searching the way a cautious traveler checks the ground for loose stones.

There were no traps waiting there. No hidden clauses buried inside legal loops. No geofencing triggers designed to immobilize the vehicle if she crossed an invisible boundary. No delayed authorization packets waiting for a specific destination to wake them up. Just a simple rental contract stored locally.

She signed the field in a single steady motion. When she handed the slate back, their fingers brushed for the briefest moment. His skin was rough with calluses, warm and alive in a way the metal surrounding them never quite managed to be.

“Be careful on the eastern flats,” he said. “Ground looks solid until it isn’t.”

“I’ll listen to it,” she replied.

He nodded once.

Outside, the Sandcat waited in the dusty lot behind the shop like a patient mechanical animal resting in the heat. Up close it looked even more honest than it had from a distance. Its shielding had been patched and repatched over the years, composite plates riveted across older scars where storms and rock strikes had chewed through the original armor. The wide treads carried red grit packed deep into their grooves, Helion’s soil ground into the machine like permanent memory. Beneath the rear housing the recycler hummed steadily, and her implant confirmed its output without effort. Seventy two percent efficiency and holding.

She circled the vehicle once without touching it, letting the machine introduce itself through quiet streams of data. When her gaze lingered on the diagnostic port, her implant slipped easily into the vehicle’s maintenance logs. Route histories scrolled through the edge of her vision as she walked, the Sandcat’s past movements appearing in neat lines of archived telemetry. It had made repeated trips along secondary roads, old agricultural corridors and service paths rather than the primary highways cutting across Helion’s plains.

Western routes appeared frequently, worn into habit. The eastern flats appeared far less often.

Why?

She saved the route data for later and allowed the diagnostics to fade back into the background of her awareness. For a moment she simply stood beside the Sandcat with her palm resting against the sun-warmed metal plating. The hull had absorbed the afternoon heat like a stone left out in the desert, and the warmth seeped slowly through her skin, grounding her in a way no system feedback ever could.

“Thank you,” she called back toward the shop.

The owner stood in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest, Helion’s harsh sunlight flaring around him so brightly it turned him almost into a silhouette. From where she stood he looked less like a man and more like something carved from shadow and patience, dust drifting lazily through the beam of light behind him.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he replied, his voice carrying easily across the lot. “Thank me when you come back.”

“I plan to.”

He did not answer right away. Instead he watched her for another long moment, his eyes narrowing slightly as though weighing the words she had spoken. Out here confidence and stubbornness often looked the same from a distance, and the difference sometimes mattered more than people realized.

Finally he gave a slow nod.

“Good,” he said. “We need people who plan.”

Just as she began to reach for the driver’s door, he lifted a finger as if remembering something that had nearly slipped away.

“Oh, and before I forget…”

Y/N paused and glanced back over her shoulder. “Yeah?”

His expression shifted, and the small smile that crept across his face carried a hint of something almost mischievous.

“Thank you for your service, Dr. Y/L/N.”

For a brief, disorienting moment the world seemed to tilt beneath her feet.

The words struck somewhere deep in her chest with the quiet precision of a blade sliding between ribs. Her implant reacted immediately, dutiful and indifferent as ever, flagging the spike in her vitals. Heart rate climbing. Breath shortening. Muscle tension tightening across her abdomen and shoulders as if preparing for impact.

The numbers meant very little beside the sensation itself. No stream of data could translate the way those words echoed through her bones.

She did not answer. Instead she turned away quickly and directed all of her attention toward the Sandcat as though the machine had suddenly become the most complicated thing in the world. Her fingers closed around the door handle and tightened until her knuckles blanched against the warm metal.

Her stomach lurched. The nausea rose without warning, a cold rolling wave that had nothing to do with Helion’s heat or the lingering stiffness of cryosleep. She swallowed hard and forced it back down, fighting the instinct to double over right there in the dust.

Behind her, the shop owner’s voice drifted across the lot again, lighter now and completely unaware of the quiet war unfolding inside her chest.

“Drive safe.”

She lifted one hand in acknowledgment without turning around, offering the kind of casual wave strangers exchanged every day. Small enough to go unnoticed.

But the muscles along her jaw had locked tight, and the hollow space beneath her ribs felt suddenly larger than it had a moment before.

She opened the rear hatch, stowed her bag, and climbed into the driver’s seat. The interior greeted her with the smell of warm dust and faint metal, that dry iron scent of machinery that had spent too long beneath a merciless sun. The seat had been repaired more than once. Mismatched thread stitched across old tears pulled the upholstery tight where it had long ago stopped pretending to be new.

When she settled into it, the springs creaked softly before giving in with a reluctant sigh. Her gaze moved across the cabin. The motion appeared casual, but it was not. In the span of a single breath her implant mapped every centimeter of the interior. No hidden tracking modules beneath the dashboard. No silent beacons embedded in the chassis plating. No parasitic code riding along inside the navigation system.

Just wiring. Old and patched. Honest in its age and stubborn survival.

She slipped into the Sandcat’s interface. The control system leaned heavily on mechanical feedback, levers and switches that resisted the hand and told the truth about what they were doing rather than the quiet lies of polished glass screens. Still, the navigation console emitted a faint signal toward orbit, requesting terrain updates the way travelers once asked the sky for guidance.

She paired with it briefly. The handshake was clumsy compared to the sleek systems she had once lived inside for years. Rural firmware. Modest encryption. Systems built by practical people who needed their machines to work, not impress anyone.

She could have overridden the entire system in her sleep. Instead she behaved. She downloaded the latest terrain scans, copied wind pattern forecasts, and checked the most recent geological alerts. The information unfolded neatly across her internal map as the Sandcat’s systems synchronized with the orbital feeds.

The eastern flats were flagged for soil instability in three zones. Two reports mentioned unexplained ground collapse near irrigation canals. One location was marked only as a structural anomaly, with no follow-up report attached.

She marked the coordinates privately, noting how they overlapped with the redacted municipal logs she had already bookmarked and with the silence where additional information should have existed.

Her hand settled on the ignition. For a moment she did not move. She simply sat there listening to the quiet hum of the Sandcat beneath her and the distant whisper of wind dragging dust across Helion’s streets outside.

She turned the key.

But I DID notice. And I DID, immediately, hit the override for my cued up jumps to Starline. Because as every pilot worth even a fraction of their soul will tell you? You see an SOS beacon? You fucking ANSWER it.

Yes, pirates pull the "help I'm stuck" trick. And yeah, there are other unscrupulous folks out there. But! That's part of why the bounty hunter's guild and pirate hunter's come down so HARD on those fuckers. If you discourage people from HELPING stranded pilots? People fucking DIE out there.

Cold Void Of Space, remember?

Far as I'm concerned? Old ship rules apply, there are enough horrors, lurking out there. We do NOT need to add to them. All differences are to be kept planet side. THEN you can kill each other.

Thank the stars, I had decided to go the back lanes. Yeah, it added a few extra weeks to my trip, that I couldn't spend on that swanky beach at Starline, but? The "road trip" through the outer edge of the galaxy had been worth it. Plenty of cool sights and fun new foods. And NOW, clearly, the much needed chance to be in the right place at the right time.

Getting my ship in close, I tried to hail the softly free floating wreck. It looked smashed. Like it hit or was struck by something at speed. They had clearly managed to slow themselves, but beyond that? I couldnt see much stabilization. The whole ship sat dark. Not good.

My dash said there was nothing to hail TOO. Fuck. I tried difference frequencies. Maybe they had a hand-held? Earpiece? Something? But I couldn't connect to anything. Find, anything. Shit! Okay. Okay! Plan B. Try to get a registration while I connect us up. Pray to which ever Gods gaurds this one's soul, that they breathe a similar gas mix.

Loading... loading...

Oh, thank FUCK!

Compatible air AND drones, someone up or out there, really DOES want these guys to live! I force myself to be calm. Rushing won't help anybody, but WILL make a mess, after all. Bring up that frustrating drone request program I downloaded on a whim. Watch as, dispite the odds, lights flicker on across the hull of the ship.

Emergency protocols engage. They, obviously, get no counter order. And? Like the beautiful, life saving, little dumbasses they are? Immediately begin to zip and trundle into position to drag the wreckage in towards my ship. Gods bless the collective single IQ point of drones. Good babies. Such good babies!

With a heavy shudder and thunk, we connect.

Already, I am hovering by the latch. Emergency kit in hand. Breather on. The second it's confirmed, I twist the latch and...Oh gods. The air that surges up to greet me is so cold, it BURNS. I hadn't even though I was sweating, hadn't noticed it, until it felt like stabbing flash frozen crystals on my face. Shit! Oh gods, oh SHIT!

I scramble down, ladder burning cold even through my gloves. Red emergency lights and terrible silence greet me. I move quick. Emergencies & Stranding classes echoing in my head. Check the warmest part of the ship first, then work your way out. If they CAN move, they'll know to retreat there.

Registration said the ship had fifteen people. No idea how many survived the impact and cold, but hopefully? All of them. I may not have the room or rations for a comfortable trip. But it'd be warm. And I could get them to a port.

They should be in the central compartment, which is usually critical storage and medbay. Getting there, the door has clearly been forced to slide open by someone with claws and blood on their hands. It couldn't close properly, they bent it getting it open.

Looking down, there... oh gods. There is A LOT of blood on the floor.

Something... someONE? Dragged to storage. Blood trails thick on the floor. There must be a preserver; trying, maybe, to keep their friends from rotting? Might be shock? And they just... couldn't figure out where to put the bodies. I shake my head, tearing my horrified eyes away. Concentrate! Save the living. The dead are already gone. Be sick about it later.

It takes the crowbar I brought, now cold enough to worry me, to force the door to slide again. The room in side is barely warmer then the air outside. But? There, against the far wall? Is just about every clothe and piece of fabric in the ship. Two emergency blankets glinting from withing the chaotic pile.

The only other people in the room are clearly dead. Injuries. He must have tried to treat them but been unable too. Regardless of what happened, I rush forward. Unearthing an unconscious Aqualin from his self made fabric tomb. The colouration might mean he's from the deep water region. But without his eyes or mouth open I can't TELL.

I hope so, his chance of survival would go up tremendously. Dragging the limp, dangerously hypothermic, man onto my shoulders in a fireman's carry, I get us the hell out. His front is stained in blood. His hands coated. Everything that could go wrong? Seems too. But if I have any say, he is NOT dying here.

Dragging us into my now cold ship, I clumsily kick at the latch until I manage to flip it closed. Just for now. I'll have to go back down for those blankets and such, to help get him warm. But first? I get my rescue set up, warming up.

A further few, brutally cold, few trips to loot the ship of what I safely can before I can close that latch for good. Lock away the horrors to be found there. Stacking everything up and off to the side for him. I'm pretty sure I even found his wallet. So at least? He won't be destitute. Then, while the droids transferred the last of the wreck's fuel? I start to bring up the heat back to normal. Slowly.

Once all is said and down, I silence the emergency beacon and send in the mandatory report. Might be a while before a cleaning crew can get out here... but, well... at least those poor bastard's family's would have some closure. Life insurance. That sort if thing.

.....fuck today has been shit.

"Ooooh go on a vacaaaaation~" Everybody said. "You're so overworked!" They had said. "So STRESSED! You definitely won't find a ship full of corpses!" Thanks for that, guys! Having SUCH a great time. No, REALLY.

Detaching from the wreckage is almost... no, IS horrific in how easy it is. It just... float away. Silent, dark, and gentle. A cold bit of nothingness, lost in the void. Sinking into the stars with it's cargo full of dead, like... like nothing happened at all. It looks so small. Just a twisted bit of metal. Drifting... drifting... away....

Even with the heaters bringing the heat back up, I feel cold.

That could have been me.

What the hell happened? I tear my eyes away from the view screen. Back down to the dash board. Standard operating procedure is to grab the black box of a wreck, even if you find no survivors. Helps universal safety innovation and regulatory blah blah blah. Had to drill it into my head to even GET my license. So... so now... there it is. Grabbed.

I... COULD look.

Fiddling with my rescues wallet, I stare at it. It's hella illegal. Breach of privacy. You can't just... just go into someone's ship and poke around. Look up where they've been and who they've been talking too about what. All their data would be on that thing. Soothing MY anxiety is not more important then THEIR boundaries, right? I should leave it.

I flip the wallet open. My rescue's smiling face grins back up at me, like some sort of dork at a photo shoot. He's leaning against an advertisement for, ironically, Starline. Probably the same beach that convinced me to go. All relaxed confidence and swagger, he looks nothing like the half frozen man I dragged from that ship.

My rescue has lost weight. A concerning amount of color. But? Looking at the rich black of the eyes and the point of his teeth? He seem to be either mostly or full blooded Deep Sea Aqualin. Thank FUCK.

There was a celebrity Tropical Region Aqualin a while back that my baby cousin was weirdly obsessed with. Not stalking obsessed, but? The "family is concerned" obsessed, you know? We all ended up learning WAY too much about their entire species. WAY, WAY too much.

Dea Sea Aqualin are apparently just? Built different. Like, "can withstand a degree of pressure and cold and would kill most others" different. The dehydration might still get him, but the cold? Might NOT.

Flipping the wallet closed, I ignore my gut. I don't need to see what's on that black box. Yeah, I'd find out what happened after they lost propulsion. But? Watching doomed men die? That's sick. There's nothing worth finding there. It's just anxiety.

I reset my next jump. The sooner we get to the next port, the sooner my Rescue (X'alus, apparently) can get help. Then? I head back to check on him. I think, he might be stirring. Approaching the mound of blankets, it turns out I'm right.

" 'rm?" He manages to slur, voices crackling like it's a fight to get anything out. "Wh're 'm? Who?"

There is no good way to tell someone a whole ship full of crewmates is... gone. But, fuck, if I don't try. Gently sitting him up, I help him drink from a hydration pouch. Little at a time, so as not to stress his likely starved stomach. He leans, boneless, towards me. Like he wishes he could drag himself into my lap. Staring like I hold the secrets to the universe.

"Pre'ty. Warm. You sav'd me?"

I nod, shooting him a smile as I tuck the blanket more firmly around him. Poor guy is still pretty weak. But he's healing fast. That's good. He smiles back, bright predators teeth glinting in the ship's light. (Bit unhinged looking, but hey, he seems loopy.)

"Y're my hero~ pre'ty, pre'ty hero~!"

Leia went on to explain a mission she was giving you. You were going to be tailing a suspected First Order spy for a few weeks. She also informed you that Poe would be coming home the next day, which made you giddy. You hadn’t seen him in a month, and you missed him terribly. The mission started in four days, so you’d be able to spend some time with your husband before you had to leave.

~

When you woke up the next morning, your heart skipped a beat when you saw him. Poe. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, just watching you silently. “Hey (y/n/n),” he started with a soft voice, “I’ve missed you so much. I wanted to wake you up but you looked so peaceful. And beautiful, of course.” He smirked at the last part.

There he was, your Poe. You took in his features as if it was the last time you’d see them.

You smiled in your sleepy state. “Come hold me?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

He climbed in the bed next to you and wrapped his arms around you. Your head rested on his chest, and the moment felt perfect. Looking up at him, you smile again. Before you know it, he leans down and kisses you, then smiles himself.

You sigh in content when you pull away. Poe rests his forehead on yours and you wished it could last forever, but it couldn’t.

“Poe. I have a mission. I’m going to be gone for a while.” You said with a shaky voice, trying to hold back tears. His brows furrowed and a confused expression painted his face.

“What? (y/n), I just got back and you’re leaving? Did Leia give you the mission?”

You slowly nod, letting a lonely tear fall down your face. He gently slid out from under you and stormed towards the door of your quarters. “Poe! Wait!” You were too late. He was out of the room.

You quickly changed out of your pajamas and into the resistance uniform you were given when you came to base. Rushing out the door, you prepare yourself for the scene you’re sure is playing out in command. You hear your husband yelling before you even get to the door. “General! I haven’t seen my wife in a month and now she’s leaving in three days!? How could you do this to us Leia?” Oh maker, it was worse than you thought.

Before walking in, you hear the General’s calm voice, “Poe, (y/n) is more than capable of com-“

“I know she is!” He interrupted with anger, “I just want to be able to be with my wife for more than a few days at a time! Marriage isn’t supposed to be like this. Just because yours is, doesn’t mean that we should be doomed to the same fate.”

This was your time to step in. “Poe! That’s enough!”

He looked at you with shame as he realized what he just said.

“Lei-“

She pointed at Poe and turned to you, “Get him out of my command.”

Nodding, you grabbed your husband by his arm and pulled him out of the room. “What are you thinking?” You yelled.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m selfish when it comes to you. I just miss you so much when I’m gone, and I expected to get to spend more time with you than 2 days.” He started to tear up, so you reached out and held his hands.

“I know. I miss you too. Poe, as much as I hate it, we are fighting a war. War doesn’t care about marriage or love. I have to do this mission.”

Sighing, he admits, “I know you do.”

~

The next few days were perfect. You spent every second with Poe and had the time of your life. You’ve only been married 6 months, so it was kind of like the really short honeymoon you never got. As you put on your flight suit, you dreaded what you’d have to do next; say goodbye.

You and Poe walked in silence, hand in hand, towards your A-Wing. He let go of one of your hands, turning you towards him. “I love you so much. Be safe, Captain Dameron.”

“I will. I promise. And,” you say, pulling him close to you, “I love you too, Commander Dameron.” This made the smirk you love appear on his rugged face. Cupping your cheeks, he leaned in and kissed you.

After pulling away, your foreheads rested against each other. “Come back to me.” He whispered, eyes closed.

“Roger that, commander.”

His eyes opened and you could see the fear behind them. “I’m serious, (y/n). Don’t do anything risky.”

“I’ll be alright. I won’t do anything you wouldn’t.”

He hugged you tightly and pressed a kiss to your forehead before you climbed into the cockpit. Nodding at him, you closed the hatch and took off.

Poe’s pov:

It’s been a month since I’ve seen (y/n). I think about her every second of every day. Actually, I worry about her every second of every day. I hate that I can’t be there to protect her, but I know she can fend for herself, especially in her fighter.

She’s checks in once a week with Leia using a secure channel. As much as I want to talk to her, I know she can’t be distracted. I think she is due to check in soon.

Often, I find myself thinking back to the first time I met (y/n). She was a new pilot on the base, and she immediately caught my eye. I watched her from afar until I had the courage to ask her out. I walked up to her and she looked like a blergg in headlights.

“Commander. How can I help you?”

“Well, (y/l/n), I was wondering if you’d want to go to dinner with me sometime?”

Her expression changed from shock to confusion. “Me? You want to go out with me?”

“Yes, you. That’s why I came over here.” I chuckled and she smiled.

“Sure. That sounds like fun.”

Everything after that was a blur. Before We knew it, I was down on one knee. I gave her my mother’s ring that I wore around my neck. Our wedding was small but perfect. My best friend, Snap, was my best man, and Tallie was (y/n)’s maid of honor. She looked so beautiful as she walked down the isle on the arm of her father. Her gorgeous (y/h/c) flowed down her back. Her dress. Wow. It accentuated her figure in all the right places. I could barely hold it together, but surprisingly made it through the ceremony.

We didn’t get a honeymoon, so life pretty much continued as normal. We spent as much time together as we could, but we both had responsibilities. The past 7 months have been amazing, but being away from (y/n) on missions is so hard. Now, she is gone and I’m stuck here alone. Leia’s voice over the comms pulled me from my thoughts.

“Commander Dameron, please report to command.” Maybe (y/n) has a message for me! I run to command and am met my a solemn looking Leia.

“Poe, (y/n) didn’t check in at her scheduled time today. She’s probably fine, but I wanted to fill you in on the situation.” My heart dropped at her words. (y/n). The love of my life. My wife. She’s missing.

“We have to find her!” I yell, my voice beginning to break.

“Poe, I do too, but the First Order has increased patrols in this sector and we can’t risk it.” General Organa responds.

“You’re joking. There’s nothing stopping me from finding her!” I start to run out of the command center, but am stopped by a blue stun blast that is shot my way. Everything goes black.

~

(Y/n) hasn’t been in contact with the Resistance in a month. I calmed down after my incident last month, but I still want to go look for her more than anything. Every day, I sit by the communication board praying she’ll send a message. I want to have hope, but I know the chances that she’s still alive are slim. Honestly, I don’t know why I still do this, but I could never give up on her. I know she would want me to grieve and then get on with my life.

Honestly, I don’t think I could ever move on from her. She is my everything. The pure exhaustion of sitting by the comm board 24/7 is starting to get to me, so I doze off thinking of (y/n).

3rd person pov:

3 months later...

The Resistance hasn’t had any contact from (y/n) in four months. Poe has given up hope and rarely comes out of what was once their shared room. Tallie has been delivering him food every day, and everyone is starting to seriously worry about him.

Leia decided they had to do something about him. She walked to his quarters and knocked. “Go away, Tallie!” Poe yelled through the door. “Poe, it’s not Tallie.” “With all due respect General, please leave me be.” He heard a clicking noise, and looked at the door to see Leia walking into his room.

She took a few moments to take in the state of his room. Overturned furniture and broken decor littered the floor. All that remained intact was the bed and a picture of (y/n) and Poe on their wedding day, which he was staring at.

“Poe,” Leia started, “(y/n) wouldn’t want you to shut down like this. She’d want you to avenge her by defeating the First Order that she died fighting.”

“I know she would. I-I just d-don’t know if I-I can do this without her.” He said, his voice breaking every word or so. She walked towards where he sat at the foot of his bed.

“You can, and you’re going to have to. We need you if we are going to win th-“

She was interrupted by her comm going off. “General! We have an unidentified spacecraft entering the atmosphere! What should we do!?” Leia and Poe made eye contact.

“(y/n),” he whispered under his breath. Before she could blink, he was racing towards the hanger. “Do NOT shoot it down! I repeat, do NOT shoot the spacecraft down! It could be Captain Dameron!”

As Poe sprinted towards the hanger, he couldn’t help but think of her. His legs were moving faster without being told to, and he was developing a deep ache in his heart that told him he was getting his hopes up to be broken.

When he reached the hanger, a large crowd had gathered in anticipation. Poe pushed to the front as Leia arrived behind him. His heart was beating out of his chest as he watched the small craft land. When the hatch opened, he held his breath, praying to the maker it was (y/n).

A small hooded figure hobbled out of the ship, and he couldn’t tell who it was. When they looked up at him, his heart started to beat for what felt like the first time in months. “(Y/n)! Baby! You’re alive!!” He ran to her and engulfed her in a hug, picking her up in doing so.

“Poe!” She yelled and hugged him even harder. She winced as she felt him squeeze her ribs. He noticed and pulled back to look her over. She had a busted lip, black eye, and a bloods gash on her forehead. “What happened to you, sweetheart?” They both didn’t even realize they were crying when he gently placed his lips on hers, careful not to hurt her.

When they separated, she looked him over as he did her. “Maker, Poe, you look horrible.”

“I couldn’t operate witho-“

He was cut off by her hugging him again. “I don’t care. I love you so much. I’m never going on a solo mission again.”

Evening light seeped through the stained curtains in thin amber bands, catching dust in the air and laying a tired gold across the walls. It softened everything it touched: the hairline cracks in the plaster, the chipped corners of furniture worn smooth by years of use, the small flaws that spoke of a life lived rather than arranged. The house was quiet, but not peaceful. It held the brittle stillness of people who had been holding their breath too long, afraid that if they spoke above a whisper, something terrible might remember they were there.

Samara moved through the kitchen like a ghost, drifting between the stove and the counter, bare feet silent against the floorboards. She lifted the lid from the pot, stirred, then nudged the flame lower again. Her movements were efficient, practiced to the point of instinct, but her shoulders never fully relaxed. Tension lived there permanently. The smell of simmering root broth filled the room, earthy and sharp, almost medicinal, the kind of scent that promised healing even when it could not guarantee it.

She leaned closer, inhaled once, frowned, and reached for a small cloth pouch hanging from a nail beside the stove. Pinching dried leaves between her fingers, she sprinkled them into the pot. Her hand trembled, just enough to notice. She pressed her fingertips briefly to the counter until the shaking passed, then continued as though nothing had happened.

Namjoon sat slouched in the old leather armchair near the hearth, its seams cracked and softened by years of faithful use. One leg rested stiffly on a footstool, wrapped thick in fresh bindings. The herbs beneath the cloth were still damp from Samara’s careful hands, their scent sharp and green, but the wound throbbed anyway, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.

He endured it quietly. Fatigue shadowed his eyes, and the lines around his mouth had deepened. When he smiled, because he always tried, it barely reached the surface. Still, when Samara glanced his way, he lifted his chin slightly, offering that tired expression like reassurance, like an apology.

“You don’t have to hover,” he said softly, his voice rough around the edges.

Samara did not turn.

“I’m not hovering.”

“You’ve checked that pot six times,” he replied, the corner of his mouth twitching despite himself.

She paused, ladle suspended, then sighed through her nose. “It needs time,” she said. “And so do you.”

Namjoon hummed in acknowledgment and settled back, fingers resting loosely on the arm of the chair. His knuckles were scraped, the marks of work that had not been gentle. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, then opened them again, unwilling to fully give in to rest.

Across the room, Dae lay sprawled on the floor amid scattered markers and sheets of paper. Her small hands moved with intense focus, turning lines into shapes, shapes into meaning. She hummed softly to herself, tuneless and content. The tip of her tongue peeked from the corner of her mouth as she leaned closer to her work.

She was drawing flames, big, bright ones, curling around a man in dark armor. His silhouette stood heavy and bold at the center of the page, unafraid. Dae pressed the red marker harder than necessary, then layered orange and yellow until the fire nearly swallowed him whole. She lifted the page and studied it with solemn concentration.

“Mama,” she said suddenly, “is this how fire looks when it’s angry?”

Samara startled and crossed the room in quick, quiet steps. She crouched beside her daughter, smoothing a hand over her hair as she studied the drawing.

“I’m not sure, habibi,” she said carefully. “Why do you ask?”

Dae shrugged, still staring at the picture. “It’s loud,” she said after a moment. “But the man isn’t scared.”

Namjoon watched them, something tightening gently in his chest at the sound of his daughter’s humming, the scrape of the spoon against the pot, the fragile illusion of normalcy they clung to because the alternative was too heavy to touch.

His eyelids had just begun to lower when the back door creaked.

His fingers twitched instantly, reaching for the walking staff propped beside his chair as his spine straightened on instinct, pain flaring without permission. Years of faith had never dulled his awareness.

At the stove, Samara froze mid-stir. The spoon hovered above the broth as droplets slid back into the pot. Her eyes snapped toward the hallway, and her free hand slid across the counter to close around the handle of the knife. She did not lift it. She did not rush. She simply held it, knuckles whitening, ready.

The house seemed to hold its breath with them.

Jungkook stood framed in the doorway, caught between the fading evening light and the warmth of the room. Dust clung to his clothes, sweat and dried blood darkening his brow. His posture was tight, uncertain, like someone who had not yet decided whether it was safe to stand down. He looked worn by the road, thinner, harder.

Namjoon blinked once. Then again. He leaned forward, half-expecting the image to dissolve if he stared too hard. When it did not, when Jungkook shifted, solid and undeniably real, Namjoon’s breath caught sharply.

“By God,” he whispered. “You’re not dead.”

Jungkook stepped farther into the room, into the spill of lamplight.

“Not yet.”

Samara’s grip on the knife loosened. Slowly, she set it back on the counter, though her eyes stayed sharp and assessing.

“We heard…” she said carefully. “The Basilica said you were dead.”

“They say a lot of things,” Jungkook muttered.

Namjoon let out a sound that might have been a laugh if it had not dragged pain along with it. He braced his palms against the arms of the chair and pushed himself upright with a muted groan, rubbing his leg absently, eyes never leaving Jungkook.

“You did it then,” he said, voice tired but warm. “Pulled the impossible out of your back pocket like you always do.”

Jungkook dipped his head once.

“I’m not dying in a fucking prison,” he replied. “Especially if I’ve still got shit left to do.”

Namjoon’s mouth twitched, the ghost of a smile forming.

Before the moment could stretch too thin, before it could buckle under everything it carried, a small, breathless voice cut through the room.

“Ommi,” Dae whispered urgently.

The drawing slipped from Dae’s lap and fluttered to the floor as she scrambled upright, all elbows and knees, bare feet pattering across the worn boards. She scooped the paper up without even looking at it and ran straight for Jungkook, skidding to a stop just short of him. Holding it up with both hands, she thrust it toward him like something too important to keep to herself.

“See?” she said, the words tumbling over one another. “I drew you fighting the monsters!” She squinted at the page, head tilting as she reassessed her work. “But I made your hair too long,” she added seriously. “Appa says it used to be long, but I think you look cooler with it short. Don’t worry. I’ll fix it.”

Jungkook lowered himself into a crouch, the movement careful and controlled, knees creaking faintly as he settled. He took the drawing from her with both hands, as if it were fragile, as if it mattered. Fire dominated the page, wild and bright, and at its center stood a man in dark armor, surrounded by a many-legged creature that looked part dragon, part nightmare, part pure invention.

His brow lifted just slightly. “You got the monsters right,” he murmured.

They weren’t bioraptors. Not even close. But it was close enough that something warm and unfamiliar loosened in his chest, easing a tension he had not realized he was still carrying.

Behind him, Namjoon chuckled softly, the sound low and worn with the tired affection of a man who had survived too much to believe certainty meant anything at all.

“She thinks you’re a fairytale character,” he said. “Some kind of knight.”

“I’m not,” Jungkook replied, still crouched, eyes on the picture. “Just stubborn.”

Samara stepped forward then, more slowly than before. The tension in her shoulders had eased, replaced by something steadier. She stopped a few paces away, hands clasped loosely in front of her.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For bringing him home.”

“I couldn’t leave him,” Jungkook answered simply.

His gaze flicked to Namjoon’s injured leg, lingering there for a moment before lifting again.

Dae tugged gently at the hem of his coat, small fingers curling into the fabric.

“Are you staying now?” she asked. “Even just a little?”

Jungkook looked at her for a long moment. It was the kind of look reserved for things fragile and irreplaceable, things you did not know how to protect without breaking. His eyes drifted around the room: the cracked edge of the window, the stitched reinforcement along the doorframe, the careful bandages around Namjoon’s leg.

“Not for long,” he said softly. “There are still things I need to finish.”

Even as he spoke, his gaze betrayed him. It lingered on the girl, on the old man, on the small, stubborn family holding itself together through will alone. He handed the drawing back to Dae, his fingers brushing hers.

“Keep this safe,” he said. “I might need it later.”

She nodded solemnly and hugged the paper to her chest, eyes shining.

Namjoon leaned back in his chair and let out a long, tired breath. His mouth curved into something wry, humor born more from exhaustion than amusement.

“Well,” he said dryly, “you’ve defied death, dropped out of the sky, and scared my family.” He lifted his brows faintly. “Would it kill you to sit down and eat some dinner?”

Jungkook’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile, just the echo of one.

“I guess I could,” he said. “It’s been a while since I had a home-cooked meal.”

Samara did not comment. She simply moved to the table and set one more place with quiet deliberation, the scrape of the plate against wood grounding in its normalcy. The gesture felt almost ceremonial, as though claiming him for the moment by giving him somewhere to sit.

Namjoon watched Jungkook as the minutes passed, fingers idly tracing the chipped rim of his teacup. The stew steamed untouched in front of the younger man. Jungkook’s gaze kept drifting toward the window, tracking shadows as they slid across the floor, measuring something unseen. Distance, perhaps. Or time. Or the space between this room and the war waiting beyond it.

“I assume you didn’t just drop in for stew and drawings,” Namjoon said at last, his voice low and steady. “You’re hunting again.”

Jungkook did not answer right away. He watched the way the fading light warped through the cracked blinds, bending and reforming.

“It’s not finished,” he said finally. “Not yet.”

Namjoon shifted with a small hiss, adjusting his injured leg until the pain dulled into something manageable.

“Didn’t think you were here to stay,” he murmured. “You’re not the type to leave knots in the rope.”

Jungkook did not reply, but the look he gave said enough. Whatever he had come back for, it was not peace.

Namjoon leaned forward, forearms braced against his knees, the movement careful but deliberate. His voice dropped another register, quiet enough to feel chosen rather than cautious.

“There’s something you should know,” he said. “The resistance isn’t completely gone.”

Jungkook’s attention snapped up at once. His spine straightened, the tired looseness leaving his posture like a switch had been flipped.

“There’s still a network,” Namjoon continued. “Small. Scattered. But not dead. They’ve gone dark, working off scraps and gut instinct more than structure. Yala’s kept the pulse steady.”

Jungkook frowned slightly.

“That the woman I saw you talking to?” he asked. “Near the alley when I first arrived?”

Namjoon’s mouth tugged into something caught between a smirk and a grimace.

“How long were you watching me that day?”

“Long enough.”

A soft breath left Namjoon, almost a laugh.

“Then yes. That’s her.” His expression eased just a fraction, as if thinking of Yala steadied him. “She’s sharp. Runs the grid on this side of Prime. Been a thorn in their side since the second the Necromongers landed. Knows the power maps better than they do. Rewires surveillance feeds, smuggles intel off-world when she can. Scrambles their comms just for sport.”

He shook his head faintly, something like admiration threading through the motion.

“She’s the reason the lights are still on,” he added, “and why they haven’t shut this place down completely.” A beat passed. “You’d get along.”

Jungkook huffed quietly. “That so?”

“She’s got that same annoying habit you do.”

Jungkook lifted a brow. “Which is?”

“Being unconventional.”

The word lingered between them, heavier than it sounded. Namjoon let it sit, his gaze drifting off for a moment, unfocused, as if he were measuring distances only he could see. When he looked back, the humor had drained from his face.

“When it gets bad, and it will, we’re leaving with her,” he said. “There’s a pod stashed near the north range. Not much bigger than a freight locker. Four seats.” His mouth twitched. “Maybe five if we sit in each other’s laps.”

The attempt at levity collapsed almost as soon as it appeared.

“We’re seven.”

Jungkook straightened, tension snapping into his frame like a wire drawn too tight.

“I’ll take you.”

Namjoon blinked once, then let out a quiet breath through his nose. “Of course you will.”

“You don’t know how far they’ve spread,” Jungkook said. “How fast they can—”

“I said no,” Namjoon cut in gently, without leaving room for negotiation. His voice never rose. It did not need to. “You’ve done enough. More than enough. I’m not handing you our survival like it’s another job you’re responsible for.”

Jungkook held his gaze, something feral and stubborn flickering behind his eyes, ready to push, ready to argue. But Namjoon was already shaking his head, slow and certain, as if the decision had been made long before Jungkook ever walked through the door.

“You’re meant for something else,” Namjoon said. Calm and steady, threaded through with iron. “There’s a reckoning coming, and it’s got your name written all over it.” He leaned forward slightly, eyes sharp despite the pain etched into his face. “You don’t get to run from that. You walk into it. Eyes up. Teeth bared.”

Jungkook looked away, his gaze dropping to the table. His jaw flexed as he ground his teeth once, slow and controlled, holding something raw just beneath the surface.

“You shouldn’t have to die here,” he said quietly.

Namjoon’s mouth curved into a smile that held no warmth, only acceptance sharpened into resolve.

“And maybe we won’t,” he replied. “But if it happens, it’ll be because we gave someone like you the time to end it.”

He reached across the table and closed his hand around Jungkook’s forearm. The grip was firm and steady. Not pleading. Not weak. Grounding.

“So finish it,” Namjoon said. “Get close. Do what the rest of us can’t.”

They sat like that for a moment, neither speaking, the weight of everything unsaid pressing into the space between them. Outside, the wind whispered against the walls. Inside, the house held.

Then Namjoon added, almost casually, “And if you happen to run into the Lord Marshal, send him my regards.”

Jungkook’s lips twitched into a sharp, humorless curve. “With pleasure.”

From the corner of the room, Dae let out a tiny gasp. She had found the red crayon she’d been convinced was lost forever and immediately dropped back into her coloring, the crisis already forgotten. Samara stirred the stew again, slower now, her shoulders easing as her attention returned to the flame instead of the man across the table.

For a while, they let it be.

For a while, the house existed in that fragile pocket of quiet, the kind that only formed when too much had been said and too much still waited its turn. The stew simmered. Dae hummed. The wind pressed its face against the walls and moved on.

Jungkook was the one who broke the quiet.

“I found her.”

The words were plain, almost careless in how simply he said them, but they landed hard enough that Samara stilled at the stove, spoon hovering mid-stir, and Namjoon’s fingers tightened around the edge of the table.

“Who?” Namjoon asked, though something in his voice suggested he already knew.

“Audrey.”

Jungkook did not look at either of them at first. His gaze stayed on the tabletop, tracing the thin crack running along the grain of the wood, as if following it might give him something solid to hold on to.

“On Crematoria,” he went on. “She was locked up on a murder charge.” His jaw tightened. “She was alive when I last saw her.”

Samara turned fully toward him, her eyes sharp and searching, the way they always were when she was bracing for bad news. She studied his face for hesitation, for softening, for the telltale signs of someone trying to cushion a blow.

“She’s alive,” Namjoon repeated quietly.

Jungkook nodded once. “She was.” He hesitated, then added, “I think she was taken.”

Samara’s breath left her in a sharp exhale, and she reached for the counter, steadying herself.

“Taken how?”

“Necromongers,” Jungkook said. He finally lifted his eyes, and there was no avoiding what lived in them. “She either took a knee, or she burned to death when the sun came up.”

The room went very still.

Namjoon closed his eyes for a moment, just long enough to absorb the shape of that truth. When he opened them again, there was no disappointment there. No judgment.

Only relief.

“She’s alive,” he said again, more firmly this time. “If they gave her a chance to convert, she would have taken it. The girl doesn’t want to die.”

Samara nodded, swallowing hard. “Audrey was always good at that,” she murmured. “Surviving.”

“There’s a chance she’s dead now,” Jungkook said. He did not soften it or pretend otherwise. “Crematoria doesn’t leave much room for mercy. And if she’s with them…” His mouth set. “Then she’s not safe.”

“But she’s alive,” Samara said, her voice steady despite the tremor beneath it. “At least long enough to be taken.”

Namjoon leaned back slowly, exhaling through his nose. “That girl has always had a talent for slipping through fire,” he said. “She didn’t get that far by being fragile.”

Jungkook’s gaze flicked up. “You think she could survive them?”

“I think,” Namjoon replied carefully, “that Audrey doesn’t break the way they expect people to.”

Samara crossed the room and sat down heavily, hands clasped tight in her lap. “Do you think she’s—” She hesitated. “Do you think she believes in them?”

Jungkook shook his head immediately. “No.” The answer came too fast to be anything but instinct. “If she’s with them, it’s because she had no other option. Or because she’s buying time.”

That earned him a look from Namjoon, sharp and thoughtful.

“You sound certain.”

“I’ve seen that look before,” Jungkook said quietly. “The one people wear when they decide to live long enough to end something.”

The silence that followed was different from before. Lighter. Fragile, but threaded through with something that almost resembled hope.

Samara scrubbed at her face with the heel of her hand, blinking fast. “I’m glad,” she said softly. “I’m glad she’s alive.” Her mouth curved into something close to a smile. “She never did like being told what she couldn’t survive.”

Namjoon nodded. “She used to sit at this table,” he said, his voice drifting for a moment. “Barely spoke. Ate like she was afraid the food might disappear if she looked away.” His gaze slid toward the hallway, toward the room that had once been hers. “I always wondered where she went. What shape her life took.”

“I’m going after her,” Jungkook said.

Both of them looked at him.

“If I can get her out,” he continued, his tone leaving no room for argument, “I will. If she’s alive, I won’t leave her there.”

“And if she’s not?” Samara asked gently.

Jungkook didn’t answer right away. “Then I’ll know,” he said at last. “And I’ll live with it. Wouldn’t be the first time somebody’s died because of me.”

Y/N’s face came to mind, but Jungkook pushed it down at once. There was no time for that. Not now.

Namjoon studied him for a long moment, then nodded once. “If you find her,” he said quietly but firmly, “and if there’s any way, any way at all, bring her back here. Even just for a moment.”

Jungkook met his eyes.

“So she knows she had a place,” Namjoon finished. “That she still does.”

Samara reached across the table and covered Namjoon’s hand with her own. “She was family,” she said simply.

Something tight and uncomfortable shifted beneath Jungkook’s ribs. He inclined his head once. “If I find her,” he said, “I’ll bring her home.”

Dae looked up from her coloring, having caught the tone if not the words. “Is Leo coming back?” she asked.

Jungkook crouched slightly so he was closer to her level. “I’m going to try,” he said honestly.

She considered that, then nodded. “Okay,” she said, and went back to her drawing.

The stew bubbled softly on the stove. Outside, the night pressed in, but inside the house something small and stubborn refused to go out.

They ate together. Bowls passed from hand to hand, steam rising in slow curls that fogged the air and carried the smell of roots and herbs, with something faintly sweet beneath it. Samara ladled generous portions, as if fullness itself might offer protection. Dae swung her legs beneath the table and narrated her drawing between mouthfuls, explaining in great detail why the monsters needed more legs and why fire was always better when it was red.

Jungkook listened more than he spoke. The stew was thick and grounding, heat spreading gradually through his chest and limbs. It tasted like patience, like something meant to last through long nights and worse mornings. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until the second bowl was empty and his body began to ease, tension loosening its grip just enough to be noticeable.

Even then, part of him stayed alert, counting time, measuring distance, listening for the subtle cues that told him when it was no longer safe to linger. Namjoon noticed.

“You won’t stay,” he said quietly. There was no accusation in it, just observation.

Jungkook shook his head once. “Not long enough.”

Samara set her spoon down, fingers resting against the rim of her bowl. “We’re leaving too,” she said. “Tonight. Or before dawn, at least.”

Jungkook looked at her. “To Yala?”

Namjoon nodded. “She’s moving the others east. Old transit tunnels, blackout routes. They’ll need time to coordinate before the fleets make planetfall.” His mouth curved into something grim. “We’re better off not being where they expect civilians to gather.”

“And Dae?” Jungkook asked, glancing at the girl, now deeply focused on dipping bread into her bowl.

“She’ll come with us,” Samara said. “She’s quieter than you’d think when it matters.”

Dae looked up. “I can be very sneaky,” she said seriously.

Jungkook almost smiled.

They finished eating. Samara packed what she could into cloth bundles, food, water, medical supplies, her movements efficient and practiced. Namjoon wrapped his leg more securely, jaw tightening but hands steady. Dae was given the important task of carrying her drawings and nothing else. The house began to shed the illusion it had briefly worn, returning to what it really was: a place meant to be left behind.

Jungkook stood near the door, pulling his coat back into place, checking the weight of his weapons out of habit more than necessity. The night waited outside, thick and restless.

Samara stepped closer. “You’ll be careful,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“I always am,” he replied.

She studied him for a moment, then nodded, satisfied with the lie. “Bring her back,” she said. “If you can.”

“I will.”

Namjoon came last. He rested a hand briefly on Jungkook’s shoulder, firm and grounding, the way he always did when words would only get in the way.

“Finish it,” he said again. “And don’t die doing it.”

Jungkook inclined his head. “I’ll try not to.”

Dae hugged him without warning, small arms wrapping around his middle with surprising strength.

“Don’t forget,” she said into his coat. “Monsters aren’t always scary.”

He hesitated, then rested his hand lightly against her back. “I’ll remember.”

When he slipped out, he did it quietly. No door slam, no farewell heavy enough to linger. Just the soft click of the latch and the night swallowing him whole.

Helion Prime after dark was a different city. The lights were fewer now, dimmed or rerouted, entire blocks left in shadow. Patrol drones passed overhead at regular intervals, their hum blending with the low murmur of generators and distant machinery. The air smelled of dust and ozone, with something metallic beneath it all, as if the city itself were bracing for impact.

Jungkook moved with it, not against it.

He kept to narrow streets and unpredictable alleys, slipping between buildings whose facades bore fresh scars from occupation: burn marks, shattered signage, propaganda banners nailed over old murals. He blended into the rhythm of the city, head down, pace unremarkable, presence softening at the edges until he became just another shadow moving with purpose.

Voices drifted from open windows. A child crying. Someone laughing too loudly. The quiet clatter of someone packing in haste.

He passed the checkpoints without trouble, timing his movements to the gaps between patrol sweeps, relying on reflected light and the way sound carried rather than what his eyes could see outright. He knew cities like this. Knew how fear reshaped them, how streets narrowed, how people learned to disappear, how silence became a survival skill.

At the edge of a rooftop, he paused and looked out over the sprawl of Helion Prime, the city turning slowly beneath a shadow it didn’t yet understand. Somewhere beyond the skyline, fleets were aligning. Somewhere above it all, the Icons waited. And somewhere inside that vast machinery of conquest, Audrey might still be alive.

The thought stripped away the last warmth the meal had given him, sharpening his focus until there was nothing left but intent.

Jungkook pulled his coat tighter around himself, stepped off the ledge, and vanished into the dark, not toward safety, but straight into the heart of what was coming.

New Mecca lay under a different kind of night now. This was not the gentle dark of rest or privacy, but a disciplined shadow that was controlled, partitioned, watched. Floodlights carved pale corridors through the streets, leaving everything else to drown in black. Necromonger patrols moved through it with mechanical precision, armor swallowing what little light touched it, boots striking stone in a cadence that felt less like walking and more like enforcement.

Jungkook moved anyway.

He slipped through the city like something the eye refused to hold onto, threading alleys too narrow for armored men, crossing rooftops where the wind scattered sound, dropping into courtyards patrol routes had forgotten. He let New Mecca breathe around him, learned its altered rhythms, the places where fear had tightened its grip and the places where resistance still lingered in small, stubborn ways.

The first patrol never saw him.

There were three of them, moving along a service road near the old waterworks, helmets tilted just enough that they trusted their instruments more than their instincts. Jungkook waited until a drone passed overhead, until the wind shifted, until the city itself offered cover. Then he was there. One hand sealed over the first man’s mouth, cutting sound before it could exist, followed by a sharp, efficient twist. The second turned too late, surprise barely forming before Jungkook’s blade found the seam beneath his helmet. The third reached for his weapon and never finished the motion.

Three bodies hit the ground without ceremony, armor dulling the sound. Jungkook crouched and listened. Nothing followed. The city absorbed it the way cities always did. He dragged them into shadow, breath steady, pulse unhurried. Killing like this did not spike adrenaline. It narrowed it, honed it. He stripped the last one quickly, black armor, scripture etched into the plating, the faint smell of incense and metal clinging to everything the Necromongers touched, and fitted it onto himself with practiced speed.

When he stood again, the silhouette was right. The weight was right. He rolled his shoulders once, testing the fit, then stepped back into the open.

No one looked twice.

Inside the uniform, the city bent around him. Doors opened. Patrols acknowledged him with brief nods and moved on. His posture did the work, shoulders squared, movements economical, gaze forward and empty of curiosity. He walked like someone who belonged, like someone who expected the world to give way.

And it did.

He passed through checkpoints without slowing, through corridors carved into streets that had once been familiar, now repurposed into arteries of conquest. Barked orders slid past him. Sermons about extinction and clarity echoed from overhead loudspeakers, faith repurposed into background noise against stone that had once carried music. Jungkook listened and said nothing.

Inside the armor, his breathing stayed even. His mind stayed sharp. Each step drew him closer to the gravity well at the center of it all, the Conquest Icon looming above the city like a wound in the sky, pulling everything toward it. Toward the Lord Marshal.

Somewhere inside that machine of belief and violence, Audrey might still be breathing. Might still be waiting. Or planning. Or already tearing her way through whatever they thought they had turned her into.

Jungkook adjusted his pace and fell into step beside another patrol as if he had always been there. Blending in was easy. It always had been. And as New Mecca bowed quietly beneath the shadow overhead, one of its conquerors walked calmly toward the heart of extinction, carrying a knife, a lie, and just enough hope to keep moving forward.

Outside the Capitol Dome of Helion, tension gathered long before it took form. It pressed into the air, subtle but unavoidable, settling against the Dome’s black stone as though testing its weight. Artificial twilight slid across the seamless curves of the structure, bending into cold gradients that vanished as quickly as they formed. Shadows did not simply fall here. They lingered, stretched thin and watchful, as if the building itself were listening.

Below, the city moved with careful restraint. Traffic flowed along precise routes, pedestrians kept to prescribed paths, voices remained low. Even the wind threaded cautiously between spires and elevated walkways, reluctant to disturb the balance. Far above, landing thrusters pulsed at steady intervals, their distant thunder rolling through the sky like a reminder that power remained alert, whether or not the world beneath it wished otherwise.

Within the Dome, the Grand Hall existed apart from the city entirely. Sealed away from its rhythms and unease, it operated under a stricter discipline. Silence ruled here, complete and controlled.

Two hundred Necromonger officers stood in flawless formation across the polished floor. Their black armor was pristine and unforgiving, absorbing the ambient light without reflection. Edges were sharp, surfaces unmarred. Each figure mirrored the next: hands clasped behind their backs, shoulders squared, chins lifted just enough to signal readiness without presumption. Breath followed regulation. Thought followed doctrine. Whatever individuality they had once possessed had been pared away until only function remained.

This was not a gathering meant to inspire or reassure. It was alignment, inevitability rendered in flesh and steel.

The Lord Marshal arrived without announcement. One moment the hall was sealed in stillness. The next, it seemed to yield around him. He descended with slow, deliberate steps, moving with the untroubled certainty of someone who had never questioned whether the ground would bear his weight. His presence spread through the chamber, heavy and inescapable. No officer turned, no head shifted, yet attention bent toward him all the same, drawn by instinct as much as obedience.

When he spoke, his voice cut cleanly through the silence.

“Ninety-nine of you see it,” he said, almost reverent, his gaze passing over the ranks without lingering. “You see it as I once saw the UnderVerse itself.”

He paced as he spoke, the faint scrape of armor marking each step. “Our enemies diminish. Their resistance fractures. Our purpose sharpens.” His tone hardened, certainty settling into something absolute. “This march is no longer conquest alone. It is final alignment.”

He stopped, allowing the words to sink past armor and discipline, past fear.

“The Door is no longer a distant promise,” he continued. “It lies within reach.”

Silence absorbed the declaration. Then a faint smile touched his mouth.

“There will be one last Lord Marshal,” he said. “You have already seen him.”

He lowered himself to one knee. Armor struck stone with a sharp, resonant crack that echoed through the hall. The response was immediate. Metal followed metal as the officers knelt in unison, a disciplined wave transforming rigid formation into collective submission. Helmets dipped. Heads bowed. The chamber became a monument to belief, obedience, and surrender.

The Lord Marshal spoke again. “Accept, O Great UnderLord, our numberless plans and prayers. Render our devotion into favorable judgment, as the Legion Vast takes the field once more to complete Your most charitable crusade.”

The final syllable faded.

Silence followed, dense and deliberate, pressing against the skin, making breath feel intrusive, heartbeat too loud. It was a stillness held with purpose, as though the universe itself had paused mid-thought.

Then something moved. At the rear of the Grand Hall, beyond the kneeling ranks, one figure remained standing. Only one.

He stood apart from the ocean of submission, hands resting at his sides, body utterly still. Helmeted like the others, identical in silhouette, and yet unmistakably wrong. Not defiant. Not uncertain. There was no rebellion in his stance, no hesitation in his bearing. He simply stood there, calm and present, as though kneeling had never been an option.

As though he belonged.

The Lord Marshal’s voice faltered. It was a small thing, a brief hitch in his breath, a disruption in the practiced rhythm of the invocation, but it was unmistakable. His eyes lifted, scanning the chamber with sudden focus, until they fixed on the lone figure standing at the rear. His lips parted. The final words of the rite died unfinished in his throat.

Something about the man disturbed him. Not defiance. Not confusion. It was certainty, the quiet, unassuming kind that did not ask to be acknowledged. The kind that existed without permission, without need.

The Lord Marshal rose sharply, reverence giving way to urgency as his armor scraped harshly against the stone. He moved through the kneeling ranks, at first with restraint, then faster, officers shifting instinctively as he pushed past them.

“There was an officer,” he muttered, no longer speaking to the hall. “Still standing. Just now, he was here.”

Toal straightened beside him at once, tension snapping through his frame as his gaze swept the rear rows. The space where the figure had stood was empty.

The Lord Marshal’s composure cracked. His hands moved with sharp, efficient urgency, tearing helmets from the nearest soldiers one by one. Faces were revealed in quick succession: confusion, alarm, unwavering loyalty, but none of them were the one he sought. His gaze darted across the formation, searching for something he could not name, only certain he had seen.

Uneasy murmurs rippled through the kneeling ranks.

“Is the Big Guy alright?” someone whispered, the words barely audible before the hush swallowed them whole.

The Lord Marshal did not hear, or did not care. His attention had returned to the empty stretch of stone at the back of the hall, to the precise place where the figure had stood.

A place where, a moment ago, a Furyan had stood.

A sharp awareness crept along the back of his neck. It was not fear. Not memory. It was something older, something alert and awake. His jaw tightened as he stared at the bare floor, as though it might offer an explanation if he stared hard enough.

For the first time in many years, uncertainty slipped through the cracks of his faith.

Had he seen a ghost?

Along the Basilica promenade, the city moved with mechanical certainty. Elevated causeways fed into stone corridors, each channeling bodies forward in steady, regulated streams. Nothing drifted. Nothing hesitated. Towering spires rose overhead, their shadows stretched long across the walkways, indifferent to the lives passing beneath them. The rhythm of it all was relentless, an ordered progression driving toward an end no one thought to question.

Warrior ships hovered low above the promenade, their massive hulls held aloft by controlled force. Engines thrummed with a constant resonance that vibrated through stone and bone alike, a sound that never shifted in pitch, never softened. One by one, the ships slid into position, black hulls overlapping until the sky itself was consumed. Light fractured weakly across armored surfaces, dull and lifeless, and the sense of open space collapsed into something enclosed, inevitable.

They settled along the platform with flawless alignment, requiring no signal, no correction. They gathered as if called long before the need became visible.

Necromonger officers descended the wide ceremonial steps in disciplined streams, armor pristine and severe. Every movement was efficient, stripped of flourish or individuality. Strides matched. Gazes stayed forward. They advanced less as individuals than as a single organism, unified by doctrine and inevitability. Behind them came the nobility, robes heavy with layers of rank and submission, expressions marked not by fear but by acceptance. Survival, for them, had already been negotiated.

High-ranking converts moved among the ranks, devotion evident in the absence of doubt. Their eyes held no hesitation, no questioning. Faith had displaced everything else. No one spoke. No one rushed. This was not retreat or evacuation. It was pilgrimage, toward a war already declared sacred, already justified, already absolved.

At the edge of the promenade stood Pia.

The wind stirred faintly at the hem of her armor, a reminder of open air and altitude, but she remained still. Hands folded behind her back, chin lifted with practiced authority, she might have been mistaken for part of the structure itself, another immobile element built in service of conquest. Her gaze followed the procession as it flowed toward the Basilica doors, controlled and unresisting, shaped entirely by what had been designed to contain it.

She did not listen to the chanting rising from within. She did not dwell on the ceremony or the blood that would follow it across the stars. Her thoughts were quieter, sharper, fixed on what came after: thinned command rosters, ships that would not return, names that would vanish without record. Victory always demanded more than it promised, and the cost was never evenly paid. She wondered who would still be standing when the balance finally shifted.

The Basilica doors hissed open once more, their massive frames parting with deliberate care. Metal plates slid aside as though the structure itself recognized the weight of its purpose, welcoming the faithful back into the heart of doctrine. Bodies disappeared inside by the hundreds.

Pia turned slightly, ready to watch the doors seal again, to close the faithful within and shut the rest of the world out.

That was when she noticed it.

Not all at once. Not clearly. Just a disturbance in the pattern, a movement that failed to match the cadence around it. Her breath caught before discipline could suppress it.

Near the far edge of the procession, nearly lost among black armor and bowed heads, a figure moved with the others. Helmeted. Uniformed. Indistinguishable in every way that should have mattered.

And yet something was wrong.

The angle of his head was off by a fraction. His shoulders carried their weight differently, not reverent, not tense. Alert. A posture that measured space, that tracked exits even while advancing. Pia’s stomach dropped as recognition, instinct rather than reason, snapped into place.

She moved.

Pia drove shoulder-first into the crowd, ignoring sharp looks and muttered protests as armor scraped against armor. One officer reached out, then thought better of it. Rank or not, her momentum discouraged interference. Her eyes cut through bodies and shadow, searching for a shape she could not name, only confirm.

Behind her, the Basilica doors began to close. Their massive edges slid inward with grinding finality, the sound deep and resonant, sealing the space behind them.

“Move,” Pia snapped, the command sharp and uncompromising as she surged forward through the press of bodies. She caught one last glimpse of him as the figure turned, not enough to draw attention or disrupt the rhythm of the procession, just enough. A sliver of dying light slipped beneath the edge of his helmet and his eyes flared in it, alive, focused, predatory.

The Basilica doors slammed shut behind her, the impact rolling across the promenade and striking hard against her chest. The sound echoed outward, deep and final, before dissolving beneath the steady churn of engines and marching boots.

Pia stopped short. The crowd streamed past her, armor brushing her sides, shoulders clipping her arms, boots striking stone inches from her feet, but none of it registered. She had become a fixed point, something the current bent around and left behind. Her gaze remained locked on the sealed entryway ahead.

The Basilica doors stood in perfect alignment, massive and immovable. For a moment she expected them to open again, to part as if summoned by authority alone. For another, she was certain she could force them, rank, consequence, and protocol be damned. They did not move.

The Basilica was closed. The procession was gone. And he was inside. Or worse, already gone.

Her pulse hammered in her ears, loud enough to drown out the lingering hum of engines overhead. Each beat struck hard, stealing her breath, but she dragged air into her lungs anyway, shallow and fast, her mind scrambling for something, anything, that might blunt the reality closing in around her.

A trick of the light, she told herself. Fatigue. Shadows bending the wrong way. Memory misfiring under strain. The explanations came easily, honed by years of discipline. Pia had survived by trusting logic over instinct, order over imagination. Each rationalization collapsed the moment it formed, brittle and inadequate against what she knew.

She knew those eyes. She knew the shape of that ghost.

The realization settled cold and heavy in her chest, bringing with it a clarity she did not want and could not escape. Nothing felt certain anymore, not their faith, not their victories, not even the rules they had followed long enough to mistake for truth.

Measured footsteps sounded behind her. Taehyung’s voice followed, low and tense, as though saying it aloud might make it less real. “You mean… on Helion?”

Pia turned to face him. Her expression was controlled, composed, but something sharp had shifted beneath the surface. “I mean on this very ship.”

The air tightened between them. Taehyung stared at her as though she had pronounced a death sentence rather than a location, struggling to contain the implications. “Could you be wrong?” he asked quickly.

Pia’s jaw tightened. “Not as wrong as you were when you left him breathing.”

Taehyung said nothing.

“Twice the mistake,” Pia continued evenly. “First the failure. Then the report calling it a success.” Her eyes stayed on his, unblinking. “If he’s here, Taehyung, he’ll kill the Lord Marshal before we can do anything about it.”

Taehyung turned away, boots echoing sharply as he paced toward the far end of the corridor, hands curling into fists at his sides. Panic had not taken hold. He was too disciplined for that. But it hovered close, circling. If she was right, if that figure truly had been Jungkook, then this was no longer a matter of risk management or damage control. It was a knife’s edge, and they were already standing on it.

He was nearly at the Basilica doors when her voice stopped him.

“Let him try.”

Taehyung turned back, confusion flashing across his face before training smoothed it away. “What?”

“If Jungkook has come this far,” Pia said, her tone level, almost unnervingly calm, “then he can do what we cannot.” She stepped closer, her presence deliberate, controlled. “He can wound the Lord Marshal. That’s your opening.”

Disbelief crossed Taehyung’s expression. “You want me to let him through?” His voice dropped. “Let him fight so I can take what’s left?”

Pia did not blink. “Is that not the way?” she asked quietly. “Kill what stands above you. Take its place.” Her head tilted a fraction.

Taehyung stepped closer, lowering his voice until it barely carried. “It’s not enough.”

“Then do it for the faith,” Pia replied without hesitation. “The Lord Marshal doubts.” Her gaze sharpened as it locked onto his. “You’ve seen it. He fears.”

Taehyung went still. The word hung between them, heavy and dangerous. They stood at the heart of the Basilica, surrounded by stone, doctrine, and centuries of enforced belief. Yet what Pia offered did not feel like treason. It felt inevitable.

She closed the remaining distance and rested her hand lightly against his arm. The touch was almost gentle, grounding even as it unsettled him. “This can still be a day of days,” she murmured. “But timing is everything.”

Their eyes held. Neither looked away.

“Are we really going to do this?” Taehyung asked.

Pia stepped closer, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her breath against his cheek, close enough that the familiar scent of her skin threaded into his thoughts. Her hand slid from his arm to the edge of his armor, fingers tracing the plating with deliberate care until they found the seam at his side. She paused there, letting the moment tighten.

“You want to know what I think?” she whispered. “I think Jungkook lived because the Lord Marshal wanted him to.”

Taehyung frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. He wanted him dead.”

“Did he?” Pia tilted her head, studying him as though the answer were already written there. “Then why send you? Why not do it himself?” Her gaze hardened. “He’s the holy blade. The chosen of the UnderVerse. Why send a commander, unless he feared what he’d find up close?”

Taehyung looked away, his jaw tightening.

“You’ve seen it,” she said quietly. “The way he watches the shadows now.” Her voice remained measured. “You don’t hesitate when you believe. You don’t flinch when you’re invincible.”

She lifted her fingers to his chin and turned his face back toward hers, slow and precise, as if correcting something out of alignment. Her smile was soft but distant. Her eyes were sharp, intent.

“He flinched.”

Taehyung didn’t answer. His gaze stayed on hers, though something in it shifted, as if a barrier he had reinforced for years had loosened.

“You see it now,” Pia murmured, certainty threaded with reverence. “He’s afraid.” She leaned closer, close enough that retreat would have required effort. “Afraid that if he faces Jungkook, he’ll fall. Afraid the UnderVerse won’t protect him.” Her tone sharpened by a single degree. “Afraid of what it would mean if one man could break everything we’ve built.”

Her lips brushed his jaw, barely there, fleeting and intentional. His breath caught despite himself.

“And what if that’s true?” she whispered.

Taehyung exhaled slowly, unevenly.

Pia moved behind him, her steps soundless, her presence settling into his space as though it had always belonged there. Her arms slid around his waist with practiced ease, neither clinging nor demanding. Familiar. Certain.

“You’ve always been stronger than him,” she said at his ear. “You’ve always known it.”

She paused, letting the words take hold.

“All you ever needed was the right moment.”

Her hand rose to his chest, palm flat over his heart, fingers spread as if measuring the truth beneath. She stayed there, letting the silence stretch, letting him feel his pulse answering her touch.

“And someone to remind you.”

His eyes closed.

“You don’t need permission,” Pia said softly. “You need timing.” Her fingers pressed just enough to anchor the thought. “And conviction.”

“And you,” Taehyung said.

Pia smiled against his neck, slow and assured. “Of course.”

She pressed a brief, deliberate kiss to his throat, then stepped away as if nothing of consequence had passed between them. Her composure returned at once, her expression smoothing into calm detachment, her attention already elsewhere.

Taehyung remained where he was, breath heavy, thoughts fractured and colliding. The corridor felt colder now, wider, charged with something unresolved.

Pia did not look back.

Outside, the Basilica Ship began to rise, its colossal mass shifting with slow, deliberate certainty as the landing pylons disengaged one by one. Each retraction sent a deep vibration rolling across the scorched terrain below, a grinding resonance felt through stone and bone alike.

As the hull lifted clear, the ground beneath it gave way. Dust, ash, and fractured stone were torn loose and hurled upward in violent spirals, the remains of the landing platform collapsing into a storm of debris and heat. The air darkened until edges blurred and detail vanished, swallowed by motion and shadow, while the ship’s vast silhouette stretched across Helion Prime and slid slowly over its surface, distorting as the vessel pulled free of a world it had come not to save, but to judge.

Inside the control vault, the light remained low and reverent. Thick panes of reinforced glass muted the violence beyond, reducing destruction to distant vibration. From here, chaos looked orderly, intentional. Helion Prime filled the horizon, vast and exposed, its slow rotation unfolding beneath them with unforgiving clarity. Every curve and every fault line was visible from this height, and the planet looked smaller for it, vulnerable in a way that could not be unseen once noticed.

The Lord Marshal stood at the center of the vault with his hands clasped behind his back, posture rigid and unyielding, his silhouette cut sharply against the planetary glow. He did not brace or sway as the ship ascended. The vessel rose around him instead, as though the universe itself adjusted to his stillness.

One Vault Officer stood a measured pace behind him, spine straight, chin lifted, breath shallow and controlled. He neither spoke nor shifted. He waited, as duty required, knowing, as all Vault Officers did, that his presence would likely never be acknowledged.

Below them, Helion Prime lay open. City lights flickered as dusk deepened, some burning bright, others dimming beneath drifting smoke and ash. Entire districts had already been claimed, their outlines traced in lines of fire across the surface, while rivers caught the last remnants of sunlight and glimmered faintly as thin threads through shadow and ruin. Along the edge of the atmosphere, storm systems coiled slowly, indifferent, as though the planet had not yet understood what had been done to it.

The scale of it pressed against the glass, making the stillness inside the vault feel heavier and deliberate, as if silence itself were part of the ritual. When the Lord Marshal spoke, he did so without turning.

“On my order.”

His voice was quiet and controlled, untouched by urgency or anger, and the words carried weight precisely because they were not emphasized. They were not a threat. They were a certainty. Outside, the Warrior Ships responded at once, formation lines shifting without visible command as they rose in flawless synchronization. Metallic wings extended and locked into place, joints sealing with finality, hulls tilting upward to catch the last fragments of light as they aligned for departure. The movement was smooth and exact, instinct refined into obedience.

Along the outer platforms below, Necromonger crews moved into position with ritualized precision, their steps and gestures guided by repetition rather than thought. Consoles dimmed. Observation stations powered down in sequence, each locking into launch configuration with a soft, final click. There was no haste in their movements and no fear, only belief rendered automatic.

Far beneath them, on the lower tiers and shattered ground beyond, converts gathered in numbers too dense to count. Bodies pressed together in desperate surges. Some reached upward, faces lifted, mouths forming prayers that still believed they mattered, while others screamed, voices breaking as they begged for salvation they had not yet accepted was already gone. A few broke from the mass entirely, throwing themselves toward the departing ships, hands grasping at empty air, feet slipping on scorched stone, clinging to the hope that belief alone might still be enough, that faith, offered loudly and without restraint, might yet earn mercy.

The ships did not slow. The Necromonger faith did not linger over mercy. Hesitation dulled purpose, and purpose was all that remained sacred. Helion Prime continued to shrink beneath them, receding into something temporary and expendable, already reduced to calculation. It would endure, or it would burn. Either way, the fleet moved on without it.

Samara stood at the window with both hands braced against the sill, knuckles pale against the worn wood. Her fingers pressed hard enough to feel the grain bite into her skin. The glass beneath her palms was cool, a thin and fragile barrier between what remained of their home and the sky beyond.

Morning had come without warmth. Gray light crept in slowly, flattening color and draining the room of anything that might have passed for comfort. It felt less like a beginning than an intrusion, as though the day itself had arrived uninvited. Even the shadows looked tired, stretched thin along the walls.

The air held an uneasy stillness, charged in a way that made her skin feel tight. The quiet pressed inward, heavy against her ears and chest. This was not a silence that promised calm. It felt like a warning, something held back just long enough to gather strength.

Her lips parted before she realized it.

“Is this the last morning of Helion Prime?”

The words left her softly, barely more than breath. She was not asking anyone. She was not sure she wanted an answer. Saying it aloud felt dangerous, as if naming the fear might give it permission to exist.

Behind her, the house shifted as the wind pressed against it. Old beams creaked. Joints complained. The structure settled into new alignments. Once, those sounds had been reassuring, a reminder that the house was alive and responsive. Now they sounded brittle and stressed, like something being asked to endure more than it was built for.

She turned from the window and crossed the room, her movements careful and deliberate. It was how she moved when panic hovered too close, when slowing herself was the only way to keep from shattering. The space felt smaller than it had yesterday. The walls were closer. The air thinner.

Dae sat on the floor near the door with her knees pulled in, struggling with her boots. Small fingers worked at stiff straps with growing frustration. She tugged too hard, then froze, jaw set, as if daring the leather to resist her again. She did not look up when Samara knelt beside her. Instead, she leaned closer to the task, intent and fierce, the way children were when they believed urgency could outrun what was coming.

“Hold still,” Samara said gently.

Her voice was calm, calmer than she felt, but steady enough to anchor them both. She adjusted the straps and tucked the laces away, careful not to pinch. Her hands shook more than she liked. She noticed, corrected, then smoothed Dae’s hair back from her face. Her fingers lingered there, memorizing the warmth, the softness, the way Dae leaned into the touch without thinking.

Dae finally looked up. “Are we going far?”

Samara forced a smile. It felt thin, but she held it. “Just far enough.”

It was not convincing, but Dae nodded anyway, accepting it because she wanted to, because children always did when the alternative was too much. Samara swallowed and stood, offering her hand.

They stepped outside together.

The air hit them immediately, thick and buzzing, wrong. It carried a sharp metallic tang that caught at the back of Samara’s throat. The wind felt charged, crawling over her skin instead of passing by. Above the rooftops, the sky hung low and gray-blue, heavy and oppressive.

Then a shadow crossed them.

It moved slowly and deliberately, stretching across the street as it swallowed doorways and walls. Samara tilted her head back, dread settling cold and sudden in her chest.

A Warrior Ship drifted overhead, immense and silent. Its vast underbelly blotted out what little light remained. It did not rush or hesitate. It moved with the certainty of something that knew resistance was irrelevant.

Without thinking, Samara reached for Dae’s hand, gripping it tighter than she meant to. Dae squeezed back, small fingers firm and trusting.

They did not linger.

By the time they reached the edge of the district, the streets were nearly empty. Doors stood open where people had fled in haste. A child’s toy lay overturned near a stoop. A scarf fluttered from a railing, abandoned. The low hum of engines rolled endlessly through the air, broken now and then by the sweep of patrol lights skimming across rooftops.

Somewhere nearby, something moved. Boots scraped stone. Armor brushed armor. Then it vanished again, leaving only the echo.

Maleek was already there.

Namjoon’s old university friend, known to Samara mostly as Yala’s husband, crouched behind an abandoned transport cart, his broad back pressed to the wall. His gaze tracked the alley with practiced ease. When he saw them, his posture tightened, then eased. He rose and crossed to them without hesitation.

Namjoon leaned against the wall nearby, pale and slick with sweat. Maleek slipped Namjoon’s arm over his shoulders with practiced care, settling his weight as though they had done this many times before.

Namjoon hissed, a groan tearing loose despite his effort to contain it. One hand clutched his ribs. The other gripped Maleek’s shirt for balance.

“Easy,” Maleek murmured, steady and grounding.

Samara moved in at once. Fear had no time to take hold. Her hands went straight to the harness they had assembled the night before. Straps cut from abandoned packs. Canvas scavenged from storage lockers. Seams pulled tight under failing light. It was not elegant. It was not even secure by standards she would have trusted days ago. The stitching was uneven. The knots crude. The balance owed more to hope than design.

But it would work.

Samara tightened the harness while Maleek held Namjoon upright, bracing his weight with steady, practiced strength. She checked each buckle once, then again, fingers pulling and testing until she was sure nothing would slip. Every second felt borrowed, counted against a clock she could feel beating behind her ribs. Each breath tasted thin and sharp, but her hands stayed steady. Purpose kept panic at bay, clarity cutting through the morning as it edged closer to something none of them were ready to name.

“Sorry about this,” Namjoon muttered through clenched teeth, pain breaking through despite his attempt at humor.

Maleek flashed him a crooked grin, stubborn goodwill holding it in place. “You owe me another bottle of that red wine, Imam.”

Namjoon managed a dry chuckle, the sound hitching halfway as he adjusted his grip on Maleek’s shirt. “God has your invoice. I don’t drink. That’s why I gave it to you.”

For a brief moment, it almost felt ordinary. Not good, exactly, but familiar, like an echo of how things used to be before every sound carried meaning and every pause felt dangerous.

Then an engine roared overhead, closer this time. The sound rolled through the air with enough force to rattle windows and send grit skittering across the pavement. The illusion shattered instantly.

They moved. The air above them felt wrong, thick with static and anticipation. Samara felt it along her spine, a warning carried straight to her nerves. They slipped into the back routes Yala had shown them weeks earlier, when the power grids had first begun to stutter and the city had learned how to disappear.

The alleys narrowed around them, choked with dust and debris. Rusted pipes ran overhead. Broken signage hung at odd angles, swaying faintly in the charged wind. Boots crunched softly over grit and fractured stone as they kept moving, breathing controlled, careful not to waste anything.

Now and then, a dull boom rolled across the sky, distant but heavy enough to be felt in the chest. Or the pale sweep of Necromonger patrol lights passed over the rooftops, slow and deliberate. Each pass tightened the space around them, threatening to pin them in place.

Helion Prime felt suspended. Waiting.

Yala was already there when they reached the substation. She stood beneath the rusted archway, posture rigid, feet planted wide as if bracing against the ground itself. Her eyes tracked the horizon in steady arcs, sharp and unblinking. The wind snapped the hem of her coat against her legs and dragged loose strands of hair across her face. She ignored it.

At her feet, Maryam sat curled inward, chin resting on her knees. She looked up at their approach, eyes wide and alert, taking everything in without a word. A few steps away, Yala’s younger sister crouched beside the escape pod, one knee down, one foot braced, running her hand along the hull. Her fingers traced seams and latches with practiced precision, checking by instinct rather than thought.

The pod was old, its hull dented and scraped from years of hurried use, paint flaked away to expose raw metal beneath. It was not impressive, but it was real. And it was alive now, humming softly as systems came online, pressure building, air sealing, waiting.

Samara let out a breath she had not realized she was holding. It was not relief, not quite, but it was enough.

“Didn’t think you’d make it,” Yala called without turning, her eyes still fixed on the skyline.

“We weren’t sure ourselves,” Samara replied, tightening her grip on Namjoon’s arm as they moved closer.

He was barely upright now, one arm hooked over Maleek’s shoulder, his steps uneven and deliberate. Sweat darkened the collar of his shirt, his breathing labored but controlled, each movement driven by resolve rather than strength. Together, they guided him toward the pod, careful with every step, careful not to disturb what was already damaged.

Yala finally turned, her gaze settling on Namjoon a moment longer than necessary. “You alright?”

Namjoon offered a crooked smile, pain flickering behind it. “Physically? Not even close. But I’m told that’s optional.”

A brief smile crossed Yala’s face before it vanished again. “We’ve got maybe ten minutes before the grid drops completely. Once it does, we lose comms, navigation, masking, everything. If anyone else is coming, now’s the time.”

No one answered.

“We should wait,” Namjoon said after a moment, his voice low and measured. “If the Icon breaks free, if they deploy it, we move. That’s our opening. Their eyes will be on the sky. We slip out underneath.”

Yala raised a brow. “And your friend? The one planning to kill their leader?”

“He’s there,” Namjoon said simply. For the first time since they had left the house, his voice carried no fatigue. Only certainty. “He’ll end this before it gets that far.”

Samara studied him for a moment longer, weighing the conviction in his voice. She did not argue. She could not. Still, her gaze drifted back to the pod, its dulled hull already catching grit on the wind, waiting with a patience that felt almost accusatory.

“Still,” she said evenly, breaking the silence, “we should get inside. In case it doesn’t break our way.”

Yala nodded once, already shifting her stance. “Children first. Maryam and Dae on the floor pan. We’ll fit wherever we can.”

“I’ll stay behind if there’s not enough room,” Namjoon said, the words delivered with an ease that felt rehearsed, as if he had made peace with them long before speaking.

Samara turned on him before the sentence had fully settled.

“No, you won’t.” Her voice cut through the space between them, sharp and absolute. She stepped closer, eyes locked on his, refusing him even the space to retreat into politeness. “You might be a politician out there, Namjoon Kim,” she said, each word precise and controlled. “A symbol people cling to because they don’t know how else to survive what’s coming.”

She pressed her palm flat against his chest, firm and grounding, right over his heart. “But in here,” she continued, tapping once, deliberate, “you’re my husband. And your duty is to your family. To me.”

He drew in a breath, ready to argue. She did not give him the chance.

“You don’t get to die here,” she said, her voice softening without losing its weight. “Not on this planet. Not like this. Not without me.” Her fingers tightened in his shirt. “I forbid it.”

She felt the shift immediately, the quiet release of a burden he had already been bracing to carry alone. His shoulders eased. His jaw unclenched. The rigid line of resolve softened into something warmer, something painfully familiar. He smiled, small and tired and entirely himself.

“Of course,” he said quietly. “I only meant the children should go first.”

The tension drained out of her in a slow exhale. Anger gave way to something raw and unguarded, and she leaned forward until her forehead rested against his, just enough to steady herself.

“Then say that,” she murmured. “Don’t try to be noble with me.” Her voice trembled despite her effort to keep it steady. “I would never love anyone else. Not in this life or the next. You’re it. You’ve always been.”

He reached for her hand slowly and deliberately, giving her time to pull away if she wanted to. She did not. She let his fingers thread through hers, rough and familiar, anchoring her more surely than any vow ever could.

“I love you,” he said.

She squeezed his hand once, sealing the moment. “As I love you.”

Deep in the underbelly of the Basilica Ship, light never truly arrived. It hovered instead in a perpetual half-state, engineered to obscure more than it revealed. Thin, colorless illumination bled from recessed panels along the steel corridors, while emergency strips traced faint lines at ankle height. Light clung to seams and edges, stopping short of corners that dissolved into shadow. Nothing here was meant to feel open. Nothing was meant to feel safe.

The passageways stretched long and narrow, the walls humming with the constant pulse of the engines. It was less a sound than a sensation, a low vibration that seeped into bone and muscle. The ship did not simply carry those within it. It enclosed them, pressed in around them, reminded them with every step that they were moving through something vast and alive.

Jungkook moved through it as though he belonged.

The stolen cloak whispered at his heels, its heavy folds dragging just enough to soften his outline. It blurred sharp angles into flowing lines, breaking his silhouette into something less distinct. From a distance, he fit well enough, another shadow among shadows, another obedient figure wrapped in steel, ritual, and faith.

Up close, the illusion did not hold. Steel flashed beneath the shifting fabric, hard edges disrupting the ceremonial lines of the uniform. Purpose showed in the way he carried himself, in the tension held in his shoulders and the economy of his movements. There was no reverence in him, no submission. What remained was violence reduced to function, stripped of belief and display.

His preferred weapon rode low at his side, the nunchuck shotgun. Ugly. Brutal. Barely recognizable as what it had once been. It had been patched, rewired, rebuilt from scavenged parts and necessity until nothing of its original design remained except intent. Weld scars marred the frame. Deep gouges cut into the grip. It was not elegant and had never pretended to be. It answered to no doctrine and no scripture. It had never failed him, and that was the only faith he trusted.

The rest of his arsenal clung to him with practiced balance. Throwing knives ran along his ribs, weighted for speed. Boot blades hid at the ankle. Short swords were secured across his back, their hilts angled for either hand. As he rounded a corner, one blade caught the dim light before disappearing again. Irgun’s dagger, taken the moment Irgun stopped breathing. Its weight carried memory, blood spilled, debts settled, promises kept long after mercy had lost relevance.

Jungkook’s gaze never lingered. It stayed forward, scanning, aligning what he saw with the map etched into his mind. The Basilica Ship was a labyrinth by design, full of false turns, mirrored corridors, junctions meant to disorient and intimidate. It did not matter. He was not lost anymore. Every passage had meaning now. Every junction narrowed the distance to the end. He moved with quiet certainty, boots striking steel in a measured cadence, the cloak shifting just enough to disguise his pace without slowing it. On this level, the faithful had thinned, drawn upward toward spectacle and judgment. The lower corridors lay unnervingly empty.

Elsewhere on the same deck, Taehyung moved down a parallel corridor with Pia at his side. Their strides matched without effort, steps falling into rhythm as though they had always moved this way together. Their dark robes absorbed the low light, swallowing detail and distinction, and they advanced like figures cut from shadow, controlled and deliberate. They were headed toward the same destination as Jungkook, though the forces drawing them there could not have been more different.

They did not speak. They did not need to. Words would have been wasteful. Each was already deep in calculation, measuring distance, anticipating resistance, rehearsing lies that could survive scrutiny and truths that could not yet be exposed. Loyalties were weighed, risks refined, every thought honed sharp enough to cut cleanly when required.

Far above the steel corridors and shadowed interiors, the skies over Helion churned. Warrior ships tightened their formation in silent synchronization around the immense bulk of the Conquest Icon, its scale dwarfing everything near it. Vast. Brutal. Reverent in its construction. Not merely a weapon, but a declaration, a cathedral built for annihilation. Cannons slid free from armored housings with deep, grinding groans that rippled through air and structure alike. Plates locked into place. Power surged. The Icon’s three colossal heads turned inward, folding with glacial precision until a massive aperture opened at the center.

A mouth of darkness, poised to devour the sky.

Inside the Control Vault, tension sat heavy and unmoving. The Vault Officer stood rigid at his station, eyes fixed on the primary lens, hands held motionless at his sides. Around him, Necromongers crowded the observation ports, their faces set with expectation rather than fear. They did not recognize fear for what it was. This was holy. This was war as doctrine had promised it, precise, righteous, inevitable.

From the core of the Icon, a brilliant sphere launched. The targeting orb tore through Helion’s atmosphere, spinning violently, shedding pulses of light and static that fractured the sky as it descended. Below it, panic rippled through cities that had still been clinging to hope, streets erupting as people looked up and understood what was coming.

Far beneath that burning sky, deep within the halls of Necropolis, Jungkook kept moving. Fire and spectacle meant nothing to him now. He did not look up or slow his pace. The corridors had thinned as the faithful gathered elsewhere to witness the final act, leaving him alone with the hum of the ship and the weight of stolen armor pressing down on his shoulders. The armor was heavy, but the weight of vengeance was heavier.

He was nearing the throne chamber when he saw her.

The corridor opened into the ceremonial approach, its vaulted ceiling rising high overhead, its polished stone floor reflecting cold, sanctified light in long, warped bands. The air here felt different, dense and charged with reverence and threat, and every step echoed too clearly, as if the space itself were listening. Audrey was turning away from the Lord Marshal’s dais, her posture rigid with ritual. Her spine was straight, her chin lifted at the precise angle demanded by doctrine, every movement measured down to the smallest fraction.

The uniform marked her as one of them, black, severe, immaculate, designed to erase softness and replace it with obedience. It should have fit her. It did not. It sat on her like borrowed skin. Her shoulders were held too high, as though bracing for impact. Her hands hovered too close to her sides, fingers curled inward, constantly aware of where she ended and where the faith began. There was restraint in her stillness now, effortful and controlled, like someone balancing on unfamiliar ground.

When her eyes lifted and met his through the visor, something fractured. Not sound. Not motion. Pressure, sudden and immense. The air between them compressed under recognition, as though the space itself had drawn breath and failed to release it. Audrey stopped short, discipline breaking before she could catch it, her breath hitching sharp and involuntary as it cut through the hush of the chamber.

“I thought…” she began, and the word broke apart before it could fully form.

Jungkook felt the impact just as sharply. A jolt tore through him, cutting cleanly through the discipline he had built around himself. For a heartbeat, everything inside him faltered. She had been dead to him, not forgotten, never that, but buried. Carried like a grave he refused to visit. A name he would not allow himself to speak. And now she was there, alive and breathing, looking at him as if she still knew him, like she always had.

There was no time to process it.

The Lord Marshal’s voice cut through the charged air, calm and cold, authority edged with something bitter. “Did my Purifier not find you?” His gaze sharpened. “Or did you refuse the mercy?”

At a flick of his hand, the Elite Guard moved at once. Silent, precise, perfectly trained, they closed in from all sides as armor slid into place and a tightening ring formed around the unrecognized soldier. Weapons angled, not raised, not threatening, but ready. The illusion shattered. Borrowed anonymity collapsed under focused scrutiny. Space vanished. Time narrowed.

Above them, in the upper annex, Taehyung and Pia watched from the shadows. They remained perfectly still, their outlines swallowed by stone and darkness. The trap had not been laid intentionally, but it was closing all the same. Their expressions did not change as calculations ran beneath the surface, angles assessed and outcomes weighed, quiet decisions forming about who might still be standing when this ended.

Below, Audrey moved.

She crossed toward Jungkook slowly and deliberately, each step controlled, her boots tapping softly against the polished stone, the sound carrying too far in the charged silence. The movement was ceremonial and restrained, and yet each step felt declarative. The guards did not stop her. They adjusted instead, allowing her passage without question.

Up close, her smile was too tight. It did not come naturally, shaped into place by force of will and stretched thin. Everything about her was controlled and composed, nothing given freely. Even her words followed the same discipline, carefully constructed, layered and reinforced, as if meant to conceal where they had been welded together too quickly.

“Tried it on for size,” she said lightly, lifting her fingers to tug at the edge of her new collar.

The gesture was brief, almost careless, but it betrayed her, an unconscious check, a confirmation, as though she still needed to be sure the uniform was real, that it truly belonged to her. “Fits better than you’d think.”

Her gaze moved over him then, quick and thorough, taking in the battered armor, the scorch marks etched by survival rather than ceremony, the seams darkened and worn smooth by use. Something flickered in her eyes, recognition perhaps, or regret, or something deeper she refused to name.

“Yours still has more character,” she added, her voice softer now, edging dangerously close to familiarity.

Jungkook did not return the smile. He leaned in just enough to keep his voice low, stripped of anything that might soften it. “Where you coming down?” he asked. “That’s all I want to hear.”

Her eyes flicked past him for an instant, tracking the guards as they tightened their formation, the circle closing by another fraction. Space compressed around them, hemmed in by steel and intent, until even the air felt disciplined. She swallowed, and the bravado fractured, not enough to shatter, but enough to let something raw surface.

“I thought you were dead,” she whispered. The words trembled despite her effort to steady them. “Join us, Jungkook. You’d be happier.”

She did not wait for a reply. Turning sideways, she slipped past him with practiced ease and disappeared into the ranks. Her outline dissolved into armor and shadow, absorbed seamlessly by uniformity. One moment she was there, close enough to touch. The next, she was gone, leaving only the absence where she had stood.

Jungkook remained still as the circle sealed. Black armor closed in, the Elite Guard completing their formation without urgency or display. The narrow gaps between bodies vanished, replaced by an unbroken ring of steel and discipline. Every exit was covered. Every angle controlled. Attention pressed in from all sides, measured, merciless, absolute.

With Audrey gone, the last fragile thread of familiarity snapped.

Pressure bloomed behind his left eye, subtle at first, an echo he knew too well. It deepened quickly, slow and deliberate. Not pain. A warning. A countdown his body understood even as his mind resisted it. The edges of his vision softened, depth slipping just enough to make distance unreliable.

Warm and slick, a single drop of blood traced its way from his ear along his jaw, soaking into the collar of the stolen uniform. He felt it more than he saw it, a hot confirmation of what instinct had already flagged. He blinked hard, forcing focus back into place until stone and steel sharpened again through sheer effort.

His jaw set as he drew a controlled breath, anchoring himself against the surge threatening to pull him under. Muscles locked. His spine straightened. He had balanced on this edge before. He knew how to steal seconds from a body already pushed past its limits.

He knew the signs. He had learned them through damage and repetition, through nights that ended in darkness he could not remember. The toll was coming due. Whatever had been taken from him, whatever had been done to make him this, had only been waiting. Each surge demanded more than the last. Every borrowed moment required payment in blood and bone.

And time, the one enemy he had never beaten, was nearly gone.

In a quiet chamber above the main floor, set back in shadow behind a carved arch of dark stone, Makani stood with her arms folded and watched the first signs of collapse begin to form below. The annex had once been a place of restraint, where commanders withdrew before ceremony or conquest, away from eyes and noise, to let silence do its work. Breath slowed there. Posture straightened. Resolve was tempered in isolation before being carried back into the world. Tonight, it served another purpose.

From this height, the grand hall lay open beneath her, its symmetry already starting to fail. The fractures were small, barely more than instinctive tightening of ranks or minute delays where certainty should have moved without thought, but to Makani they were unmistakable. Ritual was giving way to reaction. Order was adjusting instead of commanding. She had always known how to look.

The air in the annex was cooler and thinner, tinged with the faint scent of burned incense and old stone. It wrapped around her with the ease of memory. She breathed it in without thinking, her attention fixed on the figure at the center of the disturbance below. The others had not recognized him yet, not in the way that mattered. They were still searching for familiar markers, rank, insignia, some visible permission that would allow them to name what they were facing and reduce it to something manageable. They needed classification, doctrine, a shape that fit the rules they trusted. Until they found it, hesitation crept in, slowing them by fractions of a second that could decide everything.

Makani needed none of that. She had known him before the helmet, before the guards shifted their weight, before confusion tightened the air. She recognized him by the way space seemed to accommodate him without resistance, by the subtle recalibration of the room around his presence. The weight he carried had nothing to do with armor or weapons. And there was the silence, not the absence of sound, but the kind that followed him, alert, deliberate, listening.

Jungkook had survived. The truth settled into her without surprise. It felt less like revelation than confirmation. Exactly as she had always expected, he had returned. Makani did not smile. Satisfaction did not require display. What passed behind her eyes was quieter and far more dangerous, not triumph, not arrogance, but recognition. The calm certainty of someone whose understanding had finally been proven correct.

The others had been distracted by rank and ritual, by titles polished until they gleamed hollow, by the elaborate theater of power they mistook for permanence. Stone endured. Doctrine endured. They assumed they would as well. They had missed the fractures beneath their feet. Makani had not. She had seen them in the smallest shifts: doctrine growing louder and more rigid, as if repetition could smother doubt; commanders watching one another instead of the enemy; fear seeping into places meant only for faith, disguised, justified, renamed, but present all the same.

History never collapsed all at once. It cracked first. Slowly. Patiently. He was here to finish it.

Makani adjusted her stance, resting one hand against the stone column beside her. It was cool beneath her fingers, worn smooth by centuries of belief. Generations had touched it with reverence and fear, convinced it would outlast them all. Below, the guards tightened their formation, the movement precise and reflexive, armor sliding into place exactly as trained. Containment unfolded cleanly and predictably. At the center of it, the Lord Marshal stood wrapped in certainty, mistaking inevitability for control. He believed this was another rebellion to crush, another name to erase, another lesson to carve into history and call justice. He did not yet understand that the reckoning was already here.

Makani exhaled softly. When she spoke, her voice barely carried, meant for no one and everyone at once. “I told you,” she murmured. “He’s the one.”

Something sharp sparked in her chest, brief and contained, carefully guarded. A flicker of hope buried beneath discipline for so long she had nearly forgotten it existed. It did not soften her. It honed her.

Makani remained where she was, steady and prepared, her gaze fixed on the figure below as the moment finally arrived.

Let it begin.

Something deep inside Jungkook locked down.

It was not just his fists, though his hands curled hard enough to ache, but something far older, a buried instinct forged long before discipline ever entered his life. Years of restraint had sealed it, layered control welded over something raw and dangerous, but the pressure had been building for a long time. Now it surged up his spine, heat spilling through his shoulders and arms, sharp and demanding. Furyan power stirred fully awake, vast and merciless, carrying memories it never forgot: battlefields, forward momentum, bodies that broke because stopping had never been part of the equation.

He held it there.

Jaw clenched, breath forced slow, he let the pressure stack instead of fighting it. The chamber reacted before anyone else did. Sound thinned, stretched tight. The air itself seemed to brace. Even the Elite Guard hesitated, not from fear, but from instinct, the kind that flinches when a predator decides the moment has arrived.

The release ripped through the hall.

Force detonated outward from Jungkook in a concussive wave that slammed into stone and steel alike. The floor shuddered. Pillars groaned under the impact. His helmet shattered as if struck by an unseen blow, fragments spinning away as the shockwave tore into the guards. Armor buckled. Bodies lifted clean off the ground and were flung backward into walls with bone cracking violence. Weapons ripped free from hands and skidded uselessly across the floor. Formation did not simply fail. It collapsed, erased in an instant.

Jungkook was already moving.

The nunchuck shotgun snapped into his grip, its roar cutting through the chaos as he advanced. Recoil drove into his arms, grounding him as each shot landed with brutal precision. Armor ruptured. Guards dropped mid-motion, threats ended before they could finish taking shape. He did not spray fire or chase panic. He carved paths, closing distance with measured steps, angles ruthless, violence applied with intent rather than fury.

One guard lunged and never finished the motion. Jungkook pivoted through it, the stock slamming into a helmet before a blast sent the body sailing. Another raised a blade. Jungkook passed inside the swing, fired, and moved on without looking back. Steel rang against stone behind him as bodies fell where momentum abandoned them.

Across the chamber, Audrey stopped cold. She watched guards vanish from his path as if removed by design, watched the efficiency of it unfold, and something sharp settled in her chest. It was not chaos. It was not spectacle. It was inevitability. Jungkook was not reacting to the moment. He owned it. The realization rooted her in place, breath caught between fear and something dangerously close to awe.

The Lord Marshal saw it too.

For the first time, his certainty fractured. Not disbelief at survival, but at momentum, the way decades of unchallenged authority suddenly felt thin as Jungkook advanced through wreckage without slowing. Doctrine had prepared him for rebellion, for resistance wrapped in belief. It had never accounted for force that did not ask permission.

The last guard hit the stone with a sound like armor striking a bell too hard, metal ringing and skidding before going still. Silence rushed back in uneven pulses, broken only by distant alarms and the soft hiss of dust settling through the wreckage. Jungkook stood at the center of it, chest rising once before he forced his breathing back under control.

The shotgun clicked, empty.

He turned it out of habit and squeezed the trigger again, feeling the blunt finality of nothing answering. The weapon slipped from his hand and struck the floor, rolling away across broken stone, already irrelevant.

Across the ruined hall, the Lord Marshal turned to face him.

Fear reached him at last. It showed in the falter of his step, in the way his robes tangled briefly at his feet as instinct broke through authority. He did not run, but the hesitation was unmistakable, the certainty that had carried him for decades stripped away by the man advancing through the wreckage.

Order made one last attempt to assert itself.

The final Elite stepped forward.

He was built for interception rather than ceremony, broader than the others, armor layered thick over reinforced joints, stance wide and rooted to the stone. He moved with the confidence of something bred to stop lesser men, raising himself between Jungkook and his target like a living barricade.

Jungkook never slowed.

The distance between them collapsed in a heartbeat as the Elite surged forward, armored mass driving into the attack. Jungkook slipped inside the motion, body folding low and fast, center of gravity dropping beneath the swing meant to end him. Steel flashed as both blades came free, his boots skimming over stone as he slid forward with controlled precision.

His arms crossed, then tore apart.

One blade drove upward through reinforced plating, shearing metal and flesh in a single brutal line. The Elite froze mid-motion, breath tearing out of him as the strike found his heart, and his weight collapsed backward, armor crashing against the floor hard enough to shake the chamber.

Jungkook did not slow.

The other blade was already in motion, snapping free of his hand with practiced economy and cutting through the space the Elite had just vacated. It passed the falling body as if it were already irrelevant, flying straight and true toward the last figure standing in its path.

The Lord Marshal stepped forward.

Steel struck deep into his throat. Blood burst dark and sudden across pristine ceremonial cloth, staining scripture and silk alike. The sound he made barely qualified as a cry, more disbelief than pain, breath caught where words should have been.

The Elite lay dead.

The Lord Marshal remained upright, frozen in place, the blade jutting from his neck like a violation of reality itself. Blood spilled steadily down the front of his robes, soaking into layers of ritual and authority as his hands twitched, fingers grasping for meaning that no longer existed.

The hall seemed to draw inward around them. For a suspended instant, nothing moved. No guards advanced. No commands followed. No doctrine answered the man standing at the center of the ruin.

Jungkook turned slowly, deliberately. The motion was controlled enough to feel intentional rather than forced. He was still breathing.

High above the shattered floor, on the shadowed observation platform, Taehyung’s grip tightened around his ceremonial polearm until his knuckles blanched. His breath lodged painfully in his chest as every ambition, every carefully cultivated belief narrowed into the moment below. Faith, deception, the future he had imagined for himself, all of it balanced on the blade lodged in another man’s throat. Instinct urged him forward. One step. One strike. End it before the moment could slip away.

Pia’s hand closed around his arm.

“Wait,” she said quietly.

There was no urgency in her voice, no tension. It was almost gentle.

“Half-deads don’t die so easily.”

Taehyung stilled, jaw locking as restraint forced itself over impulse. Every instinct screamed for action, for motion, for resolution, but the truth of her words settled all the same.

Below them, the Lord Marshal stood unmoving, his back to the wreckage, posture composed as though the violence behind him were nothing more than a minor interruption. His helmet remained pristine, untouched by blood or impact, its polished surface reflecting the dim light without flaw. The stillness stretched, heavy and unnatural, pressing against the lungs as if the chamber itself were holding its breath.

At last, he tilted his head.

The movement was unhurried, almost curious. Ancient joints answered with a low grinding groan as his armor shifted. As his head turned, the blade slid free of his throat with a wet, dragging sound and never reached the floor. Without looking, he caught it mid-fall, fingers closing around the hilt with effortless precision, as though it had always belonged there.

When he straightened, blood traced a thin, vivid line down the side of his neck, stark and obscene against skin too pale and too still. He raised two fingers and brushed them through it, studying the red smear left behind as if it were an unfamiliar substance.

“So,” he murmured, his voice roughened by injury but steady, almost contemplative. “Still capable of bleeding. I almost forgot.”

Whatever fear had flickered across his features moments earlier was gone, burned away and replaced by something colder and far more focused. He was no longer responding to the chaos around him. He was no longer weighing outcomes.

The decision had already been made.

His astral form erupted outward, not slipping free but bursting into existence in a violent bloom of light and pressure that bent the air around it. Space warped beneath the surge as the projection lashed forward, radiant and feral, its passage cracking stone in its wake. His physical body followed through the distortion with dreadful precision, flesh and spirit moving as though they were simply two expressions of the same weapon.

The impact hit Jungkook like a collapsing structure.

There was no warning and no time to brace. The world snapped sideways as he was hurled across the hall, armor screaming against stone before he slammed into a column with bone-rattling force. The pillar fractured on contact, fissures racing outward as if trying to flee the blow. Jungkook slid down its shattered surface and hit the floor hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs. Pain flared white-hot through his ribs, sharp and blinding, but instinct cut through it before it could take hold.

He rolled, grit tearing at his palms as he dragged air back into his chest, fingers closing around the nearest blade. Muscle memory hauled him upright as the pressure returned, closer now, heavier, crushing the space around him until even the air felt hostile.

The Lord Marshal was already there.

Too fast to track. Too wrong to follow.

His astral form struck first, passing through Jungkook like a concussive wave that shattered balance and depth. A fraction later his physical body overlapped the afterimage, steel and bone arriving where the echo still lingered. Jungkook slashed upward and met nothing but displaced air. He pivoted and cut again, felt resistance for half a breath before it dissolved. The Marshal was never where he appeared to be, always half a step out of phase, moving as though reality lagged behind his intent.

Jungkook staggered, breath ripping harshly from his lungs. The pounding behind his eye surged, no longer a warning but a demand, blood sharp at the back of his throat. He needed something solid, ground that would not shift, an anchor that would not unravel beneath him.

His gaze snapped upward.

Stone warriors lined the chamber walls, frozen in eternal vigilance, carved weapons raised in devotion. They were not ornamental. They were massive and brutal, built to endure centuries of reverence and neglect alike.

He caught the change in the Marshal’s stance an instant before it happened.

So did the Marshal.

He launched himself upward, astral form phasing cleanly through stone as his physical body followed, ripping a war-pick from a statue’s granite grip. The figure shattered as the weapon came free, stone screaming as fragments rained down in violent arcs. The Marshal dropped from above with all that stolen momentum focused into a single killing strike.

Jungkook threw himself aside.

The war-pick struck where he had been a breath earlier and detonated against the floor with explosive force. Stone burst outward in a violent ring, cracks tearing through the chamber as dust and debris filled the air. The weapon’s head splintered under the impact, but the Lord Marshal did not slow. He turned the ruined haft into a club and swung with relentless follow-through.

The blow caught Jungkook mid-step and hurled him across the chamber. He hit the base of the throne with a soundless impact, breath ripped from his lungs as fire tore through his chest. Armor scraped against stone as he collapsed, vision swimming, pain blooming with every shallow attempt to breathe.

For a moment, everything narrowed to darkness and soundless pressure.

Jungkook stayed down, chest heaving, dust drifting through the air in slow curtains as the chamber groaned and settled around the damage it had taken. Somewhere beneath the roar of blood in his ears, stone adjusted to stone, and the throne loomed above him like a verdict already passed.

The Lord Marshal approached without haste, savoring the reversal with the quiet certainty of someone reclaiming what he believed had always been his. His boots struck the stone in an even, unbroken rhythm as he bent and retrieved the fallen nunchucks, lifting them with almost ceremonial care. He turned them once in his hands, weighing them, rolling the grips as the chain whispered softly against his wrist. There was no urgency in him and no caution. Only possession, settled and complete.

When he stepped closer, it was with the confidence of someone who no longer considered resistance possible. Too close for escape. The chain snapped forward in a single, fluid motion and locked around Jungkook’s neck with brutal precision, metal biting deep as breath was crushed short. The world narrowed to pressure and heat, pain flaring white and immediate. The Lord Marshal leaned in, crowding him fully, his presence cold and deliberate, breath brushing his ear as if the intimacy were intentional.

“They’ll write poems about this,” he murmured, voice low and reverent, as though reciting doctrine rather than delivering a threat. “About how the Furyan died here.” The chain tightened another fraction, merciless. “In the house of his enemy.”

The moment shattered on a sound that did not belong.

A wet, tearing impact. Steel driven home.

The Lord Marshal lurched as if the ground had shifted beneath him. A fractured gasp tore from his throat as the blade punched through his back and burst from his chest in a violent spray of dark blood that spattered across the armor he had believed untouchable. For a suspended heartbeat, he remained upright, caught between denial and comprehension, certainty faltering at last.

He turned.

Audrey stood behind him with her arm locked straight, every muscle in her shoulder and back shaking under the strain. Her fingers were clenched white around the knife buried deep in his spine, knuckles screaming as she held it there through sheer refusal to let go. Color had drained from her face, leaving it stark and bloodless, her eyes wide with something raw and unguarded, fear braided tightly with resolve. Each breath came shallow and uneven, pulled from her chest as if by force, but her grip never loosened. She did not pull the blade free. She did not step back. Letting go felt like surrender, and surrender would end her.

The Lord Marshal reacted on instinct alone.

The nunchucks snapped outward in a savage arc, the chain shrieking as it cut through the air. It caught Audrey across the shoulder and jaw with catastrophic force, twisting her body sideways and tearing her off her feet before she could even cry out. She was hurled across the chamber, momentum carrying her helplessly until she struck the wall headfirst. The sound of the impact was wrong, wet and final, echoing too long in the stone hall.

Her skull took the blow. Her body folded instantly, collapsing to the floor in a boneless heap. Blood spilled beneath her head in a dark rush, spreading quickly across the stone. She twitched once, a small involuntary spasm, then went still. Her eyes fluttered, unfocused and glassy, already drifting away. One arm lay crushed beneath her at a grotesque angle; the other dragged weakly against the floor, fingers scraping once, twice, before falling slack.

She did not rise.

The chamber seemed to recoil around her, the aftermath of violence pressing heavy and close. The Lord Marshal swayed where he stood, wounded but upright, breath rasping for the first time as blood seeped steadily down his back. Audrey lay motionless at his feet, blood pooling at her temple, her breathing shallow and irregular, each rasp thinner and slower, as though her body were already forgetting how to hold itself together.

But she had bought time.

The Lord Marshal straightened with frightening speed, the brief stagger erased as his posture snapped back into place. His boots struck stone again, heavy and deliberate, reclaiming the space as if weakness had never touched him. His gaze dropped to the nunchucks amid blood and dust. He bent, retrieved them, rolled the grip through his palm with something like fond familiarity, and sent the chain spinning once more.

The chain lashed forward and locked around Jungkook’s neck, crushing tight in an instant. Metal bit into skin as breath vanished and the world collapsed into pain and force. The Lord Marshal leaned in, crowding him fully, breath cold against his ear, voice steady and reverent.

“You’re as weak as the rest of your people, Breeder.”

The grip held, patient and absolute, the chain cutting deeper as the Marshal closed the distance another fraction. He was not rushing this. He had already moved past the struggle in his mind, already imagining how the moment would be recorded. Jungkook felt the metal carve into his throat, felt heat and pressure compress his vision until the edges dulled and air turned stubborn in his lungs. The Marshal’s presence filled everything, cold, assured, final.

Jungkook let his knees soften. His shoulders dipped. His weight rolled forward just enough to suggest surrender, the posture of a body running out of resistance. To anyone watching, it would have looked like the last strength draining away.

The Lord Marshal compensated without thought. His stance widened, grip tightening to keep control, posture shifting to hold Jungkook upright while the chain did its work. It was reflexive, the kind of adjustment carved into muscle memory by centuries of killing.

That reflex opened the door.

Jungkook moved on the breath he released, sudden and violent. His hand shot up, thumb driving into the narrow seam beneath the Marshal’s jaw where armor ended and flesh began. Furyan strength poured into the strike, focused and ruthless. Cartilage collapsed with a wet, crunching sound as nerves screamed. The Marshal’s head snapped back, a sharp hiss tearing from his throat as control slipped despite himself.

Jungkook dropped his weight, twisted through the opening, and dragged the chain across the Marshal’s forearm as he tore free, metal scraping skin and armor alike. Pain flared white-hot along his neck, but the pressure broke, replaced by a rush of air that burned as it flooded back into his lungs. He staggered sideways, boots skidding across stone, breath tearing in ragged pulls as the world snapped back into brutal clarity.

Blood splashed across the floor between them.

The Lord Marshal’s attention caught on it. His gaze followed the spread of red, then lifted to Jungkook, something sharp settling behind his eyes. Not fear. Irritation. Focused and calculating. The illusion of inevitability fractured as he flexed his wounded hand, testing it, lips tightening while his expectations recalibrated. This was not how the moment was meant to unfold. This man was supposed to die quietly.

Jungkook straightened fully, chest heaving, blood streaking his throat, eyes locked forward with predatory clarity. He had not won. Not even close. But he had torn open a moment, and moments like that were lethal.

Above them, Pia did not hesitate.

“Now,” she snapped, her voice slicing through the chaos. “While he’s weak.”

Taehyung moved as the command landed. He cleared the railing of the upper annex in a single, fluid motion, ceremonial polearm clenched in both hands. The drop opened beneath him, air tearing past as his robes snapped violently around his legs, but his expression never wavered. Doubt, hesitation, reverence, everything extraneous burned away in freefall, leaving only purpose.

Stone cracked under his boots as he hit the floor, knees bending just enough to absorb the impact before he surged forward without breaking stride. Momentum carried him straight toward the opening Jungkook had carved into the heart of inevitability.

Below him, the Lord Marshal dragged himself across the chamber, no longer commanding the space but enduring it. His fingers clawed at polished stone, nails scraping uselessly as blood smeared beneath his hands in widening streaks. Each movement cost him. His shoulders shuddered as he hauled his ruined body forward inch by inch, sacred armor fouled and broken, its once-revered surfaces dulled by gore and ash. Every breath rattled wetly in his chest, each inhale a struggle, each exhale spilling more blood onto the floor.

When he lifted his head, the effort showed.

His gaze found Taehyung, and whatever had sustained him for centuries collapsed all at once. Certainty drained away. Doctrine stripped clean under pain, leaving his eyes wild and unfocused, darting with a fear he had never learned to master. There was no prophecy left in him now, no divinity, no destiny to hide behind. Only survival, naked and frantic.

For the first time in his existence, the Lord Marshal was not a god.

He was a man.

“Taehyung,” he rasped, the name torn from his throat rather than spoken, his voice thin and brittle. Every trace of command had burned out of it. “Help me.”

The plea echoed uselessly across the chamber.

Taehyung stood where he was, expression unreadable, hands steady as the ceremonial polearm shifted in his grip. There was no hesitation in him, no internal struggle flickering across his face. Whatever faith he had once carried had already been measured and found wanting.

He lifted the polearm over his shoulder with deliberate calm. The long blade caught the light as it rose, polished edge gleaming with ritual reverence turned irrevocably lethal. In his hands, it was no longer a symbol. It was an ending.

From the shadows above, Pia’s voice carried down, low and unwavering, not commentary but scripture finally fulfilled. “And in one fell blow—”

The chamber seemed to thin around them, time stretching just enough to feel unreal. Taehyung stepped forward and brought the polearm down in a clean, controlled arc, every angle precise, every motion practiced. It was an execution delivered without haste or anger, an end measured and ordained.

Panic shattered what remained of the Lord Marshal’s control.

His astral form tore free in a violent surge, light and distortion ripping outward as it wrenched itself loose from failing flesh. The projection lashed wildly, frantic and grasping, desperate to escape the limits of blood and bone, even if only for another heartbeat.

It was not enough.

Jungkook was already there, Irgun’s dagger steady in his hand. His presence was absolute, grounded and immovable. There was no rage in his expression, no triumph. Only certainty, the kind that did not waver or announce itself.

The polearm struck stone and bit deep into the floor with a thunderous crack as the astral form slipped free.

Jungkook’s blade found its mark.

He drove it straight down through the skull in one decisive motion. The impact was clean and final, steel punching through bone and thought alike, severing the last tether in an instant. The astral form collapsed inward, light folding in on itself before vanishing completely, extinguished at the source. The body jerked once beneath Jungkook’s hand, a meaningless reflex, and went utterly still.

Silence settled over the chamber.

It pressed in from every side, heavy and absolute, the kind that followed the death of something vast, something that had shaped the world simply by existing. Not an absence of sound so much as a presence of its own, dense and final, leaving no room for denial.

The Lord Marshal was dead.

From somewhere above, Pia’s scream tore through the stillness, raw and ragged, a sound ripped loose from instinct rather than thought. “No!” The word rang once through the chamber and unraveled, stripped of whatever power it might have held. There was nowhere for it to land. No prayer could reach back far enough to undo what had been done. No doctrine could twist itself into shape and make this moment survivable.

Whatever faith had once bound this place together gave way entirely, collapsing inward until nothing remained but stone, bodies, and the irreversible truth at the heart of the chamber.

It was finished.

Far beneath the throne chamber, where the Basilica ship’s lower vault corridors curved inward like a body folding around its own wounds, Makani stood with her arms crossed, half-lost in the dim twilight leaking through old stone and stressed metal. This level had never been meant for comfort. It existed to contain, to press inward, to remind anyone who walked here that space, like power, could be taken away. The arches leaned close. Ceilings dipped low. The walls thrummed with a restless vibration that settled into bone and breath alike.

Light flickered along the bulkheads in erratic veins, brightening and dimming without rhythm. Systems hesitated. Power cycled unevenly, failed outright, then clawed its way back into partial function. The Basilica had lost its center and had not yet learned how to respond. It shuddered the way wounded things did, uncertain whether to hold together or give in. The air tasted sharp and metallic, thick with blood and ozone, biting at the back of the throat. Somewhere far above, the last echoes of violence rolled through the structure, stone collapsing, alarms cutting out mid-signal, before fading into something like exhaustion.

Makani did not move. She watched.

The fractured screens lining the vault walls stuttered, images failing one by one before stabilizing on the final scene they would ever show clearly. The throne chamber filled the displays. Shattered stone. Fallen guards. The wreckage of ceremony and belief scattered across the floor. At the center lay the Lord Marshal, broken and motionless. Whatever myth had once surrounded him was gone. He was only a body now, armor split, sanctity erased, a Furyan dagger lodged unmistakably in his skull. Proof, ugly and undeniable.

Makani held the image, unblinking.

Then she laughed.

It slipped out softly at first, a breath escaping composure, and warmed into something unguarded. There was no hysteria in it, no cruelty, no thrill at the violence itself. It was the sound of certainty finally released. Vindication without triumph. The laugh of someone who had placed her bets long ago and had just watched the universe pay out.

The sound carried farther than she intended, skimming down the corridor and settling into the space between breaths. Nearby guards shifted, armor murmuring as weight redistributed. Someone swallowed. Another glanced sideways, searching faces for reassurance that no longer existed. After a moment stretched too long, one of them eased forward, slow and cautious, his hand drifting toward his weapon out of habit rather than confidence.

A mistake.

Makani’s gaze sharpened, just enough.

The corridor answered.

Air thickened abruptly, pressure slamming inward from every direction. Walls seemed to creep closer as the atmosphere compressed, squeezing lungs until breath became effort and effort tipped into panic. Armor grew heavier. Oxygen thinned. Fear surfaced openly as they realized the space itself had turned against them. This was not force applied from without. It was the environment withdrawing its permission to remain benign.

Makani let the pressure slip its leash.

She moved without haste, inevitability carrying her forward before motion fully caught up. Air screamed as it displaced, trapped between steel walls that had never learned how to yield. Her foot rose and struck the first guard’s helmet with a crack sharp enough to ring through the corridor. Bone met reinforced metal. The result was immediate. His body slammed backward into the bulkhead, armor folding inward before gravity took over and left him crumpled and still.

She passed him without breaking stride.

Her palm lifted, fingers barely flexing, and the air answered. It collapsed into a dense, invisible mass and detonated against the second guard’s faceplate. The visor burst outward in a spray of fragments that clattered across the floor. The concussive force snapped his head back and dropped him where he stood, weapon slipping from his hands as his body folded in on itself.

The rest tried to respond.

Arms came up. Mouths opened for orders that never found their way out. The air turned on them with merciless precision, no longer passive, no longer background. It surged and coiled at Makani’s unspoken direction. Firearms were torn free and hurled down the passage, striking stone hard enough to spark. Armored bodies lifted off the deck and slammed sideways into walls, impacts folding metal and bone together. Limbs bent at angles that defied anatomy. Screams flared, brief and human, before pressure crushed them into silence.

Makani moved through the chaos as though correcting an imbalance rather than dismantling lives.

Her steps were light and exact, guided by currents that curved instinctively around her. There was no rush in her movements, no hesitation, no wasted effort. Each motion landed cleanly, efficiently, violence applied with the same detachment one might use to reset a system back into alignment. There was no fury in it. No spectacle.

Only control.

Only clarity.

Bodies struck the floor in uneven rhythm until the sound thinned and fell away. The pressure gradually loosened its hold. Breath returned to the corridor in cautious increments, the air easing back into itself as though the ship were waiting to see whether it had permission to exist normally again.

When the last echo faded, Makani stood alone amid the wreckage, untouched.

Ragged breathing lingered, broken by low groans and the faint hiss of damaged systems struggling back toward function. She remained where she was, boots planted squarely on the deck, as if the chaos had never brushed against her. Not a strand of her hair had shifted.

At her silent release, the storm unraveled. Pressure drained away. The air settled into its proper shape, temperature and density correcting themselves with a soft, almost imperceptible sigh. The corridor seemed to exhale, relieved to be allowed neutrality again.

Makani turned toward the nearest control panel and crossed the space without hurry, boots clicking softly against the floor. Cracked glass flickered beneath her fingers as she skimmed the interface, reading failing indicators with the ease of long familiarity. She worked with the calm efficiency of someone finishing a routine task, not dismantling the last functional veins of an empire already bleeding out.

“I’m done here,” she said quietly, more to the space than to anyone who might be listening. “Let them fight over what’s left of this graveyard.”

Her gaze lifted to the open viewport above. Warships hung suspended against the sky beyond it, their once-pristine formations already unraveling. Without a center, without command, cohesion was slipping fast. Soon the fleet would turn on itself, fractured and desperate, its collapse no longer a matter of if, but when.

Her thoughts drifted home. To clean air that burned sharp and sweet in the lungs. To open skies and mountain ridges where the wind answered no master and carried no banners. It had been years since she had breathed air untouched by conquest, years since she had belonged to herself without performance or disguise.

Her time among the Necromongers had always been a game, long and deliberate, carefully played. But games ended, and this one had reached its conclusion.

Makani lifted her hand, drawing the air back toward her, feeling it coil around her limbs, familiar and obedient, a promise remembered rather than renewed. She would go home once the new Lord Marshal was secured.

No one would ever threaten her people again.

Not while she lived.

The Lord Marshal lay facedown in the dust, his limbs twisted into shapes no living body should ever hold. Whatever presence he had once commanded, vast and crushing enough to bend rooms and people alike, had collapsed into inertia. Armor lay scraped and split, ceremonial robes torn and soaked through, blood ground into the stone beneath him. He no longer resembled a fallen god. He looked like wreckage left behind after something violent had passed through and moved on, nothing more than a body abandoned on the floor.

Audrey lay nearby. She had landed on her side, drawn slightly inward, as if some last instinct had tried to protect her even after the impact. One arm curled close to her chest. The other stretched along the stone, fingers slack and unresponsive. Her uniform was dark with blood, fabric saturated where it pooled beneath her and seeped into the cracks of the floor. Against the ruined vastness of the chamber, shattered pillars, broken statuary, echoes still hanging in the air, she looked impossibly small. Far too still.

Jungkook stood over her, unmoving. His chest rose and fell in harsh, uneven breaths, each one dragged up from somewhere raw and burning. His lungs ached. His head rang. His body felt hollowed out by the fight, as if it had given up everything but instinct. Blood slicked his hands, no longer proof of victory, only weight, too much of it.

He lowered himself beside her, first one knee, then the other, every movement careful, measured, as though sudden motion might shatter what remained. The chamber receded until there was only his breathing and the thin, terrible space between hers. His hand hovered over her shoulder, hesitation holding him for a heartbeat longer than he could bear, before he finally touched her.

Her skin was cold beneath his palm. Panic flared sharp and immediate, stealing the breath from his chest. Beneath the chill, though, he felt it, faint but unmistakable. Warmth. Fragile, stubborn, real. His hand slid to her ribs, pressing lightly, afraid of hurting her, afraid of not pressing enough, searching for something he barely dared to hope for. A twitch answered him, so small he might have missed it if he had not needed it so badly.

He leaned closer as her lashes fluttered against pale skin. Her lips parted, and a shallow, uneven breath slipped free, thin but alive.

“Did we win?” she whispered. Each word came slow and deliberate, as if speaking cost her something she could not spare.

Something inside him broke. A sound tore loose from his chest, half laugh and half sob, before he could stop it. He dragged the back of his hand across her cheek, smearing blood away with clumsy care. “You stupid, stubborn girl,” he said hoarsely, his voice cracking. “You don’t get to die. Not for me.”

Her lips twitched, the faintest hint of a smile. “I wasn’t planning on it,” she murmured. “He didn’t know who he was fucking with.”

A rough chuckle escaped him. “You didn’t either.”

Time thinned around them, stretching until it felt unreal. He stayed close, his hand firm on her shoulder, anchoring them both. Her blood was warm and sticky beneath his fingers. Her breathing, shallow and uneven, gave him just enough hope to hold onto. She blinked up at him, eyes unfocused, struggling to keep him in view before exhaustion tugged her under and her lids drifted closed.

“Hey,” he said softly, brushing her hair back with unsteady fingers. “No closing your eyes.”

Her lashes fluttered. “Did we win?” she asked again, quieter now, the words barely stirring the air.

He let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “We did.”

Silence settled between them, close and fragile. Her mouth moved again, slower this time, effort visible in the tension of her jaw.

“Am I dying?”

The question lodged in his chest and twisted. He did not answer immediately. Her voice was so soft it barely existed, and it cracked something open inside him that the fight itself had not managed to touch. He swallowed, forced the fear down where it could not reach his voice, and held her gaze.

“No,” he said at last, the word steadier than he felt. “You’re not dying.”

She gave the faintest nod, almost nothing at all. Whether she believed him, or whether he believed himself, did not matter.

Jungkook slid his arms beneath her and lifted her from the blood-slick floor with careful control. She was light in his arms, alarmingly so, and the realization struck him at once, even as the effort tore through muscles and bone already driven past their limits. Pain flared sharp and insistent through his ribs, his legs trembling as they took her weight. Fire scraped through his lungs with every breath, air burning as though his body had finally decided to collect what it was owed.

He kept moving. He would not leave her there, not after everything it had taken to keep her alive.

The throne loomed ahead, untouched by the violence that had gutted the chamber. It sat at the heart of the dais like judgment made solid, black stone severe and immaculate, its edges sharp and unblemished. No cracks marred its surface. No blood stained its base. It bore no sign that anything had ever dared challenge it, a seat built not to be earned but assumed.

He approached slowly, adjusting Audrey’s weight as he went, shifting her just enough to keep pressure off her wounds. His muscles shook under the strain. Exhaustion clawed at him from every direction, deep and relentless, but he refused to rush. Her breathing brushed against his chest, shallow and uneven, fragile enough that each breath felt like a promise he was terrified of breaking through carelessness.

At the top of the dais, he stopped. For a long moment, he simply stood there, breath dragging painfully through his lungs, the world narrowing to the woman in his arms and the throne before him. He studied it without awe or ambition, only quiet assessment, measuring what it represented, what it had demanded, what it had cost.

Lowering himself with deliberate care, he eased down onto the throne inch by inch until his back met the cold stone. The chill seeped through his clothes as he settled fully into the seat, and a quiet, unsteady breath slipped free of him. Sitting felt like the first permission his body had been given to acknowledge how badly it hurt.

Audrey rested against him, held securely in the circle of his arms. She was warm and frighteningly light, her weight barely registering, one arm draped weakly across her ribs, fingers curled into his clothing without purpose or strength. Her breathing stayed ragged and uneven, each inhale a visible effort, but it continued. That alone felt unreal, like something the world might still decide to take back if he named it too clearly.

He leaned his head back against the throne and let his gaze travel across the ruined chamber. Silence pressed in, heavy with consequence. Deep within the ship, systems hummed and recalibrated, compensating for damage, for loss, for the sudden absence of whatever had once anchored everything in place. Stone groaned faintly as debris settled. Dust drifted through slanted shafts of light cutting across shattered pillars and broken statuary. Beyond that, nothing moved.

A subtle pressure gathered in the air. Not sound, but attention. The stillness sharpened, the way it did before something decisive, and the hair at the back of his neck prickled in warning.

He lifted his gaze.

Necromongers filled the chamber.

They lined the walls, stood between fallen columns, occupied the edges of the dais in blackened armor streaked with blood and soot. Some held weapons loosely at their sides, grips relaxed but ready. Others stood empty-handed, posture rigid, discipline replacing threat. Visors hid many faces; those left bare revealed nothing he could read.

No one spoke. No one advanced.

They were watching him.

The moment stretched, taut and waiting, until movement stirred near the entrance. A soldier stepped forward and lowered himself to one knee, slow and deliberate, head bowing until his chin nearly brushed his chest. His fist settled over his heart, armor clinking softly as it came to rest, the sound carrying too far in the silence.

Another followed. Then another.

The motion spread through the chamber in perfect order, rippling outward as rows of armored figures knelt together. Heads bowed. Bodies stilled. There was no panic in it, no hesitation, only acceptance settling into place with quiet inevitability.

Jungkook remained where he was. His arms tightened around Audrey before he realized it, drawing her closer as his chest rose on a sharp breath. Something dense lodged in his throat. He did not yet understand what he was seeing, but its weight pressed down on him all the same.

Audrey shifted faintly, tucking her head more securely against his chest, as if she sensed his tension even through the haze pulling at her. Her eyes fluttered open, heavy and unfocused, yet aware enough to take in the sight before her. A faint smile touched her lips, broken and exhausted, but unmistakably hers.

“Keep what you kill,” she whispered.

The words barely rose above breath, frayed and fragile, yet they drifted through the chamber and settled into the silence where nothing else dared speak.

Jungkook stared out over the kneeling figures, unmoving, his heart pounding beneath her ear as the chant rose all at once.

“THRESHOLD! TAKE US TO THE THRESHOLD!”

It thundered through the ruined throne chamber, raw and unrestrained, torn from the throats of an army bound together by faith and decay. They shouted it like salvation, like release, like proof that annihilation might finally mean something. Here. Now. Jungkook Jeon, the new Lord Marshal, seventh in a line of madmen crowned and hanged in equal measure. Someone to set a crown on his head, someone else already measuring the noose. Likely more nooses than crowns, if history had anything to say about it. The throne beneath him was still warm with blood and consequence, its stone slick with the residue of belief finally broken, and still he hadn’t seen it coming. Blindsided. It was always the blow you didn’t anticipate that put you down, never the ones you braced for, never the ones you welcomed.

Death lingered over the dais like pressure left behind after a storm, heavy and charged, clinging to stone, shattered pillars, and the air itself. It filled everything except the fragile weight held against his chest. Her. Leo. Audrey. Whatever name she had worn when the universe finally decided to close its fist. She fit in his arms in a way nothing else ever had, even now, even as death worked at her with quiet patience, drawing warmth from her body one breath at a time. Her weight was wrong, too light, too still, yet it pulled at him with a gravity that hollowed his chest and turned breathing into effort rather than instinct.

“I thought you were dead…” The words barely survived her lips, unraveling into a whisper before they could fully form. Her lashes fluttered once and settled against skin gone pale, color leeched away as if the world were proving it could still take whatever it wanted. She looked nothing like the darkness she had survived. She looked like someone the dark had finally claimed.

“Are you with me, Audrey?” The question came out rough and unsteady. He hardly recognized his own voice, stripped of the control he had built his life around, and for the first time he could remember, he didn’t recognize himself either. Inside him, the beast was quiet. No rage stirred, no hunger clawed upward, no pull toward violence rose to meet the moment. Only stillness. Even it seemed to feel the rupture, the loss of something familiar, another survivor shaped by instinct and blood slipping out of the world. The silence unsettled him more than any roar ever had. This was new. Loss without distance. Grief without armor.

He hadn’t felt it like this since Frenchie, and that old wound split open again, burning as if it had never healed. Everything died in his hands. Everyone he tried to keep eventually bled out. Always. Her head rested in his palm, dark curls tangled with blood and dust as life pooled beneath her, spreading across the stone and soaking into the torn black fabric of her robes, a cruel parody of the faith she’d been forced to wear. Her eyes cleared, and they were green, the color of spring leaves, the same green he remembered from New Mecca on Helion Prime. Free of haze. Free of doctrine. Leo’s eyes. That same stubborn belief in him twisted painfully in his chest, the kind he’d never earned then and didn’t deserve now.

Not for me. Not again.

She clung to what little time remained, breath hitching, fingers twitching as she forced the words out, words that would stay with him long after this chamber turned to dust. “I was always with you…” Her breath rattled. Blood slipped from the corner of her mouth. “I was—”

The sentence never finished. The light left her quietly, slipping through his fingers no matter how tightly he held on, her head tipping gently to the side as the truth settled in with brutal clarity. She was gone.

A sound tore itself out of his chest, low and broken, as if something inside him had finally ripped loose. Like even the beast wanted to follow her, to lie down beside her and stop breathing rather than stay in a world that took her for good. His face twisted with emotions he didn’t trust, couldn’t name fast enough. Audrey, gone. For real this time. No rescue. No last-second miracle. No breaking in to drag her back from the edge. No coming back.

“Dammit, kid…”

It would have been easier if she’d been a traitor again, a merc, a sellout, a convert, anything that let him resent her instead of feel this tearing ache hollowing him out from the inside. Twice now she’d saved him, once on the Dark Fury, when she’d killed Youngblood, the first time he’d seen the animal in her. He had thought he could save her from becoming something like him, dropped her off with a holy man, told himself a normal life, any life, was better than the one he could give her.

Look how that turned out.

If only he had kept her with him.

Now she lay broken in his arms, a hole burned clean through her where she had taken a spear meant for him, where she had killed Zyhlaw to save him yet again. Again proving what he had always known and kept buried so deep he pretended it wasn’t there.

She was family.

So this was what normal people felt. Damn.

He didn’t notice he was crying until his gloved hand rose to cover his face, as if hiding might soften the truth of it. Guilt, maybe. Love, which would have been laughable if it didn’t hurt this much. He wondered distantly why he wasn’t laughing now, why the instinct to deflect and defy had failed him so completely.

He sat on the Lord Marshal’s throne with Audrey’s lifeless body cradled in his lap, holding her like an offering he had never agreed to make and never would have understood even if he had. The stone beneath him still held the warmth of the man who had ruled from it, slick with blood and belief, but Jungkook barely felt any of it. His attention stayed fixed on the weight against his chest, on the impossible stillness of her, on the way the world had narrowed until nothing else existed.

Below the dais, the remaining Necromongers sank to their knees together. Armor met stone in a muted, almost gentle rhythm. Heads bowed. Voices rose in unison, chanting his name with reverence that scraped against his nerves like grit under skin.

Cry? Him? Never.

That was what he had always told himself. What he had survived by believing. But discipline didn’t reach everywhere, and neither did violence. Somewhere deeper than either, something raw twisted and burned, an ache that answered to no rule of survival. It was animal and instinctive, grief that didn’t ask permission before taking hold. Mourning for the only sister he had ever truly wanted, the only one who had slipped past his defenses and stayed.

She was gone.

And no number of kneeling bodies or whispered devotion could fill the space she had left behind.

Outside, in the quiet left behind by violence, Samara stood with Dae held close against her chest. The child’s cheek rested warm and heavy on her shoulder, arms looped loosely around her neck, fingers slack with exhaustion. Samara didn’t speak or shift her weight. She simply breathed and held her daughter, grounding herself in the small, steady proof of life pressed against her.

The air itself felt altered. Thinner. Lighter. As if something vast, something that had weighed on the world for far too long, had finally lifted away. Samara blinked, adjusting to a silence she hadn’t known she was waiting for. It wasn’t the taut quiet that preceded disaster or the brittle hush of people hiding and counting seconds. It was simply quiet.

Above them, the sky had changed.

Where warships had once hung in suffocating formation, one massive Warrior Ship began to turn. The motion was slow, almost tentative, but unmistakable. Heavy cannons slid back into their housings with a long mechanical groan that carried across the district, and the ship eased away from the Conquest Icon, drifting outward like something suddenly unsure of its place.

Yala caught it first. She tipped her head back, squinting through haze and drifting ash, tracking the shift until a breath slipped free of her.

“They’re pulling back,” she said. Her voice was rough, but steady. “That one’s leaving orbit.”

Habiba had climbed halfway out of the pod, bracing herself on the rim as she stared upward, disbelief widening her eyes. “They never turn away,” she murmured, as if the sky itself might hear her and change its mind.

Inside the pod, Namjoon shifted. He was pale and leaning heavily into Maleek, his breathing shallow but controlled. Pain etched every line of his face, yet his eyes were clear.

“Something’s happened,” he said quietly. “Something big.”

Samara stepped forward without setting Dae down, her arms tightening reflexively as she followed the drifting ship with her gaze. Only moments ago it had promised annihilation. Now it looked uncertain. Almost lost.

“Did he do it?” Yala asked.

The question wasn’t directed at anyone in particular. It hovered between them, fragile with hope.

“I believe so,” Namjoon said.

His voice was soft, nearly reverent, as though speaking too loudly might undo whatever had shifted in the universe above them.

Samara exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding since the sky first darkened. Her shoulders sagged, her grip loosening just enough for Dae to stir. The child lifted her head and peered upward with heavy, soot-smudged eyes.

“Did Jungkook save us?” she whispered.

Samara pressed her lips to Dae’s forehead and stayed there a moment longer than necessary. “Yes, habibi,” she said quietly. “He did.”

They spoke little as they began to walk. The streets had emptied of panic, leaving behind scorched buildings that leaned inward with chipped faces, doors hanging crooked, windows broken and hollow. Ash drifted lazily through the air, settling over hair and clothing, softening the ruins beneath a pale gray veil. It felt as though the city itself had finally exhaled.

There were no sirens. No explosions. Only careful footsteps moving through what remained.

Namjoon limped with Maleek’s help, each uneven step followed by a breath he tried, and failed, to keep quiet. Pain pulled sharply at his ribs, but he waved off every suggestion that he be carried again. His fingers stayed locked around his prayer beads, knuckles pale and trembling, the familiar rhythm grounding him whenever his body threatened to fold.

When they reached the old town square, the wind shifted. Dust lifted from broken stone and curled around their ankles before settling again, as if even the ground had decided to rest. Above them, the Warrior Ship continued its ascent, engines pulsing with a low, steady thrum that echoed between hollowed buildings.

There was no mistaking it now.

They were retreating.

Namjoon stopped and tilted his face toward the sky. Without thinking, he raised one hand, fingers spread wide.

“Alhamdulillah!” he cried.

The words tore out of him, raw with pain and exhaustion, but they carried across the square all the same. “Praise be to God!”

Yala startled, the reaction sharp and instinctive, before a long breath finally slipped free of her chest. She hadn’t realized how tightly she’d been holding it. The tension drained from her shoulders, and the corner of her mouth lifted despite herself. Beside her, Samara closed her eyes and drew in a slow, steady breath, letting it settle into the space where fear had lived for far too long.

In her arms, Dae shifted. Soot-streaked fingers reached up and brushed Samara’s chin, the small, grounding touch pulling her fully back into the moment. She opened her eyes again, anchoring herself in the warmth and weight of her child.

Nearby, Habiba stood quietly, watching the ship fade into the haze. Her eyes were wide and glassy, fixed on the sky as though looking away might undo what she was seeing. Maryam pressed closer to Yala’s side and tipped her head back, her voice small but hopeful.

“Can we go home now?”

Yala lowered herself carefully to one knee, fatigue weighing down every movement. She brushed her thumb across Maryam’s cheek and paused, her gaze drifting over the ruins surrounding them before she answered.

“There is no home,” she said gently. “Not anymore. The building’s gone. We’ve been staying near the old grid relay. It has walls. It’s dry.”

Samara frowned. “The grid? You’ve been sleeping there?”

Yala nodded. “Concrete and shelter. That was enough.”

“Not anymore,” Namjoon said.

He shifted despite the pain, tightening his grip on Maleek’s arm as he turned toward them. “You’re not going back there. Come to our house. It’s still standing. There’s food. Heat. Room.”

Yala opened her mouth to protest, but Namjoon lifted a hand, stopping her before the words could take shape.

“This isn’t charity,” he said, his voice firm and clear. “This is family. You gave us your map, your pod, your strength. Let us give something back.”

Silence settled between them, heavy but not uncomfortable.

Habiba exchanged a look with her sister, uncertainty flickering between them. Maryam tugged lightly at Yala’s coat and nodded, unburdened by pride or hesitation. After a moment longer, Yala nodded as well.

“Alright,” she said. “We’ll come.”

They set off together, their steps quieter now. The silence that followed no longer pressed in or scraped at their nerves; it felt earned, the fragile calm of people who had survived something they were never meant to endure. Bruised and shaken, they carried the weight of it in their bodies, but they were still upright. Still moving.

Their footsteps found an easy rhythm through the damaged streets, boots scuffing softly over stone powdered with ash. No one hurried. For the first time in longer than any of them could remember, the future didn’t feel like a narrowing corridor closing in.

Namjoon set the pace. It was slower than he would have liked, and everyone knew it, but he refused to be rushed. He leaned into each step with care, Maleek close enough to steady him if his balance slipped. Even through pain, his presence carried quiet authority, posture composed, resolve intact.

His voice drifted back to them, calm and certain, as though speaking it aloud might help anchor what came next. “We’ll make tea,” he said. “The good leaves. The ones we’ve been saving.” He drew a careful breath before going on. “And warm flatbread with honey. Dae can show Maryam her drawings. She’s very proud of them.”

Samara glanced at him over Dae’s head, the corner of her mouth lifting despite the exhaustion tugging at her. She shook her head slightly, affection threading through relief she still hadn’t fully allowed herself to feel. “Let’s get in the door first,” she said dryly, “before you start making promises, Imam.”

He looked back and grinned, brief and familiar. It was the old smile, from before the sky broke open, from a time when survival hadn’t felt like a constant negotiation. It said everything words didn’t: that they were still here.

He turned forward again and kept walking, one careful step at a time.

Behind them, the Warrior Ship continued its ascent, engines humming low and distant until it slipped into the clouds. It dwindled to a speck and disappeared, no longer casting a shadow or demanding their attention.

For the first time since the invasion began, the road ahead—broken as it was—felt like it might actually lead somewhere.

For the briefest instant, so quick it would have slipped past anyone not watching for it, King’s grin fractured. The smile faltered, dragged sideways into a scowl before he could force it back into place. He turned his head away a fraction too stiffly, jaw tightening, and the space between them changed. The air charged, prickling against skin, heavy with something unspoken. The rookies felt it immediately. Their posture sharpened, shoulders locking, instincts flaring as if a pressure front had rolled in without warning.

Jungkook’s faint smile stayed exactly where it was, controlled and dangerous, the kind that didn’t need volume to be heard. King’s scowl deepened, irritation bleeding through the bravado, and the rookies tightened their grips again, weapons trembling just enough to give them away.

Jungkook lifted his hands slowly and deliberately, the motion almost lazy in its confidence, like a man stretching after a long day instead of surrendering under threat. His eyes never left King’s.

“Go on,” Jungkook said, his voice dry as ash. “Put the cuffs on me. I’ll even make it easy.”

One of the rookies blinked, disbelief cracking through his professional mask. “He’s… surrendering?”

A low chuckle slipped from Jungkook, humorless and sharp, scraping just enough to sting. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he said. “I’m just taking the scenic route.”

King’s jaw jumped once beneath the jagged scar at his temple. The grin came back anyway, thinner now, stretched tight at the edges. He raised two fingers and flicked them forward in a sharp, economical gesture.

The rookies advanced. They moved with rifles raised, muzzles steady, boots crunching softly through ash and broken glass. Their caution showed in the way they shifted their weight, the careful distance they kept, like they half expected him to explode without warning.

Jungkook didn’t flinch. He let them take his wrists, rough hands clamping down as they shoved him forward. The cuffs snapped shut with a cold metallic click, biting into his skin. He glanced down once, more curious than concerned, rolled his wrists just enough to test the fit, and let a faint smirk tug at his mouth.

“Upgraded since last time,” he muttered. “You finally figure out the pin trick? Took you long enough.”

The younger merc swore under his breath and yanked the cuffs tighter, frustration bleeding into the motion. Jungkook’s brow lifted in mild interest.

“Careful,” he said softly, his calm somehow making it worse. “Wouldn’t want to piss me off. I don’t really handle my anger very well.” His gaze flicked to King. “Ask your boss how the last reunion went if you want the highlights.”

King stepped in close, crowding his space until the scar at his temple caught the firelight, pale and jagged. He leaned in, voice low and sharp. “Still running your mouth. Always knew that’d be the last thing you lost.”

Jungkook tilted his head, meeting his eyes without blinking. “No. Last thing I’ll lose is patience.” He let the pause stretch. “You’ll know when that happens.”

King jerked his head toward the smoke, the smile fixed back in place. “Bring him.”

They shoved Jungkook forward. He went without resistance, boots crunching over glass and ash, shoulders loose, head high. There was no struggle, no sudden strike, just the steady movement of a man who understood that surrender wasn’t the same thing as defeat.

Through the thinning smoke, the dropship loomed, a steel sarcophagus with its maw yawning open, repulsors whining as ash curled around its frame like it already knew what it was meant to be. The ramp hissed down, metal still glowing faintly with heat.

They forced him up it. He didn’t drag his feet. He didn’t stumble. He climbed like he’d paid for the ride.

At the top of the ramp, Jungkook paused and glanced back once at the city below, still burning, still folding in on itself. His mouth curved into a dry, narrow smile.

“Hell of a chauffeur service,” he said. “You boys always pick up strays, or am I just special?”

No one answered. The rookies suddenly found the floor very interesting. King only laughed, low and dark, as the ramp hissed shut.

The ship lifted, engines roaring, vibration thrumming through the hull. Jungkook was chained into a restraint along the bulkhead, metal biting into his wrists, his shoulders relaxed despite it. As the ground fell away, his eyes narrowed, that crooked smile still etched across his face like a scar that refused to fade.

“Enjoy it while you can,” he murmured. “You’ll miss the view when I’m driving.”

In the cockpit, the mood couldn’t have been more different.

Adrenaline still buzzed hot through the cramped space. One merc slapped the overhead panel with a laugh, like it owed him something. “In and out,” he said. “Clean as hell. Tell me that wasn’t art.”

His partner barked a laugh, already flicking numbers through the air. “God, I love smash-and-grabs. Nobody even sees us coming.”

They grinned at each other, young and flushed, too green to recognize the shape of the danger they’d hauled aboard.

The co-pilot stiffened. “Hold up,” he cut in, voice sharp as his fingers flew over the console. “Rear array’s fuzzed. Thermal smear, maybe hull wash. Something’s sniffing us.”

The pilot’s hands tightened on the yoke. He scanned the displays, jaw setting. “Shit,” he muttered. “They’re tracking us. Close.”

The laughter died mid-breath. One second the cockpit had been loud with bravado; the next, the air went tight and cold, settling heavy in the chest. No one spoke. No one moved. Even the ship seemed to quiet, its hum dropping into a low, watchful thrum.

The cockpit door eased open with a quiet sigh of hydraulics.

King stepped through as if nothing had happened. There was no hurry in his stride, no edge in his posture. His boots touched the deck with easy precision, unbothered, almost lazy, like the near miss moments earlier had barely registered. The spike of fear that had rippled through the crew hadn’t touched him at all. He leaned over the co-pilot’s shoulder, one hand settling on the console, fingers loose, and scanned the radar with calm, dispassionate focus. No crease marked his brow. No tension sharpened his stance. He could have been checking a weather pattern.

“Drop one,” he said.

The pilot hesitated. Just long enough for panic to surface, sharp and choking. He muttered a curse under his breath, jaw tightening, and yanked the lever.

Deep in the ship’s spine, metal groaned. A heavy clunk rolled through the hull as one of the engines sheared away, tumbling free before unfolding midair into a decoy bird. Its underside flared bright, vomiting heat signatures, static, and false telemetry into the void, screaming for attention like a wounded animal begging to be chased.

The real ship rolled hard into the turn.

Power bled down to cold drive. Systems dimmed until only the essentials remained. For ten stretched-out seconds, the cockpit held its breath. Hands hovered above controls. Eyes locked on the scanner, daring it to betray them. Then the monitor cleared, blinked, and the ship broke free.

King straightened without a word and turned back toward the corridor. Even after he left, something about him lingered in the space, a subtle pressure no one could quite explain.

In the hold, Jungkook sat secured in the containment rig, cuffs cinched tight, metal biting cold into his wrists and shoulders. His head rested against the bulkhead, posture loose in a way that didn’t match his restraints at all. He looked relaxed, bordering on bored, but his eyes were already on King when he entered. Sharp. Awake. Tracking him with the quiet focus of a predator pretending to sleep.

“So,” King said, stopping a few paces away. His voice was low, almost conversational. “Where do I dump your merc-killing ass?” He let the pause stretch. “Who’s paying the most for you now?”

A grin crept wider. “Butcher Bay, maybe?”

Jungkook tipped his head back slightly, lips curling. A short laugh escaped him, unguarded. “Butcher Bay?” He shook his head. “Ten minutes outside every other day. Protein waffles aren’t terrible.”

A rookie snorted before he could stop himself, then slapped a hand over his mouth, eyes going wide.

King didn’t laugh. His grin twitched, less smug now and a little brittle, but it stayed in place. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket, set it between his lips, and lit it. Smoke coiled lazily around his face as he exhaled.

“Ursa Luna, then,” he said, the warmth draining from his tone. “Nice little double-max.”

“They keep a cell open for me,” Jungkook replied easily. “Just in case I drop in.”

King’s grin spread wider, the humor thinning until irritation showed through. He took another drag and glanced around at his crew. “You know what the problem is with these joints now?” he said. “They’re health clubs. Waffle-eating pussies everywhere.” Smoke slipped from his mouth as his eyes narrowed. “Feels like it’s time we raised the bar.”

He turned, addressing the room instead of any one man. “Think bigger. Somewhere properly diabolical.”

From the cockpit doorway, the co-pilot muttered under his breath, unease leaking through despite his effort to sound casual. “What the hell is he even thinking about now?”

Jungkook answered for him, voice dry and precise, cutting straight through the noise. “Triple-max. No daylight. Slam-lock.” His gaze stayed on King, unblinking. “Only three left in this system. Two are out of range for a busted undercutter flying half a ship.” He let the silence stretch just long enough to land. “Which leaves one.”

The name seemed to drop into the hold with real weight.

“Crematoria,” Jungkook said quietly. After a beat, softer still, “That the one you had in mind, King?”

One of the mercs scoffed, shaking his head. “How the hell does he know where we’re going when we don’t?”

King stiffened. He hated being read. His jaw jumped once before he buried it under a scowl. “Dope it out.”

From the cockpit, the pilot’s voice came back low and unhappy. “I hate this run.”

“Just fly the damn ship,” King snapped.

The course correction shuddered through the hull, engines shifting pitch as the ship leaned into its new trajectory. Consoles chimed softly while navigation resolved into a single, irreversible line. The cockpit fell quiet again.

Jungkook leaned into the containment rig, metal cool against his spine, chains humming faintly with the ship’s vibration. A lazy, unbothered smile tugged at his mouth as his voice drifted upward.

“Not loving this new crew of yours, King,” he said mildly. “Bit jumpy. Probably shouldn’t tell them what happened to the last one.”

King didn’t answer. He stepped closer, boots stopping just short of Jungkook’s knees, and leaned in, eyes narrowing as he searched for something that refused to surface.

“You’re supposed to be some slick-shit killer,” he said slowly. “Now look at you. All back-of-the-bus and shit.”

He straightened and pointed, not at Jungkook but at one of the guards along the bulkhead. Finch. Young, broad, trying hard to look bored instead of nervous.

“Cool him off,” King said.

Finch blinked. “You serious?”

“Change his goddamn oil.”

Finch shrugged like he’d been handed a chore and keyed in the override, twisting the valve. The hiss filled the hold. Frost raced along the cryo lines, blooming fast and pale, sinking into Jungkook’s veins like liquid glass. The cold didn’t shock. It crept. Methodical. Invasive. Everything it touched slowed. His skin drained of color. His breath deepened and thickened, each pull heavier than the last.

Finch leaned in anyway, hungry for a reaction, his grin stretched thin. “So,” he said lightly, “what really happened to the others?”

Jungkook looked at him. His eyes stayed dark and steady, carrying a weight Finch hadn’t expected. The grin faltered.

Finch forced a laugh and reached out, tapping Jungkook’s cheek with two fingers, the way a man might test a flame just to prove it wouldn’t burn him.

“Yeah,” he muttered, trying for confidence and missing it. “Thought so. Nighty-night.”

Jungkook didn’t answer. He didn’t blink either. His eyes stayed open a fraction too long, dark and watchful, fixed on Finch in a way that made the back of his neck prickle. It lingered just enough to feel wrong. Finch shifted and stepped back, irritation covering an unease he would never admit to.

The cold finished its work. It crept deeper, pulling Jungkook down as his muscles slackened and his thoughts began to drift. Cryosleep took him in layers, the world thinning, stretching, losing its edges. They said most of the brain powered down when the body froze, that whole sections went quiet, stripped away until only the bare machinery remained.

He floated in that narrowing dark and heard a voice slide in where it didn’t belong. Familiar. Unwanted.

Imelda.

…The brain shuts down in cryosleep…

All but the primitive side, his thoughts answered, slow and heavy.

All but the primitive side, she echoed.

The animal side, he corrected.

All but the Furyan side, Imelda whispered, her words threading through him like something remembered rather than spoken. Some of us still remember what was done on Furya. And when you wake, you will too.

Mercenaries. Elementals. Necromongers. Spirits. The thoughts drifted, darkly amused even as the cold tightened its grip. Christ, I’ve never been this popular. His mind should have been fading, dissolving into blankness, but it didn’t. Not completely.

I could snap these chains, spill a little blood. But why bother driving when someone else is hauling you where you need to go? A free ride to Crematoria. Thanks, King. Once I settle up, I’m gone for good. So I’ll wait. Ride it out. Back of the bus for now.

The ship climbed, engines burning as they tore free of the planet’s pull. Atmosphere peeled away, the last thin veil giving way to endless black. Stars stretched long and silver beyond the ports, sharp and indifferent.

The nav chimed once.

Destination: Crematoria.

The lava fields stretched without end, a blackened sea of jagged rock locked in place like frozen surf. Smoke whispered up from hidden fractures, sulfur drifting in slow, pale sheets that made the land seem as though it were breathing out its own pain. Every step carried risk. Stone splintered underfoot without warning or gave way entirely, swallowing boots into heat-softened crust. Fire lurked just beneath the surface. Steam tore from vents at random, and pits that looked solid a moment earlier collapsed into boiling hollows the next. The whole wasteland moved with a grim vitality, not alive in any honest sense, but restless, like a massive creature caught in its final spasms and refusing to lie still. The air burned the lungs raw. Breathing hurt. Holding your breath hurt worse. Mercy had no place here.

Above it all hung a perpetual twilight, the sky bruised red and smeared into ragged clouds along a horizon that never saw the sun. Whatever passed for light came from below, from molten seams and fires still churning under the crust. Day was nothing more than a dimmer shade of night. Crematoria. Even the name resisted being spoken. No one came willingly. No one left untouched.

Two guards crossed the ashen flats, dragging what remained of a man between them. Their armor was scarred and warped, each mark a record of how close survival had come to failure. Fine gray dust swirled around their boots and clung to everything it touched. They didn’t speak. Words had no use here. The job was simple: finish it, get back inside, try not to breathe too deep. Between them sagged Pavlov, if the half-melted badge fused to his chest still counted as proof. His body hung slack and lifeless, boots carving faint lines through the soot. His chest had been torn open, a cavity jagged and cavernous, the work of something that hadn’t needed to rush.

At the mound, they let him fall. The pile waited, a low hill of old remains. Bones burned black. Gear twisted and fused into the rock. The scattered history of the Kennel left where it lay. Pavlov hit hard, his spine cracking loud enough to echo. Ash burst upward, then drifted down again, settling him into anonymity. That was it. No ceremony. No words. Just another name erased by heat.

Emery lingered, staring down at what was left. Sweat cut paths through the soot on his face, his eyes hollow with exhaustion. His jaw worked as if he were chewing on something he didn’t want to say. When the words finally slipped free, they came out quiet and brittle.

“Should we… I don’t know. Say something?”

Chester kept walking. He didn’t look back, his gaze fixed on the glowing horizon ahead.

“Sure,” he said flatly. “Write a poem. Sing a hymn. Cry if you want. I’ll be inside.”

Emery stayed a moment longer. Pavlov’s badge fluttered weakly in the heat shimmer. V. Pavlov. That was all that remained. No marker. No memory. Just another body in a place built to erase people. He exhaled, the sound scraping his chest raw, then turned and followed, boots crunching through ash.

The structure ahead was little more than a slab of metal half-swallowed by volcanic stone. Inside was worse. The Kennel. Heat closed in immediately, thick and suffocating, like stepping into the lungs of something vast and rotten. The walls wept condensation mixed with darker streaks that ran downward in oily trails. The smell clung to the skin, heavy with sweat, rust, rot, and decay, a constant pulse that never faded.

Cages lined the walls, stacked all the way to the ceiling. Some were bent. Others rusted clean through. All of them held shadows.

Inmates waited inside. Some still looked human, or close enough, skin gone gray with hunger, eyes flicking and darting in the dark. Others had drifted further, bodies warped, movements too sharp or too slack, as if whatever lived inside them no longer cared to follow the rules of flesh. The restless paced, claws or nails dragging along metal bars. The still ones were worse. Stillness here didn’t mean rest. It meant patience. Calculation.

Silence stretched tight as wire. Every so often a growl cut through it. Metal rattled as someone tested their cage. Mostly, the quiet pressed down harder than noise ever could.

The doors groaned open.

Three guards came through, straining beneath the weight of a reinforced crate. Chains clinked as it rolled forward, air holes cut into the sides hissing faintly. Something inside shifted, slow and deliberate, heavy enough to make the metal complain. A sound pushed through the slits, low and wordless, a growl with weight behind it, the kind that settled into bone.

Earl, older and perpetually grinning, nudged the crate with his boot.

“Not so tough now, huh?” His voice carried just enough for the cages to hear.

Vic’s nerves buzzed under his skin as he flashed a thin smirk. “Pavlov thought he could handle Nakamura. Walked in a cowboy. Thought he’d walk out a legend.”

“She showed him otherwise,” Earl said, almost fondly. “Pretty thing, sure. I’ve seen more bite in the alpha cages.”

“Let’s hope she’s spent,” Vic muttered, tightening his grip on his baton.

They eased the crate toward an open cage, movements careful and practiced, unease buried beneath routine. Paul, the youngest, clutched his rifle so hard his knuckles shone white. Sweat streaked his face as his eyes flicked from crate to cages to guards and back again. Instinct clawed at him, louder than orders ever were. Once instinct took hold, orders stopped mattering.

The inmates felt it too. Growls spread through the room. Chains rattled. Claws scraped metal. Heads turned toward the crate one by one. Some stood. Others only stared. Every gaze locked in.

Earl played it calm. He yanked free a maulstick and shoved it through one of the air holes.

“Playtime, sweetheart,” he drawled. “Still feeling tough?”

The answer wasn’t a word. It wasn’t an animal sound either. It came from somewhere in between, primal and jagged, torn from a throat that had never learned submission. A scream that doubled as a snarl, a warning that no cage could truly hold. The crate slammed sideways, wheels shrieking across the floor. The stick vanished, ripped from Earl’s hands as if swallowed whole.

Earl screamed and reeled back, clutching his hand as blood poured between his fingers.

“Jesus Christ,” he gasped, voice cracking. “Goddamn animal.”

The insult didn’t land the way he meant it to. The mask slipped, anger fracturing into fear, and everyone heard it.

Paul’s rifle came up on instinct, the barrel a thin, useless shield against whatever pressed at the edges of his mind. His hands shook. Breath scraped his chest. His eyes stayed locked on the crate like it might burst apart.

The silence that followed pressed down hard enough to choke. Even the other inmates seemed to hold still.

Locks clicked. Restraints loosened. The cage stood open.

At first, she was only a shape caught in broken light, motionless and watchful, the kind of stillness that carried more threat than movement ever could. Her head tipped slightly and her gaze slid straight to Paul, not measuring danger but choosing where to cut. Something crossed her face. Not a smile. Not a sneer. Recognition.

“Don’t,” Earl rasped. “Don’t make her move.”

Paul didn’t lower the gun. One heartbeat held her there. The next, she was gone. Shadow swallowed her whole. The rifle cracked too late, muzzle flash bleaching the room white, her form burned into sight for a fraction of a second before the cell door slammed shut.

The quiet that followed felt wrong.

Paul stood frozen, arms hanging useless at his sides. Earl laughed, dry and sharp with nerves. “Hell of a shot, kid. If you were aiming for the ceiling.”

No one answered. She had retreated on her own terms. That was the only truth that mattered.

They moved with less swagger now. No jokes. No bravado. The silence knew something was off, something that didn’t belong here, something the Kennel wasn’t built to contain.

Movement drew their attention back to the threshold.

This time there was no blur, no violence of speed. She emerged slowly, predator-smooth, crawling into the light with deliberate intent. The guards turned together, none of them willing to speak.

She was young, barely eighteen, but fragility had no claim on her. Her frame was wiry and scar-latticed, shaped by survival rather than training. Blood clotted in her tangled hair. Her clothes hung torn and filthy. Presence like hers wasn’t requested. It was taken.

Green eyes swept across the guards. She wrapped her fingers around the bars. Metal groaned. Rust flaked away into dust. The sound cut through the room sharper than any rifle shot.

The Kennel answered.

It began as a low hum, rising fast into howls that multiplied and collided, swelling into frenzy. Claws scraped. Teeth snapped. The walls trembled. Lights buzzed as if the noise itself carried weight.

She staggered, clamping her hands over her ears, face twisting as the sound tore through her.

“Can we shut the goddamn noise?” Her voice shredded on the words, raw and cracking, but the howling only surged higher, feeding on itself. She folded inward, knees drawn tight to her chest, rocking as if she could compress herself into nothing.

“Big Foe,” she spat, teeth clenched. Venomous. Bitter. “Always the goddamn Big Foe.”

The guards stalled at the door. Orders pulled one way. Fear, and maybe something close to pity, pulled the other. Curled there, shaking with pain, she looked small, but no one mistook it for weakness. Something waited beneath it. Something coiled.

Earl broke the silence, his voice flat and unsteady. “She’s cracked.”

Paul didn’t respond. He didn’t move. His focus stayed fixed on her, on the way her fingers dug into the concrete as though she could root herself deep enough to hold the world still. Something lodged itself behind his ribs, hard and unfamiliar. Not fear. Not dread. Close enough to sting.

The door groaned shut. Locks slammed down in sequence, metal grinding against metal, final and absolute. The block sealed itself around her, leaving her alone with the roar, the heat, and the caged things that refused to blink and refused to look away.

She remained still. Her breathing stayed slow, measured, deliberate. Gradually, her head lifted. Sweat carved dark tracks through the grime on her face, tracing the scars beneath. Her eyes stayed clear.

Green. Sharp. Like glass just beginning to catch fire.

The screaming never let up. It pressed in from every side, a tide forcing itself through cracked steel and filling every inch of space. The Kennel lived in noise. Somewhere along the way, she stopped hearing it.

Her focus narrowed to the transfer lock. Something shifted inside her, quiet but decisive. Her shoulders eased back. Her spine lengthened and held, pulled taut like a wire drawn too far. For the first time since the crate opened, she no longer looked like a prisoner waiting to be managed. Beneath the thunder of claws and voices, her mouth curved.

Audrey Nakamura didn’t stand tall. She couldn’t. Hunger and cages had pared her down, burned muscle into lean cord, and left her frame narrow and sharp-edged. In places she looked fragile, in others hollowed out entirely. Fragility, though, was a lie her body had never told. Her warm brown skin, dulled by soot and sweat, carried its own record. Scars mapped her in fine white lines across her cheeks, raw burns spread along her palms, and deeper ridges were carved into her arms and ribs beneath fabric worn thin and loose against bone.

Her curls clung damply to her forehead, strands matted to skin slick with heat. Sweat traced slow paths down her neck and vanished into her collar. The air was so thick it resisted every breath. She hated it: the heat, the stench of rust and blood, and most of all the dogs. They never stopped watching. Their hunger pressed closer than the walls, always rumbling, always waiting.

Her eyes never left the transfer lock.

Her hand flexed against the ground. Scarred knuckles popped softly. Her fingers brushed the ink along her arm: a geisha, a cluster of rabbits, etched into her flesh in delicate, traditional lines. Memory made permanent. Proof of a different life, before the furnace, before the cages, before everything collapsed into ash.

She pulled in a breath sharp enough to scrape her lungs raw, then eased it back out, slow and measured. Holding herself together piece by piece. Gathering what mattered before it slipped.

They had charged her with murder. No trial worthy of the name. No chance to speak. Just a verdict carved clean and final. Guilty. A life reduced to this pit. Forever.

Audrey had never done forever. Cages had failed her before. Rusted jail bars. State pens with concrete too proud of itself. Black sites built to hold men harder and meaner than she had ever been. None of them had kept her. None of them had lasted.

This place wouldn’t either.

Her jaw set. The air dragged heavy, clogging her thoughts, snapping her focus in and out like static. She hated that, the way pressure could force her own mind to turn on itself. Even so, her gaze stayed fixed, anchored to the lock.

If she could keep it clear in her head, sharp enough to cut through the noise, she could see the path forward.

The way out.

The sand dunes of Helion stretched without end, rising and falling like the ribs of some sun-bleached leviathan. Under the moonlight, the desert glimmered with a muted, unnatural sheen. Hours earlier, a ship had lifted off from this very ground, its engines fusing sand into warped sheets of black glass. The air still carried the bitter tang of scorched earth.

Taehyung crouched beside one of the melted patches and dragged his gloved fingers across the brittle surface. The glass was thin and fragile, ready to shatter at the slightest pressure. He lingered, as if heat might still be bleeding into the ground, as if the desert could remember what had touched it. This hadn’t been careless destruction. It was deliberate. Exact. Somehow, that precision made it worse.

Behind him, the search team advanced in near silence. Their helmets concealed their faces, but their posture gave them away, men shaped by repetition, movements rigid with fatigue. The Lensor Necromonger stood apart from them, tall and motionless, his head tilted toward the stars. His breathing remained slow and even, as though he were listening to the night itself.

“Movement in the sky,” he murmured.

Taehyung straightened, following the man’s gaze. At first there was only darkness, stars scattered across the void, shards of glass crunching softly under the wind. A moment later, a faint streak of light dragged a crooked line across the heavens. Too controlled for a meteor. Too deliberate for drifting debris.

An ion trail. Fresh.

Taehyung reached for the tracking interface at his belt and stepped in behind the Lensor. The motion was practiced and efficient. He fitted the connector into the port at the base of the man’s spine. The device clicked home, drawing a brief shudder from the soldier. Taehyung waited as the interface pulsed once, twice, before flaring to life.

A grainy hologram bloomed above it, an unstable star map assembling itself in fragments. The trail cut cleanly through it now, no longer faint but burning bright, a jagged wound carved into the sky. This wasn’t a path abandoned in haste. It was a statement.

Taehyung studied the projection, letting the weight of it settle, before passing the device to the nearest officer.

“Take Galilee team,” he said, his voice low and even. “Best Lensors only. Track that trail. Do not return without an answer.”

The officer nodded and moved immediately. Orders like that carried their own clarity.

Taehyung stayed where he was, eyes fixed on the scar overhead. They weren’t hunting phantoms. This was a man. And wherever he passed, something burned.

Boots crunched over shattered glass behind him. A junior officer approached with care, helmet tucked under his arm. Exhaustion had carved itself into the young man’s face, war aging him faster than time ever could. He stopped several paces back, posture stiff, waiting.

Taehyung didn’t turn. “What is it?”

“Sir,” the officer said quietly. “The Lord Marshal has returned to the Basilica. He’s in the strategy chamber. He asked for you by name.”

Taehyung gave a single nod. Expected. The trail wasn’t fading. It was intensifying. This wasn’t flight. It was defiance.

“He said your presence is required before a choice is made.”

Taehyung’s jaw tightened, just enough to show. A choice, coming from the Lord Marshal, could mean anything. Deployment. Judgment. Execution. Or a silence that erased men entirely.

“Hold the perimeter,” Taehyung said. “No one stands down until Galilee reports. Flag the trail the moment it shifts.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Prep the transport. I leave in five.”

The officer saluted and withdrew, boots fading back into the dark.

Taehyung lingered, eyes fixed on the streak still burning across the night. A signature written in fire. A provocation. Someone had slipped past them, and the Lord Marshal would demand answers that left no room for excuses. The weight of the Basilica’s stone corridors settled on him already, heavy as judgment.

A slow breath left his lungs. He turned toward the black transport idling on the ridge, its open hatch waiting like the mouth of something patient and hungry.

The game was shifting again.

Inside the Basilica, the war room throbbed with a low, oppressive hum. Machines breathed in metallic rhythms, as though something ancient lived beneath the floor. Sickly light spilled from the central console, carving the Lord Marshal’s inner circle, Toal, Scales, the Scalp Taker, into fractured masks of shadow.

The projection rippled with every adjustment. Ridges flexed. Valleys shuddered. The map looked less like data and more like a living body under stress.

Toal dragged a finger along a glowing crimson vein. “Defensive grid,” he said. “Still active. Dug deep into the rift. They’ve fortified their position.”

The Lord Marshal observed with detached calm. “The body thrashes long after the head is severed.”

Toal widened the projection. “Most supply lines are choked. These remain.” He tapped three pulsing nodes. “Beacon points. If they reactivate, they signal outward. Supplies. Reinforcements. Ideology. That cannot be allowed.”

Scales surged forward, bristling. “Give me twenty thousand converts and two Warrior ships. I’ll tear the rift open by sundown.”

A raised hand stilled him. The Lord Marshal didn’t look away from the map. “Force isn’t the question,” he said. “Visibility is.” His gaze traced a new arc across the projection. “We vanish from the front. Retreat north. Ride the poles. Drop behind the rift. Let them watch the horizon while the blade finds their spine.”

Heads inclined around the chamber, some with reluctance, others with something close to reverence.

The vault doors sighed apart, and Taehyung entered. His gaze swept the room and settled on the Lord Marshal without hesitation. He didn’t bow. He had earned the right not to.

“Ion trail,” he said, his voice smooth, tension drawn tight beneath it. “Fresh. Off-world.”

The map flickered, suddenly irrelevant. The Lord Marshal turned fully toward him. The room fell silent.

“Then you should be off-world as well.” No emphasis. No question. Just certainty.

“I sent Galilee team,” Taehyung replied. “Our best Lensors. They’ll track it.”

The Lord Marshal’s stare didn’t waver. “Not them. You. Wherever Jungkook has gone, you will follow. You will burn him out. Personally.”

For half a breath, Taehyung held still. Something shifted behind his eyes, too fast to name. “My place is here,” he said evenly. “With the campaign.”

The temperature seemed to drop. The Lord Marshal’s voice never rose, but it struck like a stone dropped into deep water.

“Do not question it, Taehyung.” He stepped closer, each footfall quiet and final. His voice lowered, private and precise. “Take it on faith.”

Taehyung didn’t respond. He turned and left.

The vault doors parted and sealed behind him, his coat brushing the corridor floor like the trailing edge of a shadow. The walk to his quarters stretched longer than usual through the Basilica Ship, where light was more suggestion than illumination. Acolytes bowed as he passed, their robes whispering over stone. He barely registered them.

Take it on faith.

He hated the phrase. Not for the words themselves, but for the man who used them. The Lord Marshal never gave simple orders. He carved doctrine into bone and called it obedience. Taehyung had risen by following those lines without hesitation. This one felt different. Sharper. A boundary drawn where none had been before, leaving him unsure, for the first time in years, which side he occupied.

His quarters stood in stark contrast to the Basilica’s gloom. Obsidian walls veined with starlight glass caught the low light. Silver traced the floors in deliberate patterns. The air was warm and perfumed, designed to soothe. A place built for peace.

Peace felt foreign tonight.

He crossed the threshold and the doors sealed behind him, the sound final, like a vault closing. His wife wasn’t there, yet her presence filled the room all the same. Jasmine and pepper lingered in the cushions. Wine clung faintly to the robes draped over the chaise. A Meccan sonata drifted from the corner, soft and restrained, the one she favored when sleep refused to come. It wrapped the space in memory, something fragile he didn’t want to disturb.

Taehyung poured himself water and let it sit untouched in his hand. He watched the surface settle, his reflection bending with the last fading ripples. He had wanted to understand her, truly understand her, and that was a truth he rarely allowed himself to examine. Why she still moved through shadows when she had no need to.

She had everything. Their residence was envied by nobles and commanders alike. Silks from dying systems. Mosaics pieced together from shattered empires. Relics carved from worlds long extinct. She wore gems chipped from dead moons. Their servants spoke five languages and cooked in six. Nothing was ever denied to her. And yet she meddled.

Whispers passed through aides long after midnight. Gifts traveled to commanders outside his influence. Old bloodlines received her attention. Priests found themselves flattered, consulted, remembered. Messages bore her seal, never his. Something was taking shape quietly, carefully.

He simply didn’t know what.

He settled into the chair by the window wall, stars drifting slowly beyond the glass, distant and indifferent. A finger tapped once against the rim of the untouched glass.

Her love had never been in question. Not once. That wasn’t the danger. Love offered no protection here. Ambition, though, ambition burned without needing fuel. She wore it like perfume. Years ago, he had asked her why she still schemed when they already possessed everything a person could want.

She had smiled at him then.

“Because someone always is,” she’d said. “And it’s better to be early than late.”

Now, with her scent warm in the air and starlight reflected in the glass, he wondered if she had already stepped ahead of him. If this campaign, this pursuit of Jungkook, fit into a line drawn by someone else long before he ever saw it.

He set the glass aside and leaned back, a slow breath leaving his chest.

A soft chime broke the quiet. He didn’t answer it right away. His gaze lingered on the door a beat too long before he rose and opened it with a flick of his fingers.

Pia stood in the doorway, still dressed in formal robes layered in dusk tones. Her hair was pinned high, flawless despite the hour. She was always immaculate. Always composed. Tonight, though, something in her posture had softened. Only her eyes remained unchanged, cool, curious, reading him too closely.

“May I come in?” she asked.

He stepped aside without speaking. She moved into the room. Her fingers brushed the edge of the marble table as her gaze drifted, not over the décor but the air itself.

“You’re quiet,” she said at last. “Which means something’s wrong. Or something’s right, and you don’t like how it feels.”

A tired smile ghosted across his mouth. He poured her a drink, rich and amber, and passed it to her. She sipped slowly, then lowered herself onto the lounge without waiting for permission.

“I spoke with the Lord Marshal,” he said, voice low. “He’s sending me off-world.”

Pia didn’t flinch. Her eyes shifted, subtle and precise. Not surprise. Adjustment.

“Of course he is,” she murmured. “That’s what he does. He sends his finest toward their worst.”

Taehyung turned to the obsidian window, stars cold and distant beyond the glass. “He didn’t ask for my counsel. As if I were nothing more than a tool.”

“You are,” she said gently, without malice. “You always have been. That’s why you’re valuable.”

He looked back at her, brow creasing. There was no anger in it, only fatigue. “Why are you here, Pia?”

Her gaze didn’t waver. “Because you look like a man who’s finally considering what comes next.”

Silence stretched between them, tight and weighted, years of history threaded through it.

At last, he asked, “And what do you want me to think?”

She crossed the room with quiet precision and stopped close enough that her breath stirred his collar. Her voice dropped, intimate and deliberate.

“I want you to remember,” Pia said, “that battles decide wars. Rooms like this decide the future. The future belongs to the people who plan better than they obey.”

Taehyung searched her face. As always, she offered only what she meant to.

“You think the Lord Marshal will lose,” he said.

“I think no one lives forever,” she replied. “Not even the ones convinced they’ve outlived gods.”

The silence that followed settled heavier than before. Steam curled lazily from the untouched teacup on the low table. Taehyung leaned forward, fingertips pressing to his temple as the Lord Marshal’s words looped relentlessly through his mind. Off world. Personally. After Jungkook. The pieces refused to align. He was meant to shape campaigns, not chase a single man through the void. That wasn’t strategy. It was fixation. In their world, fixation was weakness.

“You’re angry,” Pia said behind him.

He didn’t answer.

“He’s always been like this,” she continued, moving around him with the ease of someone who knew every line of his restraint. “Grand gestures. Theatrics. He calls it vision. I call it idiocy.”

“I didn’t ask for commentary,” Taehyung muttered.

“No,” she said, stopping in front of him. “But I recognize that look.” Her eyes held his, sharp and amused, intent on the fractures beneath his calm. “He’s sending you after the breeder,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

His silence confirmed it.

“Strange,” she added lightly. “All that focus on one man.”

“Don’t,” he warned, his voice low.

Her brow lifted. “Don’t what?”

“Start.” He rose with controlled slowness, the restraint of someone keeping something dangerous contained. “You do this when you think I’m unsteady. When you’re trying to pull something loose.”

“When I’m trying to understand you,” she cut in softly. “When I’m reminding you that you could be more.”

A short, bitter laugh escaped him. “More than what?”

“More than his loyal lap dog.”

He turned away, tension rolling through his shoulders. She followed, refusing the retreat.

“I don’t understand you,” he said quietly. “You have everything. Status. Power. A name. Comfort. Respect.”

“And you believe that should be enough?” she murmured.

His jaw tightened. He said nothing.

Pia stepped closer, her voice barely above a whisper. “You see authority when you look at him. I see cracks.”

“Don’t confuse ambition with clarity,” he said, eyes fixed ahead.

“And don’t confuse loyalty with visionlessness,” she replied.

“You forget your place.”

A soft chuckle left her. “No. I think you’ve forgotten where we stand. You loved this about me when we met. What changed, Taehyung?”

They faced each other, unmoving, pride braced against pride. Her hand brushed his wrist, barely there.

“I see something in you,” she said. “Something he doesn’t. Something that unsettles him.”

“He doesn’t fear me.”

“No,” she said, closing the distance, “but perhaps he should.”

The lights hummed faintly overhead, the only sound stretched between them. She kissed him, testing whether he would pull away. He didn’t. The kiss sharpened, purposeful, as though she were trying to pry loose what he kept locked down. When she stepped back, her breath lingered warm against his cheek.

“You won’t always be taking orders,” she said. It wasn’t hope or threat. Just certainty.

Taehyung exhaled, grounding himself. “I don’t want his throne.”

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, watching him with the patience of someone already decided. “Not yet. But you will. When all of this burns out, there won’t be anyone else left who can hold it.”

She turned toward the door, her robe whispering across the floor. Just before it slid open, she paused, her voice cooling into something precise.

“I’ll find out why the Lord Marshal can’t let the breeder go. When I do, you’ll understand why it has to be you.”

The door sealed behind her, leaving the room heavy with everything she’d said and everything she hadn’t. Her footsteps thinned into the corridor until the silence closed in again, settling over the room like a held breath.

Taehyung remained where he stood. The space around him hadn’t changed, yet something inside had slipped out of alignment. Her words stayed with him, unwelcome and persistent. He didn’t believe her, not entirely, but the way she had spoken found a seam and pried open a door he had kept sealed for years.

At last, he faced the entrance. His jaw set as his thoughts circled tight and restless, wolves pacing the confines of a cage.

The concrete doors groaned apart, ancient machinery protesting as if hauled up from the grave. A flat-bed sled waited at the mouth of the lava tube beyond them. It looked less like transport than a stripped-down skeleton of metal and rail, long and low, its ribbing shimmering with heat bleeding up from the rock below. This was Crematoria’s idea of a subway: crude, brutal, unforgiving. It didn’t carry people so much as fling them where they were going.

Jungkook, shackled wrist to ankle, was hurled onto the rear of the sled like freight. The impact drove metal into his spine. The mercs piled in after him, loud and loose with laughter, the sound men made when they thought the danger was over. One of them, Jari, a bearded slab of muscle, dropped his weight square onto Jungkook’s chest. A dominance play. The kind that got men killed.

The sled hissed, bucked, and tore forward. No warning. No countdown. Acceleration snapped heads back as the tunnel swallowed them whole. Seconds later they were screaming through stone at nearly two hundred miles per hour, walls smearing into heat and shadow. Lava veins glowed beneath the rock, turning the passage into a furnace. Sulfur and scorched iron clogged the air, thick enough to taste.

Jungkook fixed his gaze on the ceiling. Lights strobed overhead in steady rhythm, a pulse he locked onto and counted. Five kilometers. Ten. Fifteen. Each marker anchored him. The chaos dulled. All that remained was timing, the last thing he still owned.

He shifted.

Jari adjusted on instinct, leaning into the motion. The sled struck a slight rise in the track, nothing dramatic, just enough. Jari’s head slammed into a low-hanging fixture. The sound was wet and final, glass bursting in a spray of sparks. He didn’t cry out. He folded.

The body slid off Jungkook’s chest, limbs slack and tangled. No one noticed at first. The mercs were too busy cursing the suspension, riding the violence of the track. A voice finally cut through from the front.

“Hey… we missing somebody?”

King twisted around, eyes narrowing as they tracked the empty space and settled on Jungkook. “Are we a man down?”

Jungkook didn’t blink. “Hell if I know.”

Suspicion burned behind King’s stare, but he let it sit. Not here. Not yet. He turned back with a grunt. “Four-way split. Everyone checks their own. Don’t assume shit.”

The sled tore onward. Twenty kilometers. Twenty-five. Thirty.

Brakes screamed. The rig shuddered, metal grinding against metal, before slamming to a halt hard enough to throw bodies forward. The docking chamber opened out before them, half natural cavern, half industrial nightmare. Ash and steam choked the air. Pipes crisscrossed overhead like exposed veins, spitting fire and hissing pressure.

King jumped down first, boots ringing against steel as he headed straight for the containment door, moving like the place already belonged to him.

The others dragged Jungkook after him. Chains scraped and clinked along the floor, the sound sharp in the cavernous dark. Ahead, iron groaned open. The man waiting inside stepped forward.

The Boss. Tall. Solid. Wrapped in heavy black without insignia, carrying authority in the way he stood. His gaze cut through the group like debris and stopped on Jungkook.

“This is it?” His voice was dry, unimpressed. “Just one?”

King smirked, head tipping with practiced arrogance. “One expensive piece of ass. You got room, don’t you?”

From somewhere deeper in the prison, a howl rose, low and guttural, something that had been caged too long. It rattled the walls and crept along the floor. The Boss didn’t flinch. His smile stayed thin and cold.

“Oh, we always have room for more.”

He turned and walked, already expecting them to follow.

The mercs hauled Jungkook down a narrow spur off the main bay, boots scraping against damp concrete. Condensation dripped steadily from the walls, rust bleeding through in long streaks like old wounds that never healed. Overhead lights flickered in sickly yellow bursts, washing the corridor in a jaundiced glow that made everything look diseased.

The passage opened into the booking chamber, a tight circle of glass and steel. No warmth lived here. No comfort. Only sharp edges, procedure, and eyes trained to wait.

“Drop the meat,” a guard muttered without looking up.

Jungkook was shoved forward. His knees struck metal hard enough to jar his spine, chains clattering as he caught himself before the console. The booking officer emerged from behind the desk, a narrow man with hollow cheeks and a datapad grafted into his forearm. He moved around Jungkook with the detached interest of a buyer at market, tapping commands, scanning bone structure, tracking heat signatures. His fingers paused.

Recognition flickered.

“Shit,” he said. “This one’s flagged.”

King’s smirk cut in from the corner. “Told you. Price of a warship.”

The officer ignored him. A drawer slid open. A thick black collar came out and snapped around Jungkook’s throat with a pneumatic hiss. Cables shot from it, one locking to his wrist, another to his ankle. Tethers. Control wrapped in humiliation. Jungkook did not react.

A brief nod from the officer set a wall panel grinding open. Beyond it waited a vertical shaft, pulleys and gears lining its throat, heat rolling upward like breath from a furnace. A single chain swayed gently in the rising air.

“You’re done,” the officer said. “He’s ours.”

King lingered, studying Jungkook with that unreadable grin. “He’ll keep things interesting.” The mercs laughed as they peeled away, already erasing him from memory.

The room emptied. A guard yanked the tether, dragging Jungkook to the lip of the shaft. A switch clacked. A mechanical arm extended and clamped the collar to the chain with a heavy, final click.

Jungkook dropped.

The chain screamed as it paid out, links rattling under his weight. Heat surged upward, slick and suffocating, clinging to his skin like damp cloth. Sulfur and ash clogged the air, each breath scraping his lungs raw. Above him, light shrank to a trembling pinprick before vanishing altogether. Below, a red glow pulsed along the shaft walls, revealing scorch marks and carvings etched deep into the stone. Names. Tally marks. Prayers. No one carved unless they expected to stay.

The descent stretched on, long enough for memory to creep in. Faces. Voices. Things left unfinished. Crematoria did not need bars or blades. It had time, and time devoured everything.

The prison opened beneath him at last. A vast pit hollowed from the planet’s bones, ribbed with tiered cellblocks stacked like honeycomb. Heat shimmered through the air. Steam hissed from vents carved into the rock. At the far end yawned a chasm so dark it felt bottomless, waiting.

The chain slowed, jolted, and stopped. The latch released. Jungkook fell the final few feet and hit the ground hard, dust bursting around him. The floor vibrated faintly, as though something massive slept beneath it.

Shadows shifted. Eyes gleamed from cracks and ledges as inmates watched in silence. New blood. Valuable blood. Something worth killing, selling, or keeping.

The hatch slammed shut overhead, its echo rolling through the cavern like a death knell. Jungkook pushed himself upright, shackles heavy against his limbs, gaze sweeping the pit. The air boiled with heat. The ground smoked and split. Cellblocks loomed overhead, packed with men the galaxy had already discarded.

Steam parted near a fissure. A giant stepped forward, shoulders like slabs of stone, arms thick with corded muscle. He said nothing, simply assessed Jungkook as if gauging how best to break him.

Three more shapes emerged from the haze. Their skin was yellowed from sulfur exposure, boots fused halfway into their feet. Rusted tools hung from their hands, chipped but sharp enough. Their eyes fixed on Jungkook with a hunger that went beyond food.

They fanned out without a word, slow and instinctive, closing into a loose circle. Predators.

Jungkook flexed his fingers inside the chains, shifted his stance, measured distance and angles. Heat did not matter. Metal did not matter. Only gravity. Only timing.

He exhaled, long and steady. His pulse eased. They thought they were closing in.

They had no idea what was coming.

Back in the control room, the Boss stood behind a rusted console humming with heat, his back half turned as he poured from a square-cut decanter. The liquor caught the low light, thick and dark as it rolled into the glass. Synthetic, perhaps, but costly. He drank slowly, letting the taste linger before he spoke.

“Strange days,” he said at last, his voice calm and weighted, as if the words belonged to the room as much as to King. “If you listen to the whispers.”

King leaned against a support beam, arms folded, unimpressed. “Whispers don’t pay bounties.”

The Boss glanced over his shoulder, eyes sharp despite the fatigue etched into them. “They talk about an army moving in the dark. Systems emptied. Planets stripped down to bone.” He turned fully, resting one hand on the console. “And there’s something else.”

“You trying to scare me?” King asked, one brow lifting. “Or just working up an excuse not to pay?”

A faint smile touched the Boss’s mouth as he set the glass aside, the clink soft and final. “I’ll run the numbers again. Take a closer look.” He gestured loosely around the chamber. “Stay until then. Enjoy the hospitality. Safer here than most places.”

King snorted. “You get a day.”

“Fair,” the Boss said, the hint of a grin lingering. “Though our days run fifty-two hours.”

King’s glare answered him. The Boss let it rest. Over his shoulder, he called, “Anatoli. Find our guests a bunk. Something with a view.”

Anatoli acknowledged from the far end of the room and melted back into the shadows. The Boss reached for the winch lever and hauled it down. Chains shrieked as gears caught, the machinery roaring awake, ready to haul up whatever else the prison’s depths still held.

The chain let go with a small, metallic clunk, almost apologetic, but the sound climbed the shaft like something alive. It skittered along the hollow walls in thinning echoes. Heat surged up as he twisted through the drop, his body carving a clean arc downward. Panic never touched him. He drew his arms in close, boots cutting through the rising heat like the downbeat of heavy wings.

He met the ground in a crouch so controlled it felt rehearsed, boots kissing stone without a sound. A breath slipped into his lungs and vanished, held and hidden. Dust hovered, uncertain, as if the air itself had sensed a predator enter the pit. His pupils widened, devouring what little light survived, stretching outward to map the black.

The Yellow Men crept out of the shadows. They spilled from corners and fissures, skin slick with sulfur, bodies warped by years of heat. Their movements jerked and stuttered, like broken memories rattling around in failing flesh. Faces hung leathery and tight, eyes flashing with small, frantic light.

The first rushed him with a desperate, unthinking swing. Jungkook slid aside, clean as a shadow stepping away from flame. His hand closed around the man’s wrist and twisted. Bone cracked like old wood. He turned the mining pick inward with the attacker’s own momentum. The impact landed soft and wet. The body folded, finished.

The second came down hard from overhead, trying to drive Jungkook into the stone. Jungkook shifted just enough. No excess. No strain. He caught the force, redirected it, and smashed the man face-first into the ground. The crack ended it. Heat rippled through the stone beneath him.

The third waited. There was always one who did. He held back, let Jungkook’s focus stretch thin, and struck from behind. Rusted links snapped tight around Jungkook’s throat, grinding into skin as they cinched fast. His boots carved trenches through the dust as he was dragged backward, vision narrowing to a white-edged tunnel.

The pressure vanished. A dull thud landed behind him. A choking gasp cut short. A boot crushed into a spine, folding the body. Steel slid between ribs with calm, unhurried certainty.

“Left of the spine,” a voice said quietly. Steady. Instructional. The tone of someone who had explained this far too many times. “Fourth lumbar. Push, and it’s over in thirty.”

Jungkook turned, breath steady and contained. Firelight spilled down from above and brushed a face recognition reached before memory could catch up. The familiarity struck warm and unbalancing, like frost giving way under sudden sun.

She looked older. She would have to. Time had honed her rather than dulled her. A braid lay over her shoulder, woven through with soot and grit. Sun and heat had left their marks, freckles scattered across her skin like constellations painted over old warpaint. Survival had cut her jaw sharp, not vanity. Her eyes, icy green and unyielding, had not changed at all.

He did not speak. He lifted one hand and slid the goggles from his face, offering her a clear look.

“You look surprised,” she said, testing the sound of her voice, as if tuning strings long left idle. “Didn’t think you’d see me again?”

Silence answered her. She stepped closer, blade loose in her grip, relaxed and deliberate. Careless had never been in her nature.

“Tell me something,” she murmured, head tipping as she studied him. “Where do you get eyes like that?”

“Doc in a slam,” he said flatly. “Vision tune-up. Cost me a pack of Menthols.”

Her laugh snapped out, sharp and brittle. “You’re still using that same bullshit story?”

“What story?”

“That prison-doc shit.” She shook her head. “I’ve been through every slam from Vega to Titan Ring. Nobody tunes eyes like yours. Not for cigarettes. Not for cash.”

Jungkook offered nothing.

“Was everything you said a goddamn lie,” she said more softly. For the briefest moment, something gentler flickered across her face. “Answer me.”

A muscle jumped in his jaw. As close to confession as he ever came. She kicked the dead Yellow Man aside. The body struck stone with a hollow rattle.

“Leo—” he started.

She closed the gap in a blink. Steel brushed his throat.

“Leo is dead,” she said. “My name is Audrey.”

His body moved before thought caught up. A shift of weight, a whisper of motion, and her blade rested in his hand instead. She hit the rusted cell door hard, metal groaning under the impact. His knife hovered just behind her spine, precise and quiet.

“Careful,” he said. No heat. No anger. Just the cold authority of someone who had survived too long. “Remember who you’re talking to.”

She pushed once, instinctively, felt the futility, and stopped. Her breath warmed the narrow space between them, too close, too human. For a moment their pulses found the same rhythm. Hers broke away first, retreating behind walls he could not see.

He studied her under the thin glow from above, searching for the shape she used to be beneath everything time had layered on. He was not sure why he looked. Maybe he hoped she was still there.

“Audrey,” he said quietly. “That real?”

She nodded. “Audrey Nakamura.”

His eyes flicked once. “Taurus name.”

One corner of her mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “Glad you kept up with colonial geography while you were off doing whatever the fuck it is you do now.”

“Spent some nights there,” he said. “Cold side.”

“That’s not where they kept me,” she muttered. “Cold side’s for the lucky.”

“It’s still better than here.”

A breath left her. Not a laugh. Nothing close. Something thinner. Sharper. “Bar’s in hell.”

Footsteps echoed above them, slow and deliberate, heavy with certainty. The sound belonged to someone who did not need speed to inspire fear.

Jungkook didn’t turn. Predators don’t look back at threats they already recognize. A voice followed the steps, smooth and weighted, like a stone sinking through deep water.

“There are convicts,” it said. The pit went still, prisoners barely breathing. “A convict has a code. Knows the rhythm of a place like this. Survives without losing his name.”

Jungkook’s eyes cut toward Audrey, but she was gone. She slipped free the way ink sinks into paper, the darkness accepting her as if it knew her. A flash of steel whispered through the low light, more sensed than seen.

She was close in the space of a heartbeat. Her blade kissed his cheek, gentle enough to pass for affection, until warmth followed, blood tracing a slow, deliberate line downward.

“I’m a new animal,” she whispered.

The dark took her again, clean and absolute. Jungkook didn’t chase. He didn’t reach for her or let her name surface on his tongue. He stayed where he was, letting the sting deepen, letting warmth spread. Blood found its own path. Silence crept back in, heavy and familiar, settling around him like dust on bones buried too long to remember what they once were.

A voice reached him before its owner appeared, rolling down the stepped levels like something etched into the rock itself.

“But an inmate,” it said, slow and deliberate, “an inmate turns on his own. Makes himself useful to the guards. An inmate forgets his name.”

When the speaker finally came into view, he was flanked by men who moved with the certainty of violence that expected no challenge. Their bodies swallowed the dim light, silhouettes shaped for intimidation alone, eyes dark and unreadable.

One of them nudged a twitching Yellow Man with his boot. The broken figure curled inward but made no sound. That silence, earned rather than granted, settled into the air like another layer of dust.

“Fucking inmate,” the speaker muttered, sparing the dying man no glance.

His attention lifted instead, locking onto Jungkook and holding there, steady and unhurried, the way a hunter watches a shape barely visible in tall grass.

“So,” he said after a pause. “Which one are you?”

Jungkook didn’t blink. The cut along his cheek pulsed, warmth tracing a slow path down his jaw.

“Me?” His head tipped slightly. “Just passing through.”

The man’s expression shifted, not quite into a smile, only the faint outline of one stripped of anything kind. He raised a hand, a worn wedding band catching the weak light. Time had polished it nearly smooth, leaving nothing but metal and memory behind.

“I remember how beautiful she was,” he said quietly. “At least when the light hit right. Can’t remember her name anymore.” The confession lingered, souring in the heat like something left out too long. “This is Crematoria,” he added, the words falling with the weight of a gravestone.

A loudspeaker crackled far overhead, machinery coughing itself awake before spilling its ritual chant through the pit.

“Feeding time… comin’ down the chimney… feeding time…”

The man didn’t look up. His voice dropped, calm and certain. “And we’re all here for the rest of our unnatural lives.”

A crate screamed down the shaft, metal shrieking as it fell, before slamming into the courtyard hard enough to shake dust loose from the beams. It burst apart on impact, scattering food across the stone: protein bricks, sardines, fruit so old it barely remembered being fruit.

The pit erupted. Bodies poured out of every shadow and doorway, a rush less like a fight than a feeding frenzy. Hands clawed. Teeth flashed. Blood splattered stone. Bone cracked under heel and elbow. Laughter spiked, thin and brittle, while someone else sobbed through clenched teeth.

“Name’s Conrad,” the man said over the chaos, as if it were nothing more than weather in the distance. “Conrad Yeon.”

He offered Jungkook his hand. Jungkook ignored it. The hand hung there briefly in the gritty heat before Conrad let it fall. No offense taken. He bent instead, retrieved a dented tin mug near his boot, and drank calmly, as though he were alone.

“Day one?” Conrad asked. “You don’t go for the drops.”

He lifted the mug toward the brawl, not pointing out the carnage so much as offering commentary, the way someone might remark on weather.

“Watch,” he said. “Let the ones who still think hunger is their biggest problem tear each other apart over salted fish and sugar pellets. Give it a little time. Someone bleeds out. Someone loses an eye. A few ribs crack. After that, you step in and take what’s left. The pieces not soaked in piss, at least.”

Jungkook offered no response. He studied the chaos with the detached calm of a creature built for darker hours, tracking motion and spacing, reading bodies the way other men read faces. His eyes followed patterns instead of people. Conrad didn’t seem to notice the silence.

“Second tier’s scab nests,” he went on. “Biters. Don’t wander up there unless you’re willing to lose something you won’t get back. Third tier’s where they dump the fresh ones. Easy kills. Easy theft. Fourth tier’s mine. Fewer screams. You’ll sleep better.”

Steam curled around his chin as he drank. Somewhere below, a scream rose and broke wetly. Conrad didn’t look.

“Showers run thirteen minutes in the morning. Water cycles three times. Go before the heat pulse unless you fancy losing skin. Staff rotation?” He snorted. “Doesn’t exist. Only the stubborn wear the patch.”

Jungkook stayed quiet. Conrad carried on, clearly accustomed to filling space on his own.

“Food drops twice a day. Learn how the crates fall. Bad angle, bad net, someone loses a hand. More men die from bad landings than knives.”

Jungkook tilted his head just enough to mark interest. The air shifted, subtle but present, like something clicking into place.

“You always talk this much?” he asked.

Conrad grinned over the rim of his mug. “Only to people who hate it.”

A sound escaped Jungkook. Not quite a laugh, just a breath edged with amusement before he caught it.

“Jungkook Jeon.”

“Figured,” Conrad said, nodding as if that settled something. “You’ve got a reputation. And those eyes…” Conrad whistled softly. “Yeah. Figured.”

Silence returned, easy this time.

“You been here long?” Jungkook asked.

“Long enough,” Conrad said.

Above them, a scream collapsed into coughing. A dented can bounced down the steps, clinking until it came to rest near a pair of bare feet slick with blood.

“You want to live here,” Conrad said quietly, “you need more than quick hands and pretty eyes. You need someone who knows the rhythms. When the power flickers. When a guard’s bluffing. When the heat spikes. You need someone who can smell the air before it changes.”

“And that’s you?” Jungkook asked.

Conrad’s grin widened, unapologetic. “That’s me.”

Jungkook didn’t answer. He let the quiet stretch on its own terms.

Steam drifted from Conrad’s mug, thin and pale, rising like a ghost. Across the tier, perched on a ledge with her legs crossed, Audrey watched them. Her blade whispered against the honing stone in slow, measured strokes. She didn’t blink. Didn’t shift. Her attention never left Jungkook.

Steam poured from the rusted pipes overhead in thick, suffocating waves, drifting around Jungkook like the breath of some ancient machine that refused to die. It wrapped him in a shimmering haze, softening his outline until he looked half unreal, a mirage inside a place already severed from anything resembling the world beyond it. Water dripped from a crooked spout above him, too thin to be called a shower and far too hot to be comforting, but on Crematoria it passed for mercy.

The scalding runoff worked its way into muscle and tendon, loosening knots that had hardened into stone over weeks of tension. Each drop stung, waking nerves one burning point at a time. Steam clung to his lashes and gathered along the lines of ink etched into his skin until he seemed almost translucent in the heat.

He touched his cheek, thumb brushing the thin cut Audrey had left behind, the last thing she’d given him before vanishing. It wasn’t deep, but it burned with a stubborn insistence, a narrow reminder carved into skin.

Across the tier, Audrey sat on a ledge gouged out by erosion or violence, likely both. She perched there as if the stone had shaped itself for her, one leg hanging loose, the other drawn in close, balanced with an ease born not of confidence but survival. A narrow blade rolled over her knuckles in a quiet, hypnotic rhythm. She never looked up, yet nothing escaped her. Even through the steam, her green eyes glinted, steady lanterns built for dark places.

Footsteps scraped behind Jungkook. He didn’t turn.

A wavering shadow resolved through the haze into a man so thin he looked carved from splintered wood. A dented tin cup trembled in his hands. “Tobacco and moss tea,” he rasped, hope threaded through the words. “Fresh.”

Jungkook accepted the cup and inspected it like something that might bite. In Crematoria, kindness usually came with teeth. He didn’t drink.

The man lingered, breath fluttering and uneven. “Aquila Major,” he whispered. “That’s where I’m from. You hear anything? Any news?”

Jungkook might have answered, but the steam shifted behind him.

Conrad stepped out of the haze with his own mug in hand, carrying it like a badge of office. The heat didn’t touch him. He wore it like dust, cutting straight through the starving man’s orbit without a glance. “Word’s been trickling in,” he said, voice worn thin but steady. “Systems collapsing. Colonies going dark. Fleets vanishing. Even convicts drifting inward, toward Helion space.”

Hope cracked across the man’s face, sharp enough to hurt. “The crusade,” he breathed. “Tell me it’s true.”

Jungkook lifted the cup. Steam burned his lips before the tea followed, tasting of boiled weeds and rust scraped from old metal, survival steeped into liquid. He drank anyway. “It was true where I came from.”

The air tightened. Even the steam seemed to pause.

“Where’s that?” someone called from the fog.

“Helion.”

Men stiffened. Someone cursed softly. Others recoiled, as if the name itself radiated heat.

“There are six planets in Helion,” someone snapped. “Which one?”

Jungkook looked up through the haze, his eyes catching the light like distant stars smothered by pollution. “Prime.”

Fear rippled through the tier, fear tangled with awe, disbelief snapping tight around it. One inmate staggered back, shaking his head as though the answer had struck him physically.

Conrad only nodded. “Doesn’t matter. Only one world left.”

A metallic scream tore across the tier, high and jagged, snapping nerves tight. The gates above juddered open. Every convict froze.

Bootsteps followed, heavy, measured, unhurried. The stride of men who never needed to run. Behind them came the hounds.

Three massive shapes lumbered down the walkway, grotesque unions of flesh and welded metal. Their hides were gray, radiating heat even at a distance. Jagged plates jutted from their bodies like broken armor. Their jaws clicked with mechanical precision, strings of drool hissing where they struck the floor. They smelled of burned meat and rotting machinery, thick enough to choke.

“Slot up!” someone screamed. “GET OFF THE FLOOR!”

Panic detonated. Men bolted for the cells, shoving and clawing, scrambling up bars, slamming doors before the creatures could reach the ground. Audrey vanished from her ledge like a falling shadow, slipping into the lower tiers as if the dark itself had opened to take her.

Conrad’s voice cut through the chaos, raw and sharp. “It’s a herd! They’re driving us like cattle!”

Another scream followed, higher, stripped of hope. “THE CULL IS ON!”

Jungkook didn’t run. He moved with deliberate calm, eyes tracking the stampede, reading the currents of fear and bodies, searching for the point where chaos would fold inward and tighten on itself. That was where he belonged. That was where he would wait.

One hound peeled away from the pack. It moved faster than the others, its gait uneven, a flank ruined by fused scars and heat-blistered skin. The creature trembled as it advanced, plates along its spine lifting like metallic hackles. Its gaze locked onto Jungkook, a low growl vibrating deep inside warped ribs.

It came close enough that its breath washed over his chest, hot and sour and chemical, carrying the stink of death. Still, it didn’t strike. It watched. Hesitation flickered there. Recognition. A predator weighing another predator and finding something wrong in the math.

Jungkook lifted a hand and rested his palm against its face, feeling the uneven blend of flesh, metal, and bone beneath his skin.

“Animal thing,” he murmured. “I know.”

A sharp whistle cut through the tier. The hound jerked its head, sniffed Jungkook once more as if committing him to memory, then lumbered back to the pack.

Far below, where the air thickened into molten breath and the rock itself sweated heat, Audrey moved through the lower block like smoke slipping under a door. The glow of a lavafall flickered behind her, throwing her silhouette into shifting gold and red. She walked with predatory ease, boots whispering against stone, body loose and ready.

She stepped into her cell and reached for the strap. Light hit her before her fingers could close.

Four guards filled the doorway, flashlamps fixed on her as though she were pinned open on a lab table.

“Make sure she’s clean,” one said, his voice heavy with authority he hadn’t earned.

“Fifty kilos, maybe less,” another muttered. “Search her.”

Audrey stayed still. Her breathing remained slow, steady. She turned to face the wall with practiced ease and placed her palms flat against the stone, fingers spread, chin lifted, spine straight. Her stance widened just enough to look compliant. The precision of it said something else entirely.

The guards grinned. Teeth gleamed under harsh white light. Confidence stretched their faces thin.

The first stepped forward, a thick man soft from stolen meals and borrowed power. His hands roamed her ribs, slid down her hip, lingered lower. Her boot brushed his shin.

The steel spike hidden in the sole snapped upward in one smooth, practiced motion, driving between his legs with brutal finality. His scream ripped through the steam-heavy air as he collapsed inward, hands scrambling uselessly to protect what was already gone.

Her head snapped back before he could register it. Bone met bone with a wet, crushing crack. Blood sprayed across her shoulder. Cartilage gave way like dry twigs. He hit the ground in a broken heap.

The others lunged, fury replacing smug certainty as they seized her, fingers digging in wherever they could. Their anger ran deeper than rage. It was humiliation, raw and stripping away the illusion of control they had worn like armor.

They did not see Jungkook until they were halfway across the tier.

He sat in the dim as if he had always been there, one knee bent, the other stretched out, a tin cup hanging loose in his fingers. Steam drifted past him in slow ribbons. Light caught only fragments of his face, leaving his eyes fully visible.

“You should take your wounded,” he said, his voice low and almost gentle, yet weighted enough to press the air tight around them. “And go. While you still can.”

The guards hesitated. Even rage could not silence instinct completely.

Panosian, broad-shouldered and loud in the way men get when numbers make them brave, stepped forward. He tried to assemble confidence from habit. It did not quite hold. “You got a name for whatever fantasy this is?” he asked. “This little world where we’re scared of you?” His gaze flicked to the cup hanging loose at Jungkook’s side. “What, you gonna kill us with that? Soup cup?”

A few of the others snorted, thin laughter scraping together as they tried to rebuild their nerve.

Jungkook glanced down at the cup, turned it once between his fingers, testing the weight, then lifted his eyes again without hurry.

“Tea, actually.”

Panosian blinked. “What?”

“I’ll kill you with my tea cup.”

Jungkook set it on the stone carefully, seemingly bored.

Panosian’s smirk faltered. Something uneasy slipped into his eyes before he crushed it down, snapping his knife open in a burst of speed meant to look decisive. He lunged.

Jungkook moved first.

The motion was clean and almost invisible. He seized the cup and drove it down against the stone. Metal split with a sharp crack, edges tearing jagged and lethal. He brought the broken rim up under Panosian’s ribs, sliding it home with practiced certainty.

The wound opened with a soft, wet sound. No scream. Just a breath spilling out in a startled sigh as Panosian sagged forward, knees folding beneath him. He collapsed heavily onto the stone.

The remaining guards froze, bravado stripped away to bare fear. One fumbled for his maulstick, hands shaking. The other edged backward, already thinking about escape. Neither got far.

Jungkook rose without hurry, advancing like a slow tide. His shadow stretched long across the floor. He crouched, retrieved a small object, a crate key, and turned it once between his fingers before setting it beside the ruined cup, aligning both with quiet precision.

McLester and Fraga exchanged a single look, the kind that passes between men who understand survival now hinges on the same choice. They hauled Panosian’s limp body away, boots scraping stone, panic thinning their movements. Neither dared glance back.

Silence crept in again, layer by layer. Steam. Dripping metal. The distant hum of heat vents.

Across the tier, Audrey leaned against the wall with her arms folded, dark amusement lighting her expression. She nudged the twisted remains of the cup with her boot. “Death by tea cup,” she said. “God. I hate how much I like that.”

Jungkook did not answer right away. He watched her too long, too still, as if tracing the outline of the girl she had once been, wondering whether any piece of her remained untouched or if places like this had remade her entirely.

When he finally spoke, his voice came out quiet and tight, shaped around something he had been holding back for too long.

“Not that I mind the pissing contest,” he said evenly enough, “but I don’t play who’s the better killer.”

Audrey’s smile curled slowly, sharp with danger and softened by something almost playful. She tilted her head, eyes bright with challenge and amusement tangled together. “Oh, come on,” she said, her voice low and warm. “You don’t get to make the rules just because you won the first round.”

She stepped closer. Her scent carried the prison with it, sulfur baked into skin, old dust, the faint metallic edge of a blade drawn too often. Beneath it all lingered something sharper, oddly clean, like pine needles catching fire.

She leaned in just enough for her voice to drop into a murmur. “Besides,” she said, light glancing off her eyes, “it’s my favorite game.”

She turned as if to leave. His hand closed around her wrist before she could take a full step. Not violent, but firm enough to pull her back into his gravity. They stood close now, close enough to feel the shift of her breathing, close enough that even the wall behind her seemed to recede. His expression did not change, but his voice hardened, darkened by time and memory.

“You came looking for me?”

Audrey blinked. The movement was small, almost nothing, but something real slipped through. Old pain. Old guilt. A recognition she did not want. It vanished as quickly as it surfaced, buried beneath the familiar armor: the shrug, the crooked smile, the practiced tilt of her chin.

“If that’s what you heard,” she said lightly, “you missed the good part.”

She tried to turn it into a joke, but the weight underneath crept into her voice, something beginning to sour. “I linked up with mercs on Lupus Five,” she went on. “Thought I’d get a chance to do things right. Learn the work. Earn my cut.”

She swallowed once, tight.

“First job in, they sold me. To a pack of Golls. I was thirteen.”

She did not raise her voice. She did not shake. The heat lived under the words instead. Quiet. Dangerous. The kind that stays buried under ash long after the fire is gone. Each syllable landed clean and deliberate, like a blade placed exactly where it would do the most damage.

Jungkook looked at her for a long moment. Long enough that the shadows seemed to press closer, folding them in. The light caught in his eyes and darkened there. No flash of anger crossed his face, no outward reaction at all. Only a heavy stillness, the kind that came from knowing precisely what a wound like that cost.

He knew the difference between someone spinning a story and someone carrying a truth that never dulled. Pain like hers did not fade. It waited.

“I told you to stay in New Mecca,” he said at last. The words came out rougher than he intended, scraped raw at the edges, but nowhere near an apology. “Told you mercs were on me. Still are. And you run straight into them? Sign up with bottom feeder crews? The same kind of scum I spent years keeping off you?”

His fist drove into the wall beside her head. Stone cracked under the impact, flakes of dust floating down around them. The sound echoed through the tier, a clean sharp snap with years of pressure behind it. The swing was not meant for her.

It was aimed at everything between them. All the time. All the distance. All the choices he made and justified as mercy. The silence he had thought would protect her. The promises he never spoke but still expected to hold.

Behind him, Audrey froze for a heartbeat. Her expression slipped, and something raw surfaced, fragile and painfully familiar. In that flicker, he almost saw the girl she used to be. Stubborn. Small. Furious at the world with scraped knees and eyes too bright for the dark places she lived in.

Only for a moment, before the steel returned. Her jaw tightened. Her shoulders squared.

“What are you saying?” she asked. “That you disappearing was some kind of blessing? That I was safer alone?”

He did not turn toward her. He did not trust himself to. His shoulders lifted and fell in slow, measured breaths, as if he were holding something inside that he could not allow to surface.

She pushed again, because she always did.

“Mercs,” he said at last. The word came out rough, scraped raw. “You signed with mercs.”

“There was nobody else around,” Audrey said.

Jungkook dragged a hand down his face, slow and harsh. His fingers brushed over old scars, catching on them like he was not sure whether he meant to push memories away or pull them closer. When he finally looked back at her, his gaze searched her face for anything unbroken, some scrap of the girl she had been, some piece she had not had to barter for survival.

“Namjoon was,” Jungkook said. The cold in his voice could have frozen the steam around them. “And you act like this is all a joke,” he went on, quieter now but tighter, strained. “Like I am supposed to feel sorry for you.”

Her throat bobbed once. She swallowed.

“You left me.”

“I am not a fucking babysitter,” Jungkook said, voice low and scraped down to the truth. “You could have done a hell of a lot worse. You had it good in New Mecca, and you ran. You chose this. Your choices did this to you.”

Audrey let out a sound shaped like a laugh but carrying none of the warmth. It was brittle and hollow, sharp at the edges, like broken glass rattling in a tin can. The kind of laugh someone makes when the alternative is screaming.

“Yeah,” she said. “Well, excuse me for thinking you actually gave a shit.”

Her head tipped back slightly as she breathed in and then out, a long, tired motion. Her eyes gleamed too brightly, not with tears but with the heat behind them. Anger does not always burn outward. Sometimes it rises, filling the eyes first, steaming just beneath the lashes.

“Fuck you,” she said, her voice splintering. “You lying, fucking asshole.”

Jungkook’s jaw tightened, then loosened again. He tried to soften his tone, but softness was a language he had not spoken in years.

“I was trying to keep you clear,” he said. “The people hunting me, no kid should have been anywhere near that.”

“But I was already in it,” Audrey snapped, stepping toward him with a force that pushed the steam aside. Her voice echoed off the stone walls, sharp enough to cut through the heat. “Do you understand that? I was already there.”

Her words came fast, like a storm breaking open without warning.

“When my mom bled out in front of me,” she said. “When the cops tossed me in a shelter like trash. When those men raped me.”

The last word hit the air with the weight of a hammer. Even the steam seemed to recoil. Jungkook did too, barely, but he did. A small twitch near his eye. A breath that did not quite fill his lungs.

“I wasn’t exactly doing great when we met,” Audrey whispered. The strength in her earlier tone had thinned, leaving something small and trembling but still stubborn. “But I cared about you. And you abandoned me.”

He looked away then, jaw locked tight. A tendon jumped in his cheek like something trapped beneath the skin. He had survived mercenary squads, furnace worlds, metal-jawed hounds, but her words cut past all of that, hitting the one place he had not armored.

“Okay,” he said finally. His voice was quiet but sharp edged. “You want honesty?”

He turned just enough for her to see his eyes, dark and tired, weighed down by ghosts he had never buried.

“Then answer this. How did you even get on the Hunter Gratzner?”

The question stopped her cold. Her eyes flickered, then dropped. She let out a breath and rolled her eyes, more at herself than at him. Not dismissing the question, but bracing for the truth behind it.

“Paid a dockhand in Port Elaris to stick me in a cargo bay,” she said. “He wanted creds. Didn’t care about anything else.”

“You were thirteen,” Jungkook said. His voice had dropped into something dangerous and controlled.

“Twelve,” Audrey corrected softly. “Barely. It was right after the last time I ran. After my mom…” Her words caught. A small, raw sound escaped before she forced herself to swallow it.

She shook her head, as though the memory tasted foul. “There was nothing left in that place but ghosts,” she said quietly. “Ghosts and streets that already wanted their pound of flesh.”

Jungkook pinched the bridge of his nose, his brow furrowing deep.

“Your mom…”

“…was already dead,” Audrey finished for him. “We both died in that alley. I just kept walking.”

The silence that followed felt ancient. Heavy enough to press into the walls and settle into the cracks of the floor. A silence that belonged in a place like this.

Audrey did not wait for him to respond. She shifted her weight once, small and controlled, then turned and stepped into the drifting steam. The vapor swallowed her quickly, her outline dissolving as if she were slipping into another world entirely. Her steps were light and ghostlike, instinctive. A girl shaped by shadows returning to them.

Jungkook did not move until a long stretch of seconds passed, seconds that scraped something raw inside him. He realized the tea in his hand had gone cold but kept holding it anyway, fingers numb around the metal. Something she had said, maybe all of it, had lodged under his ribs like a piece of shrapnel he had not noticed until now.

Finally, he moved. He made his way down the metal ramps, each step setting off a low groan from the steel underfoot. The deeper he went, the thicker the heat became, pulsing in slow waves until it felt like the air itself carried a heartbeat. The tiers below glowed with the restless orange light of the lavafall, Crematoria’s burning core churning and spitting like an angry ocean made of fire.

Audrey perched on a cracked vent grate with one knee bent and the other swinging loosely over the drop. The lava lit her from below, throwing stripes of flickering orange across her skin. Shadows stretched behind her in long, thin lines, twisting with every movement she made. A knife lay across her lap as she sharpened it with practiced precision, each scrape ringing out clearly in the thick, humid air. Sparks jumped from the stone, bright and brief.

She did not look up when he approached. He stopped a few feet from her and sank into a squat, arms draped over his knees, body loose but balanced, as if he had been through this conversation a dozen times before in a dozen different worlds.

“You always sharpen knives when you’re pissed,” he said quietly, “or is that just when I’m around?”

Audrey glanced at him, quick and cutting. One eyebrow lifted.

“You bring it out in me.”

He rubbed his jaw, a faint huff leaving his nose. “Yeah. I’m great like that.”

Silence settled between them, thick and hot, full of the distant shouting of other inmates and the constant hiss of molten rock below. Metal dripped somewhere above them, the hardened drops forming strange shapes along the tier, like frozen pieces of a world trying to melt. Neither of them moved.

Eventually, Jungkook drew in a slow breath, let it out, and spoke with the weight of someone lowering something heavy to the ground.

“I’m sorry about what happened to you, Leo.”

Her hands did not stop at first. They just slowed. The scraping softened until it faded completely, and she rested the blade across her lap. She did not look at him. Her jaw tightened as she stared straight ahead.

“Wish it hadn’t happened,” Jungkook went on. “But I can’t change it, and it wasn’t on me. Life hits the way it wants, and we don’t get to block half the swings. If I had known where you were going to end up, maybe I would have chosen differently. But I’m not a fortune teller.”

She finally leaned back against the warm stone behind her, eyes drifting up toward the ceiling, black and cracked and scarred by years of heat. She watched it like she expected it to split open and swallow her.

“You want the whole thing?” she asked.

Jungkook’s gaze held steady. “If you want to tell me, I’ll hear it.”

She blinked, surprised for a moment. Her lips parted as though she had something to say, then closed again. When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet, almost disbelieving.

“No one ever asked,” she murmured. “Namjoon tried, but he wanted me to forgive. Wanted me to meditate my way to peace. Like breathing deep enough could fix what happened. He never understood me.”

Jungkook did not speak. He did not move. He waited.

“I was born in Port Elaris,” she said. “Merchant district. Dad worked deep ore. Mom kept books for a shipping lane. I remember birthday soup. Summer fruit. Stupid little things.”

“How’d he go?” Jungkook asked, voice low.

“Mine collapse. Eight men went in. One came out.” She shrugged, but the motion was stiff. “He wasn’t the one.”

Jungkook exhaled slowly, the sound more exhaustion than sympathy.

“After that,” she said, “we got kicked out of our place. Ended up in the dock slums. Mom didn’t handle grief well. Got sick. Couldn’t keep a job. I stole whatever I could. Got good at it.”

Jungkook nodded once, a small acknowledgment that didn’t press her further.

“She hated it,” Audrey said. “Sometimes she hated me. But I kept doing it anyway because it kept us alive.” Her voice thinned, sharpened, like metal cooling too fast. “One night she took me with her,” Audrey continued. “To a charity booth. Late. Wrong street. Wrong time. I knew it. Told her. She wouldn’t listen.”

The lava’s glow washed across her face in steady pulses, as if trying to illuminate what lived behind her eyes. Her stare drifted, unfocused.

“Two guys followed us,” she said quietly. “Said we had soft hands. She pretended she didn’t hear them. Walked faster. I remember her nails digging into my wrist. I remember…” Her breath caught, a small broken sound she tried to swallow. “I remember her whispering run.”

Jungkook’s hands tightened on his knees, knuckles pale in the firelight.

“I ran,” Audrey said. “But two of them caught me.” Her voice stayed level, but it was the steadiness of someone long past the point of breaking. “You can fill in the rest.”

Jungkook’s breath stalled in his chest.

“When it was over, I went back for my mom,” Audrey said. “She was dead.” Her jaw twitched, a small tremor working beneath her skin. “I didn’t talk about it. Took her boots, her credits, and left. Shelter to shelter. Planet to planet. A ghost with no name.” Her lips pressed together. “Then I got on the Gratzner.”

She looked at him then, not as the girl she had been, but as the weapon the universe had shaped from what was left. Her eyes gleamed with something sharp and dark, like obsidian struck by fire.

“I never wanted to be strong,” she said. “I wanted to disappear. But every time I tried, someone was there waiting to use me. Break me. Sell me.”

She lifted her blade, not in threat, just holding it the way someone holds something that has become part of them.

“So I gave them what they couldn’t sell,” she said. “Fear. I got good at it. And now…” A small shrug followed, barely more than a shift of her shoulder. “It’s who I am.”

She looked at him, steady and unreadable, every muscle in her face quiet and alert. “Still want to help me, Jungkook?” she asked. Her voice was low, coiled tight, ready to strike if he answered wrong.

“I don’t help anybody, Leo,” he said. He didn’t look away. “You remind me of me,” he added. The words softened despite him, a confession slipping through armor worn too thin for his usual voice.

Something shifted behind her eyes, too fast to pin down. Anger flared first, hot and bright. Then something heavier. Sadder. Pride followed, brittle but real. Beneath it all, grief waited, old and patient, searching for a way through.

“Worst compliment I’ve ever gotten,” she muttered.

“Thought you liked killers,” he said quietly.

She studied him for a long moment, lava light sketching slow shadows across her face. Eventually she leaned back against the scorched rock and closed her eyes, releasing a long breath that sounded like years loosening, layer by layer.

“Guess we’re both monsters now,” she said.

Jungkook kept his gaze on her.

“There are worse things to be,” he murmured, his voice as steady as the heat.

The quiet that settled around them no longer felt sharp. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was gentler than the world usually allowed. The prison groaned in the distance. Lava hissed and bubbled below. Somewhere, someone screamed, from a fight or a nightmare, it didn’t matter. Around the two of them, the air held still and warm, as if the heat itself were keeping something intact instead of burning it away.

It was Audrey who broke it. She kept her gaze on the shimmering orange light spilling from the lavafall, watching it ripple and shift like something alive. Her voice came out softer than before, careful, like she was drawing a blade from a sheath without wanting it to catch.

“So what about you?” she asked. “What’s your big tragic saga?”

Jungkook shifted slightly, easing the pressure of the stone beneath him as though it had grown sharper under his weight. One arm rested across his knee, loose and ready in that unthinking way trained fighters always held themselves. His eyes drifted toward a rising ribbon of heat, thin currents of molten breath rising from the planet’s wound below. The firelight carved his face into two halves, one bright and clean, the other swallowed in shadow, like two different men were deciding who got to speak.

When he finally did, his voice sounded rough, worn down at the edges. “I don’t remember much before crime. No warm kitchens. No bedtime stories. None of that.”

Audrey didn’t move. She watched him with that quiet, razor-focused attention of hers, listening in a way that made words choose their own pace.

“Lupus Five,” Jungkook said. “That’s where I’m from. Nothing to look at, just dust, engines, spaceport fumes thick enough to choke you. Whole planet’s a reason to leave.”

He traced a scar along the back of his hand, his thumb brushing over old damage like reading a line of braille left by a life he didn’t ask for.

“My parents were fine,” he said, although the word came out wrong, like it didn’t belong in the story. “Or that’s what the case file said. Truth is, I never knew them. My mom…” He let out a short, humorless laugh. “Wrapped my umbilical cord around my neck and threw me in the trash behind a liquor store.” He lifted one shoulder. “Real maternal.”

Audrey’s brow tightened, but she didn’t interrupt. Even the air seemed to grow heavier.

“Someone found me,” Jungkook went on. “Or I wouldn’t be here. Group home raised me after that. Then juvie. Then holding cells. Then the system got tired of seeing my face and threw me somewhere worse. I learned fast or I didn’t make it out.”

The firelight flickered across his features, revealing a hardness there, not anger but something sharper. Survival hammered into bone.

“Years of that,” he said. “Learning how to fight, lie, vanish. How to live without needing anything from anyone. How to become something people didn’t fuck with.” He spoke like he was reciting a list he knew by heart but did not enjoy remembering. “When I aged out, I joined the Company. Figured it would be better than prison. Better food. Better chances. They made me a ranger. Shipped me to Sigma Three. Tunnel sweeps.”

Audrey leaned forward just slightly. “Tunnel sweeps?”

“Spitfires,” Jungkook said. “Lava-breathing things that nest in the mines. Melt through bone like it’s paper.” He looked at her, deadpan. “Plan was simple. Two guys wait in the dark, one guy goes out and pisses off the monsters. That one guy usually dies.” Another shrug. “I learned how to cheat the draw.”

For a heartbeat, something close to a smile flickered across Audrey’s mouth, quick and reluctant but undeniably real.

“I got good,” Jungkook went on. “Good enough they sent me to Strikeforce Academy. Moon facility. They drilled everything into us, how to kill cleaner, faster, quieter. Taught me things most soldiers don’t even know are possible.” He paused, his jaw flexing once. “Graduated top five,” he said. “Didn’t matter. They still sent me right back to Sigma Three.”

Audrey’s eyes sharpened. “Why?”

“Security enforcement,” Jungkook said. Each syllable carried bitterness that tasted like rust. “Except security meant cracking down on civilians who were starving because the Company drained their supplies dry. And enforcement meant dragging protestors into tunnels.”

His voice dropped, almost swallowed by the heat around them. “And cutting out tongues so no one could repeat what they had seen.”

The lava below spat loudly, as if the planet itself wanted to recoil.

“I tried to report it,” Jungkook said. “Spent weeks pulling logs, footage, names. Thought somebody somewhere might care.” He let out a short, bleak huff of air. “They buried the report. Then buried me. After I killed the man who ordered half of it.”

He finally looked at her fully, openly, his gaze steady as a held blade.

“Deep Storage,” he said. “That’s where they put me. I stopped trying after that,” Jungkook said. “Stopped pretending right and wrong were anything but lines people like us break just by breathing. Started thinking smaller. Will I live tomorrow. Can I kill the next guy before he kills me. That kind of simple.”

Audrey studied him, her expression stripped of softness. What settled there was not sympathy but something rougher, like recognition wearing a blade’s edge.

“So what now?” she asked quietly.

Jungkook met her stare. The firelight caught his eyes and made them gleam like coals fighting to stay alive.

“Now?” he said. “Now I’m the better killer.”

Something in Audrey’s mouth twitched upward. A smirk. Quick, crooked, more a shadow of a smile than the thing itself. It vanished before it could settle.

“Namjoon used to tell me my anger would burn me up,” she murmured.

“It might,” Jungkook said. “But it burns clean while it lasts.”

Audrey looked down at the molten river below them, watching it churn slow and furious. The glow painted shifting patterns across her face, bright one moment and shadowed the next, like the planet couldn’t decide whether to expose her or hide her.

“You’re the only person I’ve met who doesn’t tell me to let it go,” she said.

“I wouldn’t know how,” Jungkook replied. “And I don’t think you want to.”

A breath of rough laughter slipped out of her, thin and worn down at the edges but real.

“No,” she said. “I really don’t.”

Jungkook leaned back against the scorched wall, letting the heat sink into his bones. The stone pressed against him with the same honesty everything in Crematoria had, no softness, no mercy, nothing hidden. The vents hissed around them, exhaling the slow breath of a dying world. For a while he simply watched the firelight shift across the fissures, like the planet’s pulse was beating under the stone.

Then, voice low and scraped raw, he said, “I shouldn’t have left you.”

Audrey’s lashes lifted. Slowly. Carefully. As if she needed to be certain she had heard him right. She did not interrupt or push or rush. She stayed still enough to let him say it or swallow it.

Jungkook dropped his gaze to his hands. Scarred knuckles, pale lines that crossed each other like maps, every mark a story he never planned to outlive. He flexed once, as if the memories caught in the scars were pulling back.

“I thought…” He hesitated, then forced the words out. “If I left you with Namjoon, maybe you’d get a chance to be normal. Something better than whatever I was. Didn’t think walking out would wreck you like that.”

Audrey sucked in a breath, sharp and metallic. She watched him with a level, unwavering stare, taking in the tense set of his shoulders and the way he kept his eyes on his hands like looking at her might break the moment.

“Well,” she said, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear with a gesture too precise to be casual, “Namjoon tried. He really tried. But he didn’t get it. The quiet. The rage.” A humorless breath escaped her. “He thought I needed prayer and decent meals.”

“You needed someone who had been burned too,” Jungkook said.

She nodded once, slow as a bruise forming. “Yeah.”

Silence stretched again, long and molten, curling through the space between them like heat rising from the vents. The lava sighed below. Metal groaned somewhere above. The air shimmered so hard it looked like the world around them was coming undone and knitting itself together in the same breath.

Audrey rolled her shoulders until something cracked, then loosened her neck. The shift looked small, but the air around her changed, like she had rearranged her armor piece by piece.

“I accept the apology,” she said at last. Her voice was dry but even, no sting behind it. “But I’m still going to prove I’m the better killer.”

Jungkook let out the ghost of a laugh, a quick exhale and a small twist at the corner of his mouth. More reaction than amusement.

“Wouldn’t bet on it.”

“That’s because you know I’m right,” she said.

She turned toward the corridor and drew in a deep lungful of steam-thick air, like she needed to clear out every word they had exchanged. But after a couple of steps she stopped, pivoted back, and shot him a look over her shoulder.

“This was way too much talking for one day. I need to shake it off.”

“Going to show off to some inmates?” Jungkook asked, deadpan.

“No,” she said, giving him that crooked, tired half-smile. “I need tea.”

“Conrad’s your guy.”

A snort slipped from her, quiet and amused, gone almost immediately. Then she turned again and walked into the corridor. Her boots struck the metal in a steady rhythm, her braid swinging behind her like a pendulum. The heat fractured her outline into wavering ghosts, one version of her moving forward, one lagging behind, one glancing back even though she didn’t. The steam swallowed her whole.

Jungkook watched her go. No soft expression. No reaching out. No dramatic regret. Just a steady, stony gaze, jaw set and shoulders sharp, a man carved by fire and sharpened by loss. He did not move. He did not look away until she was completely gone.

High above the stacked tiers and rust-stained walkways, the control room began its slow rise. The screw-columns that held it groaned as they twisted upward through the rock, the sound rolling through the prison like something ancient waking up after too long. The vibration ran down the walls and into the floor, humming under bare feet, rattling loose bolts and metal grates.

The vents split open with a harsh, tearing hiss, like a creature shedding skin it did not want to lose. Heat poured out immediately, sharp and stale, the kind that carried years of trapped air behind it. A gust swept down through the tiers, pushing the smell of rust, sweat, ash, and something older, something from the planet’s molten gut, across the inmates.

Dust followed in a thick, gritty wave, slipping through every open grate. Men ducked behind pipes or yanked shirts up over their mouths. Jungkook did not bother. He simply lowered his head, raised a hand to block the worst of it, and kept walking with the steady, unbothered stride of someone who had survived storms far worse than dust and heat.

He saw Conrad ahead, leaning against a railing with the posture of a man who had stopped caring about what the air did to him years ago. The wind whipped at the older man’s coat, smeared dust across his cheek, and he did not so much as blink. His eyes stayed fixed on the rising machinery above them.

Jungkook stepped beside him, both of them cast in the dim, bitter light filtering down from the vents.

“So they really do open the place up,” Jungkook said quietly. “Swap out the air.”

Conrad let out a short, humorless snort. “That ain’t the only reason.”

Jungkook looked up.

Far above, sunlight, thin and washed-out and more of a warning than warmth, cut across the cratered surface. Crematoria’s idea of morning. The horizon shimmered violently in the heat. Up there, on the cracked ground, a cluster of guards moved quickly around an open transport.

They were unloading bodies. Two of them. Pale, limp, swinging like discarded laundry in the guards’ arms. The men dropped them without ceremony onto a heap of scorched bone and half-melted ribcages. The smell drifted down slow, burned flesh and old rot and minerals cooked too many times to care anymore.

Jungkook did not speak. His eyes narrowed the way a predator’s might when watching a scene it already expected to find.

“That’s what they’re doing,” Conrad said. No anger this time, only a tired resignation that seemed to weigh down every word. “Clearin’ space. For more.”

The vents began to seal, grinding shut like the jaws of something buried deep. The control room stopped its ascent and slowly reversed direction, sinking back into the dark. The last thin ribbon of daylight disappeared, swallowed in one smooth, hopeless motion.

The screws locked into place with a sound like a vault sealing itself.

Inside the descending chamber, the walls groaned under the heat, metal flexing as though something unseen gnawed at it. The control deck flickered with failing fluorescents, each one buzzing like a trapped insect. King stood over the main panel, a block of a man, all scarred edges and hard muscle, the sort of person trimmed down to essentials by too many bad years. He leaned over the console with a concentration usually reserved for surgeons or bomb techs, his fingers spread across the panel as if he could feel every tremor running through the steel.

His hand hovered above a rusted lever, not out of hesitation but instinct. Men like King did not jump at every strange noise. But they did not ignore them either. Quiet in Crematoria was a liar, and he had learned long ago that when the place went still, something was moving where it should not.

The temperature gauge twitched once. Then sputtered. The needle shot upward. Two hundred, three, climbing fast enough to rattle the glass. A whining noise filled the chamber, high and frayed, as though the heat itself was screaming through the wires. Seven hundred. Higher.

His co-pilot leaned in, pale and sweating. “What is that?” His voice cracked despite the effort to keep it steady.

King did not answer. Men who had survived the things he had survived did not waste breath on other people’s fear. He kept his palm on the console, feeling the vibrations crawl up through the metal and into his bones. The floor shivered beneath his boots, slow, heavy tremors, like a giant turning over somewhere under the surface.

Behind him, The Boss laughed. It was a thin, polished laugh, the kind that came from someone who thought charm could fill the space where intimidation should be. He smoothed a hand over his gelled hair, smug from scalp to shoes.

“Almost daylight,” he said, his tone light enough to be insulting. “Gets hot out there.”

King made a small rumbling sound, neither agreement nor interest, just acknowledgment that he had heard. Heat was not what bothered him. Heat was predictable. Heat did not try to renegotiate numbers or cheat him out of half his payout.

This bastard, though.

This bastard thought he could.

King straightened slowly, vertebra by vertebra, like a predator uncurling from a crouch. His thumb tapped once against the console, controlled, quiet, dangerous.

“One-point-five,” he said. Every syllable clipped. “Jeon’s bounty is one-point-five.”

The Boss leaned casually against the railing, ankles crossed, tablet in hand as though he were settling in for a chat. Hair perfect. Smile slick. A man who thought the universe bent toward him because he bought it a drink once.

“Like I said,” he replied, tapping lazily at the screen, “I’m double checking.”

Double checking.

King’s jaw tightened.

“But,” The Boss added brightly, “I can offer you seventy-five now, and you can be on your way.”

King stared at him, a long, flat stare that stripped all the shine off the man’s grin. Behind them, the temperature gauge slammed into its limit and shrieked. The floor panels jumped under a deep vibration. Heat warped the air around their ankles like it was being pulled by invisible hands.

King did not move. Did not blink. Did not shift.

Some men made threats by shouting. Some by brandishing weapons. King made them by standing still. His gaze dropped to The Boss’s mouth, the source of all the pretty nonsense, measuring distance, weight, consequence. The look of a man deciding exactly how quickly he could end this if he wanted to.

The floor shook again.

Seventy-five.

This idiot really thought that was enough.

“I’m not leaving without the full bounty,” King said, voice low and steady.

“Well then,” The Boss said, still wearing that slick little smile, “you can keep waiting.”

Far below, Jungkook felt it first, the quiet shift, the tremor that threaded through the air like a warning with its teeth already bared. The stone beneath his boots quivered in a steady rhythm, as if something enormous was pacing under the floor, choosing where to strike. Conversations faltered. Footsteps stalled. A few prisoners looked up sharply, as though the heat itself had whispered in their ear. The temperature climbed, not from the vents but from deep in the planet, as if Crematoria were drawing in a slow, heavy breath.

Jungkook lifted his head. Whatever lived in the bones of this place rose with him. The rumble underfoot was not machinery. It was older than that, a deep, rolling growl moving through the rock like sound traveling through a body. The vibration crawled up his spine, steady and cold, the way a bad omen felt right before it proved itself.

Behind him, Audrey slowed her pace.

She had fallen in behind him without thinking, three measured steps back, the exact distance she allowed another human being. Close enough to act, far enough to withdraw. Her fingers brushed the knife at her hip, hovering near the worn grip, the motion small but precise. Her gaze swept the shaking walkway, checking angles, exits, shadows, habitual vigilance, bone-deep.

Jungkook did not turn.

“When it starts,” he said, voice low under the growing rumble, “it will be fast.”

He kept moving, his stride unbroken, the heat parting for him as though someone unseen pulled the air aside.

“You can stay here,” he went on, each word dropping flat and heavy, “breathing recycled air, waiting to end up on the bone pile like the rest…”

Lava-light flickered across the steel, shadows rippling and bending.

“…or you can be on my leg when I cut the fence.”

He did not look back.

Audrey stood still for a moment, feeling the heat press against her chest like a wave rolling out from the vents. The air tasted old, aged and reused too many times, carrying the metallic bite of the planet far below. The hum in the stone deepened, as if the prison itself was warning her off.

She watched Jungkook’s back as he continued on, shoulders rigid, steps deliberate, moving like someone who had walked through worse places than this and left them burning behind him. Then she glanced at Conrad beside her. Something flickered on her lips, a word or a thought, but she held it down before it surfaced.

A voice split the tension.

“Nobody walks outta this place,” Trush Minola said, rough as gravel ground under a boot.

He stood half-hidden in the rising steam, leaning on a rusted beam scarred by years of acidic heat. His arms were folded, veins coiled under skin darkened by soot and sun. A strip of fabric hung from his wrist like an old bandage. His eyes were shadowed but sharp, the kind that had watched too many men try and fail to escape.

Jungkook did not pause.

“I ain’t nobody,” he said.

Conrad’s eyes followed Jungkook until he disappeared into the haze. No disbelief, no comment, just the long, practiced stare of someone who had learned what hope usually cost.

Audrey folded her arms across her ribs, tightening them until her shoulders lifted like she was bracing herself. Her jaw clenched once, hard enough to show through the heat shimmer.

“Definitely not nobody,” she muttered.

Conrad raised an eyebrow.

Word of the tremor, or maybe of Jungkook, pulled other inmates closer. They drifted in from the steam, gaunt faces and sunburned eyes, men who moved like they had forgotten there were choices beyond enduring the next hour. They gathered loosely, not quite approaching, not quite walking away.

Trush stayed leaning on his beam, watching the direction Jungkook had gone as if expecting something to come out of it.

Audrey scanned the growing group. Rough, exhausted men. Faces hollowed by heat and time. Bodies stripped down to instinct. They looked like they had been carved out of the planet itself and left to dry in the sun. She let her arms fall.

“You should listen to him,” she said.

A few scoffed. Others stared flatly.

“Yeah?” someone called from behind a curtain of steam. “Why? Because he talks like he’s got a plan?”

“No,” Audrey said, louder now, her voice carrying a flint edge. “Because he does.”

The steam seemed to thin, as if curious.

“Jungkook has walked out of places that make this crater look friendly. Places with kill drones and biometric locks. Acid floods. Climate traps. Underground max-sec stacks so deep you forget what sunlight is. He survived those.”

A few murmurs died out. Some did not believe her, but they listened anyway. She pointed down the corridor he had taken. Her finger cut through the haze.

“Crematoria doesn’t even rank in his top five.”

That got their attention. Heads lifted. Men who had been pretending not to care leaned in just enough to betray themselves. Someone started to speak, but Audrey’s stare, cold and direct, chased the words back down his throat.

“Jungkook doesn’t make noise,” she said. “Doesn’t bluff. Doesn’t show off. Once he decides something, it is already done.”

She let that settle.

Conrad shifted beside her. “So what’s he decided?”

Audrey looked toward the corridor, where heat warped the air in waves.

“That he’s not dying down here,” she said quietly.

She lifted her chin, glancing up toward where the vents had sealed again, swallowing the last trace of fresh air. The heavy, recycled heat settled over them once more, thick and stale.

Then she looked back at the men, Conrad, Trush, the crowd that had gathered like half-starved animals circling the scent of something unfamiliar.

“If he says he’s cutting the fence,” she told them, “you better be on his leg when he does. Because once he moves, there will not be another chance.”

This time, the silence that followed was not disbelief. It was consideration. One by one, the prisoners began to drift away, not dismissing what she had said, but storing it. Measuring it. Waiting to see which way the wind would turn when the ground finally split.

The Necromonger guards descended the marble steps like shadows peeled off a dying sun, quiet and deliberate, their black armor swallowing the light instead of reflecting it. Nothing about them suggested they had ever been ordinary men. Even their footfalls sounded engineered, a slow, rhythmic thud that echoed faintly through the hall like the memory of a heartbeat.

The air was warm, but it smelled cold, metal and incense burned down to residue, something sterile that clung to the back of the throat. The hall tried to be reverent, but the place was too curated, too controlled. Even death felt organized here. At the foot of the steps sat the open sarcophagus.

Makani was already inside it, seated upright with her hands folded in her lap. Her white robes draped around her in soft layers that gathered like snow in the seams of the stone cradle. She looked composed, ritual stillness made flesh.

The guards parted, and another figure stepped in to take the opposite place.

Pia entered with the kind of grace that didn’t need announcing. Her steps were unhurried and precise, and something in the way she moved made the space seem smaller around her. Her eyes, cool and mischievous, drifted over Makani as if measuring her, deciding where she fit in the architecture of things. It wasn’t warmth or hostility. It was appraisal, the way someone evaluates an artifact to determine whether it is genuine or cleverly forged.

“Is it true?” Pia asked, her voice smooth enough to hide the edge beneath it. “That Elementals have no Guiding Spirit?”

Makani held her gaze. She didn’t shift or blink or show the slightest tremor in her breathing. It was the composure of someone who had rehearsed for questions like this.

“We follow the teachings of Plato,” she said.

The statement hung in the space between them, calm and neutral, neither defiant nor yielding.

A thin, amused twitch pulled at Pia’s mouth, a half-smile shaped by curiosity rather than kindness. “And what did he teach you? Anything that should keep me awake at night?”

A flicker crossed Makani’s expression, small and quick, almost swallowed before it surfaced, but Pia saw it.

“That the universe exists in pairs,” Makani said. “Form and void. Heat and cold. Motion and stillness. We are taught to recognize the balance and move with it.”

Pia nodded, though the shift in her eyes was subtle and sharp, interest tightening like a cinched wire.

“I have heard Elementals don’t believe in God,” she said quietly. “Because they want the position for themselves.”

Makani didn’t react, not outwardly. But the silence she let settle between them had weight.

“Plato also said,” Makani added softly, “that it was a wise man who invented God.”

A low breath of laughter slipped from Pia, warm, amused, edged in dark velvet. “You sidestep like a serpent,” she said. “I enjoy that. Tell me, do you pray?”

Makani drew in a measured breath. “We calculate.”

Pia’s smile sharpened. “Don’t we all.”

Makani continued, still steady. “We run scenarios. Probabilities. Outcomes. Weighted toward equilibrium. It is not our place to—”

Pia lifted a single finger.

Outside the cradle, the pilot acknowledged instantly.

The sarcophagus jolted and surged upward as metal clamps bit into the rails above. The chamber shot into the vertical shaft, pulled like a body being lifted from a grave. Through the narrow viewport, the city dropped away, marble roofs shrinking, arches dissolving into shadow, wind clawing at the hull as altitude built.

Pia watched the view retreat, then turned back to Makani. Something in the air felt colder now, the height stripping away any illusion of softness.

“You walk into my city,” Pia said, her voice gentle in tone but devoid of any gentleness at all, “and you speak to the Lord Marshal as if you stand beside him instead of beneath him. You do it without faith and without fear. That tells me one of two things.”

She tapped her knee lightly, slow and precise.

“Either you are naïve,” she said, “or you know something I don’t.”

Makani’s fingers tightened in her lap. Her knuckles blanched. For the first time since Pia approached, her gaze lowered.

Pia noticed, and took her time appreciating it.

“Let’s start with Jungkook,” she said.

The name cut through Makani like a blade. Her breath stuttered and caught halfway. The chamber’s warmth evaporated, leaving a tight, cold pressure across her ribs.

“I don’t know where he went,” Makani said quietly. “I truly don’t.”

Pia didn’t smile, but interest sharpened her features in a way that felt far more dangerous.

“No,” she murmured. “But I suspect you know where he came from.”

The air thickened. Makani felt it pressing against her skin, closing in on her as if the walls themselves were drawing breath. Her thoughts retreated inward, circling themselves, searching for the place where truth had been buried and left to sleep. She stared at her hands, hoping the lines etched into her palms would offer her some kind of guidance. 

Silence gathered, heavy and suffocating.

When Makani finally spoke, her voice came out thin, threaded with something reluctant and old. “It has to do with a foretelling,” she said. “A prophecy nearly thirty years old.”

Pia shifted, only slightly, but the subtle coil of attention tightened around her like a serpent waking.

Makani clasped her hands harder to keep them from trembling.

“It spoke of a child,” she said softly. “Born on Furya. A boy who would grow to destroy a great warrior. A conqueror.”

Her voice dropped into something distant and dreamlike, as though she had inherited the memory rather than lived any part of it.

“This warrior didn’t wait for fate,” she continued. “He went to meet it. He traveled to Furya himself.”

A shadow moved behind her eyes, a memory passed down through generations, still hot enough to burn.

“He burned the world,” Makani whispered.

The sarcophagus groaned as it climbed, metal grinding against rail, the city stretching out beneath them like a broken constellation. Pia didn’t move. She absorbed every word.

“He ordered the birthing halls destroyed. Set fire to the canals. Sent troops into the creches. They strangled newborns with their own cords.” Makani’s voice remained steady, but sorrow softened her gaze. “Others were torn from their mothers before the screams even left the air.”

Pia’s stillness hardened. Her expression became sculpture.

“The warrior believed he had ended it, that he had killed every child born during the foretold window.” Makani closed her eyes, briefly, as though bracing against the weight of what came next. “But one survived.”

The sarcophagus jerked as it locked into its next rail. Metal shrieked beneath them. Pia’s stare didn’t waver. Makani finished in a quiet breath.

“And that boy is Jungkook.”

The name hung there, suspended and sharp as a blade balanced on a single strand of hair. Pia inhaled slowly. A calculated smile traced her mouth, a thin and dangerous crescent.

“So,” she murmured, “that is the ghost in his blood.”

No reverence. No fear. Pure analysis.

Makani didn’t respond. Her silence was thin but intact, clinging to her like a final layer of armor. The cradle rattled once before steadying. Pia straightened, lifting her hand with casual, queenly command.

“Take her back to holding,” she said. “I have calls to make.”

Makani didn’t resist when the guards entered. There was no point in it, not here, not under Pia’s gaze. The woman watched knowledge the way a collapsing star devours its own light, pulling truth toward her with the inevitability of gravity. Makani had fought entire worlds using nothing but her voice; she would fight this one too, but not in Pia’s shadow.

Stillness had its own kind of power. Elementals knew that better than anyone. So she let the guards’ hands clamp around her arms. Let them steer her out of the sarcophagus as if she were a ceremonial object being returned to storage. She moved with the quiet grace of someone who understood that violence used at the wrong moment was violence wasted.

The Necromonger guards flanked her, armor shifting and murmuring with each synchronized step. They didn’t jeer or smirk. They didn’t need to. Their discipline was absolute, a hollowed and lifeless sort that made them resemble the Quasi-Dead more than living men. They walked her down the corridor with the emotional engagement of clockwork.

Pia didn’t spare her a glance as they left. She was already turning away, her dark robes slicing through the air in smooth arcs. Her silhouette cut a narrow, predatory line against the polished floor as she slipped into a shadowed archway. Her footsteps were quiet and deliberate, too careful to be called graceful, too soft to be trusted.

Behind her, the annex door sealed shut with a faint hiss. Inside, the room felt colder, shaped by obsidian composite walls that absorbed light instead of reflecting it. The stillness had weight here, as if the walls themselves imposed a rule: speak only what matters.

Pia approached the embedded control panel. There were no markings and no visible sensors, just a blank sheet of metal waiting for the one person who knew its code. She entered it with crisp, confident taps. A muted chirp answered.

A hidden drawer eased open. Inside lay the slab. She drew it out with the kind of care that belonged to people who respected danger more than they respected life. Her fingers traced the edges with almost ritualistic precision.

The Quasi-Dead lay motionless, limbs folded neatly, skin the color of candle wax left too near a flame. Its face was peaceful in a way that real peace never looked. Only the faint twitch of its throat suggested stubborn breath clinging to a dying body.

Pia leaned close. Her lips hovered near what remained of its ear. She whispered a single word in the dead tongue.

The creature shuddered, ribs jerking beneath its gray skin. Its eyes cracked open, milky and unfocused, ancient. The first threads of speech did not come from its mouth. They climbed up through the comm-channel wired along its spine, a ghost of a voice scraped thin by death.

Across the void, aboard a dreadnought drifting through the dark sea between stars, Taehyung lifted his head. The whisper slid into his ear like cold smoke.

“Furya,” he said. The name tasted metallic and old. “That world’s dead. Scrubbed from every chart.”

“By design,” Pia answered.

She didn’t look at the slab. Her eyes stayed on the obsidian walls as if waiting for them to reveal a clearer version of the truth Makani had given her.

“A young soldier sought a seer,” Makani had said earlier. Pia could still hear that fragile edge in the Elemental’s voice, the moment memory had become wound. Now Pia repeated the story, her tone smooth and controlled. “The seer told him a prophecy. A child from Furya. A boy who would one day destroy him.”

On the dreadnought, Taehyung’s fingers tightened around the railing.

“And that soldier,” Pia continued, “didn’t wait for fate to come find him. He went to Furya himself. Burned the birthing halls. Flooded the canals with fire. He killed every infant boy he found. Strangled some with their own cords. Ripped others from their mothers’ arms.”

A thin, broken sound escaped the Quasi-Dead, a breath like wind leaking through a cracked corridor, then silence.

Taehyung closed his eyes. It did nothing. The whisper still lingered behind his ribs.

“And that soldier,” he said, voice thinned by realization, “became the Lord Marshal.”

“He did,” Pia replied. “And he has been looking over his shoulder ever since.”

The words landed softly, but they felt heavy, ash drifting in slow, suffocating layers. Taehyung turned away from the viewport, his reflection bending across the glass. Time had carved him hard, angles sharpened by war, streaks of exhaustion blending into shadow. The man in the reflection looked like someone forged beneath pressure, hammered into shape across too many battlefields.

Only now did he understand the full extent of the Lord Marshal’s isolation. That loneliness had grown teeth.

“And the boy?” he asked, though dread told him he already knew.

“That is where the breeder comes in,” Pia murmured. “He thinks he missed one.”

A survivor. One boy out of thousands. The last ember from a world drowned in fire.

Taehyung’s jaw tightened, a muscle ticking like something trying to break free. The idea was impossible. And yet it fit too cleanly to ignore.

“If he believed the prophecy was finished,” Taehyung said slowly, “he wouldn’t be digging through abandoned Helion colonies. He wouldn’t be sending covert teams to dead systems. He wouldn’t be—”

“Questioning his own invincibility,” Pia finished. Her voice was barely above a whisper, but it cut like drawn steel.

Taehyung looked at himself again in the glass. The man staring back seemed older than he felt, harder and wearier. Less a shadow of the Lord Marshal, more a figure who had long grown out of his mentor’s silhouette.

“Why hasn’t he told anyone?” he asked.

Pia’s smile, unseen but palpable, darkened her tone.

“Because fear invites assassination,” she said. “And the empire he built does not forgive doubt. Not even in him.”

Her voice slipped through the connection like silk pulled over a blade.

Taehyung held her silence for a moment. Outside, the stars stretched indifferent and infinite. Inside, a single truth shifted the ground beneath him.

“No,” Pia added, her voice softening into something intimate and dangerous. “He trusts you. He still believes you are the soldier he shaped. The weapon he forged.”

She paused.

“Paranoia is patient, my love. It rises slowly. But it always rises.”

The whisper-link crackled with the faint sound of her breath.

“And when it does, he will see you as a threat too.”

Taehyung’s fingers curled slowly into a fist. He kept his gaze on the reflection in the glass, a man suspended between stars and darkness, between loyalty and a future he had never allowed himself to picture. The face staring back at him looked carved from decisions he had not made yet, shaped by consequences already gathering on the horizon.

“He’s slipping, Tae,” Pia said. Her voice softened at the edges, shaded with something that almost resembled sorrow. But Taehyung knew her too well. Emotion, for Pia, was another blade. “He may still wear the crown, but he rules from fear now. Fear of losing what he built. Fear of ghosts. That is not leadership. That is desperation.”

He let out a slow breath, the kind that seemed to take a piece of him with it. “And what would you have me do?”

The answer came wrapped in silk, soft and alluring and dangerous. There was promise in her tone, the glint of some future only she could see clearly.

“When the moment comes,” she said, "don't follow. Lead.”

Taehyung turned from the glass. Light from the bridge caught the sharp line of his jaw, casting a hard gleam along his cheekbone. Something in his posture shifted, a subtle change under the armor, as if a long-sleeping instinct had rolled over and opened its eyes.

Pia didn’t push. She didn’t need to.

She knew the feel of power when it first stirred. She knew the hush before ambition drew its first real breath. And she knew the difference between a soldier following orders and a man beginning to wonder what he could take for himself.

Taehyung didn’t speak. He just stood there, staring out at the scatter of cold stars, feeling their light settle over him like frost.

Jungkook lay on the cot like someone arranged by careful hands, too rigid to be resting and too still to be anything but awake. The overhead light flickered in a weary pulse, throwing a thin, sallow glow across his face. It hollowed out his cheeks and sharpened the line of his jaw until he looked less like a man and more like something hammered into shape, meant to endure and not to sleep.

Sleep didn’t come here. Not real sleep. Not the kind that trusted the darkness.

His body stayed motionless, but his mind churned beneath the surface, restless and sharp, turning over memories he had spent years trying to bury deep enough to forget. They rose anyway, prying their way up like fingers through loose soil.

Infanticide.

The word rose with the heavy, sinking weight of something dredged from the bottom of a black ocean. Not a term from a report. Not something he had overheard. It came with images, unwelcome and uninvited, far too clear to be imagination.

The memories did not drift in like dreams. They broke through him, abrupt and merciless, like doors being kicked open.

Hands, rough and gloved and far too many, grabbing small warm bodies and dragging them into cold air. Babies wrapped in bloody cloth. Mothers screaming until the sound snapped in their throats. A sky splitting open as if the world itself were being torn from its future.

There were no metaphors in these images. Only the clean and brutal clarity of something witnessed, something lived, something stamped onto him before he had words to name it.

The silence was always the part that crushed him. Not the screams, because those faded. It was the way sound died afterward. The way the world seemed to hold its breath while tiny bodies were lifted, discarded, erased.

His jaw clenched so tightly a tendon twitched along his cheek. Sweat gathered at the base of his spine despite the heat. He didn’t know why these memories were surfacing now or why they stalked him with such precision.

Maybe it was hearing the word Furya spoken out loud earlier, landing in the air like a stone dropped in deep water. Maybe it was Pia’s voice, probing and knowing and too sharp to ignore. Or the way people kept looking at him as if they were seeing something he couldn’t.

And always, the child. Barely a year old, wrapped in a torn blanket, eyes too wide and too old for a face that new. Those eyes unsettled him most of all, knowing and ancient and terrified. They felt like a reflection of something he couldn’t place, like staring at a memory of himself or a version of himself that never had the chance to exist.

And behind the child was a soldier. A towering figure in armor black as burned earth. A helmet with three mirrored masks stacked like watching spirits, one twisted in fury, one in sorrow, one blank. No face. No eyes. Only inevitability in human shape.

Jungkook never saw the man beneath the armor. But he knew him. Not as a person, but as a shape nightmares had learned to wrap themselves around.

The soldier reached down, grasping the edge of the child’s blanket with the careful inevitability of someone plucking out a flaw from a tapestry.

Boots on scorched stone. Smoke twisting upward like ink. The scorched tang of ion fire. Too close. Too familiar.

Jungkook’s breath ripped out of him in a sharp exhale. He opened his eyes to the dim ceiling above his cot, the shadows swimming slightly as though he had surfaced from a deep dive. A chill clung to him despite the oppressive heat bleeding through the floor.

He pushed himself upright. The cot complained with a thin metallic groan. He sat there for a moment with his elbows braced on his knees, fingers tangled in his damp hair, trying to shake off the image that clung to him like cooling tar.

Movement helped. Standing helped. Anything felt better than sitting there and letting the vision tighten around his ribs.

He stepped out of the cell and leaned against the doorframe, arms loosely crossed, head tipped back against the stone. He looked relaxed, almost bored, but the pulse in his neck betrayed him, still running hot with fire and steel and a child’s wide silent eyes.

Above him, Audrey lay draped over a wide heat pipe like a bored cat taking advantage of warmth it didn’t trust but would gladly steal. One leg dangled into the open air, the other bent lazily beneath her. She was chewing something, gum or dried fruit, her jaw shifting with slow stubborn rhythm. Her braid hung over the pipe like a rope left out after a battle.

In the flickering half-light, she looked younger. Softer, even. A version of herself she did not show on purpose.

She exhaled through her nose, watching him from above. Her eyes caught everything, too sharp and too aware.

“You sleep like shit,” she muttered.

Jungkook didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

Audrey rolled onto her stomach with the easy, loose-limbed grace of someone who had spent half her life sleeping in places people were not meant to sleep, gutters and beams and ship rafters and anything that kept her one layer above danger. She propped her chin on her forearm, her hair spilling over the pipe like dark ink, catching the dim light in uneven strands. The metal beneath her vibrated with Crematoria’s deep molten pulse, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes stayed fixed on Jungkook, sharp and curious, trying to read more than he would ever say aloud.

“So?” she called down, her voice drifting through the heat. “How’d you end up here? Last I heard, you went ghost.”

Jungkook didn’t answer right away. Silence clung to him like dust, thick and stubborn. He tipped his head back until it met the stone, eyes half-lidded, face unreadable in the flickering light.

Finally, with a voice low enough to sound like it belonged to someone else, he said, “I was on U.V.6.”

Audrey blinked. Raised her brows. “No you weren’t.”

“I was.”

She pushed herself upright, sitting cross-legged on the pipe, looking down at him like a street prophet ready to deliver a verdict. “U.V.6 doesn’t have people,” she said. “Doesn’t even have pests. Just frozen fog, thin air, and rocks that’ll skin you if you look at them wrong. Why would anyone go there?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Exactly.”

That shut her up for a beat. Then another.

Jungkook went on, his voice flat but carrying something underneath it, a current heading somewhere dark. “I was off-grid. No records, no signals. Just me, a broken ship, a geothermal cavern that never saw daylight. Nobody in the galaxy had a reason to look in my direction.”

He glanced down the corridor, as though half-expecting the memory to show up out of the shadows.

“Nobody was supposed to find me there.”

Audrey narrowed her eyes. “So who did?”

He shifted his weight against the wall, arms folding over his chest. The motion wasn’t relaxed, only automatic. “Private hit,” he said. “New Mecca.”

Audrey froze halfway through a breath. “From Namjoon?”

Jungkook gave a single, stiff nod.

“He didn’t sign it,” he said. “But he worked with her.”

“Her who?”

“An Elemental,” Jungkook said. “Makani.”

The word Elemental made something tighten in Audrey’s jaw. Too many stories. Too many half-truths whispered by people who had seen the edge of something unexplainable and backed away fast.

Jungkook continued, “She told him a war was coming. Not a border dispute. Not another collapse of trade routes. Something worse. Necromongers. They’re wiping systems clean. Planets disappearing.”

Audrey didn’t move for a moment, but her eyes dimmed, something pulling inward like a flame leaning from a draft.

“And she thinks you’re supposed to stop them?” she asked.

“She thinks I can help,” Jungkook corrected. “Which isn’t the same thing.”

Audrey snorted softly, the sound edged with disbelief. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“I wish.”

“So Namjoon just handed you over?” she asked, her voice sharpening.

“He didn’t think of it that way.” Jungkook’s expression twisted, as if the words tasted wrong coming out. “He thought helping her was the right call. Bigger than him. Bigger than me. If there was a chance, he said, someone had to try.”

Audrey stared at him for a long moment. Something flickered across her face, small and fast. Hurt, maybe, or the kind of recognition that sits like a bruise.

“He believed that much?” she whispered.

Jungkook met her eyes. His weren’t warm, but they were honest. “Enough,” he said, “to sell me out.”

The silence that followed settled thick between them. The heat of the prison pressed close, humming through stone and metal like a slow-burning fuse.

Eventually Audrey muttered, “Shit.”

Jungkook let out a sound that might have been a laugh if it had any life in it. Instead it scraped out like metal dragged over rust. “Yeah.”

Audrey swung off the pipe, landing beside him with a soft thud. Dust puffed up around her boots. She brushed her palms together as if she were wiping off a memory she didn’t want sticking to her skin.

“Well,” she said, straightening, “now we’re both here.”

“Yeah.”

“And if there’s an army out there burning stars down…” Her gaze drifted toward the dim corridor, where steam curled like slow-moving ghosts. “We’ve got bigger problems than bad tea and stale rations.”

Jungkook didn’t argue. He rarely argued unless it mattered.

Audrey leaned back against the wall beside him, chewing on silence the way she chewed on everything, methodically and with intent, like she meant to break it down to its smallest pieces. Then she shot him a sideways look, sharp and easy as a flicked blade.

“How’s the holyman? Still holier-than-thou, or did life finally rough him up a little?”

Jungkook’s mouth twitched, a fractional echo of humor. “He’s doing alright. Last I saw.”

“Still on Prime?”

“Yeah. Senate seat.”

Audrey’s eyebrows climbed. “Seriously?”

“Clean suits, speeches, the whole package.” Jungkook shifted, looking almost uncomfortable describing anything so polished. “He married a woman named Samara. Tough as hell. They have a daughter now. Dae.”

Something softened in his voice. Not warmth. Just a gentler angle.

“She’s got light in her,” he said. “You can see it.”

Audrey watched him the way someone watches a fragile animal, careful and almost suspicious of the gentleness.

“You sound like you liked that life,” she said quietly.

He shrugged, eyes on the floor. “It wasn’t mine to like. But being near it was good. Seeing decent people do well. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Audrey let out a faint scoff. “Doesn’t sound like distance is treating you great now.”

He didn’t deny it. His silence was enough.

After a long moment she asked, her voice dropping low, “Was Namjoon still there when the Necromongers hit?”

Jungkook’s jaw tightened, a quick, involuntary pulse. Something behind his eyes went hard.

“Yeah,” he said finally.

She waited. She had learned to wait with him. Sometimes the only way to get the truth out of Jungkook was to give it room to come up on its own.

“And?” she pushed.

He exhaled through his nose, the sound slow and gritty. “Last time I saw him, his leg was busted. Bad. Samara was dragging him toward a tunnel with the kid on her hip. He kept telling her to leave him. She wasn’t having it.”

Audrey didn’t move. She didn’t blink. She just watched his face.

“I turned back for one second,” he said. “Just to make sure no one was on our heels. When I looked again, they were gone.”

“Buried?” she asked.

“Maybe.” His eyes drifted to the far wall as if something might be written there. “Maybe not. He’s been through hell before. And he’s got a family now. People don’t break as easily when they have something to hold onto.”

Audrey folded her arms tighter. “But you don’t know.”

He shook his head once. “No.”

A beat passed, then he added, almost tossed out like loose change, “Killed the bastard who shoved him off that bridge, though. That felt right.”

Audrey’s mouth parted a little. Not in surprise. More like recognition. This was exactly the kind of man Jungkook was, and exactly the kind he wasn’t.

“He sold you out,” she said evenly. “And you still hope he’s alive?”

He answered without hesitation. “Yeah.”

“That’s a weird kind of loyalty.”

“He didn’t mean it as betrayal. That’s not who he is.” Jungkook rubbed a scar along his knuckles, the motion absent and practiced. “He thought he was helping. Helping her. Helping me. In his righteous, morally upright, holyman way.”

Audrey snorted softly. “Still landed you in here.”

He made a low grunt, half agreement and half irritation. “Yeah. But now he owes me. Again.”

Audrey tipped her head, a faint smirk teasing its way across her mouth. “You’re more forgiving than I remember.”

“I’m not,” Jungkook said. “I just don’t have many people I call friend. Namjoon’s one of the few. Always was. And he’s tougher now. He stood his ground when he put a bounty on me. Didn’t flinch when we locked eyes again. Not many would have.”

The vents above them groaned and belched out another wave of furnace heat. The pipes shuddered like old bones. Somewhere deeper in the maze of stone and steel, a door slammed. Whether it opened or closed was anyone’s guess.

Jungkook shifted his stance, arms folding again as though he were bracing against the heat crawling across his skin. Crematoria breathed around them in slow, scorching exhales, the planet’s version of a heartbeat. The glow from the core pulsed faintly, as if the world itself wanted to swallow its prisoners whole.

Audrey stayed beside him, unusually quiet. She stared down the corridor where steam pooled, thick and resistant, like memories refusing to thin out. Something churned behind her eyes, something she had been circling for a while.

Then she said it, soft and hesitant, as though the heat had worn her edges down for just a moment.

“You ever think about Y/N?”

Jungkook didn’t look up right away. His breath faltered, then steadied. His posture didn’t soften, nothing about him ever did, but a stillness settled inside him.

“Sometimes,” he said.

Audrey nodded like she had expected that. Her gaze stayed on the empty corridor.

“What do you think she would be doing if she were still around?”

Jungkook let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh but came from the same old place.

“Flying,” he said. “She would still be in the air. Probably running her own crew by now. Her own routes. Her own ship.” His voice dipped into something faintly warm. “You couldn’t ground that woman for anything.”

A ghost of a smile touched Audrey’s lips before slipping away. “You liked her.”

“I respected her,” Jungkook said immediately, too fast to be rehearsed and too precise to be casual. Then, quieter, almost as if the words were meant to stay inside him, he added, “She stuck. Nothing else ever really did.”

Audrey turned her head slightly, watching him from the corner of her eye. Careful. Testing. Stepping up to a line neither of them had crossed before.

“Were you in love with her?”

He met her gaze head-on. His eyes were dark and quiet, holding things the world had no business seeing.

“No,” he said. Clipped. Certain. “But no one has ever sacrificed anything for me before. And I wasn’t worth her dying over.”

What he didn’t say, and what she didn’t ask, hung in the air between them. In the places sleep sometimes ambushed him, she lived. Sometimes she wore the blood and grit of the ridge they had fought on. Sometimes she wore her flight jacket and that crooked grin. Always Frenchie. Always the version of her before the universe tried to tear itself apart.

Audrey looked down, her voice softening as though she were letting something fragile breathe for once. “I wanted to go with her. When things started going to shit, I kept thinking that if I had just asked, maybe she would have let me tag along.” She swallowed. “I wanted to see Aguerra Prime with her. I wanted her to be my big sister.”

Jungkook didn’t respond with words, but his silence gave her room and she stepped into it.

“She deserved better,” Audrey whispered. “A good life. A quiet one, even. Not to end up as a name on the colony networks.” Her jaw clenched, the sound nearly audible. “I watched the broadcasts. Namjoon watched most of them. I stopped after a few weeks. I couldn’t keep seeing her family like that. I left Helion not long after.”

Jungkook’s gaze drifted down the corridor. When he spoke, his voice was low and almost thoughtful. “Hope her people are okay. She had a brother, didn’t she? On the coast? I think he was a pilot too.”

“Yeah,” Audrey said. “And a niece. A little thing who used to wear her aunt’s flight patch during interviews. Her sister-in-law did the talking. Grief hit the rest too hard.” She paused, her brows drawing together. “I think about that kid sometimes. Wonder if she still wears the patch.”

Jungkook made a quiet sound, somewhere between amusement and something heavier. It was hard to tell which way it leaned.

“Maybe I’ll head to Aguerra Prime someday,” he said. “Say hello. See the oceans.”

Audrey let out a sharp laugh and shook her head. “You? On Aguerra Prime?” A smirk curled at her lips. “They would have you clocked before your boots touched the ramp. The place is crawling with cops.”

“Still,” he murmured, a faint pull tugging at one corner of his mouth. “Might be worth it. I like a challenge.”

Audrey’s grin widened, crooked and fond. “Aguerra has drones now. Really polite ones. They’ll ask you to kneel before they fry your lungs.”

That earned an actual laugh from him, quiet and rough around the edges but real. The kind of sound he didn’t give easily, maybe not at all. Above them, the vents groaned again as though clearing their throat, blowing another blast of furnace heat and dust down the tier.

© chimcess, 2025. Do not copy or repost without permission.

The doors of the Capitol Dome opened with a long, reluctant groan, metal dragging against metal before yielding. The sound rolled down the corridor and thinned into nothing. Cold air rushed out to meet him, sterile and deliberate, stripped of warmth by design. It caught in his throat and lungs, sharp enough to command notice.

Namjoon walked through without hesitation.

The change in pressure snapped his cloak once against his back before the fabric settled again. It was dark and formal, tailored to fall correctly without calling attention to itself. Expensive, but restrained. Chosen to signal responsibility rather than privilege. His shoulders adjusted automatically as he moved, posture aligning out of habit more than thought. He carried himself the way someone did when consequence had become familiar weight.

Time had worked on him quietly. Silver threaded through his hair at the temples. Fine lines rested at the corners of his eyes, shaped by years of control rather than ease. He moved with steady efficiency, nothing hurried, nothing wasted. Long ago, he had learned how much of himself to offer a room and how much to keep in reserve.

Above him, the ventilation system maintained its constant hum, even and unyielding. It followed him down the corridor like a reminder he could not shake.

He was late.

The summons had arrived without warning. As chair of the Committee for Cultural Integrity and Information, availability was assumed at all hours, but the priority chime had found him across the city at a Second Light event, surrounded by warmer air and softer lighting.

Second Light was his in conviction, not ownership. It was his refusal to accept a city that buried its failures and called them unavoidable. The program worked with at-risk youth: former gang members, displaced families, teenagers pushed into adulthood by hunger and instability. Six weeks in, the progress was fragile but genuine. Apprenticeships were beginning to take shape. Names had started appearing on lists. Interviews were scheduled. Small steps, easily undone, but real.

He had been speaking when the chime cut through the room.

The unfinished sentence lingered with him more than it should have. Not because the words themselves mattered, but because they had been meant for someone specific. A boy who leaned hard into indifference. A girl whose laughter rang too loud, too deliberate, as if daring anyone to look closely. He had been trying to give them something simple. Proof that they could build a future of their own, if they did not let the city decide their limits.

The chime had stilled the space. Conversations faltered. The Capitol seal pressed into his awareness like a hand at the back of his neck. He had excused himself without explanation. Explanations were no longer a privilege he could afford.

Now the Capitol waited.

The corridor guided him forward in deliberate shifts, narrowing and opening with controlled precision. Ceiling lights cast an even, unforgiving glow, exposing hairline fractures in the marble and seams where repairs had been carefully concealed. The building demanded permanence. It demanded composure. It did not reward urgency.

The sound reached him before the chamber came into view.

Not chaos. Not yet. The rotunda still held, though strain threaded through it. Clerics recited doctrine in smooth, practiced tones. Military officials spoke in clipped phrases, urgency compressed beneath discipline. Lawmakers leaned on precedent and procedure, every argument shaped to sound reasonable.

Fear moved beneath it all, managed carefully and dressed up as logic.

His footsteps rang louder than expected as he reached the threshold. The Capitol had a way of amplifying reminders that people still moved within its walls.

Parliament held one hundred forty-four seats, arranged by hierarchy and tradition. Thirty-six belonged to the Clerical Order, pale robes falling in precise lines, symbols worn close to the pulse. Seventy-eight were claimed by the Legislative Order, faces trained to listen without betraying reaction. The remaining seats carried the title Diplomatic, though no one mistook their purpose. Defense ministers. Admirals. Security commanders. Uniforms heavy with insignia and intent.

Even seated, they commanded the room.

An aide hurried toward Namjoon near the entrance, clutching a datapad with hands that refused to steady. Sweat darkened the collar of his uniform despite the manufactured cold. His hair was regulation neat, though a single strand had come loose and clung to his forehead.

He leaned in close as they moved, voice lowered. “Things have been difficult, Senator Kim,” he said. “It’s serious.”

Namjoon kept walking. His attention stayed forward, fixed on the chamber ahead and the polished stone designed to make authority appear effortless.

“When proceedings conclude,” he said quietly, “the record will be extensive.” He slowed just enough to catch the aide’s eyes. “The outcome will not be.”

The aide swallowed, nodded too quickly, and veered away.

The chamber opened around Namjoon as he entered, wide and deliberate, ornate in a way meant to impress before a single word was spoken. It felt less like a place for debate than a place built for reverence, as though governance itself were something to be worshipped. Gold filigree traced the arches overhead. Stained glass fractured the light into rigid symbols: suns, crescents, spears, ships. Icons repeated so often they no longer felt symbolic, only inevitable.

Statues lined the walls. Founders, saints, generals. Their stone faces watched the assembly with fixed expectation, as if measuring the living against a standard that could no longer change.

The tension cut straight through the display. It showed in small, human ways. Hands clenched too tightly around armrests. Lawmakers blinking more than necessary. A cleric worrying his rosary beads too fast, the soft clicks betraying him. Habit had taken the place of prayer.

At the central podium, Defense Minister Garran Vol struck the lectern once. The sound snapped across the chamber, sharp and decisive. He was broad-shouldered, his hair cropped close, his expression set into something with little patience for delay. The uniform looked less worn than inhabited. His gaze moved through the room with the practiced precision of someone accustomed to counting assets.

“We must consider immediate deactivation of the beacon network,” Vol said. His voice was steady, shaped by years of alarms and briefings. “Each active signal provides a navigational reference point. A vulnerability. An invitation.”

Across the chamber, Senator Cecily Soo rose. Her movements were controlled, posture composed, hair pinned back with exacting care. She pressed her fingers briefly to the edge of her desk before speaking, as if grounding herself.

“With respect, Minister Vol,” she said. The respect was real, but strained. “That would amount to strategic abandonment.” Her gaze stayed on him. “Deactivating the beacons would sever navigation and communication for the outer colonies. Civilians would be left without guidance, without warning.”

A ripple passed through the Legislative benches. A few nods. A few restless shifts. Someone released a sharp breath that hovered between a laugh and something close to breaking.

From the clerical section, Archpriest Fadi Mansour rose at an unhurried pace, his robes settling neatly as he stood. He lifted the pendant at his chest, a fading sun worn smooth by years of touch. It swayed slightly as he spoke.

“Before this council proceeds,” Mansour said evenly, “we require clarification.” The room quieted without instruction. “Are the reports accurate that multiple sanctified colonies have been destroyed in full?”

Several lawmakers went still. A low murmur followed.

“Confirmed losses stand at seven,” a voice called from above, clipped and precise.

“Updated figures indicate twelve,” another voice added, slower. “Pending verification.”

Twelve.

The number settled into the chamber without sound, heavy in its silence.

“And none within our immediate jurisdiction,” Senator Maelis Kurn said calmly. He was older, silver-haired, his expression shaped into practiced gentleness. He spoke like a man accustomed to difficult truths. “No confirmed incursions. No direct evidence of an imminent threat.” One hand lifted, palm open, offering reason rather than insistence. “We should be cautious about legislating from incomplete intelligence.”

A few clerics murmured agreement. Several military officers shifted in their seats. Vol’s jaw tightened, not with anger, but with the restrained impatience of someone who believed delay itself was already a mistake.

The exchange tightened the room further. No one relaxed. The tension simply rearranged itself. Clerics turned doctrine against doctrine, verses delivered in calm, practiced tones. Generals spoke in probabilities and readiness states, translating destruction into margins and charts. Lawmakers leaned on charters and precedent, as though history might still have the authority to slow what was coming.

Beneath every argument, fear persisted.

Namjoon moved toward his seat, passing between the rows as quietly as his cloak allowed. He nodded where protocol demanded it, brief acknowledgments exchanged without warmth. He could feel the attention tracking him, some relieved by his presence, others resentful, others simply hoping he would take on the weight.

He settled into his place among the Legislative Order and rested his hands on the desk. The marble was cold, biting against his palms. He welcomed it. The sensation anchored him, a reminder that beneath the office and the expectation, he was still present, still human.

Above them, the stained glass kept breaking the light apart, scattering gold and red and blue across the chamber. Faces shifted in color as people moved through it, authority rendered decorative, almost theatrical in its glow.

Namjoon listened. He listened to prayers disguised as policy and to policy delivered with the measured cadence of prayer. He listened to language shaped by legacy and to language sharpened by survival. The room spoke in layers, each voice careful, each word chosen with an awareness of how long it might echo.

Beneath it all, a thought he had left unfinished earlier surfaced again, persistent and unwelcome. What do you say to the people who pay for your decisions?

He set it aside. Not because it was wrong, but because truth in a room like this had to be handled with care. Drawn slowly. Used only when you were prepared for what it broke on contact.

Near the rear benches, where the light thinned and sound behaved differently, Brother Yacoub Nasser rose. He unfolded himself with deliberate slowness, age carrying its own quiet authority. His vestments shifted softly, heavy with years, stitched through with symbols older than any current charter. The embroidery had been worn smooth by countless hands.

The chamber quieted without instruction. Not obedience exactly. Attention simply drifted toward him. Conversations tapered off. Arguments stalled. Brother Nasser rested his hands on the bench before him, fingers loose, his gaze steady and unhurried.

“Whether the number is seven or twelve,” he said, “is not the point.” His voice carried without effort. “We operate within systems we only partially understand. Our lights. Our signals. Our transmissions.” He allowed the words to settle before continuing. “The question before us is whether we choose to keep announcing ourselves.”

Unease moved through the room, subtle but immediate.

Defense Minister Vol answered at once. His jaw tightened, one hand bracing against the lectern before he reined himself in.

“Maintaining the beacon network increases the probability of hostile contact,” he said. “That conclusion is supported by data.”

Brother Nasser inclined his head, acknowledging the response. “And deactivation,” he replied calmly, “guarantees civilian loss.”

He paused, breathing evenly, neither rushed nor hesitant.

“Entire populations would become unreachable,” he continued. “We are Helion Prime. The First Light. The last point of contact.”

A few clerics lowered their heads without realizing they had done so.

“Every decision made here affects four other worlds,” Brother Nasser said. “I fail to see how choosing darkness prevents what has already begun.”

Silence lingered, stretching past the point protocol usually allowed. When voices returned, they did so carefully, layered and controlled, procedure reasserting itself as speakers waited their turn, as if order alone might slow the pressure building in the room.

From above, Namjoon watched. Fatigue sat heavy in him, not sharp or immediate, but the deep wear of someone who had seen this trajectory forming for years. His hands rested on the railing, fingers spread, holding steady while the future shifted below.

An aide approached quietly, steps measured, voice kept low.

“Director Badawi has entered the airspace,” he said. “South field.”

Namjoon acknowledged it with a small nod. His expression did not change. No surprise. No relief. Just acceptance, the way one accepted gravity or weather.

Below, the chamber strained to hold itself together. Clerics leaned on doctrine and precedent, smoothing fear into theology. Defense officials traded threat assessments in clipped exchanges, reducing annihilation to probabilities and margins. Legislators argued jurisdiction and charter, as if borders still meant something to whatever waited beyond them.

The stars had gone quiet. No one could agree on what that silence meant.

The holodisplay came to life without warning. One moment the Dome glowed with gold and marble. The next, a hard white light washed over everything, draining warmth from the room. Stone and metal dulled under the glare. Even the statues seemed to recede, their faces flattened and distant.

Above the chamber, the Helion System resolved into view.

Five planets traced precise paths around a single sun, their motion steady and unbroken. The system turned like a machine that had never known interruption. The sun burned at the center, indifferent.

Beacon markers pulsed across the display. Soft points of light blooming and fading in slow rhythm. Signals meant to reassure. To say: we are here.

Except where they were not.

Aquila Major. Cassinia Majora. Altair.

The names surfaced briefly before dimming away. One by one, the lights vanished. No explosion. No distortion. Just absence. Dark gaps opened in the map, unmistakable and cold.

A murmur moved through the chamber, restrained, controlled, but unmistakably real. Aquila had been the most recent loss. Everyone knew it. The broken transmissions. The unanswered hails.

Taurus had endured a siege days earlier. Enemy ships had arrived with precision, struck, and withdrawn without explanation. What followed had been fragmented at best. Stations destroyed. A prevailing theory, thin and unsatisfying, suggested the attackers had simply moved on.

Now those same ships were approaching Helion. No one could say when. Or where. Or whether they would strike at all. Intent, once dissected endlessly in intelligence briefings, had dissolved into speculation. Silence had replaced motive, and silence was harder to read than aggression.

Before the room could reorganize itself around the image, a voice rose from the labor delegation. It was rough, shaped by years of shouting over machinery and weather, but steady.

“I maintained contact with Taurus until signal loss,” Senator Anika Phael said.

She stood with both hands braced on her desk, shoulders squared. Her posture held, though her jaw was set hard. Her eyes remained fixed on the projection, as if looking away might allow the darkness to spread.

“After Aquila fell, the surrounding cluster was neutralized,” she said. “The sequence was rapid. Methodical.” She swallowed once before continuing. “Altair ceased transmission shortly after. Taurus remains operational. The shutdown appears deliberate. No further data is available.”

Another voice rose from the rear benches. Senator Oren Pike stayed seated, hands folded, his tone flat and deliberate, as though he were reading from a record that had already closed.

“Insignia recovered at each confirmed site matches the Necromonger seal,” he said. “I can’t speak to motive, but the historical pattern is consistent.” He paused, not for effect but for precision. “They don’t occupy territory. They don’t govern. They eliminate. Nothing is left intact.”

Denial piled over objection. Questions overlapped and unraveled each other. Motions surfaced only to collapse under their own weight. Procedure strained beneath what it was meant to contain, its careful language beginning to fray as the room pushed against it.

Namjoon rose.

The simple act cut through the noise. Chairs stilled. Voices dropped away.

“Senator Soo has framed this correctly,” he said, stepping into the open space.

He stopped there, shoulders squared, hands resting easily at his sides. No pacing. No performance. He looked like someone who had already accepted what was coming and saw no value in pretending otherwise.

“This isn’t about fear,” he said. “It’s about inertia.”

A few heads lifted. Others locked in place.

“Hostile forces don’t need justification to erase a world,” Namjoon continued. “They need time.” He let the words settle, unforced. “And we’ve given it to them.”

The silence that followed was focused, taut with attention.

“Systems have vanished while we debate process,” he said. “The threshold has already been crossed. Our responsibility now is preparation. That is our obligation to the Helion System.”

From the clerical benches, Patriarch Elias al-Qadiri rose. His scarlet robes settled as he adjusted his sleeves, movements precise, eyes sharp with assessment.

“Be specific, Senator Kim,” he said. “What are you proposing? Evacuation of core systems? Militarization of civilian space?”

The room leaned toward the exchange.

“No,” Namjoon said. “Taurus initiated a full withdrawal and survived. They altered their positioning. They avoided direct engagement.” His hands opened slightly, palms visible, not in appeal but in clarity. “We should examine what they did differently instead of repeating the same failures.”

Above them, the holodisplay continued its steady glow. Planets traced their orbits, indifferent to the argument unfolding beneath them.

Senator Halvek Rho spoke next, his voice low, almost archival.

“The Aguerra System reports the diversion toward Taurus was an anomaly,” he said. “The Coalsack and Lupus moons confirm it. Everywhere else, the pattern holds.” He tapped his desk once. “Signal collapse followed by total infrastructure loss. The planet becomes uninhabitable shortly after.”

From the galleries came a measured question. “Are we treating the Necromonger hypothesis as confirmed?”

Namjoon’s gaze lifted toward the fractured glass ceiling, light breaking into symbols overhead. “For the record,” he said evenly, “it was Senator Yeon who introduced the Necromonger designation into official proceedings.”

Recognition rippled through the benches.

“Conrad Yeon was convicted of treason,” General Kess Draek said. “He’s imprisoned on Crematoria.”

Namjoon didn’t move. “He wasn’t prone to hysteria,” he said. “When someone like that turns to belief, the data is worth reviewing rather than dismissing.” A brief pause followed. “Yeon killed a senator. That doesn’t erase the work he did here.”

The debate might have reclaimed the room if the northern doors had not begun to open.

The sound arrived first. Metal grinding against metal. Hinges protesting the effort. It cut through the chamber, rough and unavoidable. Heads turned as the doors resisted, parting just enough to admit a slice of storm.

Yala Badawi stepped inside. Rain clung to her coat in dark flecks, scattering across the polished floor before evaporating in the Dome’s controlled air. Her hijab was arranged simply, for function rather than display. Her posture never wavered.

At the center of the floor, she knelt with formal precision. One knee. Straight back. Her palm pressed to the sun-etched sigil set into the stone, an old gesture of acknowledgment and accountability.

“Senator Badawi,” the Defense Minister said sharply. “You’re late.”

She barely looked at him.

“Relay nodes seventeen through twenty-five have entered partial shutdown,” she said, calm and direct. “The action was precautionary. Three additional systems are now confirmed lost.”

Silence took the room.

“We will not initiate full grid deactivation without parliamentary approval,” Yala continued as she rose. “But we are suspending the broadcast of energy and navigational signals into deep space.” Her gaze moved across the benches. “I recommend halting all trade and supply traffic until further notice, should evacuation become necessary.”

Commander Torik Jahl surged to his feet, his chair scraping against the marble. His expression stayed controlled, irritation visible only in the tight set of his jaw and the tension in his hands against the desk.

“And you believe your office authorizes action on this scale without consent?”

Yala turned to face him fully and held his gaze. She didn’t raise her voice or sharpen her tone. She didn’t have to.

“I chair the Helion Energy Committee,” she said. “Grid failure means the immediate loss of atmospheric control, water processing, thermal regulation, and medical infrastructure.” Her delivery stayed even, almost clinical. “Every unit under your command depends on uninterrupted energy distribution. If that doesn’t justify action, then we’re not having a meaningful discussion. We’re debating theory.”

No one contradicted her.

After a brief pause, Lieutenant Ranya Haddad rose, careful in her movements, as if she were testing the stability of the room before committing herself.

“Beacon deactivation risks destabilizing dependent colonies,” she said. “It may be interpreted as withdrawal rather than strategy.”

“It’s neither,” Yala replied without hesitation. “It’s risk mitigation.” Her eyes moved across the benches. “Every signal we broadcast serves as a navigational reference. If these incursions are Necromonger in origin, continued transmission may be how targets are identified and prioritized.”

She let the silence do the work.

“We need to stop helping them.”

Discomfort moved through the chamber, quiet but unmistakable.

“Current data suggests the targets skew toward worlds with higher degrees of religious autonomy,” Yala added.

From the ice-world benches, Archpriest Khaled Sayegh stood. His pallor reflected generations raised beneath artificial suns, eyes adapted to light that never quite felt real.

“Emergency protocols must be enacted across all Helion colonies,” he said. His voice was thin, but steady. “If Prime falls, environmental collapse follows. Invasion or not, survival becomes impossible.”

Even the skeptics inclined their heads.

Prime Director Althaea Korr rose last. Age had curved her spine and softened her features, but her focus remained razor-sharp. She pushed herself upright with one hand braced on the desk, the other steady at her side. When she spoke, urgency didn’t color her voice.

Only certainty.

“I recommend formal outreach beyond Helion jurisdiction,” she said. “Tanar IV. The Janari Belt. Possibly the Aguerra System. These regions have experienced comparable signal loss and infrastructure failure. A coordinated response improves survivability. Fragmentation leaves us isolated.”

She returned to her seat.

Namjoon stayed where he was. His position had already been entered into the record. What followed would either cohere or fracture without further pressure from him. As attention shifted, voices regrouping and strategies forming and dissolving, he moved toward the edge of the rotunda, where debate softened into a low institutional murmur.

Beyond the curve of the Dome, the stars looked unchanged. Distant. Unconcerned.

Yala joined him near the far wall, where sound blurred into something indistinct, like conversation carried through thick glass.

“Good morning, Senator,” she said quietly. “How’s your daughter?”

He turned toward her, some of the strain easing from his face.

“She’s well,” he said. “Keeps asking for Maryam. Says it’s been too long.”

Yala inclined her head. “She’d love that. Time feels scarce lately, though. Between grid failures and arguing with half that room, I’m not sure when we’d manage it.”

“My wife would be happy to arrange something,” Namjoon said.

“Then I’ll talk to my husband,” Yala replied. “Mari can bring her. My sister too, so she doesn’t feel awkward. She’s stricter than I am, but she adores the girls.”

Namjoon nodded. “Dae’s the same. Very particular. Reminds me of you.”

“She takes after her father,” Yala said. After a moment, she added, “I’m glad you’re back. This place felt colder without you.”

He looked past her, toward fractured light along the far wall.

“That means more than I can say,” he said. “Mari’s illness was worse than we thought. We were lucky it passed as quickly as it did.”

“I almost resigned,” Yala admitted. “This job is hard even on good days. Worse when you feel alone. You and Soo are the only ones I trust in that room.”

He smiled faintly. “Pike isn’t terrible either.”

Yala shrugged. “I don’t work closely enough with most of them. You, though, they tense up every time you speak.”

“Don’t be too hard on them,” Namjoon said gently. “Most tolerate me well enough. It’s the military bloc that doesn’t. Mostly Draek. My committee interferes with recruitment.”

Yala let out a breath that hovered somewhere near a laugh.

They stood together in silence. The air smelled faintly of polish and machinery, unchanged despite centuries of use. Behind them, the chamber settled back into its familiar rhythm, authority layered over anxiety, procedure shaping fear into something presentable. Neither of them turned.

A glance passed between them. Nothing dramatic. Just understanding. They separated and were absorbed once more into the machinery of the state.

The Speaker’s gavel struck hard, the sound climbing the Dome before settling into stone.

“The chamber will return to order,” Speaker Jaren Al-Fadil said, leaning forward, hands braced on the lectern.

It didn’t.

Several generals were already on their feet. The shift was immediate and unmistakable, postures straightening, space claimed without hesitation. People trained to command did so by instinct.

“Mister Speaker,” one of the generals said, his voice steady and unyielding, “in light of confirmed systemic losses, I move for the immediate enactment of martial order.”

The words moved through the chamber like a pressure change. A ripple followed, visible in the way people shifted and the way attention snapped forward.

“Civil authority across multiple colonies is degrading,” he continued. “Public confidence is eroding. I propose military oversight of planetary grids and intersystem transit corridors.”

The room fractured into motion. Ministers drew together in tight clusters, voices low and urgent. Clerics leaned close, doctrine bending to fit the moment. Governors pulled projections into the air, tablets glowing as streams of data spilled across their screens.

Namjoon rose.

The movement cut through the noise. Conversations faltered. A few heads turned at once.

“Mister Speaker,” he said. The chamber recognized the tone. No one expected Senator Kim to let this pass. “I rise in formal opposition. What’s being proposed isn’t stabilization.” His gaze stayed steady. “It’s fear mistaken for action. Martial governance doesn’t protect civilians. It confines them.”

A murmur rolled through the benches, gathering and thinning in uneven waves.

“There will be unrest,” Namjoon went on. “And violence.”

General Kess Draek brought his palm down against the bench. The sound cracked through the chamber, sharp but controlled. His jaw tightened as he spoke.

“With respect, Senator Kim, deliberation does not stop existential threats. The window for restraint closed with the loss of the third system. Order must be enforced before fragmentation becomes irreversible.”

Namjoon held his ground. His voice didn’t rise.

“And yet it’s order this proposal undermines,” he said. “Civil authority isn’t a weakness to be discarded when conditions deteriorate. It’s the line between governance and coercion.”

He let the words settle where they fell.

“Abandon that line now, and we surrender the very principles we claim to protect.” His gaze moved slowly across the chamber. “Or does this body need reminding what followed Alden Roe’s attempted coup?”

The reaction was immediate. History surfaced, raw and unwelcome. A governor from Helion Three rose, tablet lifted, data sliding across its surface. His expression stayed composed, but urgency pressed through it.

“Entire sectors are demanding guidance,” he said. “Supply convoys are stalled. Beacon corridors are failing. Civil authorities are being pressed for assurances we may not be able to give.” He hesitated, just long enough to show the weight of it. “If the military can stabilize conditions, I need to understand why that option is being dismissed outright.”

From the clerical benches, Sister Lina Faraj stood. Her pendant settled against her chest as she folded her hands.

“Replacing civil governance with military authority will deepen distrust,” she said. Her voice was calm, but it carried. “And it will provoke unrest.” She let her gaze rest on the chamber. “Our people aren’t asking only for protection. They’re asking for continuity. For something they can still believe in.”

Speaker Al-Fadil struck the gavel. Once. Again.

“Order,” he said. “This chamber will maintain decorum.”

It barely did.

Senator Elio Qar leaned toward his microphone, his tone measured. “Martial governance isn’t stable,” he said. “Armed enforcement increases volatility, not control.” His eyes flicked toward the generals. “If hostile forces target military concentrations, we risk mass casualties in New Mecca itself. Potentially the loss of Prime. I reject the General’s proposal.”

General Draek answered without pause, posture rigid. “Accountability is meaningless if there’s no population left. A secured perimeter is preferable to systemic collapse.” He leaned forward slightly. “Tell me. How do you distinguish enemy from civilian when they occupy the same space?”

Namjoon stepped forward, waiting until the exchange reached its peak before speaking.

“We’re talking about people as assets,” he said. “They’re not. They’re the reason this institution exists.” His gaze traveled the benches, deliberate and unflinching. “Handing civil authority to the military admits that representative governance was conditional, acceptable only until danger appeared. If we do this, we erase years of work rebuilding trust with our communities.”

The chamber slipped into a brief, uneasy stillness.

“Mister Speaker,” Yala called out, “I move for the formation of a joint commission.”

Heads lifted. Pens paused mid-stroke.

“Energy, defense, and civilian governance,” she continued, “operating under direct parliamentary oversight.” Her hands came together, steady. “The grid cannot belong to a single authority. It supports every sector. It must be administered collectively.”

The stillness shattered almost at once. Voices overlapped, urgency cutting through restraint. Speaker Al-Fadil raised his gavel again, composure tightening despite his effort to maintain it.

“Thank you, Senator Badawi,” he said, cutting her microphone with a practiced motion. “The chair now recognizes the delegates of the outer worlds.”

Senator Mireth Cal of Helion Three was already on her feet. Synthetic furs edged her clothing, practical and unadorned, a quiet reminder of the climate she governed.

“Principles don’t keep people alive,” she said. Her voice was direct, shaped by experience. “Environmental failure begins within hours. Without grid stability, populations freeze long before debates conclude.”

A few lawmakers nodded. Others went rigid.

“If military oversight guarantees continuity of energy distribution,” she continued, “we will accept it.”

Agreement moved through part of the chamber.

She paused, her tone easing just slightly. “If there’s another workable option, we’ll consider it. I respect Senator Kim’s position. But my responsibility is to my constituents, and I believe they would support this decision.”

She sat.

Helion Five’s delegate rose from her seat. Senator Jalila Ven stood straight, her posture unadorned, her clothing plain and utilitarian. Her world had never cared much for ceremony. Labor mattered there. Output mattered. Survival came from systems that worked.

“My world survives on infrastructure,” she said. “Not sanctuaries.”

She clasped her hands loosely in front of her, a habit that suggested restraint rather than uncertainty.

“Our population doesn’t depend on Prime the way others do,” she continued. “And I oppose martial governance.”

Movement stirred among the military benches. A few officers shifted, shoulders tightening. Jalila didn’t react.

“If martial authority is enacted,” she said evenly, “Helion Five will suspend all material exports to Prime. That decision will be enforced locally, with the full backing of Prime Minister Qet.”

The response was immediate. Postures stiffened. Glances flicked rapidly between benches. Jalila remained still, her expression unchanged.

Senator Soren Bel of Helion Two rose next. His voice carried no ornament, no warmth.

“Industry doesn’t wait for consensus,” he said. “If military administration preserves grid continuity, I won’t oppose it.” One hand rested flat against his desk. “A secured perimeter is preferable to famine or infrastructure collapse.”

Mother Salma Rahim rose sharply.

“You would trade liberty for survival?” she asked.

Bel met her gaze without flinching. “I would ensure my people live long enough to exercise liberty.”

“I’m reclaiming my time,” Mother Rahim said, turning briefly toward the Speaker. “We have a moral obligation to uphold the law and protect our families, on Prime and beyond.”

Her voice carried easily through the chamber.

“Recruitment numbers are at their lowest in decades because of Senator Kim’s work,” she said. “I won’t support policies that drive them back up. There has already been enough bloodshed.” She exhaled, steadying herself. “We need to listen to Senator Badawi and begin evacuation planning.”

Unease moved through the room, threaded with reluctant agreement.

From Helion Four, the industrial delegate stood. His expression was tight, his delivery careful, every word weighed.

“Our systems support fleet readiness, energy distribution, and large-scale manufacturing,” he said. “Introducing martial governance into production environments breeds distrust.” He adjusted his cuff without looking down. “Armed oversight disrupts supply chains, slows output, and ultimately weakens the infrastructure the military relies on.”

When he sat, attention drifted back toward Namjoon. He rose only after realizing the pause had settled on him. Like he had told Yala earlier, most of the chamber respected him, even when they disagreed. He was also clear-eyed enough to know that respect didn’t always translate into restraint. Speaker Al-Fadil, especially, had never been above quiet manipulation. It still amazed Namjoon that the man had survived reelection after his role in Alden Roe’s coup. Without the riots, without Parliament turning on the disgraced Prime Minister, Helion might already have slipped back into the authoritarian habits of the old world.

“We’ve heard from every major planet in the system,” Namjoon said. “Each one names a different pressure point, but the fear beneath it is the same.”

His gaze moved across the chamber, brief and deliberate.

“Sister Rahim said it plainly,” he continued. “And I agree. Martial law isn’t the right answer. Not to me, and not to many of you.”

He paused, letting the room breathe.

“And if conflict comes,” he said, “I don’t believe it changes the outcome.”

Defense Minister Vol was on his feet immediately.

“Then you’re proposing inaction, Senator Kim?”

Namjoon answered without hesitation.

“I’m proposing action,” he said. “Evacuation.”

The word cut through the chamber, sharp and unmistakable.

“We need to leave our home,” Namjoon continued. “We won’t be safe here when the Necromongers arrive.”

Yala stood, and the room turned toward her without effort.

“He’s right,” she said. “Without the grid, there are no armed forces. No institutions. No civilization left to defend.” She let the statement settle. “Energy governance must remain collective. If it doesn’t, it fails everywhere at once. Evacuating as many people as possible before they arrive may be our only chance to rebuild anything afterward.”

The chamber fractured again. Voices overlapped. Clerics argued from doctrine. Military representatives pushed for operational clarity. Governors called for caution and procedure. Administrators leaned together, weighing statute against survival.

At last, the gavel struck three times. The sound echoed beneath the Dome, commanding attention. Speaker Al-Fadil leaned forward.

“The motion is entered into the record,” he said. “This body will recess until the next scheduled session.”

A collective breath passed through the chamber.

“I will confer with Defense Minister Vol and Prime Director Korr to establish clearer terms before we reconvene,” he continued. “Deliberation on the scope of martial authority is suspended.”

He lifted the gavel and set it down. “No additional motions will be considered at this time.”

Above them, the Dome held its light. Beyond it, the stars remained silent. Delegates withdrew in disciplined clusters. Conversations continued in low, urgent tones. Aides stayed close, trading directives and data. Clerics departed with quiet prayers, fingers brushing pendants and beads. Military officials left together, posture rigid, eyes already calculating distance and loss. Governors followed more slowly, some shaken, some resolute, all carrying the knowledge that no decision would spare them consequence.

The Dome emptied at its own slow pace. The noise thinned, but it did not vanish, lingering in the stone and air the way heat does after a fire has gone out. By the time the last clusters of delegates drifted away, only a handful of figures remained.

The Speaker stood alone at the dais, robes drawn close around himself, his attention fixed on the empty benches. Nearby, the Defense Minister lingered with his hands clasped behind his back, posture rigid, restraint visible in every line of him. A cleric from the ice worlds waited in silence, head tipped upward, eyes tracking the ceiling as if listening for something beyond it.

Yala Badawi stood at the holodisplay. The Helion System turned in pale blue light, planets tracing clean, precise orbits, untouched by the debate that had just ended beneath them. Beacon markers pulsed faintly, small points of order against the dark, their rhythm steady but thinning.

Namjoon paused near the threshold, rain still clinging to his cloak. The Dome’s controlled air had not chased the chill from him. He watched the map longer than he meant to. To anyone else it was data. To him it was survival laid bare. He found himself counting the pulses, letting their rhythm steady him, until approaching footsteps drew his attention.

Yala crossed the floor toward him, rain still darkening the hem of her coat. When she stopped in front of him, the rest of the room seemed to recede.

“You should go,” she said quietly. “Tomorrow will be worse. You’ll need your strength.”

He let out a breath that hovered somewhere near a laugh. “That’s getting harder to come by.”

She held his gaze without wavering. “Get your family ready,” she said. “Whatever’s coming won’t wait much longer.”

His jaw eased. Something older surfaced in him, less the senator and more the man beneath the title. He nodded once. “I already have.”

A hesitation followed, his thumb brushing his lip. “Should we have told them about Makani?”

Yala shook her head.

“No,” she said. “Keeping her out of this was right. She already knows more than most of us. The others wouldn’t have handled it well.”

“Maybe not,” he said, glancing back at the dark gaps on the map. “But they might have understood the danger.”

“They do,” Yala replied. “They just don’t want to say it.”

She studied him for a moment. “Be safe,” she said. “And remember what we discussed, if it comes to that.”

She turned back to the display. Namjoon drew his cloak closer and left the chamber, his footsteps echoing softly behind him. The map continued its slow rotation, blue pulses marking a system thinning by the hour.

Outside, the city lay quiet beneath a veil of mist. Lights bled through the haze as he made his way home, the sounds of the Dome following him: raised voices, clipped commands, the weight of what tomorrow might bring.

His stride stayed steady.

A holy man could not afford to look like he was coming apart.

When the door opened, warmth met him at once. Real warmth. The kind that belonged to a home, not a public building calibrated for comfort. It cut through the cold clinging to his coat and carried the scent of broth simmering on the stove. His shoulders loosened without him noticing.

Samara stood at the stove with her sleeves rolled up, movements practiced and efficient. A few pins had slipped loose, strands of hair brushing her cheek as she leaned over the pot. She hummed under her breath, not quite a song, just sound enough to fill the space. Steam fogged the window above the sink, city lights beyond it softened into blur.

At the table, Dae bent over a piece of paper, one knee tucked beneath her, the other swinging. Crayons lay scattered across the wood. Her face was drawn into deep concentration, tongue caught at the corner of her mouth.

“Appa!”

She looked up as soon as she noticed him, her grin wide and unguarded. She lifted her drawing with both hands. A crooked sun filled the page, its rays uneven and bright.

Namjoon bent and kissed the top of her head. He caught the familiar scents of soap and paper and something uniquely hers. He set the drawing back on the table with care.

“The light shines,” he said softly, “even in small hands.”

Samara glanced over her shoulder and offered a faint smile. “Dinner’s almost ready,” she said. “Sit. You look like you brought the Dome home with you.”

He took a chair, easing into it with a quiet breath. The wood creaked, familiar. He loosened his coat but left it on.

“They talked about order,” he said after a moment. “About strength. About salvation.” His voice stayed even. “But in the end, they only talked. No one argued for unity. Only fear.”

Samara stirred the pot once, slow and deliberate, before turning and drying her hands on a towel.

“And the call?” she asked.

He looked up. “What call?”

“Earlier,” she said. Her eyes flicked briefly toward Dae, already absorbed in her crayons again. “A woman called. Said her name was Kani. She asked for you.”

Something in him shifted. Subtle, but real. He leaned back and folded his hands together.

“A friend,” he said after a moment. “Politics. Nothing more.”

Samara studied him. She was not part of the world he moved through, but she knew his voice. She knew when he spoke plainly, and when his words were chosen with care. She heard the difference in his voice now. It was not the words so much as the care with which he had chosen them. Samara nodded once and turned back to the stove.

“Of course,” she said. “Politics.”

The word lingered between them, neutral and heavy. The broth continued to simmer. Crayons scratched against paper. Namjoon sat with the weight of the Dome still clinging to him, held in place by the warmth of the room. It had not left him. It had only settled into something he could carry.

Evening eased in around them. The city’s noise softened behind walls and habit. Samara moved through the kitchen with quiet ease, setting bowls on the table, ladling broth as steam curled upward. As she worked, she murmured a prayer in the old Christlam cadence, words shaped by repetition as much as faith.

Before sitting, she adjusted her sleeves. Smoothed her scarf. Straightened the table. Small, deliberate acts that steadied her.

Dae clapped when the bowls were set down, hunger winning out over patience. Namjoon bowed his head and folded his hands beside Samara’s. Their fingers brushed. They spoke the prayer together, familiar and unforced.

When it ended, Dae reached for the bread, already smudged with color. The ordinary sounds of dinner filled the space.

“I saw Yala today,” Namjoon said quietly.

Samara looked up. “At the chamber?”

“Yes. She held the floor.” There was respect in his voice. “We spoke afterward,” he added. “She invited Dae to visit tomorrow. To see Maryam.”

Dae’s head snapped up. “Maryam? Really? Can I go, Ummi?”

Samara hesitated, her thumb smoothing the seam of her sleeve. Her gaze drifted, weighing habit against circumstance.

“I don’t like being alone there,” she said. “You know that.”

He nodded. “You won’t be. Habiba will be there. She keeps the house when Yala’s at the Dome.”

Samara’s shoulders eased. Habiba was familiar. Reliable.

“Then yes,” she said. “If Habiba is there, Dae may go.”

“Tomorrow?” Dae pressed, feet kicking beneath the table.

“Tomorrow,” Namjoon said, brushing her hair back.

Samara filled his bowl and set it in front of him, steam rising between them. She lingered for a moment, studying his face, then looked away.

She did not ask about Kani. The question remained in the silence she chose to leave untouched.

“May God guide you, Joon,” she said softly.

“And keep us all,” he replied. His voice stayed steady, even though the day had not loosened its grip.

The house settled into stillness. The grid hummed quietly in the walls, constant enough to feel alive. Outside, the city lay muted beneath mist. Inside, the scale of planets and policy narrowed to the quiet of a single home.

Dae had been asleep for hours. Crayons were gathered away. The table wiped clean. Dinner cleared.

Namjoon paused at her doorway. The dim light softened her face, erased the concentration she carried when awake. A folded piece of paper rested against her arm.

She still held her drawing of the crooked sun, creased and worn, clutched tight even in sleep.

He watched her a moment longer than necessary. Lowered his head. Whispered a blessing meant for no one else. He stayed until her breathing evened, until the moment felt complete, and eased the door shut.

The latch clicked softly. The hallway returned to quiet.

The kitchen light remained on, warm and low. Samara stood at the counter, her hijab loosened, posture tired but held together by habit. The dishes were stacked neatly by the sink. Her hands rested in front of her, fingers laced.

She did not look at him.

“This Kani,” she said, her tone casual. “You didn’t tell me much about her.”

Namjoon took a breath before answering.

“I heard of her through a colleague,” he said. “A mutual contact in parliament. She was asking about an old friend. I agreed to help. Just a favor.”

Samara glanced at him, her eyes narrowing slightly. “And this favor involves calling our home in the middle of the day?”

He stepped closer, lowering his voice out of instinct rather than secrecy.

“It’s work,” he said. “Nothing else. She knows a lot about the Necromongers. More than most people in the Dome want to admit.” He paused. “She’s been useful to Yala. And to me. We’re trying to prepare, in case things get worse.”

Samara studied him. Not the words. Him. She knew the calm he carried. She also knew what it cost. He did not name it. She did not push.

After a moment, she nodded. “I won’t ask again.”

Namjoon inclined his head, the gesture small but sincere.

“Thank you.”

The rest of the night followed its familiar rhythm. Lamps dimmed. Doors were checked. The outside world was shut away. Routine carried them forward when thought would have tangled them.

They prayed together before bed, their voices kept low. Samara’s was careful and reverent, each word placed with intention. Namjoon’s followed its familiar cadence, steady enough to be grounding. When they lay down, Samara turned toward him. Her hand found his beneath the covers, light but certain, as if checking that he was still there.

“Tomorrow will be worse,” she said after a while. “And I’m afraid it will bring more fear to everyone at the Dome.”

“Yeah, I know,” Namjoon answered, eyes already closed. “But tonight’s quiet. Thank God for that.”

She was silent for a moment, listening to the house settle around them. When she spoke again, her voice was softer.

“Will I meet Kani?”

“Yes,” he said. “She’ll be coming here tomorrow. She believes my friend will be here by then.”

“And which friend was she asking about?”

The question carried no accusation, only a thin edge of fear. They both knew the answer.

“Jungkook,” Namjoon said.

Samara’s breath caught before she could stop it.

“He’ll come here,” she said. “Won’t he?”

“I’m sure of it,” Namjoon replied. He leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “He won’t hurt us, habibti. I promise.”

Her breathing slowed, easing back into rhythm.

“I love you, Joon.”

“I love you too.”

Sleep came gradually, carrying faith and doubt together into the dark.

Namjoon walked alone through Sector Five, his footsteps measured and unhurried, as though the city itself were setting the pace. The corridors hummed with low power, a tired vibration running through the walls and floor, the sound of a system conserving what little certainty it had left. Overhead, the artificial sun sagged behind layered clouds bruised purple and gray, its light dulled to a sullen glow that cast long, uncertain shadows.

The city was not asleep, but it was not truly awake either. It lingered in an uneasy middle state, lights still burning in windows, transit rails faintly alive with the promise of movement, but everything slowed and restrained, as if the entire sector were holding its breath and waiting to see if it would be allowed to exhale. Shopfronts remained shuttered, their signs glowing faintly, flickering as if unsure whether they should continue advertising a future that no longer felt guaranteed. The air smelled faintly of metal and ozone, the clean, antiseptic scent of infrastructure working just hard enough to keep collapse at bay.

Namjoon passed a baker’s stall where yesterday’s bread sat stacked behind glass, untouched. A street cleaner paused mid-sweep, broom resting against his shoulder, eyes lifted to the clouded sky as if listening for something only he could hear. Two children lingered near a transit stop, hands stuffed into their sleeves, whispering to each other in voices too low for morning laughter.

The artificial sun shifted slightly, struggling through its programmed arc. Light caught on the edges of buildings, then slid away again, unable to commit. Namjoon felt it in his chest, a familiar tightness, not quite fear and not quite sorrow, but the ache of knowing a threshold was being approached whether anyone wished it or not.

It was early morning. The hour belonged to laborers and prayer, to those who rose before the city had fully decided what kind of day it would be. Namjoon’s cloak brushed against his legs as he walked, still carrying the faint scent of home: broth, warm cloth, a trace of incense clinging to the fibers. He adjusted it absently, fingers finding the worn edge without looking.

He was on his way to the Dome. Ahead, the corridors widened, opening toward the central arteries that led deeper into the city’s heart. The hum grew steadier there, less strained, as if the systems closest to power remembered how to breathe. Namjoon lifted his gaze, posture straightening as habit took over, the private man giving way to the public one.

Behind him, Sector Five stirred slowly, reluctant but alive. Before him, the Dome waited, vast and patient, its marble and glass already gathering voices, decisions, and the weight of what the day would demand.

At a maintenance junction, something tugged at his attention. Not a sound, exactly, but a tension in the air, the way a room seemed to tighten just before an argument broke loose. Voices drifted toward him, low and urgent, edges sharpened by hunger and fear. They were too sharp to belong to guards, who learned early how to sound bored, and too wary to be workers, whose grievances usually rose in tired bursts. These voices crouched, alert and ready to scatter.

Namjoon slowed. He turned into a narrow alley lit by a handful of struggling lamps, their glow flickering on the edge of failure. The light fell unevenly, leaving pockets of shadow that swallowed faces whole. Moisture clung to the walls, beading along cables and pipes like sweat on exposed nerves. The hum of the grid dipped here, uncertain, as if even the power knew this was a place best passed through quickly.

A small cluster had gathered in the alley: displaced workers with hollowed cheeks and eyes dulled by too many nights without rest, scavengers wrapped in layers of scavenged cloth, people whose lives had been thinned down to the bare work of staying alive. Their shoulders leaned inward, drawn together not by trust but by necessity.

At the center stood a man slick as oil. Confidence stretched across his face in a wide grin, practiced and resilient, the kind that had survived too many near misses to be honest anymore. Gold flashed between his teeth when he spoke, catching the broken light. His coat was better cut than anyone else’s, his boots clean enough to mark him as an interloper rather than a sufferer.

A profiteer. The kind who surfaced wherever fear moved faster than reason, feeding on rumor the way parasites fed on blood.

“When the crusade comes,” the man was saying, his voice thick with promise and rich as syrup, “you’ll have thirty minutes to board the evac.”

He lifted a hand, fingers spread as if counting blessings.

“Miss it,” he went on, lowering his voice, “and you’re either in a pine box or a crater.”

A murmur rippled through the cluster. Someone swore under their breath. Someone else laughed too quickly, a brittle sound that broke and fell apart halfway through.

Namjoon stepped closer. His presence shifted the air, the way gravity did when something solid entered the field. His voice cut cleanly through the murmurs.

“Crusade?” he said. “That’s what we’re calling it now?”

The man turned, grin widening, as if he’d just been handed a winning card. His eyes flicked over Namjoon’s cloak, his posture, the calm that did not belong in alleys like this.

“Crusade, blackout, Divine Sweep,” the man said easily. “It doesn’t matter what name you give it.”

Without breaking his rhythm, the man pressed a silver token into a buyer’s palm. The woman hesitated, fingers hovering as if the thing might burn her, or vanish, or turn to dust if she accepted it too slowly. Then fear tipped the balance. She closed her hand around it, clutching tight, knuckles whitening as though the metal might evaporate if she loosened her grip.

Another token followed. Then another. Each exchange quick and practiced, like cards dealt from the bottom of a rigged deck. Hope passed hand to hand in small, glowing discs, traded for silence, for obedience, for belief.

Two landed in Namjoon’s hand. The weight surprised him. They were warm. Not hot, but alive. A faint hum vibrated through his skin, subtle but insistent, like a pulse heard through water. The evac crest etched into their surface glowed softly, a pale, wounded light that throbbed in time with nothing human. It looked less like a symbol and more like an injury that refused to heal.

“They’re not for me,” Namjoon said flatly.

The man’s grin never faltered. It stretched wider, easy and confident, as if resistance amused him. His shoulders rolled in a careless shrug, loose and unbothered.

“They are now.”

Namjoon stared down at the tokens. He felt their weight settle into his palm, felt the soft thrum of energy beneath the metal. Promise lived there. And beneath it, the lie, layered carefully, the way rot hid beneath polished wood. He could almost hear it whispering: safety, passage, time.

Slowly, he slipped them into his pocket anyway. They settled cold against his ribs, heavier than metal, heavier than coin. Not for me, he told himself. The words sounded firm in his mind, but the lie clung like smoke, seeping into his lungs whether he wanted it or not.

Suddenly, the alley erupted. Helion security poured in from the blind side, sudden and violent as a breached dam. Visors sealed. Rifles raised. Boots hammered the concrete like gunfire, the sound echoing hard and fast between the narrow walls. Crates overturned, clattering and splitting open. Orders snapped through the air, sharp and clipped, stripped of any warmth.

A scream tore loose. Raw. Human. Terrified.

Namjoon turned just in time to see soldiers drag a man out of the shadows. Blood streaked his face, dark and wet, cutting through grime. His limbs fought the grip on him, muscles straining, body twisting with feral refusal. His voice broke apart between curses and sobs, rage and fear tangling together in something painfully alive.

For a split second, Namjoon’s breath caught. The posture. The fire in the eyes. The refusal to yield.

Jungkook. It had to be.

Reality snapped back into place, sharp and unforgiving. His body moved before his thoughts caught up, instinct overriding reason. He slipped back into the corridor, blending into the flow of shadow and steel. The noise dulled behind him, breaking apart into the hiss of concrete and the echo of boots.

The tokens pressed against his side, pulsing. Not heat, but weight. Not for me, he repeated, though the words rang thin now, stretched and hollow.

He slowed only when he circled back toward the mouth of the alley, breath uneven, pulse hammering like a warning drum inside his chest. His hand rested briefly against the wall, steadying himself, fingers brushing cold metal slick with condensation.

Security still held the ground.

Six soldiers in matte black stood in a tight formation, armor traced with thin gold sector lines that caught what little light the alley allowed. Their boots were planted wide and certain, knees unlocked, weight balanced the way instructors drilled into muscle memory until it replaced thought. Weapons were angled with clean precision, not quite pointed and not quite lowered, ready. It was the posture of people trained for catastrophe, shaped by too many drills and too much dread, by the quiet knowledge that one day the drills would stop pretending.

Namjoon stepped into the open. Hands low at his sides, palms visible but not raised. He did not posture. He did not need to. His presence alone disrupted the geometry of the scene, like a dropped stone rippling through water.

The nearest soldier froze mid-step. Her voice caught in the modulator before she could smooth it out. “Senator Kim.” The visor hissed open, releasing a breath of recycled air, and revealed a young face already carved by strain. She looked too tired for her years, eyes ringed dark, jaw clenched as if holding something back. “Sir. You shouldn’t be here.”

Namjoon closed the distance at an unhurried pace, eyes moving over them, counting breaths, reading tension, noting who flinched and who didn’t. “Tell me what’s happening.”

The others turned at the sound of his voice. Rifles dipped immediately, the shift instinctive and unspoken. To them, he wasn’t only a senator. He was a story their parents told late at night. M6-117. The man who had walked out of fire carrying a child who should not have survived. Something older and steadier than law.

The officer in command stepped forward, stripes clear on her arm. Her posture was perfect. Her voice was clipped, but tight around the edges, like a wire pulled too hard.

“Martial law was enacted fifteen minutes ago,” she said. “Central Command ordered full detainment. Citywide.”

Namjoon’s jaw set. He felt the word detainment settle in his chest like a bad echo. “On whose authority?”

“Joint session,” she replied. “Emergency quorum after satellite tracking flagged an object. Unknown vessel. High mass. No beacon. No registry. Coming in from the system’s edge. Too fast for supply, too slow for meteor.”

Namjoon’s stomach dropped. The weight of it dragged through him like lead sinking through water. He had known this moment was coming. Knowing did nothing to soften it.

“How long?” he asked.

“Six hours at current velocity,” the officer said. “Less if it accelerates. Command wants no one unaccounted for. Everyone goes inside.”

Against the wall, detainees hunched in a crooked line, the geometry of their bodies broken by fear and fatigue. Traders with grease-stained hands still smelled faintly of oil and grain. Tinkers clutched tool kits to their chests like talismans, knuckles white around handles worn smooth by years of work. Street kids pressed their backs to the stone, eyes too old for their faces, the kind of eyes that had learned early not to expect mercy.

Some of them stared at Namjoon with naked, aching hope, as if he might still be the man from the stories, the one who had walked out of fire, who had bent rules until they remembered their purpose. Others refused to look at him at all. It was easier not to hope than to have it taken away.

“They’re not insurgents,” Namjoon said. His voice was even, calm enough to sound merciful, but there was iron under it now, a firmness that cut clean through excuses. “They’re civilians.”

The officer straightened instinctively, spine locking as if discipline alone could shield her. Words tumbled out too quickly, rushed and brittle, as if speed might excuse them.

“We’re not treating them as combatants, sir,” she said. “But protocol is protocol. Orders are to move all non-essential personnel into lockdown. Trucks are coming. We just hold the perimeter until they arrive.”

Namjoon’s gaze slid downward. A man lay crumpled on the concrete nearby, his body folded wrong, one arm twisted beneath him at an angle that promised weeks of pain and long, sleepless nights. Blood streaked his face, already drying, already dark, a second skin he had not asked for. His breath came shallow and uneven.

Namjoon’s voice did not rise. It did not need to. But the edge in it sharpened enough to draw every eye.

“Then why,” he said quietly, “does it look like you’re abusing the people you’re claiming to help?”

The officer’s jaw worked. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Whatever justification she had rehearsed died somewhere between duty and conscience. She swallowed it back.

A younger soldier shifted beside her, boots scraping softly against the pavement. He could not stand the silence. His voice broke it, uncertain and guilty, still carrying the cracks of youth.

“Sir, the alley was crowded,” he said. “When we moved in, someone bolted. We thought it was a runner. Things got… messy.”

Namjoon let out a breath that carried more than air. It carried fatigue. Disappointment. The old grief for a system that always arrived too late and too hard, mistaking force for order and fear for control.

He crouched beside the man on the ground, movements slow and deliberate so as not to startle him. He lowered his voice, bringing it down to something human.

“What’s your name?”

The man flinched anyway, eyelids fluttering open. Red-rimmed eyes burned through the haze of pain, fear sharpening them into something desperate and bright.

“Joaquin,” he rasped. “Just… buying rations. Didn’t know what was happening.”

Namjoon nodded once. He rose and turned back to the officer, the alley suddenly very quiet.

“You’ll get your perimeter,” he said evenly. “But no more bruises. And no more hurting people.” His gaze held hers without blinking. “I’ll report every single one of you to the Defense Minister if I have to.”

The officer’s reply came quieter now, stripped of stiffness and armor. “Yes, Senator.”

The alley remained tense, coiled tight as a held breath. Above them, the city hummed on, unaware, or unwilling to know, that six hours remained and that history was already leaning forward, impatient, tapping its fingers.

Namjoon let his gaze sweep the street. Splintered crates lay scattered across the pavement, rice spilling in pale rivulets that looked like ash against the stone. People froze mid-motion, caught in the aftermath. Some still held their hands in the air, muscles trembling from the effort. Others clutched their bags tight against their chests, uncertain whether to flee or apologize for existing.

Fear hung over them thick and gray. Not fear of rifles. Fear of what the rifles meant. Fear of the shift already underway, something heavier than curfew, something that would not lift when morning came.

He faced the officer again, his voice low and measured, already moving forward in his mind.

“I’m on my way home,” he said. “I need to collect my family. As a Senator, I have clearance for an escape pod. We’re authorized.”

The officer nodded quickly, too quickly, shoulders stiff with nerves. “Yes, sir. That’s correct. Do you want an escort?”

Namjoon shook his head. “No. I’ll manage.”

He did not wait for the words to settle. He was already moving, stride cutting him free of the alley and into the labyrinth of Sector Five. The undercity folded tight around him like a throat. Corridors narrowed. Walls pressed in. His footsteps echoed against concrete too still and too quiet, as if the city itself leaned closer to listen.

The tokens in his coat pulsed faintly against his thigh. They were not heavy in any physical sense, but they dragged all the same, tugging at his breath until each inhale felt slightly delayed.

Not for me, he told himself. The thought came easily. Its weight did not.

At the end of the hall, his apartment rose out of the corridor like a held breath, a vertical slab of steel and fingerprint glass standing too still in the dim light. It was quiet, as it always was.

He struck the entry panel harder than necessary. The impact stung, a sharp, grounding bite in his fingers. The door slid open with a crack that snapped through the corridor like a gunshot, echoing once before the sound was swallowed by concrete and distance.

The air was cool and precisely regulated, vents whispering behind hidden grates. Recessed lights pulsed in slow, obedient rhythms, painting soft halos along the walls. It was peace by design, approved, optimized, maintained, an illusion laid carefully over stone already beginning to fracture.

Namjoon didn’t bother closing the door. It slid back along its track and stayed open, leaving a thin seam of corridor light cutting into the apartment like an unfinished thought. He took the stairs two at a time, lungs tightening, legs burning, ignoring the instinct to slow. His hand skimmed the railing as he climbed, the metal slick and warm beneath his palm, catching the glow of the lights as though the house still belonged to another life.

Everything felt staged, too orderly, like a set dressed to resemble a life that had paused too long, waiting for people who were never coming back. The walls held no urgency, no trace of panic, and that absence unsettled him more than chaos ever could have.

He was halfway up the stairs when he stopped. The sound reached him before meaning did. A slow, metallic scrape, deliberate and unhurried. It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It settled into bone and stayed there. Steel dragged against stone, or steel against steel, the sound of someone who had time. The sound of someone who had already decided how this moment would end.

The building seemed to lean into the quiet that followed. Even the hum of the vents thinned, receding until it felt unreal, as though the structure itself had drawn back to watch.

A voice slipped into the silence. Dry. Hollow. Familiar.

“Did you know all your doors were locked?”

Namjoon’s fingers tightened around the railing, the pressure anchoring him. His eyes closed involuntarily. He had known this day was coming. Makani had said he would be here today. He had just hoped it would not happen this way.

“Five years ago,” the voice went on, conversational, almost mild, “I took two people off that planet. A kid pretending to be a boy and a holy man looking for New Mecca.”

He turned slowly. He already knew.

Jungkook stood in the washroom doorway, bent over the sink, shoulders squared, spine straight despite the angle, posture held together by habit and stubborn will. His movements were careful, almost reverent. A blade glided across his scalp in smooth, practiced arcs, shaving it clean. Dark hair slid into the basin in soft, lifeless clumps, collecting near the drain. Each pass left bare skin behind, pale and scarred, catching the light like polished bone.

Namjoon didn’t speak. Any sound felt dangerous, as though a single word might fracture whatever fragile balance still held the room together.

Jungkook finished the stroke and straightened, wiping the blade on a cloth with habitual care. “Someone’s in your shower,” he muttered. “Didn’t look.”

The knife rested loosely in his hand, balanced and familiar. Not raised. Not threatening. Less a weapon than an extension of his body. His face was leaner now, stripped down to wire and sinew, hunger and endurance etched into every line. Scars traced his skin, some faded to silver, others still raw, a map of survival written without apology.

His eyes met Namjoon’s. Time seemed to fold there, fire and distance and blood erased, as though the universe had simply paused and resumed where it left off.

“I told one man where I’d go,” Jungkook said. His voice was rough, worn thin, like something dragged across stone too many times. “One.”

He stepped closer.

“I trusted one man.”

Another step closed the remaining distance with care.

“Did I make a mistake, Namjoon?”

Namjoon opened his mouth, and in that suspended instant understood, calmly, with a clarity that bordered on serenity, that whatever came next would decide whether Jungkook would kill him. The apartment seemed to narrow around them, air growing dense as the hum of the vents faded away, leaving only breath and the faint, living scrape of steel.

The answer arrived too late anyway.

Jungkook moved with brutal, sudden grace. One moment there was distance, ordinary space between two bodies, and the next there was none. The knife found Namjoon’s throat as if it had always belonged there, steel cool and intimate, angled with devastating precision.

Namjoon went still, breath turning shallow, pulse roaring in his ears until everything else felt distant. He didn’t raise his hands. He didn’t flinch. He held Jungkook’s gaze and refused to look away, denied him even the small victory of a broken stare.

“Did I?” Jungkook asked again, softer now.

The words were quiet, but the blade answered them with certainty, steady as a surgeon’s hand. It hovered close enough for cold to seep into Namjoon’s skin, close enough to make it unmistakably clear that survival in this room depended on trust that might already be splintering beyond repair.

Namjoon spoke softly, choosing each word with care, as if it might be the last thing he was ever allowed to say.

“There’s no simple answer,” he said. “Whatever was said was meant to give us a chance. A fighting chance.”

He drew in a careful breath, measured and restrained. The edge shifted with it, cool steel brushing skin in a quiet warning not to take more air than he was permitted.

“If there were no invasion,” Namjoon went on, his voice steady despite the pressure at his throat, “if this were still only between us, I would have taken your secret to my grave. I give you my word, Jungkook.”

Jungkook didn’t blink. His gaze didn’t soften or drift. He watched Namjoon the way a storm watched a coastline, with a patience that wasn’t calm so much as inevitable, weighing what would be taken and what might be left standing.

Footsteps cut across the tension. Both men turned at once, bodies reacting before thought could catch up. The knife stayed where it was, but the intent behind it faltered, pulled toward the sound with the quiet force of iron answering a magnet.

A little girl, no more than six, stood in the hallway. A nightgown of soft red and white brushed her ankles, paisley curling across the fabric in gentle patterns. Her long black hair fell down her back, glossy and carefully brushed. She might have stepped out of a storybook, but her eyes told a different story. Dark, steady, fixed on Jungkook with a calm that didn’t belong to someone so young.

“Jungkook?” she said.

The name barely left her mouth before movement stirred behind her. Quick footsteps, the soft rush of fabric, something slipping free and striking the floor with a damp, hollow sound. A towel lay forgotten at the threshold as a woman appeared, pulled straight from warmth into danger.

She was dark-skinned, her black hair still wet and loose against her shoulders, steam clinging faintly to her skin. High cheekbones caught the light, sculpted and expressive, her mouth full but already set firm. Her eyes, green threaded through brown, were wide for only a heartbeat before sharpening with immediate understanding. She took in the room in a single glance: the blade, the men, the narrow space between them, violence held taut but not yet released. Her face settled into something controlled.

She stood there for a breath, unmoving, then turned and disappeared back into the bedroom. Drawers slid open. Fabric whispered. The efficient sounds of someone preparing not for appearance, but for confrontation filled the space. When she returned, she was fully dressed, her head covered, posture straight and composed. Pale blue wrapped her hair in clean, deliberate lines. Her warm skin stood out against the cool light, and her eyes, more green than brown now, held a clarity Namjoon couldn’t look away from.

For a brief, painful instant, he thought of his mother. The resemblance struck hard: the curve of the cheekbone, the steadiness in her gaze, the kind of composure that wasn’t gentle, but earned.

She moved behind the girl and rested both hands on her daughter’s shoulders, steadying her without pulling her back. Her eyes never left Jungkook. There was no flinch in them, no apology.

The knife was still pressed to Namjoon’s throat, but the room had shifted in a way neither man controlled. A child had done that. She dragged the moment back into the real world and forced it to reckon with consequence. Violence stopped being abstract when someone small enough to be broken stood only a few steps away.

“A wife?” Jungkook asked.

The word came out rough, almost casual, yet something in his tone caught Namjoon off guard. Curiosity was there, but beneath it lay something quieter and unexpected, as if the idea had slipped past Jungkook’s defenses before he could stop it. Not approval. Not warmth. Just recognition.

Strangely, it eased something in him. He hadn’t realized how firmly he’d assumed Namjoon would never move forward, would remain stranded on M6-117 with the rest of the dead. That planet had taken everything from both of them. Jungkook had stayed there in his own way. Namjoon hadn’t. That difference had always mattered.

Namjoon spoke before he could temper the edge in his voice. “If you have an issue with me, let it be with me,” he said. “You don’t need to know their names.”

Jungkook didn’t look at him. His attention stayed on the woman and the child, his voice steady enough that the knife felt almost incidental now, like something he’d forgotten he was holding. “I have no issues with your family, Namjoon. I’m just curious.”

Namjoon swallowed carefully. The blade shifted with the movement, just enough to remind him it was still there. He forced his voice into something even. “Her name is Samara. She’s a local doctor.”

Jungkook continued to study her, taking in her stance, the way she carried herself, the solidity shaped by years of pressure. She didn’t resemble any doctor he’d known, though his experience was limited to prison infirmaries and military bays. Her skin looked soft, almost delicate, but her eyes told a different story. They watched him without trust and without fear, measuring.

“Been a long time since ‘beautiful’ meant much,” he muttered, his voice worn thin. “How long, Namjoon?”

“Nearly five years,” Namjoon said. “We met not long after Leo and I returned to New Mecca. I knew almost immediately I wanted to ask her father for permission to marry her.”

Samara began guiding her daughter back down the hall, one hand settling gently between the girl’s shoulders, already turning her away from what she didn’t need to see.

“And her?”

Jungkook’s voice cut through the movement, sudden and taut, his eyes flicking to the child.

Samara stopped. The veil cast her face in shadow, but her hesitation was unmistakable. “Delilah,” she said at last. “You may call her Dae. She’s named for my mother.”

The girl didn’t shrink back. She lifted her chin just enough to meet Jungkook’s gaze. The resemblance was undeniable. His eyes, his dimples, reflected cleanly in her face. From Samara she had inherited her curls and her dark skin. Unlike her mother, she wore no head covering, her hair loose and unburdened.

“Did you really kill the monsters?” she asked. “The ones that wanted to hurt my appa?”

The question was quiet, sincere. It landed like a weight wrapped in cloth. Jungkook didn’t answer. For a brief moment, something cracked across his expression, small, deep, almost imperceptible. He looked at her, then at Namjoon, and the knife in his hand suddenly felt out of place, like a prop from the wrong story. For that instant, he wasn’t the danger in the room. He was the man who had once stood between monsters and people too afraid to name them.

“She knows that?” he asked. His voice was lower now, edged with disbelief.

Namjoon nodded slowly. “Such are our bedtime stories.”

Jungkook blinked once. Then the knife was gone, folded away with a smooth, practiced motion. Not surrender. Not forgiveness. Simply unnecessary. The air loosened. The walls seemed to release a breath they had been holding. The silence shifted, no longer lethal, now fragile.

Samara didn’t hesitate. She turned and ushered Dae down the hall. The door closed behind them with a soft, final click.

Jungkook stood still, chest rising and falling as if he had to remind himself how to breathe. After a moment, he turned back to the sink and braced both hands on the porcelain. His knuckles went white, not from anger but from effort, the strain of holding himself together. He stared down into the basin. The water was still, dull, offering no reflection, just an empty surface that refused to give anything back.

“You shouldn’t have told her,” he said quietly.

There was no bite in the words. No accusation. Just exhaustion, deep and settled, the kind that lived in the bones. “You were the only one I thought would understand.”

Namjoon didn’t move. His voice, when he spoke, was calm and even, steady in the way it always was when things mattered most. “I have my reasons.”

Jungkook let out a short, humorless sound and dragged a scarred hand down his face. “So now who do I have to kill to get this payday off my head?”

Namjoon didn’t dodge the question. “Something’s coming,” he said. “Something vast. It’s tearing through systems and leaving nothing behind. No signals. No cities. Just silence. I couldn’t leave you buried, not if there was a chance you could help stop it.”

That landed. Jungkook’s grip on the basin eased, his shoulders shifting. He didn’t relax, but he listened. Slowly, he turned, his eyes locking onto Namjoon’s.

“Knew they’d come for me,” he said. “Took them five years, but I knew.” His mouth twisted slightly. “You don’t expect mercs to have honor. But this, this new bounty, coming from you, from a man whose neck I saved…” He gave a low, dark chuckle. “Guess that’s on me. No such thing as a friend.”

“You are my friend,” Namjoon said, the word chosen deliberately. “You were the one person I trusted to come back if the stars started falling. You’re angry. You have every right to be. But you’re here, Jungkook. Some part of you already knew I wouldn’t have called unless I had no other choice.”

Jungkook turned away again, running a hand over his freshly shaven scalp. The skin caught the light, and his fingers lingered there, as if he were still getting used to the feel of himself.

“I should kill you,” he said under his breath.

Namjoon didn’t flinch. “You could,” he replied. “It wouldn’t be difficult.”

The silence stretched between them, thick with years left unspoken. Finally, Jungkook exhaled.

“She’s a good kid,” he said at last, nodding toward the closed door. “Looks like you.”

Namjoon’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. “No one’s ever said that before.”

“Well, she does,” Jungkook said, his gaze sliding away. There was a flicker of warmth there, buried deep under the damage. “Still can’t believe you told her about that place.”

“I didn’t,” Namjoon said. “Not really. Just enough so she understands why I don’t flinch when she asks about monsters.”

Jungkook leaned back against the counter, a tired sigh scraping its way out of him. “So what now?”

Namjoon stepped closer, careful to leave space between them, the way you did with something unpredictable but not yet lost. “Now I tell you who’s coming to dinner,” he said. “And you spend the next twenty minutes trying to scare me out of it before they arrive and prove I wasn’t bluffing.”

Jungkook looked at him. The corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but close.

“You got tea?”

Namjoon let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Always.”

Namjoon moved toward the galley, the familiar layout guiding him without thought. The faint scent of lemon peel and cardamom still hung in the air, a quiet trace of Samara’s presence. It was the kind of smell that grounded you without asking, that made a space feel inhabited even when the people weren’t in it. His movements were smooth and practiced, the small rituals of someone who understood how much weight ordinary actions carried after too much chaos.

Behind him, Jungkook followed. Not close. Not hesitant either. Just slower, as if he were testing whether the floor would hold.

The silence between them had changed. It wasn’t empty anymore. It had edges now, a shape you could feel. Not comfortable, not safe, but workable, the kind of silence shared by two men who had stopped bleeding just long enough to admit they were still standing.

Jungkook leaned back against the counter, arms crossed loosely over his chest. His eyes drifted, unfocused, fixed on some point beyond the room. When he spoke, his voice came out softer than expected, worn thin by years but still carrying a quiet edge.

“Does she know our story?”

Namjoon turned on the burner. A hiss cut through the room, followed by the low whoosh of blue flame. He didn’t rush. He reached for the tin of leaves, each motion deliberate, steadying.

“She knows what she needs to,” he said. “That you were brave when you didn’t have to be. That you helped her father when no one else would. That some people call you a criminal, and some call you a hero.” He paused, then added, “She’s smart enough to understand those aren’t opposites.”

Jungkook’s jaw tightened, the line of his face sharpening in the fading light. After a moment, it eased again as he let out a breath through his nose.

“But not the rest.”

Namjoon glanced up, meeting his eyes. “No. But I didn’t lie. Dae doesn’t ask questions she isn’t ready to hear the answers to.”

Jungkook let out a sound that was half laugh, half sigh. “Still the philosopher.”

“I’ve had practice,” Namjoon said, sliding the tin closed.

Outside, the light shifted. Amber streaks spilled through the windows and spread across the tiles, thick and slow. Shadows lengthened along the counters, stretching at sharp angles. From deeper in the apartment came the soft sound of Samara’s steps on the floorboards, measured and calm, followed by a sudden giggle. Dae’s voice, bright and unguarded, cut through the room like a bell.

Jungkook felt it settle in his chest. This wasn’t his kind of place. Too much stillness. Too much light. Homes like this didn’t reject him, but they didn’t hold him either. He fit in them the way a knife fit a cradle: possible, but wrong.

“She’ll hate me someday,” he said quietly, eyes following the steam as it curled up from the kettle. “Not now. Later.”

Namjoon poured the water with care, the motion unhurried. “I doubt it. You’re easier to like than you think.”

Jungkook’s mouth twitched. “You didn’t like me.”

“At first,” Namjoon said, setting two mugs on the counter. His voice stayed calm, but the memory carried weight. “But I learned to see things differently. We were different then. Still are. But I owe you my life. Without you, there’s no Mari. No Dae. I wouldn’t have left that station alive.”

Jungkook pushed off the counter and stepped closer. It wasn’t aggressive and it wasn’t cautious either, just intentional. The room seemed to contract with the movement, space bending subtly around the gravity he carried with him. When he spoke, his voice dropped, low and close, meant for one person alone.

“Who do I need to kill to stop this?”

Namjoon didn’t flinch. He didn’t raise his voice. “You wouldn’t find them,” he said. “Not even if you tried.”

Jungkook’s expression didn’t change, but something tightened beneath the surface, like a blade drawn a fraction of an inch farther from its sheath. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and deliberate. “Then stop wasting time,” he said. “Bring them to me.”

Namjoon held his gaze. He looked tired, worn thin by too many nights without rest, but there was no break in him. “If I do that,” he said evenly, “you’ll lose sight of what actually matters.”

Neither of them moved. The silence stretched between them, taut and vibrating, thin as wire pulled too tight, loaded with everything neither man was willing to say out loud.

Namjoon turned toward the window. Outside, the light had shifted again, gone sharp and metallic. A comet tore across the bruised sky, fast and clean, leaving behind a pale silver scar that lingered longer than it should have. Its glow spilled into the room and washed the walls in a bone-colored light, bright but lifeless, a false daylight that felt ancient, as though it belonged to a world that no longer existed.

“It’s said the comet always comes first,” Namjoon said quietly. “Before the world-enders.” He didn’t turn back. “The Coalsack planets are gone. Eight million settlers missing. The Aquilan System too, wiped clean. Helion Prime shares its sunlight with every world nearby. If we fall, they fall with us.” His voice wavered just enough to betray him. “And after that…” He swallowed. “My God. How do I save my family?”

Jungkook let out a low grunt. “What the fuck are you talking about, Imam?”

Namjoon turned halfway back. “Have you heard anything I’ve said?”

“You said it’s all circling the drain,” Jungkook replied. “The whole universe.”

“When Nero died,” Namjoon said, his voice barely above a murmur, “Rome tore itself apart. The empire collapsed under a comet.”

Jungkook dropped into a chair at the table. He drew a blade from his belt with the ease of habit and began spinning it between his fingers, smooth and rhythmic, the movement almost unconscious. The knife split a candlestick clean down the center, then another. The pieces tipped over silently onto the wood. He didn’t look at them. His eyes stayed fixed on something far beyond the room.

“Another omen,” Namjoon murmured.

“Had to end sometime,” Jungkook said. The blade spun faster now, catching the dim light as it orbited his hand. He spoke without lifting his eyes. “Always does. One way or another.”

The doorbell rang. The blade froze mid-spin, caught clean in Jungkook’s palm as if the sound had summoned it. Namjoon didn’t move. His hand slid beneath the counter, fingers tapping twice against a recessed switch.

“Guests?” Jungkook asked.

Namjoon nodded once. “I’m afraid so. It must be starting.”

Jungkook stood, eyes narrowing toward the dark of the hallway. “You said tonight.”

“They’re early.”

“And that’s not a problem?”

Namjoon lifted his mug and took a slow, measured sip. “It’s a very big problem.”

Three knocks followed, sharp and precise, each one placed with intention.

Samara appeared at the edge of the hall, already veiled, her posture straight with the kind of composure that came from long practice rather than ease. Her hands rested lightly on Dae’s shoulders, holding the girl close without pulling her back. Dae leaned just far enough to see what was happening, her wide eyes darting between Jungkook and the door, trying to understand without quite knowing what she was looking at.

“They’re not here for her,” Namjoon said quietly.

Samara kept her gaze forward, breathing slow and controlled. When she finally spoke, her voice was steady, but there was no mistaking the tension beneath it. “They’ll still look.”

Jungkook’s hand dropped to his side. He wasn’t reaching for a weapon. He was simply ready, his weight shifting almost imperceptibly. “Let them,” he said. “If trouble’s here, it’ll find me first.”

Namjoon shook his head. His voice didn’t rise, but it carried an unyielding firmness. “No. It’ll find me.”

The bells on the door rattled suddenly, thin and metallic, the sound sharp enough to cut through the room like glass dragged across steel. Samara moved toward the door, her steps measured, her fingers steady as they closed around the latch. Only her eyes betrayed her, nerves flickering beneath the calm. She paused for a single breath, then eased the door open.

Three clerics crossed the threshold without a word. Their black robes drifted inward like smoke, carrying a pressure that bent the air around them. It was subtle at first, then unmistakable. The room seemed to tilt, as though something unseen had entered with them and lodged itself deep in Samara’s chest. She shut the door hard, slid the bolt into place, and lingered against the frame a moment too long. The weight did not lift.

The clerics moved with unsettling patience, gliding rather than walking, as if gravity were optional. The faint sweetness of incense clung to them, pleasant for a heartbeat before turning sour, ash-heavy. Namjoon waited until they were fully inside before speaking, his voice low and deliberate, untouched by the tension tightening the room.

“He’s here,” he said. “The one you wanted.”

Jungkook straightened. The man who had been leaning against the counter was gone in an instant, burned away. What stood in his place was sharper, coiled tight, presence honed to an edge. He didn’t speak. He stepped forward, blade loose in his hand, boots striking the floor with quiet finality.

He stopped in front of the clerics and, without hesitation, reached out and tore away their coverings. Plain faces stared back at him. Ordinary men. No recognition. No sign of what he felt tightening in his gut. Logic offered nothing. Instinct pressed harder.

He turned slightly toward Namjoon. “Even if I looked—”

One of the clerics flinched. It was barely noticeable, a small twitch at the corner of his mouth, the kind of movement most people would have missed. Jungkook didn’t. It mattered.

He crossed the distance in two strides, blade held low, his voice dropping into something almost gentle. “Something you want to say?”

The air changed. Not with sound, not with motion, but with pressure. Jungkook could smell something coming closer to him.

He spun just as a figure appeared behind him. The blade flashed up on instinct, stopping short at a pale throat. The woman didn’t flinch. She stepped into the dim light with unhurried ease, as if the knife were nothing more than an inconvenience. Her skin shimmered faintly, not glowing exactly, but catching the light in a way that felt wrong, as though it passed through her instead of stopping at the surface. Her eyes were crystal blue, steady, unafraid.

“Whose throat is this?” Jungkook asked, his voice tight, edged with steel.

Namjoon stepped closer, careful not to crowd him, but close enough to be present. “This is Makani,” he said. “Envoy of the Elementals.”

Jungkook didn’t lower the blade. “And what the fuck does that have to do with me?”

“She’s not here to harm you,” Namjoon said.

Jungkook’s tone flattened as the blade pressed a fraction closer. “How do you know that? She put a bounty on my head. I don’t take that lightly.”

Makani spoke then. Her voice was soft, but it carried, drifting through the room like smoke that found every crack. “If I die, the offer dies with me,” she said. “So does the reason you’re here.”

“I’ll lower the blade when the price on my head is gone.”

Her head tilted, just slightly, and a faint smile crossed her face, brief as a struck match. Then she vanished. One moment she was there, the next she wasn’t, the air folding back into itself where she had stood.

Her voice lingered, drifting down from somewhere unseen. “There are very few who have met a Necromonger and lived to speak of it,” she said. “So when I choose to speak, you should choose to listen.”

“Necromonger,” Jungkook said quietly, the word catching on something old and sharp. Imelda had used the same name. He remembered the way she’d said it, like a warning.

Makani reappeared in front of him, close enough to feel the cold that seemed to radiate from her. Her eyes were startlingly clear, blue as ice.

“It is the name of what will convert or kill every last human life unless the universe finds balance again,” she said.

Jungkook snorted. “Maybe you should talk like you’re dealin’ with someone who grew up in the penal system,” he said, sarcasm heavy in his voice. “Actually, don’t pretend.”

“Balance is everything to us,” Makani replied evenly. “Water and fire. Earth and air. We use different words, but the truth is the same. And now there is only time to speak of balance between opposites.”

Jungkook looked at Namjoon. “What the hell is she talkin’ about?”

Makani answered before Namjoon could. “There is a story, Jungkook, of Furyan boys strangled in their cribs with their own cords. Feared from the moment they opened their eyes.”

Namjoon spoke softly then, almost reverent. “When Kani told this story to the Helion leaders, I told her about you.”

Jungkook scoffed. “Don’t talk about me to anyone, holy man.”

Makani’s gaze locked onto his. “Don’t you ever wonder where you come from? What you are?”

“Not particularly,” Jungkook said, shrugging. The lie sat heavy in his chest.

“Do you remember your world?” Namjoon asked. “Where you’re from?”

“Yeah.” Jungkook’s voice sharpened. “Lupus Five. Orphan.”

Makani cut in quickly, her voice both near and distant, unsettling as drifting glass. “Have you ever met another like you?”

Jungkook’s eyes hardened. “They don’t know what to do with one of me, sister.”

Makani laughed quietly, something dark and knowing in the sound. Namjoon stepped in before it could stretch too long.

“I think she means ones with your eyes,” he said gently. “You once told me they were done in a prison. But I don’t believe that. Do you, Jungkook?”

Jungkook said nothing. He tried to remember telling Namjoon that story and came up empty. Only three people knew it. Leo. Lee. Y/N. Lee would never have spoken. Y/N was dead. That left Leo. The thought twisted something sharp and ugly in his gut. Betrayal by proxy, by someone who had once been closer than family.

He hated people playing his cards without permission.

“Who gives a shit?” he snapped.

“I do,” Makani said. Her voice was cool and measured, without ceremony. “There is a prophecy of a Furyan. A boy who grows into a man and burns the Necromonger plague out of existence. It came to me long before tonight.”

Jungkook let out a short, incredulous breath. Fatigue crept into his voice, roughening it. “And you think that’s me? A Furyan?”

“I don’t think,” she said. “I know.”

He opened his mouth to answer, but the words never came. The door shuddered under a sudden blow, then another. Heavy fists slammed against it in sharp bursts, rattling cabinets, shaking the walls, sending vibrations through the floorboards like warning tremors.

Jungkook didn’t flinch. His eyes had already gone distant, tracking exits that weren’t there, calculating rooftops, angles, distances. Escape lines formed and dissolved in his head with mechanical precision. His body was ready. He waited anyway.

Samara appeared in the hall, her face drained of color, lips pressed thin. Her gaze flicked between Namjoon and Jungkook, fear flashing through the cracks in her composure. When she spoke, her voice barely carried.

“It’s Necromongers. They’re going house to house. They’re looking for Makani.”

She hesitated, fingers curling into the fabric at her wrists.

“A jasus,” Namjoon said quietly. The word landed with cold certainty. “Someone was followed.”

Samara turned toward Jungkook, her eyes sharp despite the fear beneath them. “Did anyone see you come in?”

Before he could answer, the door screamed. Plasma torches bit into the frame, steel hissing and spitting as it melted under the heat. The air filled with the stench of burning metal, sharp and choking, a taste that clung to the back of the throat.

Jungkook’s muscles drew tight, every nerve pulled taut. His gaze lifted instinctively, tracing the skyline beyond the walls, mapping his jump before the thought even finished forming. His body had already decided how this would end.

“Will you leave us to our fate?” Namjoon’s voice was even and steady, but it carried weight. “Like you left her?”

Jungkook froze. The torches vanished. The pounding boots outside fell away. The shriek of steel, the trembling house, the fire gnawing at its seams, all of it dissolved. What remained was a single name, spoken without sound.

Y/N.

The memory struck with ruthless clarity. She didn’t creep into his thoughts. She arrived whole, standing there with her arms crossed, chin tipped just enough to warn him she was about to say something he wouldn’t like and couldn’t ignore. She never went quietly. That had never been her way.

She ran straight into fire she had no business walking into, for people who would never remember her name. For him too. That was the part that burned the deepest. She had believed he was worth it. He had never proven her right.

She had known him. All of him. The blood, the edge, the ruin threaded through his bones. She had seen it and accepted it without flinching, held it up like it was simply another piece of a broken world still worth saving. That calm of hers, that steady certainty, it had undone him more thoroughly than any scream ever could have.

And now, with the walls about to give way and the roof trembling overhead, she was back again, alive behind his eyes. Too close. Too real. Too much to bear.

Downstairs, the door finally gave way with a scream of tearing steel. The frame buckled inward and smoke poured through the opening, thick and acrid. Voices followed close behind it, sharp, commanding, stripped of doubt.

Namjoon stood near the archway, his jaw tight, his voice low but steady. “We still have influence,” he said. “Let us try. Please, Jungkook.”

Jungkook closed his eyes. For a moment, he saw a child growing up without a father and felt the weight of the silence that kind of loss leaves behind. He exhaled slowly and gave a single nod.

Namjoon didn’t waste it. He slipped into the hall, already straightening his shoulders, already becoming the man who spoke for others. The clerics followed him, their robes brushing the walls like dry leaves dragged by a weak wind.

When they were gone, the air changed. It felt thinner. Cooler. As if the house itself had let out a breath it had been holding.

Makani appeared. She didn’t walk into the room. She seemed to unfold from the shadows, her shape catching the dim light the way dust clings to glass. Her voice was barely there when she spoke.

“Consider it another test.”

Then she was gone.

Jungkook stayed still, but his mind snapped into focus, sliding into that cold, narrow place where instinct took over and hesitation got you killed.

A creak sounded below. Then another. Boots on the stairs. Slow. Measured. Not rushing. Good, he thought. Better when they think they’re in control.

He spoke into the dark, his voice flat and waiting. “Come on in.”

Ten soldiers swept into the room in tight formation, armor catching the light, rifles raised, beams cutting through the smoke. They were trained. Alert.

The first man never saw it coming. One step too far, one breath too loud, and Jungkook was already there, the takedown clean and soundless.

Gunfire tore through the dark, muzzle flashes ripping white holes in the smoke before snapping back into shadow. They shot at walls, at movement that wasn’t real, at panic itself. Not him. Never him. Jungkook slipped through the chaos the way water found its way through stone, silent, inevitable.

Steel caught the light. A rifle clattered across the floor. A helmet spun free and rolled until it struck the wall. One body slammed hard enough to fracture plaster; another collapsed beside it before the scream could finish forming. By the time the fifth soldier went down, the rest were already unraveling. Formation dissolved into instinct. Discipline gave way to noise, to fear, to the certainty that something was loose among them.

One of them bolted. Jungkook caught him before he reached the door, drove him into the floor, and kept moving without breaking stride. He didn’t need to look back. The outcome had already been decided.

Outside, even the dogs had gone quiet. Samara and the clerics stood frozen near the veranda, faces lit by the last dying flashes of red as the gunfire choked itself out.

Silence rushed in to fill the space violence left behind. It settled deep, heavy, the kind that sank into bone and stayed there.

Jungkook stepped out of it. The glow in his goggles was dim now, unfocused, more ember than flame. Blood slid from the blade in his hand and struck the floor once before the weapon went still.

Only one soldier remained. He was young, barely past recruitment, his rifle shaking so hard it rattled against his chest. His eyes were wide and wet, locked on Jungkook with the kind of fear that erased thought entirely.

Jungkook crossed the distance at an unhurried pace. He took the rifle from the boy’s hands as if it weighed nothing and tossed it aside without a glance. For a moment he studied the kid’s face, steady, unreadable. Then his wrist flicked in a short, dismissive gesture.

The boy ran.

When Jungkook turned back, Namjoon stood in the doorway. He wasn’t blocking the exit or reaching for him. He was simply there, watching, his face stripped down to something bare and honest.

“You mentioned her,” Jungkook said, his voice scraped raw.

“I was speaking of Leo,” Namjoon replied, quietly.

Jungkook’s jaw tightened. His mouth opened, closed. Not Y/N. She belonged to another life, buried under fire and ash. Leo was different. Leo was the one he’d left behind, the one he’d convinced himself distance might protect. She would be nearly twenty now. Old enough to have chosen a path of her own. He wondered where it had taken her.

“She followed your path too closely,” Namjoon said. Every word landed heavy. “People died.”

Something shifted in Jungkook’s jaw, a fracture too small to notice unless you were watching for it. “She wanted me to be something I’m not,” he muttered, more to himself than to Namjoon. “That’s always a mistake.”

He turned away.

“She never forgave you for leaving.”

The words caught him mid-step. His spine locked, shoulders drawing tight, breath snagging before it could finish. He didn’t turn back. He didn’t answer. He vaulted the veranda rail in one smooth motion and disappeared into the dark.

Below, the courtyard lay drowned in dust and silence. Samara and Dae stood together beneath the failing grid, their outlines pale and fragile in the brittle hush of a city holding its breath. The quiet stretched until it felt ready to break.

Dae’s voice cut through it. “Are you going to stop the new monsters now?”

Jungkook didn’t answer. His gaze stayed lifted, fixed on the shimmer hovering just above the rooftops. Makani lingered there, half seen, half imagined, like heat rising off stone.

“He doesn’t even know who he is,” her voice drifted, thinning into the wind before fading completely.

Jungkook moved across the rooftops with practiced ease, low and fast, silent as thought. It was the movement of someone shaped by places without names.

Below him, the city began to come apart. People spilled into the streets, pointing upward, voices breaking into sharp bursts of panic. He followed their gaze.

At first it looked like a comet, a long ribbon of light stitched across the sky. Beautiful. Almost gentle. Then the shape began to change, not breaking, not exploding, but shedding itself with deliberate grace. The glowing tail peeled away in smooth, luminous fragments.

Jungkook’s breath caught.

Dozens, then hundreds of Necromonger warships unfolded from shadow into atmosphere, as if they had been there all along, hidden behind cloud and darkness. Their hulls caught the city’s light and turned it cold. The sky dimmed beneath their weight, and for the first time in years, something unfamiliar settled in Jungkook’s chest.

One of their titans, an Icon, fell straight out of the sky. It struck the western solar beacon with a force that split the air apart. The sound was too large, too heavy, something that felt impossible to exist. Fire tore through the skyline in a single violent bloom, swallowing steel and glass whole. Windows blew out across entire blocks. The beacon buckled, then collapsed, stone and sparks raining down in brutal arcs.

The shockwave ripped across the rooftops. Jungkook was thrown flat, the breath punched from his lungs, pain flaring white-hot through his ribs. Grit filled his mouth. Dust crushed down on him, thick and choking.

He coughed once, planted a hand, and pushed himself upright. New Mecca became a battlefield in the space of a breath. Sirens screamed. Fires climbed the sides of buildings. Somewhere deep in the city, something cried out, raw and broken, a sound that carried through smoke and ruin.

Jungkook moved toward it. Smoke curled around him. Ash drifted down like dirty snow. He stepped past twisted metal, shattered stone, bodies half-buried beneath what had once been streets and homes. People surged around him in blind panic, scattering in every direction, driven by nothing but survival. Jungkook didn’t look at them. His eyes stayed fixed ahead, locked on the devastation. On the Icon.

It towered over the district like a god carved from shadow, taller than the buildings it had crushed beneath its weight. Plates of armor caught the firelight and threw it back cold and merciless. This wasn’t a machine built to build anything. It wasn’t even built to conquer. It was built to end. Its massive limbs moved with slow, deliberate precision, vents exhaling steam like a furnace drawing breath.

Fighter jets screamed overhead, bright streaks slicing through the smoke. Sonic booms cracked the sky. Missiles slammed into the Icon’s armor and fizzled out, bursting harmlessly, like pebbles thrown at a cliff.

Jungkook’s jaw tightened. A low hum rolled through the lower districts, pressing behind the eyes, vibrating through bone. It felt wrong, like the world itself had gone slightly out of tune. In the plaza, people froze where they stood. Mid-step. Mid-scream. Heads tilted upward in unison, eyes wide and unblinking.

A sphere hovered above them. Perfect. Pale. Motionless.

Necromongers flooded the streets. They came in disciplined waves, black armor swallowing the light, blank helms giving nothing back. Dozens at first, then hundreds, spilling into the square and spreading across the stone like ink dropped into water. There were no shouts, no chants, no rallying cries—only the steady, mechanical advance of something that did not need belief to exist.

At their front stood Taehyung. He did not rush or posture. He simply stood, composed, eyes burning with a cold, unwavering focus. When he lifted his weapon toward the sphere hovering above the plaza, three hundred rifles rose with him, smooth and synchronized, as if the army itself had taken a single breath.

The orb pulsed. Everything within its reach ceased to exist. Buildings didn’t collapse or burn. They vanished. Glass, steel, stone—gone. People disappeared mid-scream, erased so completely it was as if they had never been there at all. Light folded inward, swallowed whole, and the darkness left behind did not feel like absence. It felt permanent.

From behind a shattered wall, Namjoon watched, evacuation tokens clenched in his hand. Their faint glow burned against his skin, cruel and useless now.

Beside him, Jungkook stood motionless, staring into the empty space where the plaza had been. His face held no fear, no shock.

Only calm.

Almost reverence.