"Sometimes destiny whispers. Other times it screams while covered in blood and poor decisions."
Location: Yxtrielle – Sector 9, Drift-Sync Border Outpost
Status: Active Warzone
Ren's Mood: Vaguely done with everyone's shit
Ren wasn't even supposed to be out here.
Lira told him to stay inside the dome — "don't breathe the ash wind, don't talk to the shadows, don't get yourself killed by dimensional feedback."
So naturally, he'd wandered out thirty minutes later with Snarksteel buzzing in his arm and Blaze screaming in his aura about how boring peace was.
The sector was mostly collapsed scaffolding and glitching gravity wells. There were no people.
Until there were.
VOICE (somewhere behind rubble):
"There! That's one of them — Yxtrielle soldier, tagged with burn marks."
REN (sighing):
"Here we fucking go."
Four figures leapt from behind a shattered hull.
Tall. Brutal. Scarred from the neck down.
Threxil-born.
Planet 8 monsters.
All raw strength and no foreplay.
Their armor was bone. Their eyes flickered like sonar.
One of them — taller than the others — stepped forward and pointed a glowing claw at Ren's face.
THREXIL LEADER (snarling):
"This is Threxil ground now. Yxtrielle forces die screaming."
REN:
"I'm literally not from here. I don't even like this planet."
THREXIL SOLDIER #2:
"Lies taste the same as blood."
SNARKSTEEL (materializing midair):
"Oh my god can we kill them already? Please? I'm starving."
They charged.
Ren didn't move.
Not at first.
Then — one flick.
Threadbreaker hissed through the air like it was slicing silk and egos.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Gone.
Zero wasted effort.
They didn't even scream.
The silence returned.
Ren exhaled.
REN:
"Okay. What the fuck was that?"
TIME (materializing next to a splattered ribcage, poking it):
"Well, they were Threxil scouts. Probably here to sabotage anchor nodes."
FROST (appearing beside him):
"Or looking for the Override Soul themselves."
REN (frowning):
"You think they knew?"
Then it happened.
From the corpse of the Threxil leader, something clicked.
Not magical.
Not glyph-coded.
Just... a folded piece of damp paper sticking out of his inner armor pocket.
Ren picked it up.
It was… a flyer?
A literal paper flyer.
On it: a picture.
A name.
An address.
And below that: "Chosen for Dimensional Stability Candidate Program – Tier: Override Access."
The face was sharp, tired, familiar somehow — but not known.
Dark skin. Blue sigils faint beneath their left eye. No armor. No weapon. Just…
A calm face. The kind Ren hadn't seen in months.
SPACE (peering over his shoulder):
"Okay. That's weird."
GRAVITY (from behind):
"No. That's fate correcting itself."
BLAZE:
"Or fate getting lazy."
REN (staring at the paper):
"They're from Threxil."
The Override Soul wasn't on Yxtrielle.
They were on Planet 8.
The most unstable, violent, monster-riddled pit in the system.
And apparently? They had a mailing address.