They rested.
Ocean departed—slipping silently into the black sea of stars and planets beyond.
Time became a haze. The stars thinned. The moons fell behind.
Eventually, they arrived.
The pod docked near a dark waterstream planet, currents glowing like slow veins under its surface. Just beyond it: the abandoned moon of Calista.
That's when Salven felt it.
A wrongness. Not loud. Not even clear. Just… pressure.
He stiffened. His whole body went rigid.
He didn't speak. But his knuckles whitened around the grip of his sidearm.
Ka'rui looked up, tension threading through her voice. "Salven…?"
He didn't answer. But his eyes were locked on the dark.
And then Lasi felt it too.
A stare.
Not from the moon—but from something beyond it.
Something in the void.
It didn't look.
It felt.
Like a mouth unhinging in thought.
A thing that imagined violence.
"Get your gear on," Lasi muttered.
Their wristmarks flared. Ocean's pulse came through in jagged, fragmented bursts. A panicked signal.
A shivering code:
GO.
LEAVE.
DO NOT DELAY.
DO NOT TURN BACK.
Scarlet swore. Ka'rui grabbed Lasi's hand to run—
—and stopped.
Because in her other hand, something pulled itself into existence.
A blade. Thin. Fractured.
As if a single strike might shatter it—but in that fracture: light.
Like it had lived too many lifetimes.
It pulsed, softly. Unnervingly.
Lasi flinched the moment her eyes met it.
The sword vibrated. Hummed. Then—without warning—chose.
Ka'rui gasped and let go. The blade streaked through the air, cutting a silver arc—
—and landed in Lasi's grip.
The moment her fingers closed, a shockwave rippled outward.
Not air. Not sound. Something deeper.
Like gravity exhaling.
A presence flooded her chest—warm, ancient, intimate.
The blade whispered her name.
But not the one she knew.
Bo Anyi.
And then the shimmer arrived.
It didn't tear through space.
It folded it.
Reality inverted around it—bent and trembling, like something was being dreamed in reverse.
A flicker. No light. No origin.
Edges that warped memory. Bent time.
The shimmer searched.
Then it spoke—again:
"Bo Anyi."
Lasi staggered. The sword in her hand pulsed with memory.
And then, from everywhere at once:
Ocean's voice.
Furious. Resounding. Ancient.
"How dare you."
The shimmer froze. The air convulsed.
Ocean's voice boomed through the wristmarks, tearing through distance and dimension.
"You vile, ancient mistake.
You were banished. Erased by pact.
The Council should have ended you 7,000 cycles ago.
But they were cowards.
I am not."
Back on the homeworld, the bay surged—miles of water responding to rage.
Ocean didn't whisper this time.
She declared:
"You will not have her.
Not again."
The shimmer faltered.
Ocean struck.
Not with light. Not with sound.
With soul‑force.
Reality cracked. The shimmer's fold patterns unraveled.
It reeled. Lost tether.
Vanished.
But not defeated.
Ocean's final echo rang through the dark:
"Go. I can hold no longer.
Your road begins now.
Never remove your Magi‑coms.
Let the stars remember."
The pod reengaged. The silence fell back into place.
Lasi collapsed into her seat. Sword still in hand.
Its name lit up in her mind:
Void Slicer.
Not a weapon.
A promise.
Memories trickled in.
Ka'rui—her right hand in battles long erased. Fierce. Loyal.
Salven—her… anchor. Her grief.
But nothing of Scarlet.
That cut deepest.
⸻
Fragment: Scarlet POV
—-
Scarlet watched the shimmer vanish, her whole body taut with terror. But not surprise.
She'd seen it before.
Not in this life. But others.
Lives that bled out in defense of Bo Anyi.
Lives ripped to pieces by that thing's search for her.
The shimmer was not a being.
It was a reaper of iterations.
It came whenever Bo Anyi remembered too much.
Loved too hard.
Changed the current.
And Scarlet?
Scarlet was the shield.
In one life, she'd held Bo Anyi's hand as the void consumed them both.
In another, she had sacrificed her own name to erase the path.
Now?
Now, Lasi didn't remember her.
But she would.
Scarlet closed her eyes. Just before everything ended—one memory pushed forward.
Two girls beneath a red sky.
Bo Anyi and her. Laughing. Holding hands.
No titles. No war. Just music.
And one promise:
"If they erase you,
I'll find you again.
Even if I burn to do it."
Scarlet opened her eyes.
This time, she'd keep that promise.
Even if it killed her again.
⸻
The pod docked again—this time beneath the slate cliffs of Calista's shadow side.
The garage loomed ahead. A sealed half‑shell of carbonsteel and hex‑fiber, long since darkened by dust and cold winds. No visible doors. No lights. Just a lock panel, cracked but still active.
Lasi stepped forward, sword sheathed at her side, magi‑com locked on tight. She pulled her mask on, remembering the warnings.
Salven followed her lead without hesitation and did the same.
The other two snickered.
She held the journal up.
It pulsed.
A code etched itself across the surface, bleeding from ink to light.
She pressed her hand against the panel, linking the pod and garage into a merged living setting.
The garage breathed open with a tired hiss—like something sighing awake after too long alone.
Inside: darkness. And beyond it—racks of gear, locked crates, sealed supply lockers.
Pulseblades. Memory cloaks. Tech-weave armor.
Strips of untraceable currency. Jars of stabilized rations. Vials of blue biogel marked "For neural disruption only."
But also—warnings.
Spray-painted in jagged, desperate glyphs:
THEY SMILE TOO LATE
DO NOT SHOW THEM A SECOND FACE
PU✓ITALIANS DO NOT SLEEP
EYES OFF = LIFE ON
Scarlet muttered, "Nice place. Very murder-chic."
Salven didn't laugh. "Don't touch anything with a smile on it."
Ka'rui drifted toward a mask rack. "These don't look like the ones Ocean gave us…"
She lifted one. It was humanoid. Generic.
But it pulsed faintly—watching.
"Put that down," Lasi said sharply. "Now."
Ka'rui froze. "Okay. Noted. Creepy mask is creepy."
Scarlet tilted her head. "What if they imprint off your nervous system or some quantum mirror reflex—"
A sound sliced through the laughter— not footsteps, not breathing— something dragging.
Slow. Heavy. Dry.
Ka'rui, still examining the mask rack, paused. Her fingers hovered above the display.
"What is that—"
Then she froze.
Because from between the crates, a figure emerged.
It moved like something poorly pretending to be human.
Limbs jointed too smoothly. Too fluid. Its skin was pale, stretched—unfinished.