Her crew, scattered. Dying. Over and over again.
She almost faltered.
But then—like a single candle in endless dark—she found it.
A thread of survival.
A chance.
She saw theSilandamake it. Saw her crew reach the refugee base. She saw hope.
And it was enough.
That sliver of possibility carved the final fear from her hearts, leaving only resolve.
The time we had made everything else worthwhile.A final thought to her mate, before she called the Balefire.
If she hit the tear perfectly, and the Balefire opened the fissure, the following detonation from the core, even without the ship to heighten its power, would blow it wide enough and fast enough to suck in all the Wraith before they could get away, and before it closed again…assuming it closed.
The Wraith would be swallowed whole in a one-way descent into nothingness. And she would fall with them. Not gladly. But without regret. At least if she got it right and didn’t destroy everything she was trying to protect instead.
Focus. She forced her thoughts on the magical weave.
Balefire was no ordinary weapon.
It was a cataclysmic force, the antithesis of existence itself. It didn’t simply destroy.
The best analogy she could conjure was that of a spider’s web, with each strand representing a life, an event, a choice. Balefire didn’t sever threads. It burned them out completely, as if they had never existed. And when that happened, the surrounding pattern often unraveled with them.
It wasn’t just capable of annihilating a town or a planet. It could tear out entire swaths of the Weaving. A careless application could become a wildfire of unmaking—ravenous, uncontainable, and irreversible.
And here she was, at the end of existence, surrounded by soul-hungry monstrosities, trying to figure out Balefire on instinct alone. She had no training, no inherited right, no assurance that this would work. She only knew about it because she’d overheard her father late at night, speaking to his most trusted advisor in the tone he reserved for forbidden truths.
There was every chance she would fail.
More than that, she would likely Balefire herself into oblivion in the attempt, completely unraveling her own thread in the process.
Though, strangely, that thought offered a sliver of peace.
If she erased herself, her mate might survive the loss.
Starlit linings.
“Okay. Let’s do this,” she murmured, her voice steady despite the chaos inside her. “Even if it means I never existed, at least I did something good first.”
Stopping mid-flight, she held her wings still in the vacuum and released the veil that had kept her hidden. The magic unraveled from around her in streaks of vanishing Will, exposing her golden form to the enemy as she began pulling energy into her scaled palms.
Balefire.
She couldn’t summon it through her throat the way a true dragon would have. Her long-time preference for human form had stunted that reflex. But she was far from sane in this moment, anyway, and practicality had left her hours ago. She would channel it in any way she could.
The black fire bloomed.
The Wraith didn’t notice her. They were still focused on her vanguard—the few remaining fighters who had kept them clustered near the tear.
She blinked, and one of the Wraith’s skirmishers broke formation, darting after her last defender. It was a lone one-seater, brave and relentless, still dancing through the crossfire.
The enemy locked on, and a milky white beam lanced from its weapon, piercing her fighter's hull.
