Xandros studied me for a long moment, then said, "You're asking us to trust you anyway."
"Yes."
"And you're asking us," Ashley added quietly, "to believe that the greatest danger isn't the Arkhevari, but something insidethe Dark Abyss, something you and your brothers have been fighting for eons."
"Yes."
Silence stretched.
Then Xandros spoke again. "You want an alliance."
"I want cooperation," I corrected. "Against the Harrowed One. Against the Mmuhr'Rhong. Against whatever is trying to force the universe into an ending it hasn't chosen."
"And your first move?" Xandros asked.
That one was easy. "I need to return to my brothers."
"We need to do some more research, find answers to questions," Nadine explained.
Xandros folded his arms. "You believe answers lie within the Dark Abyss?"
To my surprise, Nadine shook her head and looked straight at Ashley, "No, I believe the answers will be found on Earth. I believe that the Arkhevari were never meant to carry this alone. And that whatever the Harrowed One is, it feeds on isolation as much as power."
Ashley exhaled slowly. "You need our permission for access?"
The wordpermissionwould have grated once. Now it simply felt… accurate.
"Yes," Nadine replied calmly. "We could go without it, but whatever we found under those circumstances would be dismissed as myth or coincidence. We need transparency. Oversight. Context."
Xandros's gaze flicked between us. "You're proposing joint research on a planet that belongs to the Pandraxian Empire." Xandros turned back to me. "You understand that if this goes wrong, history will remember this as the moment we trusted the wrong gods."
I inclined my head. "History has always been unkind to those who act alone."
That gave him pause.
Ashley folded her arms, studying Nadine with a look that held both respect and something like unease. "You're not afraid of what you might find."
"I am," Nadine admitted honestly. "But fear doesn't change data. It just delays its discovery."
A corner of Ashley's mouth lifted. "You really did choose well," she said, looking at me.
I felt the bond warm at that, not pride, exactly. Recognition.
Xandros straightened. "Very well. We proceed cautiously. Limited access. Shared intelligence. And if at any point this turns into an extinction-level gamble?—"
"You'll stop us," I finished. "I expect nothing less."
He nodded gravely. "Then we have an understanding."
As the meeting adjourned and the stars beyond the viewport shifted with the ship's course correction, I felt the weight of what lay ahead settle fully into place. The Harrowed One was not a singular enemy. It was a consequence. Of memory without release. Of power without balance. Of beings—gods and mortals alike—who had believed they could carry the universe's grief alone.
I looked at Nadine. She met my gaze without flinching. Whatever awaited us on Earth, whatever truths lay buried beneath its surface, one thing was clear now in a way it had never been before. We would not face it in isolation. That assurance felt like the beginning of an ending; the universe might actually survive.
Nox Eternum did not welcomeus. I suspected it never had in the first place. The Arkhevarihomeworldexisted in a state that defied human understanding, vast, luminous, and heavy with a presence, as if the space itself remembered too much. When we arrived, the stars seemed to dim around it, swallowed by that familiar sense of gravity that wasn't physical at all. Memory. History.
Power that had never learned how to rest. Through the bond, I felt Dravok feel it the moment we crossed the threshold. The same bond allowed him to steady himself beside me. This was where he had been shaped. Where everything he was had been refined, restrained, and ultimately fractured.
The Hall of Seven revealed itself gradually, unfolding from the living stone like a thought taking form. It was circular,impossibly vast, its ceiling lost in a soft, internal glow that had no visible source. The floor was smooth and dark, veined with slow-moving light, like currents beneath deep water. I had seen great halls inside massive domes meant to observe the stars, but this one wasn't built to impress. It was built tocontain.
