When Daryus had summoned me, I'd assumed he wanted me to continue Seris'earlierwork, the respectable work. Refine it. Reframe it. Strip away the speculation and leave the mathintact. Now I was beginning to realize that wasn't what he wanted at all. He wanted me to investigate what I'd written off as rambling. Not his polished theories. Not his respected work. But his fractured, half-mythic attempts to describe something that didn't want to be described at all. That realization unsettled me far more than the Dark Abyss ever had.
A laugh threatened to escape before I could stop it. Not because it was funny. Because it was deeply, profoundly unsettling.
The silence began to stretch too long. Dravok was no longer looking at Daryus. He was looking atme. Not the way people usually did—not with curiosity or appraisal—but as if he were recalculating something he had believed immutable. His gaze never left me, but the weight of it felt different now, less like suspicion, more like recognition. As if I'd finally said something that aligned with what he already knew.
"You dismissed Seris' later work," he said. It wasn't accusatory. It was factual.
"Yes," I agreed. "So did most of the Pandraxian scholars. So would any Earth-based scientist working with the data available at the time."
"Yet you don't dismiss it now."
I hesitated. His question landed deeper than I liked. "I'm… reconsidering it," I finally admitted carefully. "His later theories don't read like conclusions. They read like someone struggling to describe a phenomenon without the language or tools to define it."
Dravok inclined his head slightly. Approval, perhaps.
Daryus shifted his stance, arms folding behind his back. "You believe Ceceaux Seris was correct?" he asked me.
"I believe he may not have been wrong," I replied. "That's not the same thing."
Dravok snorted softly. "He was closer than you think."
That snapped my attention back to him. "You believe the Abyss can do what he suggested."
"I know it can," Dravok replied.
The certainty in his voice sent a chill through me. Not because it was dramatic, but because it was unembellished. He wasn't theorizing. He was recalling an experience. Raising my curiosity. About him. About the Dark Abyss. He might know more about it than any other living being, and that alone made him irresistible to me—even without the strong sexual attraction I felt for him.
Daryus looked between us. "You speak as if this is a settled fact."
"For the Arkhevari, it is," Dravok nodded. "The Abyss does not merely consume. It influences. It remembers. It responds."
I shook my head slowly. "I wouldn't go that far. Not yet."
Dravok's eyes narrowed, not in anger, but in focus. "You don't have to. You only need to acknowledge that Seris was observing something real."
I swallowed.
"That's… possible." I could concede that much. "And if Nythor's fragments align with his later models, then Seris wasn't losing coherence. He was encountering data that didn't fit existing frameworks."
"Exactly," Dravok agreed. "And frameworks break before truth does."
Daryus remained silent, absorbing it all; his expression stayed unreadable. "So, we have an Arkhevari who believes the Abyss is an active force, a human who believes an old scholar may have been ahead of his time, and a missing Oracle speaking in fragments that no one but Doctor Phillips can interpret." He looked at me. "You are claiming certainty?"
"No," I corrected quickly. "I'm claiming uncertainty that deserves investigation."
Dravok's mouth curved slightly. "That is more dangerous than belief."
My pulse kicked.
"Because uncertainty invites proximity," he continued. "And proximity invites consequence."
Daryus exhaled slowly. "Then we proceed carefully."
Dravok turned to him. "I proceed regardless."
Their eyes locked. I suddenly understood something that made my stomach tighten: Dravok wasn't trying to convince anyone. He never had been. He was warning us. And I was standing at the edge of the same precipice Ceceaux Seris had once stared into, only now, the Abyss was staring back.
I should have left.The moment the emperor extended the invitation to have dinner in his quarters and spend the night aboard the imperial ship. I should have declined and set a course for Cryon space. Nythor did not improve with captivity, and the longer I delayed, the more variables entered the equation. Yet I found myself standing outside the emperor's private suite, with irritation coiling tight in my chest, wondering when exactly I had decided that staying was preferable to leaving.
