Which meant it could be understood.
Hah! He thought he'd secured me. That was his mistake. Because whatever he thought I was… I was not helpless. I wasn't done fighting. My eyes moved to a palmtop lying on a hovering cube that served as a nightstand. It looked smaller than the newest model on the emperor's ship; still, I grabbed it like a lifeline.
"Okay," I muttered. "Let's start simple."
If I could call for help—any help—this whole situation changed. I brought the interface up with a thought-command; relief flickered when the familiar lattice of icons bloomed into existence. Network access. Feeds. Streams. I scrolled automatically, my brain half a step behind my fingers.Pandraxian news channels, commentary threads, live feeds from colony worlds. And there—absurdly—entertainment. Streamers. I snorted despite myself. One name jumped out immediately.
Nock.
I'd watched him before; on the rare occasions I allowed myself to do anything besides cramming through archives while I was still on Astrionis. I had done everything in my power to learn about the new worlds I had been thrown into, and that had included the Galactic Union's version of social media.
Nock was one of the most famous streamers, so it wasn't just a coincidence that I stumbled across his feeds. They'd caught my interest because he talked about the Space Guardians, the very same ones who had rescued me. I'd watched one of his streams once with Silla, purely out of morbid curiosity. He was… annoyingly funny.
For half a second, hope flared. If I could message him, if I could getanyone'sattention… I tapped the interface. Nothing happened. I frowned and tried again, routing through a different channel, then another. The palmtop responded flawlessly… right up until the point where anything external should have gone through. I realized there was no outbound signal. My stomach sank. I pulled up the system diagnostics. Internal functions: green. Local access: unrestricted. External communication—disabled.
My jaw tightened.
"When?" I whispered, "When did you do that?"
Had he planned this all along? Shut it down before abducting me? Or had he done it from the bridge in the moments after he brought me onto his ship? It didn't really matter. The result was the same. I was cut off.
I set the palmtop down slowly, forcing myself not to throw it across the room. Panic pressed at the edges of my thoughtsagain, sharp and insistent.No. Focus.If I couldn't call for help, I needed information.
Which meant I needed to think abouthim. The Arkhevari. I picked the device back up, logged into my account, and pulled up familiar files. Classified summaries, fragmented historical references—things even the Pandraxians treated carefully.
I learned that the Arkhevari weren't gods. No matter what Dravok claimed.
At least not… exactly. They were… something in between. That was something I thought I could live with. Thinking of Dravok as a god was simply… unacceptable. They were—he was—an ancient entity born of the Luminis, older than any recorded civilizations. They didn't rule empires. They didn't demand worship. They existed tobalance,to counter excess, to intervene when creation tipped too far into chaos. They aged. They died.
But… somehow, they were reborn.
Not as infants. Not as new beings. As continuations. Minds that shed overload the way a star sheds mass before collapse, making room for more knowledge, more memory.
They weren't omnipotent. They were just… operating on a scale that made everyone else feel small. Which made Dravok worse, not better. Because he wasn't some unhinged tyrant playing god. Dravok was—according to Emperor Daryus' files, given to him by Zapharos—a sort of specialist. An Infiltrator. Spymaster. Hunter of treachery. The one who went where others couldn't. The one who manipulated outcomes before anyone else realized there had been a choice. My fingers curled against the edge of the table.
Andthatwas who had decided I needed to be on his ship. Not because of destiny. Not because of prophecy. But because I wasuseful. That realization steadied me. If he'd taken me because I mattered strategically, then I still had leverage. Still had value beyond whatever twisted pull existed between us.
I needed to go deeper, so I opened system menus and watched how the ship responded to my queries. Driven by the simple calculation: Learn the environment + Learn the rules = Learnhim.
If Dravok thought he'd secured a compliant asset… he'd underestimated the part of me that survived Earth, the Cryons, and everything that came after. I fully intended to make him regret that mistake. One calculation at a time.
I should have goneto her. The thought surfaced as the ship slipped free of the emperor's gravity well, dissolving into open space with practiced silence. Nadine was secured, furious, and already testing boundaries I hadn't intended her to reach so quickly. But I didn't. Instead, I let the ship drift, emissions flattened, presences thinned until we became irrelevant noise among dead stars. Then I turned inward and did what few Arkhevari ever chose to do willingly: I opened myself to memory. Not mine alone.
The Abyss remembered everything it swallowed. Worlds did not vanish when they fell; they imprinted. Heat, fear, final decisions, the last patterns of civilizations compressed into echoes that lingered long after matter collapsed. I had walkedthrough those echoes before. I allowed my mind to brush against them now.
A ruined ocean-world, its last sun flickering out as cities boiled away. A lattice civilization that had sung itself into extinction. A Cryon research moon, cracked open by curiosity that it couldn't survive. I sifted through them carefully, extracting context, motive, and anomaly. If the Abyss had reached out before—if it hadspokento mortals—there would be precedent here. There was none. Only silence. The Abyss did not repeat itself easily. When it adapted, it did so deliberately. I exhaled slowly. Then, with more reluctance than I cared to admit, I shifted targets: homing in on my brothers.
Arkhevari minds were not meant to be accessed casually. We shared lineage, memory structures, and thresholds that made such contact… intimate. Invasive. It was a boundary that even we respected. Normally. Today, I needed information. I reached for Zapharos' mind first, where I was met with war immediately, resolve honed to a lethal edge. A blade drawn across stars. That was expected. I moved past it, deeper, beneath the surface fury. There. I searched through fragments he had gathered while on Auris Prime. Not deliberate espionage, these were fragments he had subconsciously picked up. Pattern recognition beneath his focus on Ella.
I learned about entire Cryon fleets that had been dismantled by the Pandraxians. Their leadership fractured. Their empire absorbed under Daryus' rule. Victory, on the surface.
But beneath it lurked something unfinished. Like it always did after the annihilation of an entire civilization. There were always a few left ready to fight and reestablish their old world. I followed the thread. Followed reports that were dismissed as noise, Cryon enclaves that should not have existed, supply chains rerouted through unmonitored corridors. Discoveredcells operating independently. Calling themselves autonomous: Rebels.
I withdrew before Zapharos' awareness could sharpen toward me, then reached for Thyros. His mind greeted me with fire. Judgment. Violence shaped into law. His memories were cleaner. Interrogations. Captured Cryon operatives speaking of voices. Guidance. Promises whispered from nowhere.
Interesting. Those voices were neither Arkhevari nor gods. They came from something far older. Cold recognition settled inside me as I followed more threads regarding the so-called rebels, but like Thyros, I set them aside for now before I severed the contact completely.
The hum of the ship grounded me as my mind collapsed back into itself. I ran a hand through my hair and summarized. The Cryons were no longer sovereign. The Pandraxian Empire had swallowed them whole—or believed it had. But fragments had slipped through the cracks. Rebel factions moved in the dark, convinced they were reclaiming control—holding control. They were wrong. They were being used. The Abyss had not reached out directly. It had listened. It had found receptive minds near thresholds, stations too close to singularities, experiments conducted where they never should have been. The Cryons had no boundaries. If profit scented the air, they pursued it. No matter how deep they had to dig. No matter what they disturbed.
