"The Mmuhr'Rhong," Thyros guessed.
Selkaris nodded. "In the ash of fallen songs, there is a fragment—older than our descent—speaking of a voice behind their voices. Something sentient, something that thinks. I found only one name:The Harrowed One."
The name didn't mean anything to me. Neither did my brothers seem to know it. We all looked at each other expectantly, but none of us wore an expression of recognition.
Ozyrael's scoff was thin. "An ominous name."
Selkaris looked at Ella. "A name that needs more investigation."
Ella swallowed. "If you agree, I would love to work with you on this."
Selkaris inclined his head. "If the great Praetor of War doesn't mind, it would be my honor, Earthling."
Finally, this was my cue. "I will be on my way to get Nythor back," I vowed. Since it seemed to be a day for the dramatic, I paused on the threshold, where the glow from the star-vault met the dark I carried. "If he still breathes, I'll drag him home. If not…" My gaze flicked toward Zapharos and Ella. "…then the Abyss will have to settle for ashes."
Before anybody else could stop me, I repeated. "I will bring him back."
Whole or not, I did not specify. I am a creature of precision, not mercy.
The Hall's weight pressed against me with expectation, fear, and need. Let them fear. Let the Abyss watch. Let prophecy mutter about bonds and Aelyth and fates entwined.
I am Dravok.
I do not bend.
I do not bind.
I do not fall as Zapharos fell.
I will retrieve our lost brother. I will tear through Cryon fleets and Moggadesh lies. I will confront whatever whispers Nhal'Vareth has awakened. But I will never accept an Aelyth. Not even if the cosmos itself tries to force one upon me. I am shadow. I am clarity. I am the blade born of collapse.
And unlike Caelor… unlike Zapharos…
I walk alone.
With that vow burning cold in my chest, I dissolved into the dark, carrying war with me.
Black holes were never meantto be observed this closely. Every model said the same thing: event horizons were limits, not invitations. You could orbit them, measure them, map their influence, but you did notapproachthem. Not without consequences. Not without losing something you could never quantify.
And yet, here I was. On Emperor Daryus' flagship, with him only a few cabins down. I never thought I'd be this close to royalty, let alonespaceroyalty. The powerful kind. As emperor of the Pandraxians, he wielded influence over half the universe. No matter how strong you were, though, everything was dwarfed when in proximity to the black hole, or what the Pandraxians called the Dark Abyss. They spoke the name with reverence and restraint, as if sound itself might attract its attention. Tome, it was a singularity with irregular behavior, a gravitational anomaly that refused to obey the rules it should have been bound by. Which made it irresistible.
From the moment our science teacher mentioned black holes in school, I had been drawn to them. Maybe because I felt they were as inexplicable as I was, at least until I got older and met otherslikeme. Nerdy, drawn to math and logic rather than princesses and unicorns. Nobody in my family ever understood that desire, or me, for that matter. They tried, in the way people try when they already think something is wrong and are humoring you anyway.
They didn't understand why I couldn't justwatcha movie. Why I had to pause it, rewind it, frown at the screen, and say things like,That doesn't make sense,orNo, he would never catch up to her at that speed.They heard criticism where I felt curiosity. To them, it was nitpicking. To me, it was the fun part.
I didn't want to know who the hero kissed at the end. I wanted to know how the engine worked. Why the explosion propagated the way it did. Why a chase scene that violated basic kinematics was considered thrilling and not laughable. I remember ruining a family movie night once by asking—honestly, innocently—how everyone in a Star Wars film was breathing the same air. No tanks. No filters. Same gravity everywhere, no matter the planet.
My uncle laughed and told me,It's just a movie, Nadine.That sentence followed me for years. It wasn'tjusta movie. It was a system. A set of rules someone had invented and then broken without explanation. That mattered to me. It always had. If the universe—real or fictional—was going to behave in a certain way, I wanted to understandwhy. Or at the very least, I wanted it to be consistent.
That tendency didn't win me many friends. The other kids wanted magic. I wanted mechanics. They wanted fairytales anddestiny and happily-ever-afters. I wanted to know how the dragon flew without collapsing under its own mass, or how the castle stayed standing on a cliff with no visible support. When I pointed these things out, I was told I was overthinking. Too serious. No fun.
So I stopped pointing them out.
I learned early that there was a correct way to exist around people: smile at the right moments, laugh when they laughed, keep the questions that mattered to me folded away where no one else could trip over them. At home, I was the odd one out. At school, I was the quiet one with her nose in a book, more interested in equations than conversations.
I didn't really make friends, not with my family, not with the other kids. Not because I didn't want to, but because it always felt like we were speaking slightly different languages, close enough to sound familiar, but never close enough to truly connect.
Black holes were different.
