—Ashera tried to end it?—
"Enough," I snapped, and severed the containment field. The act sent a shockwave through the chamber. Nythor collapsed, energy unraveled rapidly now, and his consciousness finally broke under the strain. His last coherent thought slammed into me like a dying star. —she is trying to change you?—
The darkness surged. Yes. Change was instability. Change led to fracture. I stepped back as Nythor's body disintegrated into inert light, his rambling dissolving into static. Silence followed. Blissful silence. And in that silence, the longing returned, stronger, sharper.
The female again. Closer now. Her face was blurred, but her presence was unmistakable. My chest tightened with something dangerously close to grief. Why did her absence feel like loss? Why did the idea of herendingfeel wrong if she was theproblem? Contradiction irritated me. Contradictions needed resolution.
Movement at the chamber's edge caught my attention. More Space Guardians, dozens this time, converging. I welcomed them. I tore through them with savage precision; the darkness bloomed with every kill. With each strike, the image of the female dulled. Her warmth faded, replaced by certainty. Yes.
This was better.
This was peace.
When the last false Space Guardian fell, the chamber fell quiet again.
And then, out of nowhere… she appeared.
Not as a memory.
Not as a projection.
Her.
Standing at the edge of the cavern, breathless, eyes wide with terror and determination. Something bright flared across her skin, painfully bright. The interference made flesh. Something in me recoiled. Something else surged forward eagerly.
Nythor was right.
"She came to stop you," the darkness reasoned. "She wants to unmake you."
I advanced. She said my name. The sound hurt.
"Dravok," she pleaded.
The gold flickered weakly, a dying echo. I closed the distance in an instant and wrapped my hand around her throat. Her pulse fluttered wildly beneath my fingers.
So fragile.
So dangerous.
Her hands grasped at my wrist, not to fight, but to anchor.
"Look at me," she begged in a breaking voice. "Please."
I tightened my grip. This would end the noise. This would end the fracture. This would bring peace. The darknessapproved. And somewhere, very far away, something that had once been me screamed
—but it was too quiet to matter.
Xandros didn't hesitate.Ashley didn't have to explain, didn't have to justify the panic in her voice or why my hands were shaking as I clutched my palmtop like it was the last solid thing in the universe. She said his name once—Xandros—and he was already moving.
No questions. No politics. He trusted her. The shuttle was prepped in minutes. Soldiers poured in around us, armored and silent, faces set in the grim calm of people who knew they were walking into something bad. Xandros stood at the ramp as we boarded, his presence steady, controlled; he was command incarnate.
"Stay close," he ordered.
I nodded, though my attention was already elsewhere. The bond hurt. Not like a cut or a bruise, this was deeper. A tearingache in my chest, as if something vital was being pulled away, strand by strand. Every second we descended toward Cronack's surface, it worsened. Something was slipping. Somethingwas wrong.
I pressed a hand to my sternum; my breath was stuttering.Dravok, I whispered into the bond, not expecting an answer. None came.
The shuttle touched down hard. We disembarked into silence broken only by the crunch of scorched ground beneath our boots. The shuttle Dravok had taken stood right next to ours. It sat like ours on top of ash and vitrified stone, abandoned like an afterthought. It wasn't hard to find his tracks either. They cut straight through the devastation, unhesitating, purposeful.
