He’s built for ruin.
The comm goes silent again.
“I can forward the footage to central command,” Reflector offers. “Security will terminate them before breakfast.”
“No.”
“Pardon?”
“Let it breathe.”
“Garokk, with all due respect, this isn’t fermentation. It’s treason.”
“I know.”
I stare out the reinforced viewport at the sprawl of Orbimall One. The city-ring glitters like a gilded noose. Every light down there—every walkway, every skylane—it’s all built on illusion. On the belief that violence has a shape, a schedule, a rulebook.
But it doesn’t.
Violence is a whisper. A shift in temperature.
And Vrek just turned the air cold.
“You’re going to wait?” Reflector asks, tone edged with something I can’t quite name.
“I need to see how deep it runs,” I say. “If it’s just those three, I can carve the rot out clean. But if the whole crew’s splintering?—”
“You’ll need proof.”
“I’ll need time.”
“And what if you don’t have it?”
I smile. It's not a nice one.
“Then we bleed fast and loud.”
Reflector sighs. “You’re impossible.”
“Part of my charm.”
I kill the link.
My reflection stares back at me from the glass, moonlit and hollow-eyed. Not a hero. Not a king.
Just a pirate with a mutiny blooming in the dark.
And not enough allies to prune it.
Not yet.
But the thing about me?
I was forged in fire.
And fire doesn’t flinch.
I knockon her door like a man with no right to.
