Silence fell, thick and heavy. We'd talked about this before, but it still boggled my mind. I kept going, unable to stop now. “Yet somehow Kael’Varyn gave me the exact coordinates to come here. I don’t know if he knew Earth was waiting… or if this was just a coincidence, but?—”
More silence.
Rylan, still rubbing his jaw where I’d punched him, finally muttered from the floor, “Sounds less like a coincidence and more like someone wanted us all in the same place at the same time.”
Nadine nodded slowly, her glowing fingertips still resting on the wall. “We also discovered that the Harrowed One was the one behind influencing the Cryons tofindEarth. To harvest it.”
The words landed like a second cave-in. I felt the starmap on my skin pulse again, hotter this time, as if agreeing with the terrible shape of the truth we were only beginning to see. Whatever had erased the center of this map wasn’t just ancient history. It was still reaching out. And we had just walked straight into its grasp.
Nadine’s glowing finger hovered over one particularly large blank void. She traced it carefully, but nothing ignited. The emptiness stayed cold and absolute.
“And this here…” Her voice dropped, almost reverent. “This is where the Dark Abyss should be. It’s completely erased. Like the map itself refuses to acknowledge it… or can’t.”
I stared at that blank heart of the wall, the place where everything should have connected. The starmap on my skin flared hotter, almost painfully, pulsing as if it wanted to reach out and fill the missing pieces.
Ashley shifted her weight, blaster still in hand. “Whatever erased the center of that map... it wanted us to be here.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. We all stared at each other. Because deep down, I knew we had just stepped into the moment the universe broke. The answers we were looking for were written in the emptiness staring back at us, an emptiness that seemed to bewaitingfor something… or someone… to stand in the center and make it whole again.
Ella was completely lost in the wonder of it, her glowing fingers eagerly tracing more lines across the massive wall,lighting up new sections as she went. “This line here connects to?—”
“Stop,” Nadine called out sharply.
We all froze.
Nadine stepped forward quickly and caught Ella’s wrist, gently but firmly pressing her glowing arm against the wall right at the border between the filled map and the empty void.
“Look,” she whispered.
Where Ella’s skin touched the stone, new golden light bloomed andstayed, filling in faint gaps that had refused to activate before.
Nadine’s eyes widened with scientific hunger. “It matches. The starmap on our bodies is the missing key.” She looked at all of us, glowing with excitement. “Okay. Take your tops off.”
Ella blinked. “What?”
“Scientific necessity,” Nadine snapped, already yanking her own shirt over her head. She stood there in just her bra, glowing starmap patterns swirling beautifully across her shoulders, chest, and stomach. “Oh, don’t get hard-ons about it,” she snarled at the three gaping human men behind us. “This isscience.”
Ashley crossed her arms, smirking. “I don’t have those, so…” She trailed off, staring at the glowing patterns on Ella and me. “Though I have to admit, this is… something else.”
I muttered a curse under my breath. “By the prophets…” But I pulled my top off anyway, leaving my bra on. The cool air of the chamber kissed my glowing skin. Ella followed a second later, cheeks pink but clearly too curious to argue.
Nadine became a whirlwind, moving us like living puzzle pieces. She pressed Ella’s back against one section, adjusted my shoulder here, my hip there, then pulled Ella's arm across a blank spot. “Arm up—higher—yes, like that. Ella, stop squirming.”
“Ow!” Ella yelped as Nadine repositioned her elbow.
“Don’t be a sissy,” Nadine chastised.
Ashley giggled from the side. “This is the weirdest group hug in history.”
Ella glared at her. “Just wait, Nadine will find something to contort you for too.”
But besides all the muttering, it worked. Wherever our glowing skin pressed against the wall, the empty sections ignited with rich golden light. New stars, new connections, entire sectors bloomed into existence under our touch. The map was waking up. When we finally stepped back, rubbing abused parts of our skin where Nadine had gotten carried away, we stared at what we’d revealed.
It was breathtaking… but still incomplete. Large sections—especially the vast empty center where the Dark Abyss should have been—remained stubbornly dark.
Ashley planted her hands on her hips. “The men. We need those big Arkhevari hunks of yours. They’ve got the mapping too, right?”
Nadine nodded. “Their starmaps should fill the rest. Especially the center.”
