I almost smiled. “He’ll need a heart first.”
Zapharos shot us a look, but said nothing. He resumed his pacing, eyes fixed on an enemy only he could see. I wondered if he thought he could outwalk the inevitable strangulation of Imperial bureaucracy.
Nadine’s gaze sharpened. She turned and caught me staring at her. “You don’t like it out here, do you?”
“Does anyone?” I countered.
“I do,” she replied, quick and bright, but then the corners of her mouth folded inward, as if she’d tasted something bitter. “Or at least I thought I would.”
Ella leaned forward, fingers steepled. “Can I ask what it’s like? For you? Nox Eternum… it’s the only home you remember, right?”
I hesitated. Of all the Arkhevari, I was the only one not born in Auris Prime. The others carried flashes of memory, sunlit fragments of abefore. My first moment was inside Nox Eternum, cold and sealed, a cell dividing in the dark. My memories began with containment, with being necessary but unwanted, a weapon that could not be trusted to sleep unless it was surrounded by the Abyss. Mychildhoodwas measured in layers of security protocol, gene edits, and continual tightening of the psychic leash.
“Home,” I repeated the word. “That’s a word humans are too fond of.”
Ella gave me her archaeologist’s stare, picking at my words as though they were bone fragments from a midden. “You know what I mean.”
I exhaled slowly. “The Abyss is?—”
The word fluttered in my mouth, seductive, I wanted to say, but it wasn’t a word the room wanted to hear in relation to Nox Eternum.
Nadine’s gaze held mine. “It’s seductive, isn’t it?” she braved so softly I doubted anyone but me could hear.
I nodded, once.
Truth was, I never hated the cold. Never resented the dark, the endless inward spiral, or even the brushes of the Harrowed One against the edges of my mind. I was the only Arkhevari who could stand within the radius and not come apart. I understood it not as a conqueror or a predator, but as something shaped by exile and need.
For years—years being a human word for what passed as time in Nox Eternum—something had been calling to me. Not the Harrowed One, though his hunger was ever-present, omnipresent, like gravity. No, what began to haunt me were dreams, persistent and brilliant, of a woman who did not exist. At first, it meant nothing; Arkhevari do not dream unless theyare unraveling, and I was built not to unravel. But the vision persisted, crystalline, more real than the ship or my own hands.
The woman was never the same twice: sometimes dark-haired and ferocious, sometimes fragile as a memory escaping a dying star, with hair the color of the brightest sun. But always her eyes caught me, stopped me, made me want to step off the edge of myself. In the dream, I called her name. A name without meaning, but it sang to me, only to be lost the moment I opened my eyes. In the twilight moments between sleep and awakening, it always disintegrated like fog in a breeze. Leaving me hollow and empty. I resented her for that fact alone. Wishing she would never return to my dreams. But like the Abyss itself, the woman was patient. She waited, always just out of reach, promising something neither the Dark Abyss nor the Harrowed One could ever give: Balance.
Not victory, not annihilation, but a return to the perfect, knife-edge poise that the universe had lost. That we had lost. Orthem. Our ancestors. The males and females who perished in Nox Eternum’s endless darkness, the ones I'd never met.
The ship shuddered as we left the last remnants of the Dark Abyss' gravitational pull.
“And we're back in Auris Prime,” Nadine exclaimed, filled with nervous energy.
Threedays, Nadine had called it. I almost laughed at the word.Days.As if the universe kept count in such petty increments. A day. A year. A millennium. What difference did any of them make? Time was only the space between one execution and the next, between one world bleeding out and the next one learning it was already dead. I had walked the edge of Nox Eternum longenough to know that the Abyss did not measure in hours. It measured in what it consumed. And it was always hungry.
Yet here I stood—shoulder to shoulder with the others—glued to the massive viewing window like some wide-eyed mortal who had never seen a planet before. Earth rose into view slowly, a blue marble suspended in the black. Swirls of white cloud. Patches of green and brown. A fragile little thing, spinning like it hadn’t already been cracked open and stitched back together more times than any of us knew. The latest attack by the Cryons had left it bleeding and scarred, no matter how much the Pandraxians tried to patch it up.
Ella and Nadine clutched each other’s hands, shoulders pressed together as if the sight might vanish if they let go.
“Home,” Ella whispered, the word cracked on the last syllable.
“It’s sopretty,” Nadine added, in a soft voice that was filled with something I did not understand. Wonder, maybe. Or relief. “I forgot how blue it is.”
I had seen prettier worlds burn. The one we had passed not long ago—Mars, Nadine had named it—held more appeal. Rugged red stone, sharp canyons, the kind of place that did not apologize for being difficult to survive. Earth looked too soft. Too inviting. The kind of world that lured you in and then reminded you, gently, that softness was just another word for vulnerability.
Zapharos’ low growl pulled my attention outward. “Orbit’s thick with Pandraxian forces. Drek. Looks like the Superior Commander of the Imperial Forces beat us here.”
Dravok’s aura tightened beside me; red shadows flickered along his gold edges like blades testing the air.
“Great,” he muttered. “Just what we needed. More politics.”
Zapharos crossed his arms, his now-golden aura kept steady but was edged with irritation. “The emperor’s dogs are already circling. This is going to be delicate.”
Nadine glanced over her shoulder at Ella, and a mischievous spark lit her eyes. “Oh, wait until you meet Ashley. She’s something else."
