“You keep looking at me like I’m going to disappear,” she whispered.
The truth hit too close to old fears. “I’ve spent my entire existence believing anything beautiful would eventually be taken from me.”
Emotion flickered across her face. Then she cupped my jaw with astonishing tenderness. “I’m here, Thyros.”
A painful swell of devotion tightened my throat. Mine. Not possessively. Not cruelly. As though the universe itself had finally handed me something worth protecting.
Nearby, Ella flexed her glowing fingers in bewilderment. “How did I do that?”
Nadine was already pacing, distracted and breathless. “There must be some kind of neurological amplification through the Aelyth bond combined with exposure to the Vessel and recovered ancestral memory patterns, except that explanation is scientifically insufficient because none of this should be physically possible?—”
Ella pointed dramatically. “See? This is why nobody asks scientists to make things romantic.”
For once, even Dravok looked mildly amused. Then the temperature in the cabin dropped. Every light flickered. A pulse of energy rolled through the ship. I went instantly still. Something was here. A figure appeared near the center of the cabin. Not fully corporeal, it was more shadow than substance. As though thousands upon thousands of tiny shards of light were struggling to assemble into a recognizable shape.
All of us froze. Naeris inhaled sharply. The figure was female. Beautiful. Ancient. And heartbreakingly fragile. I recognized her immediately. Not from memory, but from instinct.
Ashera.
Or what remained of her. Fragments drifted endlessly around her translucent form like broken stars. Most flickered weakly, unstable and fading in and out. But three shone brighter than all the others. Three radiant golden pieces that seemedanchored somehow. One burned with fierce warmth. Another with brilliant clarity. The third with luminous compassion.
My gaze moved instinctively toward Naeris.
Then Nadine.
Then Ella.
Understanding slammed into me hard enough to steal my breath. Not reborn.Fragmented. The realization barely formed before the figure lifted her head. Her eyes found us. Pain unlike any I had ever felt crashed through the cabin. Not physical pain. Loneliness. Grief. Endless waiting.
Then the mental force hit all of us at once.HELP HIM.
The command thundered through my mind with such overwhelming desperation that Naeris cried out beside me. The figure shattered into drifting sparks of gold. Then vanished.
There wasno real time to rest. The ship still trembled intermittently from the damage it had sustained from the fight with the Moggaddesh and our desperate flight from Nox Eternum, and somewhere deep in the lower levels, I could hear strained metal groaning beneath the pressure of overworked systems.
Still, we all gravitated toward the breakroom as though instinct demanded proximity. Zapharos remained on the bridge long enough to set the ship into an erratic flight pattern through the outer currents of the Abyss, one designed to make tracking us more difficult.
“At least for now,” he’d warned grimly before finally joining us.
The atmosphere inside the breakroom was strangely subdued. No one seemed entirely present. We sat scatteredaround the room, wrapped in our own thoughts, yet not truly separate anymore. Ever since touching the globe, the bond between all of us had deepened into something startlingly intimate.
I could feel them. Not exact thoughts. More like impressions, emotions, and questions circling the same impossible truths.
Ashera.
Caelor.
Earth's duplicate: Terra Nova.
The Harrowed One.
Help him.
The words still echoed inside my skull. Ella sat curled against Zapharos’ side, absently tracing circles against his palm while staring into space. Nadine paced slowly near the viewport, while her mind visibly tried to reorganize the laws of existence.
Dravok watched her with quiet attentiveness.
Thyros lounged beside me with one arm draped possessively across the back of my chair, though I could feel tension simmering beneath his outward calm. He was thinking too hard. About himself. About Caelor. About where exactly he fit into all of this. My chest tightened for him.
