Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
CYAN
The cockpit pressed in around him, thick and smothering in the absolute silence.
It had taken far too little effort to get the craft out of the decommission dock. When Cyan had arrived, the ship was already open and waiting for him. His feet felt sluggish as he took one step after the next, the weight of the blade at his back like a stone dragging him down into the depths of something he knew he’d never escape from.
But as soon as his boots crossed the threshold into the ship, the weight lifted off his shoulders. He felt light. Unburdened. Released.
This was where he was supposed to be.
There was no seat. No cockpit. Only a dark gray floor, somewhat malleable under his boots. Priad’s claws left indents in the surface that smoothed themselves seconds after each paw step.
“Sit,” Cyan commanded in the middle of the empty craft. Priad complied, and Cyan followed. The warg settled between Cyan’s knees, and he wrapped his arm around the thick, furry neck to keep him secure.
The door behind them closed, and they were plunged into a darkness so pitch black that Cyan for a moment thought he must surely have gone blind.
He felt no motion. One moment he was shrouded in nothingness in the middle of the alien craft, and the next the walls of it all opened up around him, revealing a blanket of stars on all sides. And that was it. He was out.
Cyan turned around. The back of the craft revealed Earendel’s station behind them. Were they going to give chase? Something told Cyan he didn’t have to worry about that.
He checked his comms—still working. He thought of Elaina, waiting for him. He’d received her earlier ping and had no heart to respond. Part of him didn’t want to hurt her, but most of him had already detached. He knew what he had to do, and he had to do it alone. Elaina Fairan had been a flash of light on his path. But the brilliance of a mind was not enough to overcome the logistics of it all. Juggling his duty with her need for presence, her life on the edge of the universe—an edge he had no business staying in—all of it. It would never work, no matter how much he might’ve loved to pretend.
Cyan had to be pragmatic for them both.
He focused on the void ahead, shoving down the gnawing pit in his stomach until it wasn’t there at all. He’d made his decision and it was the right one. The ship guided itself, pulled by some invisible thread.
He didn’t know how much time had passed, or was passing. He and Priad sat there for what could have been minutes or hours or years, and at a point Cyan closed his eyes and retreated into himself, focusing on the sensations in his body and the warg’s rough fur between his fingers. Time, space, even the familiar weight of the sword at his back seemed to shift.
He was getting close now. Cyan could feel it—a pull, stronger than gravity itself, dragged him toward a place he couldn’t name. Somewhere far outside the reach of the known universe. He hurtled toward some predetermined end.
He opened his eyes.
The ship jerked and for a split second, Cyan thought this might be it. Self-destruction.
Priad.
The world around him stretched, then collapsed, and the surrounding void vanished in a flash of white.
When his vision cleared, he was standing on something solid.
No ship. No nothing. Only endless white, empty and disorienting as the snowfields back home.
Cyan took the sword from his back, gripping it tight in a gloved fist.
“Stay close,” he instructed Priad.
The space around them was featureless, infinite, yet suffocating. Time, matter, and logic no longer applied. He was nowhere at all.
“How far you have come,” a resonant voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere.
Cyan stiffened, his grip tightening on the hilt as he scanned the emptiness.
“Farther than most,” the voice continued. “And yet here you stand, so certain of your place.”
The figure that materialized seemed to coalesce from the void—tall, robed in shifting shadows, its head obscured by a vague hood. But Cyan didn't need to see its face to know what it was.
“Yes, I am what you seek,” static laced its whisper. “But you’ve misunderstood all along, haven't you?”
Cyan stood firm, his hand steady.
“I know my fate. My duty,” he said coolly. This was the source he’ d been led here for. The corruption he had to weed out.
“Do you?” A chuckle reverberated. “How comforting delusion can be to my creations.”
“I’m no creation of yours,” Cyan refused to waver. He’d been chosen for this. He was tied to the sword, bound to his path. “What are you?”
“Does it offer you control, this fantasy? This duty ?”
“I don’t want it. I never wanted it. But fate had other plans for me.”
“Fate…” The figure tilted its head. Priad growled at Cyan’s flank, hackles rising as the figure drifted closer.
“I would know if I had chosen you, for I am the one you claim to serve,” it said. “But your sword does not belong to me. I am the Architect of all things, and you, simply a stray thread.”
“You are but an abomination corrupting Earendel. Fate does not corrupt. My sword?—”
“Is a tool,” it interrupted. “A weapon you use to justify your choices. But you have always had a choice, Cyan Orlogsson. And you have made it, every step of the way.”
Cyan stepped back. All lies, of course. It had to be.
“It is no lie, warrior,” the thing calling itself the Architect read his mind. What else could do that, if not fate itself?
I am hallucinating.
“It is no hallucination,” the Architect chuckled.
“If you are fate, why are you causing disturbances on Earendel? Fate breeds order, not chaos. Not that .”
The figure recoiled. “ I am not causing disturbances. They are merely a side-effect of your mutation. My creations—humanity— you —have run amok. All your choices . All your will. At first I was curious, then amused. My creation was breaking my rules. Then I was angry.” The disdain spitting from its voice was palpable. “I created this simulation, and you have thrown it off-balance.”
A simulation? That’s all we are?
“ All ?” The Architect dissolved into angry static before rematerializing right before him. “You do not appreciate my creation, Cyan Orlogsson! I created this world and embedded myself within it. To host me. To be me. I have poured myself into it all, and your kind have ruined it.”
“Why then? What’s the purpose of all this?”
The entity shrank, shifting to something almost childlike. “I was simply curious. I wished to see what would happen.”
So that was it… They were simply a curiosity of a bored creator.
“And now you’re trying to wrest back control.”
“It is my control that created you! But it is enough now.” Fate’s edges softened, its aggressive movements stilling. “Now you, Cyan Orlogsson, get to live up to what you thought your purpose was. You thought you were my loyal follower. Now you can become just that. We will dismantle and recreate a world in the proper image. My image. With you at my side.”
The figure had grown closer as it spoke until it enveloped the nothing-air around him, swallowing the world. Priad trembled against Cyan’s leg, a faint growl escaping him as the Architect’s presence pressed in. Cyan stroked the warg’s cheek, an absentminded attempt at comforting the only creature he had ever let himself rely on.
When the Architect’s shadowy arms stretched out, Cyan leaned into the offering. A weight lifted from his shoulders as fate’s smoky form began to solidify around him.
Its embrace took away the gravity of loss, the ache of longing. Cyan had never felt lighter. And why shouldn’t he accept the offer? He had thought he’d been led by fate the entire time, yet here was fate itself, giving him the opportunity to do just that.
“It hurts you. I feel it,” the words were a silent vibration in Cyan’s brain. “When you accept your purpose, I will let you forget. When you take your place in my design you will never need to fear loss, or love, or pain again. I will be your shepherd in all the ways you thought I was.”
Forgetting everything he had left. Everything he’d given up. Her.
It would all be so easy. He craved it.