8. Thyros
I leaned against the far wall, arms folded, letting the shadows of the briefing room cloak me while the others crowded around the glowing holovid.
The golden thread between Naeris and me hummed like a live wire under my skin, constant, insistent, impossible to ignore.
Every sharp word she spoke only pulled it tighter.
And damn if she wasn’t impressive.
She had turned a simple timeline revelation into leverage within moments.
Even the Superior Commander of the Imperial Forces, the male who bowed to almost no one, was listening to her like she held the keys to the entire campaign.
Amusement flickered through me. If she could make the Pandraxian war machine dance to her tune this easily, what else was my fierce little rebel capable of?
Naeris stepped forward without hesitation. She plucked the palmtop from Ella’s hand with the smooth confidence of a commander who had long ago learned to seize control. Her fingers danced across the interface, making the world on the holovid… change.
Oceans retreated in a slow, majestic flood, exposing vast new stretches of continental shelf.
Northern continents grew heavier with ice sheets that gleamed white under simulated sunlight.
Mountain ranges rose and shifted subtly in elevation; entire coastlines reshaped themselves as sea levels dropped dramatically.
Beringia emerged as a wide, grassy land bridge connecting what would become different continents.
A smaller ocean shrank even further. Massive river systems carved new paths across now-exposed seabeds.
The planet looked rawer. Wilder. More primal. More to my liking.
“This,” Naeris said, her voice steady and laced with quiet authority, “is what Earth looked like when my first ancestors were taken. Roughly two and a half million years ago.”
Ella stared, transfixed, slowly turning the reconstructed globe with careful gestures.
She spun it repeatedly, zooming in on different regions.
“It could have been… anywhere,” she muttered, frustration bled into her tone.
“The landmarks we use today simply didn’t exist yet.
Whole coastlines are gone. Entire landmasses look different. ”
Naeris didn’t speak. She worked the palmtop once more.
A second, translucent overlay shimmered into existence—the one more familiar to the females, modern Earth in soft blues and greens—laid gently over the ancient version.
The two worlds now coexisted, one ghosting the other, making the differences stark and undeniable.
I watched the way her shoulders remained squared, the way her dark hair caught the holographic light.
Impressive didn’t even begin to cover it.
She stood among gods and Superior Commanders and gave ground to none of us.
The Aelyth bond sang in recognition, heat curled low in my gut despite every vow I’d made to keep my distance.
Xandros’ eyes narrowed with fresh calculation.
Zapharos and Dravok exchanged a weighted glance.
The humans leaned in closer, their voices rising in excitement and speculation.
But my focus stayed locked on her. Always her.
Naeris. My Aelyth. The female who was quickly becoming the most dangerous variable in this entire war.
I stayed exactly where I was, shoulder against the wall, arms still crossed. My body hummed whenever Naeris moved, every time her voice cut through the room. She was magnetic without even trying.
Nadine, the sharp-eyed astrophysicist, tilted her head, her mind clearly racing along logical pathways. “If aliens descended helter-skelter from the sky, snatching people from what was presumably a central, thriving civilization… what would the early humans have done?”
Ashley answered without hesitation, her soldier's posture snapped into place. “Retreat. Scatter into nearby forests or mountains, anywhere with natural cover and difficult access. You don’t stand and fight superior air power with spears and stone tools. You hide. You make yourselves hard to find.”
Ella nodded slowly, still turning the dual-layered holovid with careful fingers. “Makes sense. Fragmented settlements. Hidden enclaves. Oral traditions passed down in secret.”
Nadine looked directly at Naeris. “So after what? A few hundred years? A thousand? When did the Sythari finally stop?”
Naeris’ fingers paused on the palmtop. “Roughly six hundred Earth years.”
The three human females exchanged a long, heavy look, trying to digest the scale of it.
“Almost a millennium,” Ella breathed, “living under the constant threat of being taken by… whatever they thought these beings were.”
“Would they have seen them as gods?” Ashley asked.
Ella nodded. “It would make sense. Beings descending from the sky in ships that must have looked like chariots of fire or divine vessels. Power beyond anything they could comprehend.”
Naeris shook her head, and some of her dark strands slid over her shoulder.
“Remember, you cannot think of them as the kind of humans you know. They were Ashera’s descendants.
They carried more than primitive minds and fragile bodies.
They carried her blood. Her knowledge passed down over generations. ”
That statement landed like a live charge in the room. The females immediately dove into it, voices overlapping in rapid speculation. I chanced a glance at the other males in the room and found their attentions raptly focused on their mates, just as enthralled with them as I was by Naeris.
“So maybe they weren’t completely helpless,” Nadine speculated. “Some latent abilities? Heightened intuition? Maybe even forms of the same gifts Naeris talked about?”
Ashley crossed her arms. “Or they developed countermeasures. Hidden cave systems. Warning networks. Rituals or technologies that tapped into whatever power Ashera left in their line. Stories of sky gods could have been both worship and warnings.”
Ella zoomed the ancient Earth overlay again, her eyes bright with an archaeologist’s hunger.
“It explains the sudden gaps in the fossil and archaeological record. If entire populations vanished or relocated en masse, it would explain myths that appear across disconnected cultures: sky beings, divine punishment, chosen ones taken to the stars. They weren’t just primitive humans running scared.
They were fighting to preserve something sacred. ”
Naeris watched them, a faint, almost proud curve touched her lips. “They resisted longer than anyone expected. Some bloodlines stayed hidden for generations. Others… were taken. But the core of Ashera’s line endured. That is why I exist. Why the Sythari keep us contained in their world.”
Contained.
Not captured. Not sold. Contained.
My attention snapped awake, every instinct I possessed locking onto that single word like prey.
The Sythari hadn’t merely harvested Ashera’s descendants the way they harvested other humans.
They had kept Naeris’ bloodline contained.
Deliberately. Systematically. Like something too valuable—or too dangerous—to be allowed to roam free.
I reached for her mind without thinking.
The golden thread flared hot between us as I brushed against the outer edges of her thoughts, seeking answers, seeking her.
For half a heartbeat, I tasted it—lashes of dark corridors, orange-skinned guards, the cold certainty of orders given from up high—before a wall of pure, blazing light slammed into me and hurled me out.
Naeris’ head whipped toward me. Her glare was sharp enough to cut starsteel. A hard mental push followed, forceful and precise, like a dagger driven straight into the base of my skull. Discomfort bloomed behind my eyes, bright and stinging. I didn’t flinch. Couldn’t have if I’d wanted to.
Instead, a low, dark amusement rolled through my chest. Impressive. Most beings couldn’t even sense an Arkhevari probe, let alone throw one back with that kind of control. My little rebel had teeth.
And secrets. Because if the Sythari had kept her people contained, then how in the void had she ended up running with rebels? When had she broken free? What had she seen? What had they done to her to make her fight so fiercely?
I wanted it all. Every memory. Every scar.
Every name of every bastard who had ever laid a hand on her.
I wanted to crawl inside her mind and pull the truth out piece by piece, until there was nothing left hidden between us.
The Abyss inside me stirred, hungry for the knowledge, for the her that no one else had ever been allowed to touch.
My fingers itched for the hilt of my blade. Whoever had hurt her—whoever had dared cage Ashera’s last true daughter—would die screaming. I could already feel the weight of my sword in my hand, the satisfying drag as I sharpened it later tonight in anticipation.
Naeris held my stare a moment longer, warning clear in those luminous eyes. Stay out.
The corner of my mouth twitched. Make me.
The golden thread between us pulled tighter, almost painful now, as if the bond itself approved of the challenge.
Around us, the women kept talking, voices rising in excitement over hidden bloodlines and latent gifts, then ebbing as they discussed possible sites, but I barely heard them.
My entire focus had narrowed to the fierce, glowing female who had just accidentally handed me the first real thread of her past. A thread I was going to follow straight into the heart of whatever storm she carried.
I felt the pull again, sharper this time. Not just physical. Something deeper. This female carried the living echo of a goddess who had once helped shape worlds, and she wielded that legacy like a blade.
Xandros’ voice cut in, measured. “Six hundred years of resistance against an interstellar harvesting operation. That is no small feat for any species.”
Zapharos’ golden aura pulsed once in agreement. Dravok simply watched restlessly from the shadows.
Naeris stood taller under their scrutiny, unyielding, beautiful in her defiance. The Aelyth bond coiled tighter in my chest, heat and hunger and something perilously close to respect twisted together. She was going to ruin me.
I knew it, still, some reckless part of me—the part born in the Abyss and starved for light—was already leaning toward the flame.
The room thrummed with energy now, the kind that made even an Arkhevari born in the Abyss sit up and take notice.
Nadine’s voice rose above the rest. “If they had a central civilization—a true hub, not scattered villages—it would have been in the most defensible, resource-rich area possible on that ancient map. High ground, fresh water, fertile soil, natural barriers.”
Ashley leaned in, Marine instincts firing.
“Exactly. And when the sky gods started harvesting, the survivors wouldn’t have run toward open plains.
They’d have pulled back into the most inaccessible terrain they could find while still staying close enough to maintain some kind of organized resistance. ”
Ella’s fingers flew over the palmtop controls, rotating the dual-layered globe again. “So we’re looking for a plateau or mountain system that existed 2.5 million years ago, one that later got buried or flooded or tectonically shifted just enough to hide it from modern eyes.”
Naeris stepped closer to the holovid.
She reached out and tapped a command. The ancient Earth overlay zoomed in on a vast, elevated landmass that no longer existed in the same form, a broad, fertile plateau nestled between what would one day become the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, according to the names I read off the modern Earth duplicate.
Rivers that no longer flowed carved deep, protective valleys.
Natural ridges formed natural fortresses.
The overlay shimmered as the modern Earth ghosted over it, showing how rising seas and later ice ages had drowned and buried most of it under sediment and volcanic ash.
“There,” Naeris said quietly. “My blood knows this place. The pull… it’s strongest here.”
The women exploded into motion.
Ella’s voice rose with pure archaeologist glee.
“That plateau aligns with every myth we have: sky-descended beings, lost golden ages, cataclysmic floods. And look, the Pandraxian scanners can overlay residual energy signatures right now.” She glanced at Xandros.
“You have the tech for deep planetary resonance scans, right? The kind that can detect life echoes even through millions of years of geological noise?”
Xandros’ grin was sharp and predatory. “We do. Quantum resonance array. It reads the imprint left by any life matter.”
Nadine was already linking the palmtop to the ship’s systems, her fingers a blur. “Cross-referencing with known gravitational anomalies and magnetic anomalies that have never been fully explained. If there’s even a trace of non-terrestrial tech down there…”
Ashley cut in, eyes gleaming with tactical hunger. “We scan in overlapping grids. Start narrow on the highest plateau remnants, widen if we get ghost readings. Military precision. No wasted time.”
The holovid pulsed once as the Pandraxian array came online. A new layer of shimmering blue lines swept across the ancient map like living veins of light. The room held its breath.
Then: a single, brilliant flare.
Right at the heart of the plateau Naeris had indicated. The women gasped in unison.
Ella’s voice cracked with excitement. “That’s a match. The resonance signature is off the charts, it’s singing the same frequency as Zapharos’ aura, as Thyros’, as every Arkhevari we’ve ever scanned.”
Nadine laughed, a short, stunned sound. “It’s possible. It’s actually possible. The hidden cradle of Ashera’s civilization, buried under two and a half million years of Earth trying to forget… and the planet never quite managed it.”
Ashley slapped the table. “Let's go.”
Naeris’ fingers tightened on the palmtop.
She didn’t speak, but I felt the pull through the bond again, stronger this time, like a golden cord yanking us both toward that glowing point on the map.
Her eyes met mine across the room, and for once, there was no glare, no warning.
Only the same raw anticipation burning in both of us.
Whatever waited on that lost plateau, it was calling her.
And because the Aelyth bond refused to be ignored, it was calling me right along with her.
I pushed off the wall. “Then we stop talking and start moving. The Abyss has waited long enough.”
The females turned as one, faces alive with the kind of fierce, hopeful fire that could rewrite galaxies. And for the first time since the Dark had spat me out into this universe, I felt something dangerously close to hope myself.
Hope that my life was meant for something different than to feed the Harrowed One's curiosity and hunger.