Ashes of a Shattered Soul

Before Space – Eons Ago

Looking up, she caught sight of him weaving through the crowd toward the center of the starship’s bridge—shoulders squared too tight, steps just a little too quick.

His white hair, precise as ever, clung to his shoulders in soft waves, framing the deep brown of his skin like a flag declaring his lineage.

One of the younger elvish-born, a genetic echo of the Wise Ones’ obsession with crafting sentient life.

Spotting her, his shoulders straightened more, chin lifting a fraction.

“Anomenel.” She smothered the smile that tugged at her lips. “Report.”

He snapped to attention. “Commander! We’re nearing the tear in the Weaving.”

Already? Her heart lurched, but her face held steady. No reaction. No hint of the dread squeezing her chest as she looked at the boy.

He was one of many refugees they had picked up along the way, arriving and departing in waves as her ship hunted the Wraith deeper into the unraveling periphery of the universe.

Faces blurred together now, too many to track, changing with every emergency offload on unstable moons and crumbling outposts.

“Very well.” She forced her pulse to steady. If even one made it to safety, it mattered.

She swallowed the wild laugh threatening to rise.

Great Mother, how had this become her life? How had she, the Dark One’s bastard daughter, become responsible for thousands? She could feel them now, each life teasing the edge of her mind like wind whistling through a broken seal. Hers to protect. Hers to fail.

“What are your orders, Commander?”

The question was simple. The weight behind it was not.

She’d watched worlds die, scorched and hollowed out, the Weaving stripped like marrow from bone, leaving nothing but silence. Each loss dragged her crew lower—shoulders heavier, reactions slower, feeding the Wraith with their despair.

Yet, for every world Rynna reached in time, more souls clung to her ship, hungry for hope she wasn’t sure she could provide. The Silanda groaned under the weight of them. Supplies strained and morale frayed, all while the enemy pushed forward, devouring life like wildfire through dry brush.

“Prepare the younglings.” She didn’t look away.

His eyes widened, fear flickering in their depths.

She memorized the shape of his face in that moment. Not because she expected to forget it, but because too many others had already fallen through her grasp.

Their mission mattered. That was why so many of the refugees stayed, pledging their hearts to hers. To fight. They’d seen what happened when the chase faltered, when the Wraith escaped the net. Worlds vanished, civilizations blinking out like dying embers. And no one else was coming to stop it.

Anomenel understood that. He was small and quiet, but he moved like the rest of them now, carrying the same burden.

She let the smallest smile curl beneath her sternness.

He’d been aboard the Silanda longer than most. No one had named him bridge messenger, but somehow, he’d become one, moving through the decks with ease.

He’d done more than adjust. He had claimed the younger ones, too, the children left shivering in corners, fists scrunched around torn clothing and broken buttons.

He made sure they had food, water, and a place to rest that didn’t stink of piss or panic. In the nights that stretched too long, his quiet footsteps often answered the whimpers and cries of the smallest. To them, he was more than a helper. He was safety.

But, even that glimmer—the rare, steady burn of something good—flickered and died beneath the weight of what came next.

“Commander?” His brows pulled tight as his voice wavered. Tears welled, rising fast beneath long lashes. He didn’t blink them away. He didn’t speak again. He only stared at her, chest rising in shallow bursts.

He knew what prepare the younglings meant.

It meant stasis pods and drug-induced sleep. Quiet, dreamless sedation designed to smother fear, so the children wouldn’t see the lights fail. So they wouldn’t cry when the fire came. So they wouldn’t feel pain when the end reached them.

It was a last resort, cruel in execution but necessary, used only when hope failed.

Her hand lifted against the nearest console, knuckles white as she braced herself. His dread rang through her mind, wild and hot, like a yell with no sound. She gritted her teeth, grounding herself against it.

But when she looked up, he was standing taller, despite the fear. His chin lifted once more. “I’ll see it done, Commander.”

Then he pivoted on his foot, the movement precise, and strode away down the corridor toward the children. Toward the task. Toward the terrible possibility of what came next.

She watched him disappear down the corridor, his small frame held too straight, shoulders pulled too tight. The bridge crew didn’t speak, but their silence rang loud. Every one of them had heard the order. Every one of them knew what it meant to tuck the children away.

She drew air in through her nose, held it, then exhaled. Her eyes squeezed shut. When she opened them again, the command deck snapped back into focus, lights humming, panels blinking, and screens scrolling with readouts that could mean life or death.

If everything went to plan—if the calculations held, if the engines didn’t fail, if the Wraith didn’t break and scatter too soon—this final, brutal push might actually work.

They might end the threat once and for all.

She muttered a quiet prayer to the Mother, not trusting her voice to carry it.

The strategy, in all its desperate brilliance, was simple. Unforgiving, but simple.

They would position the fleet near the small tear in the Weaving at the fraying end of existence.

Silanda, limping now, would bait the Wraith in, drawing them close while the attack wings swept along the flanks, pressing them inward.

And once the swarm was exactly where they needed it to be, she would detonate the ship’s main power crystal. Silanda’s heart.

The explosion would be unlike anything their side had ever unleashed, a shattering burst strong enough to rupture the small wound. And the resulting hole in the Weaving would not just unmake the ship. It would blast through reality itself, sucking everything in behind it, including the enemy.

Rynna shifted her stance, the hum of the Silanda’s core thrumming beneath her boots, steady, for now.

The hope, thin as it was, was that the sheer scale of destruction would force the Weaving to react, snapping closed around the rift like a cauterized wound, sealing off the breach and trapping the Wraith on the other side.

That was the plan. Obliterate herself and almost everyone she’d ever cared about to protect a universe that had never given a damn about her. And pray the Weaving would do the rest.

Moisture burned at the corners of her eyes. Ridiculous. Her kind didn’t cry tears.

“Commander.”

The voice was deep, wet with gravel and vibration. She turned to find Thalen at her side, the shimmer of his scales muted beneath the sharp lines of his uniform. His elongated fingers drummed once against the datapad he held before tucking it behind his back.

“The core is rigged. Flight wings are standing by.”

Everyone onboard knew the plan—that they were about to spring the final trap and end the war with one last glorious act of sacrifice.

Empty Night, what are you doing? A bitter pulse beat low in her throat. You’re a bastard. A mistake made flesh. Nails cut into her palms. So, your father wanted this war to kill you. You didn’t need to bring everyone else down with you.

It was monstrous.

And even if, by some impossible twist of fate, the alternate plan she hadn’t told them about succeeded, even if the tear collapsed just right and some fragment of the crew or refugees survived, there was no way to know where they’d land.

The rupture might spit them into empty space, or, just as easily, strand them in a fracture of unbound time.

They could vanish. Drift. Or worse, remain trapped behind the seal with the Wraith.

She was sending them all into the dark. Every soul who’d put their trust in her. Every child still clutching a thread of hope. Every fighter who’d stood at her side through fire and ruin.

They deserved more than this.

But she had nothing else to give.

It was madness. And it was the only chance they had to save everything that remained.

As exaggerated as that sounded, it was the truth. The other Wise Ones were locked in battle elsewhere, holding back incursions from the original Outsiders. No cavalry was coming. No divine reprieve waited in the wings.

And then there was her father.

His machinations warped through reality like rot through old wood, grasping for power, manipulating the tides of war to suit his own agenda. She was certain that particular truth was the reason she’d been shoved into this mission in the first place.

A convenient sacrifice. If she burned, it would tie up loose ends for him. Nicely.

Either way, she and her crew were alone. Which meant they were the ones who had to make a stand.

These few. These ragged, reckless few—brothers, sisters, and something more—banded together at the tit’s ass-end of reality.

She turned, letting her gaze sweep the bridge. It was a patchwork of the cosmos—scaled, feathered, furred, and skinned. A dozen species. A dozen worlds. All of them here, crammed into one failing ship, standing elbow to elbow, willing to die for each other. Die together.

From the razor-sharp fighter pilots strapped into launch harnesses to the last food-caster still programming nutrition cubes in the mess, every single soul had chosen this path. Not one had been conscripted. Not one forced.

Even Vexil, the thumb-sized, telepathic protoform spinning in the nav tank, had signed on with a flick of his fronds and a mental whisper of assent.

None of them expected thanks. There’d be no statues, no galactic parade. No record of how close the universe had come to being consumed, or what it had cost to hold the line.