Chapter 2 NADINE #2
Emperor Daryus didn't bring me here for reassurance.
He brought me because Zapharos—the Arkhevari Praetor of War—had warned him that black holes were not always natural phenomena.
That some were… touched. Influenced. Remembered.
The idea still sat wrong in my chest. Science didn't remember.
Space didn't watch. No matter how many anomalies I'd already witnessed coming from this particular one, I knew in time they would make sense, just like everything else in the universe. Eventually.
Another flicker rippled across the data stream, making me freeze.
"Did you see that?" I asked no one in particular.
One of the technicians hesitated. "See what, Doctor?"
I replayed the feed, slowed it down, and overlaid waveforms. The anomaly appeared again: a rhythmic distortion, subtle but deliberate, like a heartbeat where none should exist.
"That," I said. "That shouldn't repeat."
Silence followed. I swallowed, suddenly aware of how far from Earth I was.
How far from anything human. The Pandraxians were powerful, disciplined, and—by every definition I had learned—honorable.
They weren't the ones who had captured me.
They were the ones who had hired Space Guardians to free humans like me.
They had asked if I wanted to work for them.
They offered protection, resources, and something I hadn't expected to be given again so freely: respect.
I wasn't a prisoner. I wasn't even a political bargaining chip.
I was a specialist. An expert. Useful. I was allowed—encouraged, even—to return to my field.
Astrophysics. More specifically, gravitational anomalies and non-standard singularity behavior.
Not many humans have had the opportunity I had to pick up their lives from where they were forced to leave them after the Cryon invasion.
When life stops you short for one reason or another, not many people have the will to go back to their old lives.
Some just want to start over, others… get lost in their pasts.
The business of survival eclipses curiosity.
Need outpaces want. Not many have the drive to pursue the careers or hobbies they once loved.
The luxury of choice vanished the day the Cryons came.
Within hours of their arrival, Earth's military had been annihilated.
Within days, everything we had built—governments, cities, families—was gone.
People were killed or taken. Sometimes both.
Where they were taken to, we didn't know.
We only learned later that somewhere was never singular.
From the beginning, I had been luckier than most. I was working for NASA when the invasion happened and was relocated to a military base deemed strategically valuable enough to protect. We held out for months. Long enough to believe—foolishly—that science might still matter.
Then the base fell.
I was captured shortly after, processed with brutal efficiency—including being given a translator chip—and loaded onto a Cryon transport along with several others.
High-value assets, according to the files they flashed at us, as if that label meant something to the Cryons.
A senator's wife. A famous actor who had somehow found his way onto the base.
A governor's daughter. Very few soldiers.
It didn't matter to the Cryons, and it didn't matter to the Space Guardian who rescued us mid-transport.
The alarms were brief, the fighting even shorter.
One man killed over a hundred Cryons in less than ten minutes.
The Guardian who boarded the ship was… not charming.
Efficient, yes, and thorough, but unimpressed by our panic.
His name was Zaarek, and his bedside manner—if you could call it that—suggested he found our entire species mildly inconvenient.
He cut through the Cryon's defenses like they were an annoyance. Removed our collars without ceremony. Told us we were coming with him.
That was it. No speech. No reassurances. No attempt to make us feel better about the fact that we'd just watched an alien massacre unfold ten feet from where we were standing. Some of the humans were furious about that; a few, like me, were grateful.
He promised to take us somewhere safe, and he kept that promise.
The planet was called Astrionis, part of the Pandraxian Empire. It was governed by Lord Protector Garth and his wife, Silla, who, to my complete astonishment, was not only human, but formidable.
Together, she and Garth were building something unprecedented: a refuge, a future, something that would eventually become a purpose for those of us who had lost everything. Silla worked tirelessly to reunite families and friends, cross-referencing records that shouldn't have existed anymore.
That was how I came to the attention of Emperor Daryus.
He needed someone with expertise about what they called the Dark Abyss.
And so, here I was. Staring into a black void, using instruments and machines I could have only dreamed of on Earth.
Pandraxian technology was so much more advanced than ours, and yet, they were as stumped by the Black Abyss as humanity had been.
Suddenly, red light flooded the deck as gravity spiked violently. The ship shuddered, and metal groaned like a living thing pushed past its tolerance.
"Intrusion!" someone shouted.
I turned just as the viewport distorted, not shattered, but honest to God flexed, as reality seemed to tear open around a ship which phased into existence far too close for comfort.
The computers didn't recognize it and called it an Unidentified Space Object, which would have made me laugh, given different circumstances.
I mean, there I was, in space, surrounded by aliens, and their computers called out UFO—technically a USO—but semantics, right?
Weapons stations erupted into motion, taking away any kind of humor I might have seen in the situation.
The Pandraxians were getting ready to attack or defend.
The moment felt surreal, like I was in the middle of a Star Trek episode—my favorite show ever, sue me.
I liked it even with all its little inaccuracies.
Even more after I learned not to comment while others were around.
For some reason, I always identified with Spock.
"Target lock achieved," the ship's commander barked. "Unidentified vessel inside exclusion radius."
My nerves rattled. This wasn't happening, couldn't be happening.
We were NOT going to get into a space battle.
I tried to tell myself that I was safe, that I was on the emperor's ship after all.
Nothing could happen to the emperor's ship, right?
It was protected above else. But I had thought the same about the NASA station and was still taken by the Cryons.
No matter how hard I tried to suppress the sense of Déjà vu clawing its way up inside of me, some of it found its way through.
As if I were somebody else, I watched the Commander, a man I had come to respect during the past weeks, order, "Permission to fire, your—"
I shuddered, expecting the ship to be violently hit any second now, anticipating being sucked out into space, when another voice cut through the chaos with surgical precision. "Stand down."
My head turned towards Commander Noctus—the head of the Emperor's security and closest guard—as he stepped onto the deck, his presence instantly reordering the room.
Tall even by Pandraxian standards, armored in deep obsidian marked with the sigil of the Emperor's Guard, he did not raise his voice. He never had to.
"I am assuming command," Noctus announced. "All fire solutions are suspended."
The regular commander, Tarex Valmor, turned sharply. "Commander Noctus, the vessel breached perimeter protocols. If it's hostile—"
"If it were hostile," Noctus interrupted calmly, "we would already be dead."
That stopped Valmor cold. It didn't exactly reassure me, but his logic helped me find my equilibrium.
Noctus' gaze flicked to the tactical display, then to the data scrolling faster than the systems could comfortably handle. "That ship did not breach our perimeter. It emerged."
A chill crawled up my spine as the truth of it hit home.
Valmor frowned. "From where?"
Noctus didn't look at him when he answered. "From the Dark Abyss."
The words landed heavily. My breath caught before I could stop it.
It wasn't fear, at least, not entirely. It was the sickening, disorienting sensation of watching a fundamental law of the universe tear in half.
Singularities didn't expel matter. They consumed it.
That wasn't theory or philosophy; it was bedrock physics.
An event horizon was a one-way boundary.
Nothing crossed it outward. Not light. Not information. Certainly not ships.
"That's impossible," Valmor snapped. "Nothing comes out of a singularity."
Noctus finally turned. "Until now."
The data screamed confirmation. Every vector. Every timestamp. There was no inbound trajectory, no approach curve, no measurable acceleration from normal space. There was only one logical explanation: the ship hadn't arrived. It had exited.
My hands tightened on the edge of the console as something cold settled in my chest. If this was possible—if the Dark Abyss could return what it had swallowed—then everything I understood about gravity, causality, and cosmic order was wrong.
Worse, it meant the Abyss wasn't just a void. It was a door.
Valmor bristled. "Sir, with respect, the safest course is to eliminate it before it—"
Before he could finish, the deck doors parted.
The temperature seemed to rise with the arrival of Emperor Daryus.
He moved with contained violence, golden armor catching the lights like a warning rather than ornamentation.
His eyes swept the deck once, taking in the flickering displays, the tension, the anomaly hanging just outside the viewport.
"What," he demanded, "is all this noise about?"
Valmor snapped to attention. "A ship, Your Imperial Highness. Unknown origin. It breached—"
"I can see the ship," Daryus snapped. "Why is it still there?"
Valmor swallowed. "Commander Noctus has ordered a weapons hold."
Daryus turned slowly. Noctus met his gaze without flinching. "The vessel is requesting permission to come aboard."
That got everyone's attention.
Daryus' jaw tightened. "Requesting."
"Yes," Noctus said. "Politely."
For a heartbeat, no one spoke. Then Daryus laughed, short, sharp, and humorless. "The universe grows bold." His eyes narrowed on the tactical display. "Who commands it?"
Noctus tilted his head slightly, listening to the incoming transmission. "He identifies himself as an Arkhevari."
The name of the elusive species landed like a dropped weapon. The Arkhevari had been assumed extinct, if they had ever even existed in the first place. That was until a few weeks ago, when one emerged and met with Emperor Daryus, which prompted him to seek me out and hire me.
To put it into context, the arrival of an Arkhevari to the Pandraxians was like a being from Atlantis emerging on Earth and requesting an audience.
Suddenly, I felt an inexplicable pressure build deep in my skull, subtle but undeniable, as if the space around us had leaned closer to listen.
Noctus continued, "He says his name is Dravok."
The silence that followed was absolute. Daryus' expression darkened with recognition and something dangerously close to irritation. "The Shadow Strategist," he muttered. He turned sharply. "What does he want?"
Noctus' mouth curved into something akin to amusement. "He requests an audience."
Valmor couldn't hold it in any longer. "Your Highness, this is reckless. If he means harm—"
"If he meant harm," Daryus snapped, his temper finally cracking through, "he would not be asking."
He strode closer to the viewport, staring at the dark ship suspended against the impossible pull of the Abyss. "And if Dravok is here, then something far worse is already in motion."
Daryus turned on his heel. "Allow him aboard."
Valmor stiffened. "Your Highness—"
"I said, allow him aboard," Daryus repeated in a voice that sounded like thunder wrapped in silk. "Escort him to Conference Hall Prime. I will meet him there."
Noctus inclined his head. "As you command."
The lights dimmed as docking protocols engaged.
I exhaled slowly, only then realizing I'd been holding my breath.
An Arkhevari. Here. On the Pandraxian flagship.
This close to the Abyss. Whatever equations I had been chasing moments ago suddenly felt inadequate.
Because the anomaly outside the viewport was no longer the most dangerous thing in the room.
For reasons I could not yet explain, the closer that ship drew, the stronger the pressure in my head became, like gravity itself had found a new center. Far too close for comfort.
I would have loved to call it curiosity, but even then, I felt that it was more. Much more.