Chapter 5 DRAVOK
I should have left. The moment the emperor extended the invitation to have dinner in his quarters and spend the night aboard the imperial ship.
I should have declined and set a course for Cryon space.
Nythor did not improve with captivity, and the longer I delayed, the more variables entered the equation.
Yet I found myself standing outside the emperor's private suite, with irritation coiling tight in my chest, wondering when exactly I had decided that staying was preferable to leaving.
I heard it the moment the doors parted.
"—incompetent," Daryus roared, his voice echoing off metal and crystal alike.
"If they cannot hold a perimeter without—" I barely caught sight of a form standing in the center of the room before the holovid cut abruptly, followed by a flying vase.
It shattered spectacularly against the far wall.
I took one step inside and stopped, assessing.
The suite was vast, designed not for comfort but for dominance, with vaulted ceilings and layered shielding disguised as art.
Windows framed a spectacular view of space and the Dark Abyss, now at a more respectable distance.
Everything about the space spoke of carefully curated power.
A female, who had to be the Empress Heather, stood near Daryus, utterly unflinching.
"Oh no," she said mildly, surveying the wreckage. "I liked that one."
Daryus spun toward her, fury still crackling through him like a live wire. "They will answer for this."
"They always do," she replied, stepping closer. She placed one hand flat against his chest, fingers splayed over his skin, and I prepared myself to interfere. She was so much smaller than he was. Fragile. "But not if you rupture a vessel before dinner."
His breathing slowed. Not immediately, but it did slow.
I watched carefully. Daryus was a large male.
Larger than most Pandraxians, built like a siege engine given flesh.
He could have broken her neck with minimal effort, anger making it easier rather than harder.
Still, the empress did not hesitate. She never raised her voice.
Never stepped back. She simply grounded him.
That took courage. Or trust so absolute it bordered on madness.
Daryus exhaled sharply and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, the worst of the storm had passed. That's when he noticed me. "Dravok, you're early."
"I considered leaving," I replied honestly.
Heather turned, giving me her full attention.
The Empress of the Pandraxian Empire was human, like Nadine, but where Nadine burned with restless intellect, Heather radiated something steadier.
She moved with quiet confidence; her presence was neither submissive nor defiant.
Her hair was golden—a little darker than Nadine's—worn loose over one shoulder, her expression warm but sharp-eyed.
I couldn't help but get the feeling that nothing escaped her.
"I'm glad you didn't," she said. "Dinner is already a battlefield. An extra warrior won't hurt."
A corner of my mouth twitched before I could stop it. She had called me a warrior—when I was a god—but I supposed I could forgive the misclassification. Mortals often lacked the appropriate scale. Perhaps that was how she survived him, Daryus.
Dinner itself was… illuminating. Mostly because Nadine sat across from me, looking as beautiful as sin.
She wore her hair down, soft waves framed her face, and the color caught the light in a way that made her eyes seem impossibly vivid.
She wore a flowing dress—simple, elegant, entirely unsuited to a warship—and somehow that made her presence more disruptive rather than less.
I tried not to look at her and failed miserably.
She held her eating utensil—some Pandraxian-human hybrid that resembled a spork, according to Heather's thoughts, which I quickly probed—with absolute seriousness, as if it were an instrument requiring precision.
Her brow furrowed slightly when she concentrated.
I had fought wars that consumed star systems, and here I was being undone by the way her eyes narrowed when she disagreed.
"So," she said, fixing me with that look. "You keep saying the Abyss absorbs planets. That's not how gravity works."
"It's how the Abyss works," I corrected evenly.
She scoffed. "That's not an explanation. That's mythology."
Daryus said nothing. He was watching. Measuring.
"The Abyss is older than your equations," I continued, unbothered. "It does not consume immediately. It waits. It accumulates mass, memory, consequence."
"That's poetic," Nadine shook her head, amusing me. I'd been called many things, but nobody had ever accused me of being poetic. "Not empirical."
I leaned back slightly. "Give it time."
Her lips pressed together. "That's not science."
"No," I agreed, enjoying our little war of words. "It's experience."
Her nostrils flared. "You're enjoying this."
She caught on quickly. I was. Frygg. But I wasn't about to stop either. "I'm stating facts," I threw out another hook. "You're the one reacting emotionally."
Heather hid a smile behind her drink. Daryus eventually set his glass down with deliberate finality, interrupting our little war of words. "Dravok, why don't you tell us more about those Mmuhr'Rhongs. Zapharos mentioned they're different from the ones we've encountered in this universe."
Nadine looked confused, "Mmuhr'Rhongs?"
I exhaled slowly; the Mmuhr'Rhongs weren't anything I wanted to discuss.
Still, I felt compelled to explain, "They are a swarm.
A consuming force that moves between systems, stripping them of resources, life, and memory.
We thought them contained to Nox Eternum, but we were wrong.
They're destructive, dangerous, and utterly remorseless. "
Nadine leaned forward slightly. "So… parasitic entities? Self-replicating constructs?"
I shot her a look. "They are not constructs."
She waved that off. "Everything is a construct if it has an organizing principle."
Heather made a thoughtful humming sound in the back of her throat, possibly to distract, but Nadine and I were too focused on one another to give it any attention.
"The difference," I continued, keeping my tone level through sheer discipline, "is where these Mmuhr'Rhongs come from."
Daryus' gaze sharpened. "The Dark Abyss."
"Yes."
"Like demons." Heather made a weird criss-crossing motion with her hand and fingers over her chest. Her eyes turned wide, and I swear she paled. Before I could respond, I felt it again, the by now familiar pressure deep inside my skull, the echo of something vast and patient.
"The Abyss does not create the way stars create," I filled them in, sharper than I needed to, but damn, that feeling was irritating me as much as Nadine.
"It does not build. It does not design. It accumulates.
When enough collapses, enough deaths are collected, enough unreturned energy gathers in one place… it begins to express itself.
Nadine frowned. "Express how?"
"Through intermediaries," I clarified. "The Mmuhr'Rhongs are not born. They're exuded. Like antibodies produced by a wound that has learned to defend itself."
Her eyes lit despite herself. "So they're an emergent phenomenon. Not engineered, but grown."
"No," I felt my patience thinning. With her, with my inability to explain, it was anybody's guess. "Not grown either."
She tilted her head. "Then what?"
I leaned forward just enough for the weight of my presence to settle. "They are consequences."
Silence followed. Nadine swallowed, then rallied.
"If they're tied to the Abyss, then what we're observing near singularities—those anomalous fluctuations—could be precursor activity.
Proto-constructs forming along the event horizons.
" I stared at her. "The Dark Abyss," I glared at Nadine, "does not construct.
" She opened her mouth. This time, I stopped her.
"It does not prototype. It does not experiment.
It does not iterate." My voice dropped. "When it sends something into the universe, it already knows what it wants it to do.
They are what happens when the Abyss learns how to reach back. "
Heather's hand went to Daryus' arm. "We can't let those into the Empire."
"We won't," Daryus' expression and voice were iron hard.
Nadine crossed her arms. "You're being dramatic."
I met her gaze. "I'm restraining myself."
She looked away first. I kept watching the way she tucked her hair behind her ear when thinking. Catalogued the subtle shifts in her posture and the way her attention sharpened when challenged. Adorable.
I froze.
Frygg.
Did I just—
No.
Absolutely not.
This was not an Aelyth bond. This was an irritation. Curiosity. Proximity. That was all. I finished my drink and rose. "I should go."
Nadine looked up, surprised. I turned toward the exit, but the sound of her voice stopped me. "Hold on." It cut through me with infuriating precision.
I paused, fingers flexing once at my side, then turned back. She was already standing, shaking her head as if trying to clear it.
"What you're saying," she began, "is impossible."
I lifted a brow and suppressed an exasperated sigh. She took a breath, clearly choosing her words carefully now. "The Dark Abyss—black holes in general—they swallow. They don't generate. They don't produce. They don't emit anything except Hawking radiation and distorted spacetime effects."
I opened my mouth to contradict her, but she lifted her hand; this seemed to be becoming a thing between us. "No. Don't."
I stopped myself, teeth grinding.
"Call it producing, creating, defending—whatever vocabulary you prefer," she continued. "It doesn't change the underlying issue. If something is making decisions, if it's sending intermediaries and responding with intent, then there has to be a logical mind involved."
The words hit harder than I expected. I tilted my head slightly. She wasn't wrong. It was something that needed to be considered.
She noticed.
"Oh no," she shook her head immediately. "No. Don't do that."
"Do what?" She confused me.
"That thing you just did," she said, pointing at my face. "You're considering it."
I didn't deny it.
"There is no god down there," she scoffed firmly after pointing toward Nox Eternum. "Gods don't exist."
The room went very still, except for the sound of Heather sharply inhaling. Something in my chest snapped tight, not rage exactly, but something older, colder. After all… I was a god.
I stepped closer, my shadow stretched just enough for her to feel it. "Be careful, human."
Her chin lifted. "With what? Offending mythology?"
She looked away first. It was a victory, small, petty, unsatisfying.
Still, I took it. But then she did something far more dangerous: she thought.
I watched the way she tucked her hair behind her ear, the way her eyes narrowed, sharpened, recalibrated.
She wasn't dismissing me anymore. She was working the problem. Adorable.
I froze.
Frygg.
I just did it again.
One more time, I turned, forcing my feet toward the door. A thought entered my mind, "Have you considered that if you're wrong, entire civilizations will die before anyone understands why?"
She didn't even flinch or pause. "If I'm right, then someone has to be brave enough to question the story you've all been telling yourselves."
I faced her again. For a heartbeat, the universe narrowed to the space between us.
She wasn't backing down. Only my brothers dared to stand up to me, and even then, not often.
Mostly, only Zapharos or Thyros. I regarded her with renewed admiration.
She was either extremely stupid or extremely brave. Neither option cancelled the other.
"You assume courage excuses ignorance," I kept my voice cooler than I felt. "It does not."
She stepped closer instead of retreating.
"I assume stagnation kills faster than curiosity," she replied. "History agrees with me."
Frygg. I should have ended the exchange there. I had already said more than necessary, lingered longer than prudent. Every instinct honed over millennia told me to leave, to sever this distraction before it rooted itself deeper.
And yet—
I found myself studying her again. The set of her shoulders. The way she stood her ground without posturing, without fear-masking bravado. She wasn't trying to win. She was trying to understand. That was worse.
"You speak as if the universe rewards those who challenge it," I observed.
Her lips curved faintly. "No. I speak as someone who knows it doesn't care either way."
That landed harder than any insult. Even though I knew that in her ignorant mind, she didn't mean her words the way I did.
I felt it again, unmistakably—the pull—tightening, insistent, curling low in my chest like gravity seeking equilibrium.
I'd felt it before in battle, in moments when fate narrowed to a single decision.
Only this was different. Much more personal. I broke eye contact first, turning away sharply. "You're reckless."
She didn't deny it. "And you're afraid."
Her words, a challenge if I'd ever heard one, stopped me midstride. Slowly, I looked back.
"You mistake certainty for fear," I set her straight.
"I don't," she replied. "I recognize it. You've already seen what happens if you're right. You don't know what happens if you're wrong."
The words threaded themselves into places I did not allow anyone access to.
Behind me, Heather had gone very still. Daryus said nothing, only watching us like someone would study two fighters to see who to bet on.
I took one step toward Nadine, just close enough that she'd feel it: the weight, the presence, the restrained violence that followed me like a second shadow.
I allowed my aura to flare black for a moment.
It took immense self-control to let it through and push it back down.
"If you won't allow your mind to adapt," I warned quietly, "you'll see things that will ruin you."
Her pulse jumped. I could see it at her throat. She was mulling my words over. Good. Silence fell again.
I straightened abruptly. Enough. "This conversation is over. Stay away from the Abyss."
She met my gaze evenly. "I can't."
I knew she meant it. That was the problem. But not mine. I had other things to do. Namely, getting Nythor away from the Cryons. I turned and walked out before the pull convinced me to do something unforgivable, like ask her to come with me.
Behind me, the universe did not snap back into place.
It merely waited.