Chapter 14
RHEA
Three years is long enough to bury a past.
Not erase it, no—ghosts like mine don’t go easy. But time dulls the sharp edges. Turns agony into background hum. Gives you a thousand tiny distractions to fill the spaces where pain used to live.
Like sticky fingers stealing fruit from the kitchen bowl.
Like the wild giggle of a toddler tearing through the garden in a pair of too-big boots, tripping on weeds and laughing like she invented gravity.
Like mornings where I forget, for exactly thirteen seconds, that I ever lived another life.
My name is Sera Tallen now.
I live on Kaeltris VI—a lush, quiet colony world at the far edge of the Vellari Expanse, known mostly for exporting medicinal moss and having exactly one bar worth walking into.
The seasons here shift like moods—slow, wide, full of color and storm and heat.
The people are kind in a mind-your-business kind of way, which suits me fine.
And my daughter?
Ripley Hart Marn is a supernova.
Blonde, feral and fearless. She climbs everything. Eats nothing green. Asks too many questions. Laughs with her whole body. Gets into brawls at school and then hugs her enemies until they cry.
She’s got his eyes.
That same cutting gold. That same way of looking at the world like it’s a puzzle she’s already solved but is letting you try anyway, just to be nice.
I tell myself she’s my heart walking outside my body.
And I know that’s cliché.
But I also know it’s true.
The job offer comes on a slow Thursday, just after Ripley shoves a stuffed toy into the drainage chute and laughs like a villain.
It pings on my private terminal. The one I swore I’d never reactivate. The one with two-factor authentication tied to a dead alias and a ghost server in the Khorin Drift.
It’s from NovaCast.
The biggest media syndicate in the quadrant.
I don’t recognize the name of the recruiter, but the message is sharp, direct, and absolutely my style.
We’ve reviewed your legacy portfolio. You’re exactly the kind of voice we need for a limited-run documentary series.
High-profile, exclusive access. Remote. Minimal travel. Subject: Galactic Gladiators.
You’ll have full creative control. Five weeks. Six-figure contract. Safe.
I reread the message three times.
Ripley’s hanging upside-down on the arm of the couch, chewing on the edge of a datapad that she definitely wasn’t supposed to touch.
“You ever heard of NovaCast?” I ask her.
“Mama,” she says solemnly, “I licked the drone.”
“…What?”
She grins. “It tasted like sky.”
I sit on the porch that night, watching the firelights rise over the hill line—tiny glowing bugs that float up from the grass and hover like stardust—and think about who I used to be.
Rhea Hart.
Journalist.
Fighter.
Breaker of truths and bringer of chaos.
She’s still in here. Rusted, dulled, buried beneath motherhood and false names and a kind of domesticity I never thought I’d wear so well.
But she’s restless.
And this job?
It smells like freedom.
I take the contract.
NovaCast dispatches a courier drone with the new credentials. My cover is clean. Untraceable. Even Dowron’s old eyes wouldn’t find me in this identity.
Ripley doesn’t understand, not really. She knows we’re going somewhere new, just for a little while. She’s excited. She packs three stuffed animals and a rock she insists is magic and tells me, “We’re adventurers now.”
I tell her we always were.
The transport takes us to Gheldor Prime—a planet that’s ninety-five percent arena, five percent overpriced beverages.
Galactic Gladiators isn’t just a sport. It’s religion.
Spectacle. Blood opera. The whole damn system orbits around its bi-weekly matches.
Fighters from across the stars, humans and aliens both, brought in under ridiculous names and even more ridiculous contracts to beat the hell out of each other for fame, credits, and the dream of escaping whatever hellhole they crawled out of.
It’s absurd.
It’s glorious.
It’s perfect for a documentary.
My first day in the production suite, I’m hit with lights so bright they feel like a resurrection. The scent of fresh grease and ozone hangs in the air. Screens flicker with slow-mo shots of carnage, cheers rolling through the steel bones of the stadium like thunder.
The floor vibrates with music and bloodlust.
Ripley’s eyes go wide. “Mama,” she says, “I want to fight a robot.”
“Let’s start with not licking anything this time, okay?”
Opening night is a firestorm.
The arena—The Crucible—is a glass-domed monstrosity, wide as a city block and packed with fans from ten systems. I’ve got a press box seat with sound-dampening filters and a remote feed link, but I can still feel the energy rolling off the crowd like heatwaves.
Below us, the sands are silver-black and shimmer like oil.
Lights snap down.
A voice booms over the intercom. “LADIES AND GENTLEBEINGS—YOUR MAIN EVENT… THE SLAUGHTERDOME!”
Ripley screams with joy, clutching my arm. “Is there blood?!”
“Not on the first date, baby.”
The lights swirl. Music slams. Fire bursts from the grates in rhythmic pulses.
“ENTERING FROM THE EAST GATE… THE UNDEFEATED, UNTOUCHABLE, UNHOLY BEAST OF THE PITS—YOUR CHAMPION—BLAAASTAAAAAAAR!”
The crowd explodes.
I’m already reaching for my datapad, prepping the record, when I look down and—
And I stop breathing.
He’s there.
Towering.
Red-scaled.
Golden-eyed.
Seven-foot-five and wrapped in plated armor and scars.
He walks with that same grounded weight. That same deliberate grace. Like the gravity obeys him.
His mouthguard covers half his face, but the shape of his jaw, the line of his brow, the ripple of the cords in his neck—I’d know them in my sleep.
It’s him.
Valtron.
My Valtron.
The arena shudders as he hurls his opponent into the sand hard enough to break bones from here.
The man tries to crawl.
Blastaar—Valtron—doesn’t flinch.
He pins the guy down with one foot and lifts his fist.
Ripley grabs my sleeve. “Mama…”
I don’t hear her.
I can’t.
Because all the years I spent stitching myself back together just ripped wide open.
My heart hammers so loud I can barely think.
Valtron.
Alive.
I don’t sleep that night.
Can’t.
I pace.
I swear.
I throw a mug so hard at the far wall it cracks the synth-ceramic paneling and Ripley’s stuffed bramblebear falls off the shelf with a thump.
She stirs in the next room, murmurs something sleepy and sweet, then settles back into that deadweight toddler sprawl, one leg hanging off the side of the mattress, hair a golden halo across the pillow.
I sit on the floor and stare at the cracked mug like it’s got answers.
It doesn’t.
Because there aren’t any answers. Not to this.
Valtron is alive.
Not hiding. Not running. Not rotting in some hellhole blacksite.
Alive.
And not just alive—thriving. Famous.
A goddamn celebrity.
“Blastaar,” they call him.
Like he’s a brand, not a person.
The footage from his last five fights has over two billion views on the net. There are action figures. Holo games. A cocktail named after him that burns going down and leaves a golden shimmer on your lips.
I found it all.
Pulled up every shred of info NovaCast’s archives had and then went deeper, crawling through shadow feeds and side-broadcasts, tracking the man I used to know through a digital haze of blood and glory and spectacle.
He’s been fighting for two years.
Climbing the ranks like a man with no ceiling.
He’s known for two things: never speaking off-camera... and never losing.
I don’t understand it.
I don’t understand him.
How did he survive?
Why didn’t he come find me?
What the hell is he doing in a spotlight when we were supposed to disappear?
My fists curl and uncurl, my palms raw from clenching.
The walls feel too close. The lights too bright. The air too thick.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and almost flinch—hair a mess, eyes rimmed with exhaustion, mouth tight with something like betrayal.
“You son of a bitch,” I whisper. “You left me in the dark and went public?”
But even as the words leave my lips, they taste wrong.
Because there was hurt in his eyes.
When he saw me in that press box, right after the fight… gods.
He didn’t smile.
Didn’t wink or nod or even breathe.
He stopped.
Mid-stride.
In front of thousands of screaming fans.
And he looked at me.
The air between us vanished. The noise. The lights.
There was only that look.
Like a ghost seeing sun again.
Like a drowning man surfacing to air he thought he’d never taste again.
And in that instant, I knew.
He hadn’t stopped looking.
The press session is packed. Bright lights, synthetic marble floors, crowd-control drones scanning for trouble.
I wear a hood. Keep Ripley with a sitter from NovaCast I half-trust because her teeth are bad and her eyes are kind.
My badge gets me front row.
I tell myself I’m here for the story.
That’s a lie.
I just… I need to see him again.
To confirm it wasn’t some grief-soaked hallucination conjured by adrenaline and nostalgia.
I grip the armrests of my chair so hard my fingers ache.
The panel opens with the event manager announcing tonight’s “victor and reigning champion of the Gheldor Crucible…”
“BLASTAAR!”
And he enters.
Taller than I remember.
Broader.
Wearing combat plating like it’s second skin. Red scales gleaming under the hot lights, gold eyes scanning the room with slow, predatory precision.
He moves like a man used to being watched.
But when he sees me?
Everything changes.
His posture stiffens.
His breath catches—only for a second, but I catch it.
And then he stops.
Not subtle. Not careful.
He just halts mid-step and stares.
Our eyes lock.
And time folds in on itself.
I forget where I am. Who I am. What three years of exile have turned me into.
I’m just his.
His Rhea.
And he’s my Valtron.
I don’t ask any questions with my voice.
I ask with my eyes.
How?
Why?
Where the hell have you been?
His eyes answer.
I tried.
I failed.
But I never gave up.
The questions come. Journalists with better nerves than me lobbing softballs about his opponent, his training regimen, his rising stardom.
He doesn’t look at me again.
But I know he knows I’m there.
I leave before the last question lands. Heart hammering.
I don’t trust myself to stay calm.
It’s after midnight when the pounding comes.
Hard. Fast. Desperate.
I know it’s him before I even get to the door.
I don’t open it.
I lean against it.
My hands shake.
Ripley’s sleeping in the next room, a soft snore puffing through the baby monitor on the end table. Her favorite stuffed bramblebear tucked under her chin.
I close my eyes and press my palm flat against the door.
His voice comes through low. Rough. Wrecked.
“I never stopped looking.”
My throat tightens so fast I almost choke.
I bite back a sob, teeth pressed hard into my lip.
He continues. “I followed every trace. Every ping. You were gone. Not just hidden. Scrubbed. They said you were dead. I checked planets with no names. Crossed voids I shouldn’t have survived.”
I whisper, “You found fame instead.”
Silence.
Then, “I needed to be seen. It was the only way I’d ever find you again.”
I slide down to the floor, knees pulled to my chest, head resting against the cool alloy.
He mirrors me.
I can feel it.
His voice breaks. “You hate me?”
“No,” I whisper. “But I don't know you anymore.”
Another pause. The air feels too thick. Too still.
“You could.”
I cry.
Quietly. Ugly. The kind that makes your ribs ache and your soul bleed.
“Valtron…” My voice is just breath. “You’re not the only one with scars.”