Chapter 17
AEBON REXX
The war drums in my veins start low—like distant thunder—but each breath tightens the snare. By the time I walk into the Sanctum Hall, the deep black marble of Centauri Sect’s inner sanctum gleaming like oil in low light, I’m already past the point of deliberation.
I don’t pace. I sit. Chair carved from fused bones and obsidian. It sings beneath my weight.
The room hushes.
My lieutenants—Haarvik, Bruna, Ellex—file in like bloodied dogs sniffing the leash. They see what I’ve become. Not the smile, not the suit. The thing behind my red eyes.
Bruna’s the first to speak, rough voice still marinated in the spice of last night’s kill. “Boss. The girl?”
“She lives,” I say.
I don’t say more. I don’t mention the mangled hovercar or the gaping wound on the chest of the man paid to protect her. I don’t say I smelled her blood before I saw her. I don’t describe the sound she made—small and shattered—when I pulled her from the wreckage.
I don’t mention I haven’t slept. Not because of fear. But because the part of me I keep caged is howling.
“Ellex,” I say, voice like steel dipped in velvet. “Inventory.”
He stands, pale skin glowing under the room’s shifting lumens. “Nar’Vosk logistics confirmed. They’re running stim through the Mekar shipping port under false registry. Five containers daily.”
I nod.
“Haarvik. Bribe chain?”
The brute smirks. “Got three judges and a Minister’s cousin on their payroll. We flipped one last night. Fed him his own contract.”
“Public assets?”
“Three casinos, six brothels, two chains. All marked.”
Bruna leans forward, sharp eyes like broken glass. “You want ‘em sanctioned?”
My smile is a whisper of teeth.
“No,” I say, each syllable heavy with promise. “I want them erased.”
Silence.
I press my palms together, feeling the bones shift. The rage curling in me isn’t wild. It’s disciplined. The kind that waits. The kind that cuts through noise like a scalpel through flesh.
“We gave them time,” I continue, voice low but rich with thunder. “We gave them corridors and truces. But they put a bomb beneath my woman’s car. They bled on my doorstep. That... is a mistake they will drown in.”
No one corrects me on what I just said. My woman.
Because they’ve seen it too.
The way I look at her.
The way I haven’t let another touch me since she walked into my courtroom like fury in heels.
I slam my hand against the comm-table. Holograms of Nar’Vosk assets flicker in blue and red—targets glowing with impending violence.
“Three-phase strike,” I order. “Bruna—take the brothels. Burn every registry, free the girls. Make it loud. Haarvik—cut the supply line at Mekar. Leave one survivor. A mouthpiece. Ellex—you and the Ghosts hit their bribe chain. We leak it to the press after. Corruption trial by sunrise.”
Bruna chuckles, flexing knuckles cracked with old blood. “You want messy or elegant?”
“I want surgical carnage,” I say. “Make it an art piece.”
She grins wider.
The room grows hot. I can smell the bloodlust blooming like steam. And still, I remain seated. Still. In control. On the outside.
But inside, the Reaper’s loose.
And the city of Goldwin? She doesn’t know what’s coming.
When the meeting ends, they leave fast—obedient and silent. Because they know what I didn’t say.
This war isn’t about territory anymore. It’s personal.
I stand at last, stretch my limbs, feel the armor of control shift on my shoulders.
In the quiet, I walk to the northern viewing port, where the skyline of Goldwin pulses like a dying heartbeat.
I press one hand to the glass. Beyond it, neon veins of the city stretch like arteries, and somewhere out there—Aria sleeps under guard, her breath labored but healing.
My fingers tighten.
No one hurts her again. Not without forfeiting everything.
I whisper to the night. Not a threat. A promise.
“No more politics.”
The glass reflects my eyes—burning bright.
“We end this.”
I don’t announce myself.
No grand speech. No banners. No horns.
Just the hum of the drop shuttle cutting through Goldwin’s storm-choked night, wind howling like an omen as I descend into the heart of Nar’Vosk territory with death riding my shoulders.
My crew’s strapped and tight behind me—ghost-faced, wide-eyed. Some haven’t seen me fight in a decade. Some never have. The silence between them says it all.
They think they know what I am.
They don’t.
The vault is buried under an old train depot—grime-caked metal and rusted stone, tucked in the bowels of the industrial district like a rotten tooth. We land hard, boots crunching on broken concrete.
I don’t flinch.
I inhale.
And the scent of blood, oil, and ozone hits like a punch to the gut.
There are twelve guards on perimeter. Seven more inside. Automated defense turrets. Heat-scanners. Sonic alarms.
I don’t care.
I nod once to Ellex. He blinks, confused. “Boss… You want us in first?”
“No,” I say, stepping into the shadows. “You follow after.”
And I vanish.
Not with tech. Not with tricks.
With instinct. With birthright.
The Reaper moves.
I slide between shadows like smoke, every step a silent prayer to old gods with teeth. My bone spurs ripple out from under my sleeves—white and jagged, humming with raw energy. The tips drip venom. Not metaphorical. Real.
The first guard turns too late.
I grip the back of his skull and twist.
Bone cracks. His body slumps, silent.
The next one doesn’t even get to scream. My elbow shatters his jaw mid-breath, my glaive impales his spine, lifting him off the ground before I hurl him into a fuel tank. The explosion is a whisper compared to the roar building in me.
Three more sprint toward the alarm.
I leap from a catwalk, land like thunder.
They die in pieces.
Limbs separated from bodies. Arterial sprays painting the walls. Their blood smells sweet—terrified and tainted.
I revel in it.
I become it.
Inside, the final line of defense opens fire. Plasma rounds tear through air, singing past my ribs. One grazes my side.
I roar.
Not from pain.
From pleasure.
I fling my glaive. It spins, humming—a shriek of sonic force—and cleaves a man from collarbone to groin.
The others freeze.
Big mistake.
I charge.
My voice lifts—not a shout, not a command.
A song.
Ishani war tongue. Older than planets. Banned in four sectors because of what it does to the mind when spoken with Reaper intent.
They drop their weapons.
Too late.
My fists are hammers. My bones are knives. I paint the vault in ruin.
When it’s done, I’m the only thing breathing.
I stand in the wreckage. Blood steaming from my shoulders. My eyes burn like twin eclipses. The ground at my feet is red and slick.
Behind me, my crew arrives—slow, uncertain.
They see the aftermath.
Ellex swallows. Hard. “Boss…”
I turn, covered in blood, grin carved across my face like a war god returned from exile.
“The vault’s clear,” I rasp. “Strip it. Melt it. Leave a body hanging from every damn beam.”
Bruna, her voice shaking, mutters, “They’ll talk about this for decades.”
“They better,” I say. “Or I’ll come back and remind them.”
I don’t clean the blood from my hands.
Not tonight.
Tonight, the Reaper walks again.
And he doesn’t ask for mercy.
He teaches them what it means to bleed.
The scent of carnage clings to me.
Thick. Metallic. Saturating the air with the weight of what I’ve done.
The vault’s dead quiet now. Even the flames have stopped crackling, as if afraid to breathe the same air I do. The bones of Nar’Vosk guards litter the floor like discarded promises, and my glaive—still warm in my grip—drips with viscera that smokes when it touches the cold concrete.
I stand in the center of the slaughter, light from an emergency beacon flickering against my skin like it’s trying to decide whether I’m still a man… or something worse.
My heart’s still hammering, a drumbeat soaked in blood and fury. But beneath it, something hollow is starting to open.
She’d hate this.
I close my eyes.
Aria’s face rises behind my lids.
Not the firebrand prosecutor. Not the woman who snapped orders at me like I’d obey them. No. The Aria I saw in that medical bed. Pale. Fragile. Her voice cracking when she said she couldn’t pretend not to care anymore.
She’s the only pure thing in this universe of rot.
And I—
I just dragged myself back into the abyss for her.
Would she understand that?
My fingers tighten around the glaive. The metal creaks beneath the strain.
She believes in law. In balance. In truth.
I believe in teeth.
In silence.
In making your enemies vanish so completely their names become taboo.
She sees justice as something noble.
I see it as something you carve out with a blade when the galaxy won’t give it freely.
She wants change.
I want control.
And this… this bloodbath I’ve authored tonight?
It’s not an act of love.
It’s a warning.
A reckoning.
A declaration to every bastard watching from the shadows that if you come for her again, if you touch her, I will rain hell down so violently your ancestors will scream from their graves.
But that doesn’t mean she’ll forgive me.
Or even look at me the same way.
Because no matter what I tell myself—this wasn’t just about protecting her.
It was about reminding the world what I am.
A monster with a memory and a code all my own.
I lower the glaive.
My reflection catches in a pool of blood at my feet.
Eyes glowing. Face splattered. Bare chest heaving.
Reaper. Godfather. Weapon of extinction.
And I wonder—not for the first time—if I’ve gone too far to ever make it back to her.
Not to her bed. I could have that if I pushed.
But her heart?
That’s the part I may’ve burned tonight.
Ellex calls from outside. Says the clean-up’s starting. That the payload’s secured. That the rest of the sector’s already whispering.
I don’t answer.
I just stand in the center of hell I’ve made and whisper one name—
“Aria.”
And for the first time in years…
I feel fear.