Chapter 19
KALLUS
Darkness.
Still. Endless. Complete.
It cradles me like a tomb.
No breath. No pain. Just void.
Then—
“Kallus…”
Her voice slices through the silence like lightning across an obsidian sky. It’s faint, barely more than a ripple in the ether, but it’s enough. The torpor shatters.
My body convulses.
Alarms wail into sudden life. Red strobe pulses flood the cockpit, casting blood-colored shadows across failing instruments. I suck in a breath that tastes like rust and static. My lungs burn like they’ve never known air before. Pain blooms behind my eyes, spiderwebbing across my skull.
The ship’s life support stutters. Gravity shifts erratically beneath me. The grav field whines like it’s dying.
“System reboot… partial. Structural integrity… critical,” the AI slurs in broken Common.
I groan, dragging myself upright. Every joint screams. Blood crusts my temple. My left arm won’t respond. Something in my chest clicks wrong when I inhale.
But I’m alive.
And I heard her.
Ayla.
It wasn’t a dream.
She called to me.
“I’m coming, starborn,” I rasp, voice barely audible over the alarms.
The grav sensors flicker—then stabilize just long enough to show me where I am.
Still inside the gas giant’s upper atmosphere.
No time. No fuel. No exit vector.
But I’m Reaper-born. Ishani-blooded. I don’t need permission to survive.
I grip the console with my good hand and close my eyes. Reach down deep—deeper than bone, deeper than blood—into the ancient core of what I am.
Energy answers.
The old kind. Wild. Pure. Sacred.
Ishani current ripples through my veins, lighting every nerve with fire. The console sparks beneath my touch. The ship trembles, recognizing its alpha again.
I whisper in Ishani, half-prayer, half-command. The emergency sling thrusters groan awake.
“Trajectory locked,” the ship murmurs, obeying.
I look out at the swirling storm, the crushing pressure, the chaos that tried to swallow me whole.
And I smile.
“You picked the wrong bastard to bury.”
I slam the activation rune.
The ship lurches, hurling itself sideways into the wall of gravity that surrounds us. Instead of fighting the pull, I ride it. Channel it. I become the sling, the projectile, the fury.
Hull groans. Plates pop.
The G-force slams me back into the seat, vision narrowing, black blooming at the edges. I grit my teeth. Not yet.
The ship spirals, gains speed, climbs—
And bursts free.
The stars explode across the viewport like a thousand tiny torches relit.
The silence that follows is holy.
I laugh. It comes out ragged, feral, full of blood.
The sensors are fried, nav systems gone, and comms barely a whisper, but I’m breathing.
And I heard her.
That’s enough.
I reconfigure power—cutting everything non-essential, funneling energy into the med-core and navigation. I need to heal. I need to move.
Most of all, I need to find her.
I press two fingers to my temple, closing my eyes again. That whisper—it wasn’t just in my head. It came from her. Across the stars. Across the bond. Across time.
Somehow, she’s still alive.
Still reaching.
And that means I will burn planets to find her.
“Hold on, Ayla,” I breathe, voice low and rough. “I’m coming back from the dead for you.”
The ship drifts silent for now, stabilizing. There’s no fleet to call. No backup to signal. I’m alone.
But I’ve got her voice in my blood.
And that’s all I need.
I gun the engines for all they’re worth. I have to wager everything on this move, and I only have one shot.
But by the bones of my ancestors, I WILL make it! Not even the fundamental forces of the universe will stop me from reclaiming what is mine.
The sling maneuver shatters through the storm like a war cry.
I break through the last turbulent layers of the gas giant, one wing ablaze and trailing smoke. The sky behind me is fire. The void ahead—open.
The ship screams in protest, but it holds.
Just barely.
I glance down. One wing—gone, torn clean off in the burst. The rest of the structure is scorched, scarred, and damn near fused into the flight chassis. Shields? Don’t make me laugh. Gone before I even started the run.
But I’m through.
I’m alive.
And she called to me.
“Status,” I snarl through my teeth.
The AI’s voice is flickering, sluggish. “Core… online. Navigation… erratic. Atmospheric maneuvering… compromised. Weapon systems… offline.”
Figures.
I lean back, blood crusted at my temple, the taste of iron in my mouth. My breathing is rough, heavy, like dragging steel through sand.
But none of it matters.
What matters is the next pulse. The signal.
The tether.
I key into the biological array, overriding the standard protocols. It’s dangerous, untested—half-myth even among my kind—but I don’t care. Ayla is out there. And she called to me.
I press my bloodied palm to the panel and whisper the words in Ishani—the bond phrases, the ancient tongue. “Zhal’eh. Torth’a ven.”
The system hums.
Then it pings.
A single point of light flickers to life on the star map. Slow. Pulsing. Beckoning.
Bone resonance.
Scent trace.
She left a mark in me. Left her soul in my body, and now it draws me like a star’s own gravity.
I stare at the coordinates, the numbers resolving.
Sol system.
Earth.
Of course.
Of course they’d drag her back there. To the cradle of control. To the seat of every broken lie in the IHC’s throne.
Rage burns cold in my chest. Not fury. Not madness. Something deeper. Something righteous.
“I’m coming for you,” I growl, fangs bared.
The nav array flickers again. I don’t care if it dies in the next five minutes—I’ve got what I need.
I pull a hard yaw to starboard. The missing wing throws off my balance, makes the ship yawl sickeningly. In-atmosphere, I’d spiral and crash. But out here? In the clean, open silence of the void?
I’ve got room.
And fury.
And time.
The ship shudders again, metal groaning like an old warrior on his last march.
“We’ll make it,” I mutter, jaw clenched. “We always make it.”
The Earth glows ahead—blue and green, wrapped in cloud and tyranny.
She’s down there.
And hell’s coming with me.