Chapter 24
KYLDAK
Istand frozen in the ruins’ half-light—shafted beams of energy dancing across fractured walls, the hum of the obelisk thrumming like a heart. Dust motes drift in the air, each one catching the glow of ancient glyphs. My boots crunch on cracked tile and broken conduit, but I can’t even move.
Jaela’s words echo in my bones: “You don’t get to die before you meet your son.” The sentence hangs between us like a blade.
I replay every moment since she returned—her silence, her fear, the things she half-said and half-hid.
The extraction. The scans. That she coaxed life from my marrow.
I see her face in every shadow, every flicker of light.
My fists clench. Rage claws at me. But beneath it is something else, fierce and raw. Something like awe.
I swallow hard. My throat hurts. My eyes burn.
I step forward. The greatest risk feels smaller than doing nothing.
“Jaela?” My voice is rough.
No answer.
I take another step. The ruin hums. The glyphs flare in sympathy. Panels shift. I can feel the device’s energy pulsing through the floor.
“How old is he?” I ask, voice low.
She freezes. The glow falls across her face—sharp contours, smudged grime, wild light in her eyes.
“A year and six months,” she says. Soft. Broken.
My breath catches. Ash falls behind me. The world tilts.
“A year and six months,” I repeat so I can hear it. Because he existed. Because she carried him. Because I might have missed half his life.
I feel her beside me in the hush. The hum of the obelisk is louder now, pressing, expectant.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I demand, voice thick with betrayal, grief, and longing.
She looks down. Her fingers wrap around themselves. She flinches as if she expects pain. The walls shift. Glyphs glow. I taste iron.
“Because I was terrified,” she admits, voice brittle.
I step close. “Terrified of what?”
She meets my gaze, though her eyes are rimmed red. “Terrified you would hate me. That Kel would be better off unborn. That you’d refuse to help if I told you. That all of this—” she gestures around, at the ruin, at us “—would collapse if you knew the truth too soon.”
The air shivers. The obelisk hums like it understands.
“You lied to me,” I whisper, more to myself than to her.
She flinches. “I had to protect him. Protect you. I had to prove the sample was viable. I had to be sure before I risked trusting you with that burden.”
I close my eyes. My heart is hammering. My spirit teeters.
Memories flicker—when we met, when I lost her, when I believed she was gone forever. The nights I dreamed of her. The rage I let swallow me. The silence I wore like armor.
She places a trembling hand on my chest. “I did it all for Kel. Because I needed a chance. Because I needed you.”
My voice breaks. “You used me.”
She shakes her head. “No. I needed you. Even when I was afraid.”
The ruin pulses. The energy hums underfoot. I can feel it stirring, alive under our confession.
I reach forward slowly, touch her cheek. The skin is warm, gritty. She breathes. I taste dust, sweat, salt. All of it hers. All of it binding me.
“I should hate you,” I whisper. “But I can’t.”
Tears pool in her eyes. She lowers her head. She presses into me. The confession floods us both.
She sobs, quiet at first, then deeper. I wrap my arms around her. The world contracts to our shared breath, our shared light, the hum of the obelisk.
She whispers against my chest, voice muffled, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I smooth her hair back. “We rebuild. We cross. We don’t lose him—not if I can stand.”
She shakes her head softly. “I’m scared.”
I kiss her temple, breath ragged. “So am I. But not enough to walk away.”
Her hands grip my arms. The obelisk’s glow pulses like a heartbeat. Within its coils, lights wink awake. The chamber quivers. The glyphs flare as though the ruin recognizes us both.
She pulls back slightly, eyes meeting mine. “I want him to know you. To see your strength. To know what love is before the war broke the world.”
I swallow thick. “He will.”
She breathes deeply, trembling. “Thank you for not hating me.”
I press my lips to her forehead. The ruin hums around us, alive with possibility and danger.
In that moment, nothing is certain except us and the fragile hope in her eyes.
And I know—whatever comes next, we face it together.
“Jaela,” I say.
She lifts her head slowly.
I take one step. Then another. “How old is he?”
Her eyes flutter. Like she’s bracing for impact.
“One year,” she says, voice barely above a whisper. “Six months and nine days.”
I do the math in my head. I stagger.
“That’s…” My voice cracks. “That’s when you left. That’s when you told me you were gone for good.”
She nods once. “I was already pregnant.”
My knees almost go out from under me. I grab the wall. My mind’s a thunderclap. “And you didn’t tell me.”
“No.”
I laugh. A sharp, broken thing. “You went halfway across the system, had my son, and let me rot thinking we were done.”
She flinches. Her voice shakes. “I didn’t know if you were alive. You were captured. The Alliance made sure nobody could contact you. I thought…” She swallows. “I thought I had to protect him. From them. From you. From the world.”
My jaw clenches. I step closer, fists curling.
“You thought I’d be a threat to him?” I growl.
She lifts her face, eyes wet. “I thought you’d never see him. And if you did, you’d hate me for the way it happened.”
“I do hate you,” I snarl. “Right now, in this second, I could tear this whole ruin apart trying not to. Because I still love you.”
The words fall like a blade.
Jaela chokes on her breath. “Kyldak…”
“No. You don’t get to say my name like that after what you did.”
Tears fall freely now, trailing down her cheeks.
“I didn’t come here to win you back,” she says. “I came to save him. He’s dying, Kyldak. His immune system is collapsing. The hybrid stem disorder—they said he wouldn’t make it past his second birthday unless I found a compatible donor. And guess what? There’s only one in the goddamn galaxy.”
My stomach caves in.
“You used me.”
She nods. No denial. Just raw honesty. “Yes. I did. I stole your sample. I hacked your lab. I lied. And I would do it again, a thousand times, to keep him breathing.”
I stare at her.
“You could’ve told me.”
“You think I didn’t want to? Every night I slept in that chair, I wanted to scream it at you. But I couldn’t—what if you said no? What if I lost everything?”
“You already did.”
The silence thickens. The ruin hums. Even the air feels heavier.
I sit down beside her.
She blinks in shock.
“You’re not running?” she whispers.
“I’m tired of running,” I mutter. “And I want to know everything. No more riddles.”
She leans her head back against the wall, exhales slow. “Kel is smart. Smarter than me. He builds things out of broken code. He sees patterns in light. But he gets sick. Fast. Fevers that spike and drop. Blood cell collapse.”
My heart splits.
“Why not tell me sooner?”
“I didn’t think I had the right.”
“You had every right. You were his mother.”
“And you were his father. But I didn’t know if you still wanted to be.”
I reach out and take her hand. It trembles.
“I do,” I say. “I want to know him. I want to fight for him. I want to live for him.”
Her breath hitches.
“Then come with us,” she whispers.
I nod, slow. “Let’s bring him back. Let’s bring us back.”
She leans into me, and I wrap my arms around her. We hold each other like we’ll shatter otherwise.
Eventually, she pulls back just enough to look at me.
“I’m sorry I lied,” she says.
“I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to.”
A long silence.
Then I smile, just barely.
We stay like that for a while, resting in the shadow of the ruin, the obelisk pulsing in the distance like a beacon.
Eventually, we stand. We walk back together.
And as we re-enter the chamber, I press my hand to the obelisk one more time. It flares to life, brighter than before. Maybe it feels the truth now. Maybe it knows what I am—what we are.
“Let’s go home,” I say.
Jaela grips my hand.
I believe that home is real.