23. Naeris #2
Now a faint shudder ran through me. I wasn't opposed to violence or torture. By the Temple, I had applied both many times, but the thought of being at Dravok's mercy rushed images to my mind that I wasn't sure I could ever forget.
Dravok continued as though discussing weather patterns. “The Moggaddesh know little beyond conquest. Their species is brutally efficient but intellectually simplistic. They overwhelm advanced civilizations, steal their technology, and incorporate whatever improves their military capabilities.”
Nadine nodded. “An evolutionary strategy based on aggression and opportunistic adaptation.”
“Precisely,” Dravok nodded.
He enlarged the image, highlighting a massive figure adorned with jagged armor and ceremonial markings. “Their Overlord has pledged allegiance to the Harrowed One.”
A hush settled over the bridge. “They believe Nhal’Vareth is a god,” Dravok continued. “One who will grant them dominion over the universe.”
“What did the prisoner tell you?” Thyros asked.
Dravok’s gaze darkened. “Very little of tactical value. Only that the Harrowed One is waiting.”
A cold chill slid down my spine. “He expects us to come for the Vessel,” Dravok continued. “And if my instincts are correct, he will deploy a substantial force of Mmuhr’Rhong to prevent us from reaching it.”
Silence followed. Zapharos stared at the tactical display for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice held the calm certainty of a commander making an irrevocable decision.
“Plan B, then.”
He straightened to his full, imposing height. “I will recall our legions from the outer fronts. They will engage the Mmuhr’Rhong and keep the Harrowed One occupied while we retrieve the Vessel.”
Thyros' hand tightened around mine.
“We,” he repeated carefully, “meaning you, Dravok, and me.”
I drew breath to inform him exactly what I thought of that assumption. But before I could speak, Zapharos shook his head.
“I wish it were that simple.” His gaze shifted to Ella, and the fierce warrior in his expression softened with unmistakable love. “I would give anything to keep Ella here.”
Ella’s eyes shimmered.
“But this cannot be accomplished by the Arkhevari alone,” Zapharos sounded defeated.
He looked around the bridge, meeting each of our eyes in turn. “The Vessel responds to paired resonance. Reconstitution requires both halves of the bond.”
Understanding dawned. Ella reached for Zapharos’ hand. Nadine moved instinctively closer to Dravok. Thyros went utterly still beside me.
Zapharos’ voice deepened. “This must be done by all of us who are joined through the Aelyth bond.”
Ella blinked. “So let me get this straight.” She pointed around the room. “The six of us are going on what is essentially a suicide mission into the most horrifying place in the universe because cosmic soulmates are the only ones who can activate the ancient superweapon-slash-soul-backup-device.”
Nadine nodded. “That is an inelegant but broadly accurate summary.”
Ella folded her arms. “Fantastic. Sounds like fun."
Her voice betrayed her false bravado slightly, but I admired her courage. For a non-fighter, this couldn't be easy.
Thyros turned to me, and his amber eyes searched mine. Worry still flickered there. But beneath it burned acceptance. And trust.
I lifted my chin. “I told you,” I reaffirmed softly. “Wherever you go, I go.”
The bond flared between us, bright and unwavering. His expression shifted, and awe and devotion washed over his features. He raised our joined hands to his lips and pressed a lingering kiss to my knuckles. “My impossible female.”
Zapharos activated the final tactical overlay.
The swirling darkness of Nox Eternum expanded above the table like a living wound.
Deep within, a single point of golden light pulsed steadily.
The Shard of Echoes. The key to restoring the Arkhevari.
The key to healing the universe. The one thing the Harrowed One feared above all else.
Zapharos’ voice rang through the bridge. “Let's go.”
Ahead of us, the Abyss opened like the maw of a sleeping god. Together, the six of us went to reclaim what had been lost for millions of years.
For a long moment, no one spoke. The stars around us seemed to dim as our ship crossed the outer threshold of Nox Eternum.
Space itself appeared to unravel. Colors bled into one another in unnatural swirls of violet and crimson, while vast shadows drifted beyond the viewport like the bones of dead worlds.
It felt as though the universe were holding its breath.
The golden thread between Thyros and me tightened until I could feel the steady thunder of his heart as clearly as my own.
Ella moved closer to Zapharos, her fingers slipped into his as naturally as breathing. Nadine and Dravok stood shoulder to shoulder, their expressions outwardly calm but their bond humming with quiet intensity.
We were six souls joined by something older than history. Six people who, by all logic, should never have met. And yet somehow, we had become the only hope the universe had left.
The ship shuddered. Nadine’s hands flew across the console. “The gravitational fluctuations are increasing.”
“Shields are holding,” Ella announced, though tension tightened her voice.
The darkness outside thickened. For one dizzying instant, I thought I saw shapes moving within it, vast silhouettes drifting just beyond the range of our sensors. Watching us. Waiting. A whisper brushed the edge of my consciousness. So faint I almost mistook it for my own thoughts.
Welcome home. Followed by demonic laughter that set all my instincts on alert. I stiffened.
Beside me, Thyros went utterly still. He had heard it too. His grip tightened around my hand, but he did not look away from the viewport.
“Do not listen,” he murmured.
I turned to him. The pale scar on his jaw stood out starkly against his tense expression. The mark on his back was hidden beneath his uniform, but through the bond, I felt it burning. The Harrowed One knew we were here. He was waiting for us.
Fear fluttered in my chest. I hadn't felt true fear since I left the Temple.
This felt like a cold claw going for my heart and squeezing it.
I wasn't afraid for me, or even for Thyros, because somehow I knew that even in death we would be together.
No, this fear was for the Universe itself, for what might happen if we failed.
Then Thyros looked at me, and the fear dissolved beneath the force of what I saw in his eyes.
Love.
Unshakable and absolute.
The kind of love that had crossed galaxies and survived millions of years of darkness.
Whatever awaited us in the heart of the Abyss, we would face it together.
I lifted our joined hands to my lips and kissed his knuckles in a mirror of his earlier gesture.
His breath caught, and a slow smile curved his mouth.
My fierce, impossible warrior. The man who had once believed himself born to darkness.
The man who now stood in the center of that darkness with me at his side.
For the first time, I understood the true power of the Aelyth bond.
It was not a chain. It was a promise. A promise that no force in the universe—not even the Harrowed One himself—would break our connection.
Eventually, the stars disappeared completely. The Abyss swallowed us whole. Another sight came into view, just as breathtaking.
"The Celestial Portal," Zapharos announced.
What appeared was breathtaking in its beauty.
At first, I thought I was looking at a star.
Then the image sharpened, and awe swept through me so forcefully that my hand tightened around Thyros'.
Suspended in the heart of Nox Eternum was a sphere so vast and luminous it seemed less like a machine and more like a captured universe.
Its surface shimmered like crystal and liquid starlight, perfectly transparent and impossibly smooth.
Entire galaxies swirled within it, spiral arms of violet and silver, newborn stars ignited in bursts of gold, nebulae unfurled like blossoms of light.
It was as though someone had taken the night sky, folded it in upon itself, and enclosed it inside a radiant globe.
Around it drifted immense rivers of cosmic dust, glowing in shades of amethyst, rose, and blue-white fire. They spiraled toward the sphere in graceful arcs, feeding the celestial structure like tributaries flowing into a living heart.
Great crystalline orbs floated around the central maelstrom like jewels orbiting a crown, each containing the embryonic blueprint of a world or star system waiting to be born. The entire chamber pulsed with quiet purpose. Creation unfolded in the very place where destruction had once reigned.
My throat tightened.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.
Beautiful was too small a word. It was breathtaking. Sacred. A cathedral built from light and memory. A promise that nothing truly precious was ever lost.
Ella stepped closer to the holovid, her face drained of color. With a small gasp, her fingers rose to her lips.
“No,” she breathed.
Zapharos turned to her instantly. Ella pointed at one of the smaller spheres. Inside, a blue-green world rotated slowly, still veiled in translucent clouds. Continents glimmered beneath the forming atmosphere. Tears spilled down her cheeks.
“That’s Rotodex IV.”
Silence crashed over the bridge.
Nadine stared at the projection. “That's not possible.”
“It is,” Ella whispered, her voice trembling with wonder. “That’s the planet the Cryons took us to. The one where they were going to sacrifice us on.”
I tore my gaze from the impossible beauty of the sphere to look at her.
“But how?” I asked. “I thought it was swallowed by the Dark Abyss.”
Zapharos stepped forward, his golden features softened by reverence.
“The Celestial Portal,” he explained quietly. His voice carried the weight of ancient memory. “When Nox Eternum devoured a world, the Arkhevari could not always save what was lost.”
He looked back at the radiant spheres suspended in the darkness. “So we built a way to restore them.”
I stared at the glowing orbs, understanding dawning with painful clarity. These were not mere machines. They were wombs of creation. Sanctuaries where the universe healed itself. Where destroyed worlds were remembered and born anew. Duplicated.
My eyes burned. All my life, I had believed the cosmos to be indifferent at best and cruel at worst. Yet here, in the heart of the greatest darkness imaginable, the Arkhevari had created something of such staggering beauty and hope that it made my chest ache.
Even after unimaginable loss, they had chosen.
Not surrender. Not vengeance. But creation.
Beside me, Thyros’ intertwined fingers tightened around mine. The warmth of his hand grounded me as I gazed at the reborn world turning inside its crystalline shell.
Rotodex IV.
A planet consumed by darkness. A planet being born again. In that moment, I understood with breathtaking certainty that this was what the Arkhevari and their Aelyth had always fought for. Not simply to survive. But to restore. To remember. To rebuild everything the darkness had tried to erase.