The sheets are too soft.

  Every time I shift, they wrap around my legs like warm syrup. Alien silk—some stupidly expensive blend that probably changes its weave based on mood or body heat. I’ve been naked in this bed for hours, and honestly? I don’t plan on getting up anytime soon.

  Another sip of something better than Ruebrew—smooth, rich, the kind of drink meant for people who never bled for anything. None of the memories I’ve stolen ever tasted this. All grunts, soldiers, survivors of the Hive. This… this was for guests of the Citadel. And that meant me.

  Glass clinks on the nightstand. I think I’m on bottle six. Or maybe seven. Lost count after the third one stopped burning.

  No shift schedule. No med scans. No Knight. No Dad. Just the endless parade of food and drink. Back on Earth, I grew up in the palace of Voss Tower while the world outside starved, and I still enjoyed more luxury than most would ever know. But since Phoenix woke up, I haven’t seen this much real food in one place. On Jericho and the Stormbreaker, everything I didn’t kill myself was rationed, lab-grown, processed to dust. Now it’s endless—fresh, alive. I get to rot in luxury again.

  I flick through alien TV with one lazy hand, arm half-buried in the silks.

  Cooking show—something with organs boiled alive while the host sings through a translator that keeps glitching.

  Next.

  Religious drama about a fungus god who betrays himself across five dimensions—every scene slower than death, every actor dripping spores.

  Next.

  A romance between a sentient cloud and a war criminal. I think they’re both crying. Or evaporating. Hard to tell.

  Why is everything wet?

  I groan and kill the feed.

  [INITIATING SOLAR SIPHON ALPHA. SUBJECT: ROYAL GUARD COMMANDER LION. ESTIMATED IGNITION IN THREE MINUTES.]

  Valicar’s voice cuts in from the chestplate on the floor, calm as always—too calm. The armor hums faintly, quantum shields still active, close enough to cover the bed.

  I roll my head toward the viewport, eyes half-open.

  And there he is.

  Lion.

  A golden speck balanced on the edge of a spire, arms raised toward the star. The sun behind him boils, blue and brilliant, shifting as he pulls it apart.

  It’s the tenth jump—maybe more. I’ve stopped counting. He always begins the same way: calm, centered, like he’s praying. Then the plates on his back open, and his Dragon Drive breathes. A seam of black light splits his armor, widening until the singularity at his core yawns open—perfect, silent, hungry.

  The blue giant bends toward him. Streams of plasma peel from its surface and spiral inward, drawn into that impossible darkness. Every atom that vanishes into him feeds the station, the shields, the jump array—an unholy feast that even the Dyson sphere can’t match.

  Millions of tons of solar mass reduced to obedience. Enough power to melt worlds.

  And of course he’s standing there like that—hands raised, haloed in fire—always looking holy when he’s doing something insane.

  I reach for one of the trays they sent earlier—still stacked with meat. Red. Rich. Still warm. I tear into a piece, blood on my lips.

  Sometimes I think back to that talk on the Jericho—Lion rambling about the gods’ arsenal like it was scripture. Dragon, Phoenix, Chimera, Titan… and one that didn’t even sound like a weapon: the Aether Lens. He said Dad built it to see past reality itself, to look into whatever comes after.

  Watching the spectacle of the Dragon Drive now, the way Lion drinks a sun dry like it’s nothing, I can’t help but wonder—did Dad ever finish it? Did he look through? Did he see something waiting on the other side? Maybe that’s why he’s so obsessed with me “ascending.”

  Phoenix hums low inside me, pleased, like it’s tasting the meal through me as I take another bite.

  I’ve been eating like this for weeks. Months?

  No one stops me.

  They just keep sending more.

  My gaze drifts to the mirror across the room.

  I pause.

  Red and blue eyes stare back from the mirror. I’ve gotten used to them—same as the knife ears. But that’s not what catches me this time.

  The reflection staring back is… different.

  I’ve been gorging myself, and it shows. My body’s changed again. Hips a little fuller. Chest heavier. Curves settling in ways I didn’t ask for but can’t ignore.

  The extra mass hasn’t made me soft; if anything, the muscle underneath looks denser, bone harder—everything packed tighter on a smaller frame.

  Still pale and compact—stronger, tighter, built for something I don’t quite want to name.

  Knight put this in the code, I think, eyes narrowing. Her idea of “perfection.” She always liked symmetry.

  I shift under the silks and feel the weight move with me—enough that lying on my stomach isn’t comfortable anymore; subtle, but there. Eating like this has put everything in all the “pleasing” places. Great. Just fucking great.

  My fingers trace down my side—solid muscle, the clean lines of a six-pack, smooth skin without scars or hair, just the strange perfection Knight thought was beauty.

  White hair pours over my shoulders, down my back — long, loose, faintly glowing in the dim room. I haven’t cut it in… a while. It doesn’t seem to stop growing. Or maybe it just grows how it wants.

  I glance toward the viewport. “Alright, Valicar, hit me with it. What’s the grand total? Weight, age, maybe how long I’ve been rotting up here.”

  [QUERY RECEIVED. COMPILING CURRENT DATA…]

  Valicar’s diagnostic floods my HUD through the neural link—numbers, ages, weights, percentages—enough to make me feel like a specimen again.

  [HEIGHT: 152.4 CM (5’0”)]

  [WEIGHT: 742.1 LBS | 336.6 KG]

  [BODY FAT INDEX: 15.1%]

  [MUSCLE MASS: HYPERDENSE | GENETICALLY MODIFIED]

  [SKELETAL MASS: REINFORCED | 900% HUMAN BASELINE]

  [ENDOCRINE SYSTEM: PHOENIX-ADAPTED]

  [CHRONOLOGICAL AGE: 90.04 YEARS]

  [BIOLOGICAL AGE: 20.01 YEARS]

  [TIME AWAKE: 32.86 YEARS | EARTH: 20.0 / JERICHO: 3.61 / STORMBREAKER: 9.25]

  [ESTIMATED MENTAL AGE: ~33]

  [CELLULAR AGING: INACTIVE | GENETIC ENTROPY: NULL]

  [REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEMS: STABLE]

  [STATUS: IMMORTAL | PHOENIX NODE: QUEEN CLASS]

  [BUST: 41.7 IN | CUP SIZE: H]

  [WAIST: 24.2 IN | HIPS: 36.9 IN]

  I blink. “Okay, okay—that’s enough,” I mutter, waving at the air as the numbers keep scrolling across my HUD. “Goddamn. I’m really seven hundred pounds?”

  [742.1. AND THE CURRENT DATE IS JANUARY 19TH, 2538.]

  “Fuck,” I exhale, dragging a hand down my face.

  The star burns just beyond the shield-glass — massive, blue-white, and close enough to feel like it should blister skin on sight.

  Instead, its light drips through the filters in soft, sterile rays.

  Too clean. Too safe.

  Like bathing in the memory of warmth, not the real thing.

  I wonder if I can tan through that, I think, squinting.

  Probably not. Filtered for radiation. UV stripped out. All for “safety.”

  I snort and roll my eyes at myself.

  Still pale as bone. At this point I’d probably just reflect the sun back into space.

  [SYSTEM JUMP IN T-MINUS ONE MINUTE. ALL INTERNAL HABITATS AND FLEETS ACCOUNTED FOR. MASS ESTIMATE: 44.6 SOLAR MASSES.]

  I drain the glass again and reach for another strip of meat. Blood drips onto the sheets. I don’t care.

  I should stop eating.

  ...Maybe later.

  [ROYAL GUARD COMMANDER LION HAS REACHED IGNITION THRESHOLD. BRACE FOR GRAVITATIONAL DISPLACEMENT.]

  I slump back—chewing, naked, drunk, and tingling all over.

  The sheets lift on a pressureless wind; the room goes thin and bright—like the world forgot how to breathe. Outside, the sun bends. Light twists into ribbons. Space folds in on itself like glass under pressure.

  And then—

  the whole system tears free. The star implodes into its own shadow, dragging everything bound to it along for the ride. Moons rip from their orbits. Defense rings strobe white as their shields flare. Forge worlds howl, venting fire as their magnetic anchors snap to new coordinates. A dozen shipyards, a hundred foundries, a thousand weapons platforms—all pulled through the dark in a single, blinding instant. The Dyson mirrors fold inward like wings, riding the wake of the blue supergiant’s death-light.

  The jump burns across reality like a scar, and when the glare fades, the whole machine hangs above a new warzone—its planets, fleets, and suns arrayed like a blade.

  Another front. Another war. Another trap for the Hive.

  And then the pattern takes over. Fold to fold, battle to battle, the days start to blur. What began as motion turns into rhythm—steady, mechanical, endless.

  One fold, one sunrise, one system burned and rebuilt. Breakfast in one arm of the spiral, sleep above another.

  After a while, I stop counting. Years pass, and the shine wears off. Even paradise starts to taste recycled.

  Young keeps the myth threaded through the feeds; Eagle keeps the Stormbreaker clean; Wolf keeps our enemies nervous. Optics, hygiene, fear—same trinity as ever.

  The news runs our wars on loop—highlight reels of salvation and slaughter. The more they play it, the more the galaxy believes. Reverence grows like mold: quiet, persistent, hard to scrape off.

  The crew changes; I don’t. Faces come and go, replaced by new believers. They build shrines to Lion’s hammer, to luck, and somehow—inevitably—to me. Saint of Suns. Phoenix Eternal. I laughed at first. Now I just let them pray.

  What started as hymns in the barracks spreads through the fleets. The Senate notices. Young and Lion start funding shrines outright, calling it morale—faith as fuel. Vorathel hates it, says belief makes bad math, but he keeps quiet when the polls shift his way. Even the Iron Blood clergy try to hijack it, preaching that my fire proves their Codex true. Some even claim I’m a test sent by the Elders to measure their faith. I almost admire the audacity.

  Wolf is still here. He drinks in silence, always stops one bottle before I do. Sometimes we just sit on the observation deck, watching the stars instead of talking. One night, half-drunk, he tells me how he took out the leadership of South America in a single night, like it’s something to be proud of. I don’t say anything. Just refill his glass.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  He’s a reminder of what’s left—of who’s left. The old crew used to fill the silence without even trying. Now it’s just echoes.

  I miss them sometimes—Warren’s certainty, Vega’s calm, Yates’ patience. Holt’s silence. Ashly’s kindness, Jimmy’s hope. Even Jericho’s voice in the walls. They were the rhythm of those years—loud, quiet, steady, human. I think that’s what I miss most. The sound of being human, however brief it was.

  Kael’s old now—retired to a desk somewhere under Vorathel’s wing, turning war into paperwork. Msv’au hasn’t aged a day, and somehow that’s worse. He still walks those marble halls like time bends to him.

  The others are light-years away—out of sight but never out of mind. Most are still frozen, technically alive, technically waiting. Maybe they still have the shift rotation. Maybe they don’t. If they’re awake, they’re getting older. Even cryo can’t stop that forever.

  Reid’s there too. Locked under glass, whole in body but not in life. I remember the sound when Lion threw him—how he hit the bulkhead. All for Lion to prove a point. There was something between us once—something small, bright, half-real. It might’ve become more if he hadn’t broken him. If we’d had time. Now all I can do is remember him, and the nights we shared, before everything turned cold.

  Sometimes, when the Hive hums through the static, I swear I can feel him there—like a spark caught in the current. It’s probably nothing. But if it isn’t… maybe that’s all he is now. Just another echo in the machine.

  Work doesn’t stop.

  Forge-moons print hulls in the blur between places, their slipway mouths glowing like small dawns. Rue riggers—veins lit like tidepools—lace biocircuitry into steel while Khevari silk-metal weavers test living bulkheads for a proper “breath.” Lueaseg crystal-cores hum out of vaults on grav-sleds like winter glass. Vonn inspectors squint through polarized visors and sign off in tones only they hear. Yardmasters boast about laying keels at relativistic speed; whole flotillas roll off the line already pointed at their first battle. The Hive buckles. The Devil retreats—bleeding vectors, shedding splinters, leaving carcasses of ships that drift between the stars like shed skins. Dispatches read the same in a dozen languages: corridor maintained, incursion blunted, vector sterilized.

  They mint a holiday for it—Translation Day—and sell little glass suns that flicker when the system jumps. Starn kids press them to their cheeks; Hav’ka vendors hum prices; an Iron Blood tariff rider clicks a Codex blessing over a cart anyway.

  I ignore the uniforms and watch Hfav’Ragneas Huasta couriers pad through the crowd, trailing sea-salt and psionic aftertaste.

  Above it all, I see the change we’re causing. People are smiling again. Markets reopen on worlds that forgot the taste of sun.

  Lion said once—almost gentle—“Divinity is what a solved universe looks like.”

  The crowds keep trying to solve me. They make me a saint. The galaxy’s healing—or pretending. But not everyone comes back the same.

  Even the Rue have come back to the light—what’s left of them. Once they ruled a fourth of the Ocean Tide Bloc, a power so vast Earth was just a blue border world on their maps. They hated the Iron Blood for worshiping metal and machine, for grafting soul to circuit. The Rue believed in flesh—bio-tech grown from sea and song. They built their cities like coral and their ships like leviathans, living things that answered to melody instead of code.

  It should’ve saved them. Instead, it doomed them. The Hive found in them the perfect beginning—a people who had already blurred the line between organism and empire. When the infection came, it didn’t have to learn how to grow; it only had to inherit.

  Now the Rue drift among Vorathel’s people, refugees in the same Senate that once feared their voices. The Tide doesn’t even count them as a power anymore. But their hymn-ships still limp through the lanes, patched and loyal, singing to the same gods that failed them. Sometimes I hear those songs on the open channels—old harmonics folded into the jump static. They sound like prayers for a home that doesn’t exist.

  Every fold hits like a bell inside my bones—not from the jump, but when I drop my shield and the Hive sees me. The whispers crawl in, cold and sharp, while Lion flares behind me, all fire and thunder. Every time I rang the dinner bell, they came—spearheads and swarms, easy kills. All but the Devil. He waited, watched, let the others die first.

  Smart bastard. And Orion? Nowhere. That silence scares me more than the blood.

  We worked it like clockwork—me as bait, Lion as hammer, and Vorathel spinning the story for the Senate. Every fight was broadcast, proof we were still holding the line. Then we jumped again—sideways, behind, whatever the moment called for. We didn’t always win, but we made it look like we did. The casualty lists didn’t.

  Lion never changes. He stands at the spire’s lip each time, plates opening, Dragon Drive breathing—black light yawning, the blue star bowing.

  Eventually, I kick the bottles out of the way and pull Valicar’s chestplate onto the bench. It opens slow, precise—like a flower that remembers every cut. I start with the easy fixes: seals, gel, wiring. Then deeper—spine rail, shoulder servos, logic boards. I replace the sections still held together by old nanite patch jobs—good enough in a fight, but never as strong. When I can, I sneak in upgrades—alien alloys, Rue biocircuitry, whatever fits. Phoenix residue clings like guilt. By the time I’m done, the bench is covered in gleaming parts and bowls of solvent glowing like trapped dawn.

  The Citadel turns into our anchor and our market. Soon enough I even get to set foot on a planet again—for the first time since Earth.

  It hit me like altitude sickness at sea level—the sky actually went on.

  Not the brown lid I grew up under. Some worlds were worse than Earth ever managed, a thousand industrial sins stacked to the horizon. But some were clean, shamelessly clean—the kind of beautiful Earth used to be before my lifetime, before the smoke learned our names.

  We start working the worlds strung on its mirrors like charms on a chain—forge, arsenal, garden, grave. I make a habit of it.

  On the forge worlds, the sky is a bruise and the wind tastes like pennies. I walk the yellow lines into the antimatter yards, refueling Valicar with antimatter bottles and exotic elements until the benches start to sing. Foremen stare at Lion and forget to breathe; their clipboards sign themselves. “One century,” I tell the containment trap. “Two, if you behave.” We leave with the field humming tight and the ramp sweating from the bleed heat.

  On the arsenal worlds, everything is orderly and wrong. Vaults nested inside vaults. Priests of metallurgy reciting serial numbers like prayers. I trade favors and proofs for what I actually need—an enhanced kinetic barrier to absorb impact shock, plasma shields tuned to survive higher-energy bursts, and a new plasma blade that can extend or retract at will, burning ten times hotter than the last one. I even slip in Rue bio-injectors—nutrient-dense, quick-acting, designed for emergencies when regeneration alone isn’t fast enough. Valicar opens like a hungry flower while I graft the hardware into its bones. The HUD lights go greener than usual. I tell myself that means safer.

  Between the mirrors are the noble estates and their vacation pearls—curated sky, curated water, scenery that knows how to shine. I take off the suit and sit on a beach for the first time in my life. Sand clings like a rumor. The horizon is too far in every direction. The air doesn’t taste like filters. I get drunk enough to forget which sun this is and eat enough to make Phoenix purr.

  It’s insane, really. I could stay here if I wanted—claim the whole planet, live out eternity in peace, pretend the war never happened. The thought almost feels like treason.

  The world was Vorathel’s once—his private estate, a “guest world” meant for rest between campaigns. For a while, that’s all it was: borrowed luxury. Then Lion made his quiet point—one gesture, one reminder of what we’d done for him—and Vorathel caved. Called it a gift. A “reward for service.” He said it like it hurt to say.

  After that, it was ours. The planet moves with the Citadel, so we turned it into an anchor—half retreat, half fortress. Machines and Rue-grown builders worked side by side, blending alloy and living coral until the palace took shape above the water. Lion claimed the orbital plates for his guard; Wolf and Eagle set up the defense grid. Even Vorathel didn’t dare object once the guns went live.

  When it was finished, paradise had teeth. A home, if you could call it that. Better than the spire, quieter, almost peaceful. But I couldn’t stay long. Between folds, distance from Lion was a risk neither of us could afford.

  Sometimes, when my shields falter and the Citadel drifts too close to the Hive’s shadow, I hear them again—the whispers, soft and countless, brushing the edge of thought like static made of voices. But beneath it all, I only ever hear him. The Devil.

  Orion’s been quiet lately—too quiet. That one scares me. It’s clever, patient. Whatever it’s planning, it’s not rest. Even my drunken soul knows that much.

  I shake my head and take one last look at the beach—the waves, the sky, the impossible calm—before turning back toward the shuttle. Time to return to the Citadel. The next jump won’t wait.

  Work keeps getting done. Between the missions and the downtime, I drink too much—usually with Wolf. He’s the only one who can keep up. Sometimes we sneak off to chase treasure on Vorathel’s map, half-drunk and laughing while Lion yells over comms. He’ll live.

  Wolf’s quiet violence hides a sense of humor that almost feels human. He doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t flinch when I’m not myself. Just fights, drinks, fixes things. The kind of company that doesn’t demand anything holy from me.

  When we spar, the world narrows to breath and impact. When we tear into Valicar’s systems, the hum of the core fills the space between us. Sometimes I swear the suit’s alive—part of me now.

  Time folds. Work. Drink. Fight. Repair. The rhythm stays the same, even when the stars change.

  Eagle vanishes between jumps, sliding off the scope whenever we drift too close to a mark on Vorathel’s chart. They always come back with things that have legends stuck to them—encrypted caches, lost keys, a box that sings when you open it. Some cargo goes to the fleet. Some ends up in my private projects. The rarest disappears into sealed vaults earmarked for Julian—artifacts sharp enough to shave years off his work. Lion gets them to him somehow, through routes I can’t trace and favors I don’t want to know. All part of the plan. His plan. Mine now, I guess.

  The Dyson’s necklace becomes familiar. We touch down on garden worlds for organics you can’t synth, borer moons for exotic lattices, refinery rings for coils that don’t warp under starfire. I learn which dockmasters will deal straight if you look them in the eyes—and which ones only understand Lion’s shadow on the wall. I learn my name is a password I don’t want.

  Sometimes, after the speeches, the interviews, the backroom deals with Lion and Young whispering strategy over wine, I just look up. Seventy years boxed inside metal corridors teaches you to trust ceilings—solid, close, dependable. Planets don’t have that. The sky just stretches on forever, like it forgot where to stop. Every time I see it, I feel small—like one wrong breath and I’ll fall straight into it.

  Ten years since the first Translation Day. The Legion’s chants echo even in vacuum broadcasts now—my name threaded through every victory report. The more they worship, the less I feel real.

  Even Vorathel’s bloc has learned to kneel when it helps their numbers. I suppose that makes me bipartisan.

  And then the summons comes—formal seals, the whole performance. The Iron Blood sermons call me an abomination; the Ocean-Tide psalms call me a test. Either side would sanctify my corpse if it steadied the market.

  It’s been twenty years since the vote gave Vorathel his “temporary” powers, thirty since I left Jericho. The Citadel’s wired to the Drive now—fold by fold, refuge turned spear. I think about the beach. I’d rather be there. Waves crashing, sand biting back. Just wind, sun, and nothing watching.

  But that’s not today. I shake it off, check my quantum shields—Valicar green across the board, Hive quiet for once. I glance at the overhead cams and give them the practiced smile.

  [ALL SYSTEMS IN THIS SECTOR: STABLE]

  Valicar pings the forward front across my HUD—clean lines, redacted clutter, enemy blips fading one by one. One of many sectors recently won—another tendril of the Endless Swarm, broken and scattered, left to be picked off.

  We’ve sprung traps, burned fleets, dragged the Devil back by the throat.

  If my shields were down, I’d hear him again—rage and rot, gnawing at the edge of thought.

  He calls himself the King Node now.

  Thinks if he breaks me—if he takes the Queen—the swarm kneels. Phoenix. The Hive. All of it.

  Like some great khan on the steppe, binding the fractured clans under one will.

  A single voice.

  A single hunger.

  He’d take back everything we’ve gained in weeks. Maybe days.

  We take the long way because ceremony likes echoes. [2558] flashes on my HUD as we cross the Senate floor again—same breathless walk, same slow pace, like reverence could rewrite what power already owns.

  Everything feels rehearsed: the muted thrum beneath the tiles, the ozone tang of the wall projectors, the drifting incense from Ocean-Tide choristers high above.

  No whisper from Father. No whisper from Orion.

  Which means either I’ve finally gone deaf—or they’re plotting something worse than usual.

  And knowing them? It’s something clever, manipulative, and guaranteed to fuck me over.

  The audience murmurs in the tiers—silk brushing alloy, the click of lenses, a cough too quickly swallowed. My HUD paints the room green: old friendlies, familiar routes, the choreography of order.

  Lion’s gait is half a beat behind mine—ceremonial, deliberate. Gold light from his armor catches on the chamber’s ribs and ripples across my arm like sunlight through water.

  The dais rises ahead, pale and perfect, waiting for the speech they’ve written for me.

  The light goes gold. The crowd inhales.

  We’re halfway to the dais when something flickers across my HUD—an energy spike where there shouldn’t be one. I open my mouth to speak—

  Lion moves in a blink.

  His hammer slams into a missile point-blank. The explosion is a newborn sun. The shockwave punches the air out of the chamber; light devours everything. My shields flare bright enough to blind, then stutter to gray static.

  Lion takes the brunt, the blast folding around him like a breaking tide. My HUD skips, shakes—then screams.

  [EMP DETECTED]

  A second explosion hits—lower, heavier. Not heat. Pressure. Like gravity tripping over itself. My ears pop, and then the sound is gone.

  [SHIELDS: 0% — REBOOT]

  The room tilts. A white spike drives in behind my right eye. Vision shears in half—left world, right void. I taste copper thick as coins. Everything smells like cooked wiring and meat.

  I catch a flash in Lion’s visor—gold and ruined. My reflection, what’s left of it: a smoking crescent carved through my face. Flesh running down my cheek in ribbons.

  I can’t scream. Only breathe—ragged, wet.

  He’s already moving, palm up, catching another sun-bright bolt and crushing it to sparks.

  “Easy,” his voice cuts through the static—steady, iron calm. “You’re already healing.”

  Phoenix floods in—heat under heat. Fibers crawl. Nerves spool. The pain folds and unfolds again, molten and endless.

  “Le—” The word rips apart halfway out. “—o.”

  [SHIELDS: 12%… 19%… 27%]

  Black crawls in at the edges. The floor tips. My vision folds in half. The HUD stutters and glitches—great. They missed the implant.

  Eat shit, sniper. I close my last eye. Darkness takes me.