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With that, she slipped back into the backdrop, leaving only the cold realization that he had just turned down reinforcements against a literal pantheon of gods.

He shook his head. ‘Fokkme,’ he muttered under his breath.

Then, he tilted Issa’s chin, eyes solemn with quiet resignation.

‘Let’s roll.’

She nodded, and so, together, they surrendered to the inevitable.

22

Vaulting Skies

ISSA

The celestial fleet hovered in the void, suspended on the edge of the impossible.

Their ships were sleek, liquid entities forged from the cores of dying stars, their hulls shifting amid molten silver and pure light.

Ethereal blue engravings spiraled across their surfaces, etched with runes older than time.

They pulsated with an energy that defied the laws of matter.

As if they did not fly so much as move with space itself, bending the fabric of the universe to their will.

The Saatifa were waiting.

A boarding ramp unfurled from the lead Sacran warship with a whisper, bridging the familiar and the unknowable.

It extended and touched the exterior hull of the airlock on the Perseus, where Issa and Ki’Remi waited for their ride, their hastily packed bags slung over their shoulders.

The airlock doors slid open, and with a deep breath, Issa stepped onto the secured bridge ramp, heading towards destiny.

She sensed the Sableman prowling behind her as she approached the undulating entryway to the Saatifa’s fleet crown jewel.

Issa perceived the sentinels of the Most High before she set eyes on them, sensing their souls shimmer in the immediate plane of existence.

Their presence was not oppressive or loud but undeniably vast, a quiet dominion over everything they touched.

A tall figure glimmered into view as if from thin air, draped in flowing armor glittered with light and shadow.

His features were too perfect and sculpted to belong to anything mortal. His eyes, twin orbs of liquid silver, seemed haunted by the vastness of eternity.

When he spoke, it was not mere speech but a poetic song in the harmony of an ancient hymnal.

‘The child of dusk returns to the wandering star and steps upon the path to the ethereal she once called home. Have you come to jettison away your burdens, Issandra Elaris Astraeus D’Leqan, daughter of the burning horizon?’

She stopped before the ethereal entryway and stared at him without a flinch, meeting his gaze with a steadiness carved from centuries of defiance.

‘I see you, Kastian Saqar Xenon D’Niryan, Warden of the Celestial Sanctum, Master of the Etherbound Legions, Sentinel of the High Gates, Keeper of the Throne’s Silence. The course is shadowed, yet my feet remember its encumbrance,’ she answered. ‘The onus I bear is not so easily cast aside, for it is mine to carry until the stars grow weary.’

A ripple of acknowledgment passed through more Saatifa warriors who also luminesced into view, their armor shifting like woven constellations.

‘Step forward, dusk-born. Your waiting is at its end.’

She inhaled once, sensing,fokk, needing Ki’Remi’s presence behind her, solid, grounding.

She drew her confidence from him and advanced into the vessel that thrummed with unparalleled life force.