Page 2 of Ravaged By the Reaper

HAKTRON

Iwake mid-howl, throat raw and chest heaving, the cry ripped from me like flesh from bone.

The sweat slicking my skin has gone cold. My claws dig trenches in the steel floor of the Widowmaker’s lower hold—again. Great. That’s the third time this week I’ll have to explain to maintenance why there’s a perfect Haktron-sized crater in bay seven.

My hearts pound in tandem, a twin drumbeat slamming in my ears. My vision blurs, red edges curling the world like paper near fire. Not from rage this time.

From her.

I don’t know her name. I’ve never seen her face before the dreams started, not that I recall—but gods, do I feel her. Slender hands curled into fists. Muffled screams. That sound she makes—half sob, half scream, pure anguish—burns itself into me every damn time.

She’s crying in my head again. Begging someone not to do it again. Whatever it is.

“Fragging spirits,” I snarl, slamming my fists into the bulkhead, rattling the walls. “Why won’t you let me sleep?!”

There’s a beat of silence. Then the door hisses open.

“You gonna cry or you gonna fight, Bloodsinger?”

Panaka.

Only Panaka could call me that without getting a blade to the gut.

The old bastard stands in the threshold like a grim statue, his silhouette carved from shadow and scorn.

His coat is draped over one shoulder, the other sleeve pinned where his left arm should be.

He lost that arm in the Battle of Sarn’s Reach, didn’t even flinch.

“Captain,” I rasp, standing. I’m still panting, breath tasting of rust and ozone. “Didn’t mean to—”

He waves a clawed hand. “Don’t insult us both with lies. You meant to howl. You needed to.”

I say nothing. He watches me like he’s dissecting me with his eye—that one milky white orb still sharp as a blade.

“You dreamt her again,” he says flatly.

I nod once.

“She was in chains. Screaming,” I manage. “This time there was blood. On her mouth. On her eyes. They’ve got something crawling on her—some kind of mind leech or extractor, I don’t know. But she’s breaking, Captain. Every time I dream, I see her coming apart.”

Panaka grunts. Steps into the room and shuts the door behind him.

“You’ve seen her face?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Recognize her?”

“No. But I know her.” I clench my jaw. “I feel her.”

He folds his arms. “Describe her.”

She comes to me so clearly it’s like she’s burned into my retinas. “Human. Pale. Like snow that’s about to melt. Platinum hair. Blue eyes—cold blue, like glacial ice just before it cracks. Delicate features. Beautiful, but not fake. Like… crafted.”

Panaka grunts again. That sound means interesting.

“You think you’ve seen her in battle? On a station? A raid?”

“No,” I say. “She’s not from the past. She’s from… now.”

He’s quiet for a beat, then exhales slowly, like he’s releasing something weighty.

“You know what this means,” he says.

“No, I don’t.”

“You do.”

I glare at him.

“Say it,” he orders.

My stomach knots. My claws flex.

“Say it, Bloodsinger.”

“She’s my jalshagar.”

The word tastes foreign on my tongue. Sacred. Ancient.

A soul tie. A burning fate. The one being in all the infinite galaxies the universe has tethered to mine.

“I thought that was just a myth,” I mutter.

He smirks. “So did I. Until I found mine. Until I felt her calling me in my bones. Until the gods themselves screamed hers into my blood.”

“What did you do?”

“I killed the slaver who had her in chains. Took her back from the stars with my own hands.”

“Was she…?”

“Dead.” Panaka’s voice doesn’t break. His expression doesn’t twitch. “But I still saved her. Gave her a grave carved from starlight. Then burned the whole damn moon.”

I stare at him, throat tight.

“So what do I do now?” I ask.

He grins, and for a second, I see the Reaper he used to be. The one who could break ships in half with his bare hands.

“You find her. Save her.”

I hesitate.

“Then claim her,” he says. “And tame her.”

“You make it sound like she’s a wild animal.”

He shrugs. “Aren’t we all?”

"She’s not just some dream, is she?"

Panaka’s staring at me, one hand braced on the bulkhead like the walls themselves might lurch under the weight of truth. The light from the console casts deep shadows in the grooves of his face—each one earned, each one a kill mark.

“No,” he says. “She’s your jalshagar.”

There’s a finality in his voice that silences everything else—the humming of the bulkheads, the distant clank of crew boots, the muttered curses from the mess. I feel it deep. Right down in the marrow of me. Like hearing a prophecy spoken aloud after years of denial.

“What does that even mean?” I ask, pacing like a caged beast. My breath is short, my bones too tight for my skin.

He watches me, calm as a corpse. “Reapers don’t bond like humans do. We don’t ‘fall in love.’ We find—or are claimed by—our jalshagar. One. Ever. There’s no second chance.”

“That sounds like poetic garbage,” I snap, but my claws twitch at my sides. “Like something the priests tell softbloods so they stop sleeping around.”

Panaka’s mouth curls. “I used to think the same. Then she walked into a raid on Nalthor Three and nearly killed me with a fusion lance. Gods, she was magnificent.”

“You married her?”

“No. I buried her.” His voice is steel wrapped in smoke. “But I still feel her in the dark. She’s the reason I wake up screaming sometimes, not because of the pain… but because she isn’t next to me.”

I stop pacing.

“You're telling me I’ll always feel her?”

“You already do.”

I curse, low and vicious. The kind that tastes like iron. I don’t want this. I didn’t ask for some galactic soulmate. I’ve got blood on my hands and ash in my wake. I’m not built for connection.

But she’s in me now. Burrowed under my armor. Every breath feels hers.

Panaka reaches out and claps a hand on my shoulder—his one good hand. His grip’s hard enough to bruise steel. “You gonna stand around crying about it? Or you gonna go get her?”

I don’t answer. I don’t have to.

Because something in my chest shifts—clicks into place. A magnetic pull yanks at my gut, pointing me not north, not south, but toward her. Like a compass made of bones and blood.

I stride to the hangar bay. The Widowmaker groans around me, a living ship built from stolen tech and war metal. She knows when I’m coming. Knows when I’m leaving.

The scout shuttle’s small, sleek, barely a blip to a sensor scan.

Cloaking drive’s got a finicky actuator, but she’ll hold together long enough for a blind jump through Coalition borders.

I override the launch protocols with my personal code—Panaka’s not gonna stop me, and anyone else who tries can explain to my fist why they thought that was smart.

I board and slide into the cockpit. The seat smells like ozone and leather soaked in rage. Systems light up one by one under my touch—engine hum, nav flare, cloaking shiver.

“Where to?” the onboard VI chirps.

There.

The coordinates slither into my brain like they’ve been carved there since birth. Coalition space. Grolgath sector. A moon I don’t know by name but feel in my veins.

“Inputting trajectory,” the VI confirms. “Confirm jump?”

“Do it.”

The stars stretch like molasses in fast-forward. We slingshot through reality, space bending like glass beneath pressure. I feel it in my teeth—the jump always does that, like the universe is briefly chewing on your soul.

When it smooths out, I rise and head to the weapons locker. Bloodfont hangs on the rack like a lover waiting to be touched.

The scythe-hybrid curves like a predator’s smile, wicked and lean, the chain coiled like a viper. I grab it, let it unspool in my hand, the links cool and familiar against my palm.

I test the edge. It sings.

“Good girl,” I murmur.

I strap her across my back, double-check my sidearms, then lock down the rest of the armory. No point in over-packing. If it gets bad—and it will—Bloodfont’s all I’ll need.

Back in the cockpit, I stare out at the stars.

Somewhere out there, she’s screaming. Not with rage or defiance, but pain. That kind of pain that shreds the soul before it hits flesh. I know that scream. I’ve lived it.

But she won’t have to scream much longer.

I don’t know her name.

Don’t know her voice outside those choked cries.

But I know her soul like it’s sewn into mine.

She’s mine.

The stars are a river of knives—sharp and endless—slashing past the shuttle as we surge through superluminal space. They whisper in a voice older than breath, older than gods. I listen.

The pull in my chest hasn’t faded. If anything, it’s getting stronger. A thread of fire drawn taut, dragging me across parsecs toward a woman I’ve never touched. Never kissed. Never claimed.

But she’s mine.

The universe has carved it into me with blood and bone.

Still… I clench my fists, bone spurs grinding against the reinforced grips of the pilot chair. It’s not fear clawing at my insides. Reapers don’t fear. Not even death. But there's something—an itch, a crawl under my skin I can’t shake.

Could fate really be this cruel?

My jalshagar—a human?

Fragile. Slow. Breakable.

I’ve crushed warriors beneath my boot with more resilience. I’ve bled beside monsters who’d chew through battleships just for the challenge. And now I’m supposed to belong to some delicate creature spun from silk and diplomacy?

“Why?” I growl at the void outside the cockpit. “Why her?”

The stars don’t answer.

But her scream does.

It lingers in my mind, fresh and ragged. Like a nerve torn raw. Like someone carving their way through my head with a vibroblade.

She's suffering. Somewhere in the dark, in some twisted Coalition oubliette, they're breaking her. The memory extractor, that writhing bastard-thing glued to her face—it’s not just tech. It’s violation incarnate.

I’ve seen those devices before. During raids. Used by the Ataxians to gut dissidents from the inside out without ever spilling a drop. It’s slow, surgical, efficient.

And it hurts.

She didn’t scream like a soldier. No defiance. No venom.

She screamed like someone drowning, and knowing the surface is a myth.

I breathe out hard. My breath fogs against the inner canopy. The heat of fury starts behind my eyes and spreads like a plasma burn.

She’s not weak. Not if she’s survived this long. Not if she’s still in my head.

But that question keeps slithering back.

Why bind me to her?

The gods don’t speak plain. Their answers come wrapped in riddles and stained in ash. They don’t care if the match makes sense. They care if it burns.

And it does.

Her face haunts me. That sharp chin. Those defiant blue eyes clouded by pain. The way her lips tremble when she pleads—and stars help me, I hate that it stirs something in me.

Not pity.

Possession.

Mine.

My claws dig deeper into the seat. The synthetic leather splits beneath the pressure.

If I touch her… will she shatter?

If I claim her… will she die?

That itch behind my skull again. That pull down the spine. I snarl under my breath.

"She better be stronger than she looks."

Because if she isn’t… if she breaks beneath me, I’ll tear the stars themselves apart.

But that doubt? That soft little question digging its way into my thoughts?

It’s a lie.

I know she’s strong. I saw it in her posture, even when pain turned her bones to glass. I felt it in her voice, even when she sobbed.

She’s still fighting.

The screen flashes. Destination lock confirmed. We’re nearing the fringe of Coalition space now—dead zone channels, no patrols. The perfect place to hide something nasty.

Figures.

I lean forward and pull Bloodfont from its resting hook. The chain uncoils with a hiss, the scythe head gleaming in the flicker of console light. The metal’s warm. Like it knows.

“Soon,” I whisper, running a claw down the curved edge.

I remember the first time I killed with her. A Dovari bounty hunter who thought he could outfly a Reaper. He was wrong.

So are the ones hurting her.

Whoever they are—whatever they call themselves—will learn what it means to bleed from the inside out. Slowly. Deliberately. Personally.

I won’t make it quick.

The shuttle hums, systems whispering in quiet symphony. I tighten my harness and stare at the nav chart as the red dot pulses.

Closer. Closer still.

“Whoever’s got you, little star,” I murmur, “I’m coming. And when I get there…”

I smile. It’s not pleasant.

“They’ll beg for a death I won’t give.”