Page 97 of Ravaged By the Reaper

I believe him. And still, the ache remains.

After he leaves, I go to the storage compartment tucked behind engineering. Not many people come here—it smells like dust and neglect and old coolant. But in the far corner, under a thermal tarp, I find it.

My lyre.

Scratched. Slightly out of tune. But real.

I sit cross-legged on the floor and pull it into my lap. My fingers find the strings on instinct. A gentle pluck. Then another. I start slow—half a melody, then a lullaby I half-remember from training days. My throat tightens, but I keep going.

The notes wobble. Then settle.

And something inside me unlocks.

I don’t cry. But I feel the weight ease.

I play until my fingers hurt. Until the ache becomes a song again.

Because maybe that’s what I lost—not the girl who played the lyre, but the courage to remember her.

And maybe that’s what I’m finding now.

I findthe room by accident.

It’s buried two decks below the medbay—half-forgotten, half-consumed by old crates and oxidized lockers. Smells like dust and spilled lubricant. A cracked viewscreen flickers weakly in the corner. Most would walk past it. Hell, I nearly did.

But something about it feels… untouched.

So I claim it.

It takes hours to clear the clutter, days to make it mine. I salvage soft lights from broken dormitories, string them around exposed pipes until the shadows soften. I pull old datapads from the archives—ancient Earth poetry, forgotten sonatas, even a battered volume of Neruda. I drag in an old piano from the wrecked rec hall, piece by goddamn piece.

And when I sit on the makeshift cushion and pluck my lyre again, it feels like breathing sweet, clean air.

This isn’t about war. Or survival. Or power.

It’s about remembering who I was before I became what I had to be.

One night, I’m playing when the door hisses open.

I don’t stop. I don’t even look up. The melody is low, aching—an echo of the loneliness that never quite left me. My fingers dance over silver strings, each note a confession I don’t know how to speak aloud.

But I feel him.

Haktron doesn’t say a word. Just steps inside, silent as shadow.

He watches me play.

And gods, he listens.

Not like a man used to command. Not like a warrior gauging weakness. He listens like someone trying to memorize the sound of something rare.

When the last note fades, I set the lyre down. My hands tremble slightly.

He steps closer. Still wordless.

“This was supposed to be who I was,” I say. My voice catches on the words. “Music. Literature. Quiet things that didn’t draw blood.”

He kneels beside me, brows knit.