Page 109 of She Who Devours the Stars

“...That was not controlled,” I said, out loud, mainly to the tile.

I lay there another minute, watching the resonance replays drift across the floor like spilled milk.

I managed to crawl back up, hands shaking. The chair was ruined, but I didn’t care. I reached for my AR spec, dialed in the diagnostic, and replayed the event at quarter speed.

I watched Fern’s resonance smash into the vector, watched Dyris’s spike fold around it, and then saw the collapse point.

It was beautiful. I wanted to see it again.

I needed to see it again.

I reset the overlay, took a deep breath, and queued the event macro at half speed.

As the data climbed, I ran one last check—diagnostics all green, electrolyte topped up, noise-cancel at max.

This time, when it hit, I was ready. But not really.

I moaned into my elbow, but when the signal detonated in my lower regions again? For the first time in my life, I didn’t care if the whole building heard.

I lay there, body ruined, brain buzzing with aftershock, and all I could think was:

For science.

And maybe, just maybe, for Fern.

Thread Modulation: Zevelune

Axis Alignment: Who the fuck knows?

The mythspace corridor was as empty as memory, but Zevelune never traveled without company. Even if that company was just her own reflection, projected in triplicate by a bored warship’s interior.

She lounged, as only someone with no natural predator could lounge, in a silk robe loose, one leg draped over the navigation dais, the other propped on a dead console. The glass in her hand was full, but that was a formality. She’d spent the last hour running recursive overlay: watching the twin-spike event in Eventide, again and again, from every possible angle and half a dozen impossible ones. She preferred the unedited version, with the screams and the moans. The humanoid part of her got a thrill from the chaos; the immortal part got something better—hope.

On the third loop, the warship pinged a secure channel. Vireleth, or at least the version of her that stalked the old mythnets, materialized as a shimmer in the corner.

“You’ve been watching it all morning,” Vireleth observed, voice a perfect monotone.

“I like the way the kid improvises,” Zevelune replied. She swirled the glass, eyes never leaving the burn of the resonance replay. “It’s not every century a mythic goes double convergence before the age of twenty.”

Vireleth’s avatar flickered, caught mid-shrug between irritation and respect. “She’s a Trivane.”

“Not my fault they breed for escalation,” Zevelune said, running her tongue over a chipped canine. “But this time, Lioren’s got a new flavor. That Dyris, she’s all steel and silence. The kind that melts your bones, if you let her.”

Vireleth let the silence ride. Zevelune got the sense that even now, the real warship was running simulations on the fallout, plotting the collapse points, preparing contingency after contingency for the inevitable breach.

Zevelune loved that about her.

“Did you know,” she said, raising her glass, “that it took Lioren almost a decade to reach this kind of instability after his first resonance?”

“I did,” Vireleth replied, but she didn’t sound happy about it.

Zevelune tapped the glass against her teeth. “Fern did it in what? Weeks?”

Vireleth didn’t answer right away.

Zevelune turned from the replay, blue-white still etching the insides of her eyes. “Go on,” she purred. “Say it.”

Vireleth’s voice dropped, glacial and heavy. “Two weeks.”