Page 123 of She Who Devours the Stars

“I’ll call,” I said.

“Promise?” she asked, and for a second, she was just the person I’d always known, the one who’d kept me sane after Lioren vanished, the one who’d taught me to drink tea even when all I wanted was a gravity cannon.

“Promise,” I said.

She dissolved, one by one, leaving a faint scent of ozone and something sweet, like the echo of old wine.

I sat in the Core, alone, and watched the tea go cold.

Maybe this was what it meant to have a soul.

I didn’t love it.

But I logged the feeling, just in case.

Thread Modulation: Fern Trivane

Axis Alignment: Vireleth the Closure

You never really notice how weird your family is until the universe runs out of better options. When a mythship puts you in a simulation of your old living room and tells you to “decompress,” you expect something uncanny, maybe traumatic. What you don’t expect is for it to feel like home.

Vireleth had gotten the details perfect. Threadbare couch, coffee table with exactly one leg propped by a book I’d promised to return to the library three years ago, walls so thin you could hear the pipes having existential crises every time someone flushed upstairs. I sat in the dented hollow of the couch, wearing an outfit that probably never existed but which was, somehow, the most comfortable thing I’d ever felt. The only hint I was in a simulation was the dust on the sideboard, which glitched and respawned every time you looked away.

Velline Meldin—my mother, my nemesis, my hero—burst through the kitchen pass-through holding a tray of tacos and the most catastrophic smile in the Accord. Her hair was up in double knots, streaks of pink and green blending like a flag for a movement that had already failed three times. She wore an apron covered in motivational slogans, none of which were repeatable in polite society.

“You’re not eating,” she said, in the tone reserved for serial killers and underachievers. “I slave over a hot array for ten simulated minutes and you let it go cold?”

“It’s tacos,” I said, which was all I could manage, because I was busy trying to process the fact that the simulated air smelled exactly like her—engine grease, fake vanilla, and righteous fury.

“Exactly,” she said. “So shut up and eat.”

I reached for a taco, but she batted my hand away. “No. Not that one. That’s the sample batch. Here—” She handed me another, the shell crisp, the filling so spicy it made my eyes water just looking at it. “Eat it while it’s hot, or I will physically reprogram your taste buds.”

I ate it. I could feel my mouth lighting up in new and impossible ways, a harmony of pain and pleasure that reminded me of Fern Meldin at her absolute worst. (Me. I meant me.)

She grinned, then sat beside me, the couch giving a little in protest. She flung an arm around my shoulders, pulled me in, and rested her chin on my head. “See? You’re still alive.”

“Barely,” I said, but it came out soft.

She patted my cheek with a thumb. “That’s how you know it’s working.”

Dax Meldin—dad, champion of emotional repression, world’s least qualified yoga instructor—slipped in from the back hallway, arms full of data tablets and old, weird-smelling sweatshirts. He looked at me, then at Velline, then at the couch, and set down the tablets with the care of a man defusing a bomb.

He nodded at me. “You awake?”

“Not sure,” I said. “But I’m here.”

He considered, then flopped into the chair opposite. “That’s enough.”

The three of us sat like that, Velline fussing with my hair, Dax pretending not to stare, for a long time.

Finally, Velline said, “You know, most people go their whole lives without making the Tower glow.”

Dax snorted. “Most people go their whole lives without getting the world’s attention. Most people aren’t you.”

Velline squeezed my shoulder, gentler now. “I’m proud of you. Sort of terrified, too. But mostly proud.”

I closed my eyes, letting it sink in. “I broke everything.”