Page 135 of She Who Devours the Stars

I managed a shaky breath. “It’s not just Aenna. It’s not just the pool. It’s everywhere now.”

Fern nodded, and if she was afraid, her eyes didn’t show it. “I like it better this way. I used to think I was connected to the Astrum, but now? I think Iamthe Astrum.”

And underneath that, I heard Fern’s hunger. Still not sated. Again.

How did you contain someone like this? You didn’t. You just prayed the rest of the universe learned to adapt before she decided to eat it all for breakfast.

Chapter 18: And then… Zevelune

Thread Modulation: HoloNet

Axis Alignment: HoloNet

[HOLOFEED LIVE—TOPIC: MYTHDRIFT CATASTROPHE. THREAD LOCKED BY SYSTEM MODERATOR. POSTING PERMISSION: ELEVATED TO PRIORITY USERS. BANNED: NSFW, UNLESS IT’S RELEVANT.]

We interrupt your regularly scheduled bullshit for an update on the rapidly developing situation in the Perseid sector. We don’t want to, but the script says we have to.

If you’re not already in a bunker, or a lead-lined party barge, or the neural suppression ward of your local Accord-approved medical provider, now is a great time to start drinking.

The broadcast started as a flicker—a single panel of three news anchors, all in different time zones, none of whom looked like they’d ever been paid enough for this. The left one, a synth-male with hair like a combative exoplanet, was openly sobbing behind mirrored shades; the middle, a sleek nonbinary hybrid with the kind of jawline that could only have been grown in a scandal lab, had the haunted look of someone who had just realized their entire education was a meme; the right one, an old-school meat-woman with beads woven through her gray hair and agold septum ring, was holding her head with both hands and muttering something about “the twelve blighted centuries.”

Every screen in the Accord locked in.

No one believed it at first.

The composite view was instantly spammed with a trillion memes: Fern’s face photoshopped onto old gods, Fern painted onto galactic currency, Fern rendered as a chaos squid with the entire mythic hierarchy as her wriggling, gasping tentacles. Someone found an ancient image of Lioren Trivane, colorized it, then pasted “World’s Okayest Dad” across the chest, with Fern below, grinning like she’d just burned down a library for fun.

Then the next wave of news hit, and the memes got meaner.

On screen, the anchors tried to get ahead of the panic. They failed.

“Joining us now is Professor Krillan—” said Jawline, but the feed cut in on an elderly woman sitting cross-legged in the ruins of a temple, sipping tea as chunks of the ceiling dusted her shoulders. “Ah,” she said, blinking, “I lost that bet.” She didn’t seem upset, just quietly resigned. “Tell Fern I owe her… let’s say a favor. Not money.” She held up her mug in toast, and the feed dropped her before she could say more.

Smash cut to a council of Pelago-9 execs in a panic room, looking not at the cameras, but at the legal disclaimers scrolling across their walls. “That’s not covered,” one gasped, as a line of blue aurora flickered behind his head. “She can’t just—She can’t just take the Crab! It’s not—” His sentence vanished in a flicker of static. The next image: a low angle of the city, every other block pulsing with mythic energy, the sky like a rave for angels who’d run out of drugs and started snorting stardust instead.

Cut to a pirate broadcast from somewhere on the Drift. A woman in an ancient flight suit, half her hair shaved, shouted over a roaring crowd. “FERN BOUND THE CRAB NEBULA! BETS OPEN FOR WHO’S NEXT!” She waved a bottle of some neon fluid, then smashed it on the console and howled at the sky. The camera zoomed in as she licked the shards, tongue already blue from the toxins. The crowd behind her started chanting Fern’s name, and something else, echo-something, hard to make out.

Back to the anchors, none of whom had recovered. The synth-male had been replaced by a backup clone, which was now visibly glitching: eyes cycled between four different colors, voice output lagging a full second behind. “We’re, uh—We’re joined by the Panel of Physicists,” he announced. All three windows filled at once with people in varying states of undress and disarray, some screaming, some laughing, one just rocking back and forth in a tinfoil hat.

“There is no precedent for this,” said the first physicist. “She broke it. It’s broken.”

“I, for one, welcome our new mythic queen,” said another, deadpan, then looked off-screen and screamed.

“This is a joke. A literal, viral joke,” said the third. “It’s not possible. You can’t—” He dissolved into sobs.

The ticker at the bottom of the screen kept scrolling. It had a sense of humor, if you could call it that:

- Gravity wells forming in public parks—trees now in stable orbit around children’s playgrounds.

- Asteroid field in Malachite 7 now “singing” Fern’s name. Accord to deploy listening posts for research.

- Mirrors on Redshift Station show two weeks ahead; the entire population is locked in the bathrooms.

- Spontaneous minor fire powers are now reported on Port Ascella, being used mainly for cooking and practical jokes.

- Eventide: No visible effects. Citizens report an overwhelming sense of “being watched by something beautiful and terrible.”

The HoloNet meme thread went thermonuclear: