Page 151 of She Who Devours the Stars

He flicked his little LED eye at me. “She’s not dead, Dax. She’s just… mythic. That’s what you wanted, right?”

I wanted to punch something, but the only thing nearby was Perc, and he’d survived worse than my fists.

“I wanted her to have a future,” I said, finally. “Not just a legend.”

Perc was silent for a while. He nibbled at his pizza, then, softer: “You did your best. If there was a manual for raising mythics, you would’ve read it. Then you would’ve glued the pages together and made fun of the author.”

That almost got a laugh out of me. Almost.

I finished the coffee, set the cup down, and let my head slump into my hands. The drone parts smelled like ozone and failure. Fern’s holo, frozen at the moment she smiled at the camera during the Taco Miracle, glared at me from the bench. It wassupposed to be comforting, but it was just proof I’d never really understood her.

“You want to watch it again?” I muttered.

Perc’s eye brightened. “Is that a trick question?”

I hit the button, and the projector hummed to life. The feed: Lioren Trivane, front and center, chest bare, eyes like nuclear dawn. Behind him, the mythic event played out in perfect, horrifying detail: rings of fire, the sky tearing, the planet Jupiter twisting under the weight of his will.

He said, “Observe,” and then he bent the moon in half, just like the old stories promised.

Even the audio had a low, animal whine, the kind of sound that stuck in your teeth long after the show was over. “Oh Lioren, that’s past my Roche limit! Oh, Moonbreaker! By Sol! Harder!” Europa begged.

When it ended, the room went quiet.

Perc leaked a bead of grease from his servo. “Still impressive, even on the eleventh go.”

I nodded. My throat was tight, but I wasn’t about to let Perc see it.

We sat there, the two of us, just watching the holo fade and waiting for something in the world to get better.

It wouldn’t, of course.

But we couldn’t stop watching.

The loop was going to play out, with or without us.

Thread Modulation: Fern Trivane

Axis Alignment: Fey Ruins

The air in the ruins got thicker with every step. At first it was just humidity, or so I lied to myself, but after twenty meters the pressure settled into my skull like a migraine, pushing out all the convenient lies and leaving only the red rawness underneath. I could feel my mythprint flexing, then stretching, then bleeding into the environment. It made sense: every inch of this place felt hungry, like it had been built to hollow out anyone dumb enough to try and pass through.

Zevelune didn’t seem to mind. She moved ahead of me, picking her way between the ancient trunks, her silhouette always a little too precise, never blurred even when the air started to shimmer and twist. She had a way of stepping into a shadow and coming out six meters ahead, as if time and space had agreed to let her cheat. The only reason I kept up was that every time I slowed, the ruins themselves seemed to close in—branches moving closer, bark creaking with a noise like a fist being unwrapped from a human heart.

The first challenge was nostalgia.

It hit without warning. One second I was breathing the rot and ozone of the stone forest; the next, I was on Pelago-9, standing in the half-collapsed hallway outside my childhood bedroom. The walls were the right shade of gray, the air still tinged with industrial solvent and the sour-sweet of vending broth, but everything was too quiet. I went to open the door and found my hand bleeding, every knuckle split. When I pushed inside, there was a family dinner in progress—Mom, Dad, even a younger version of me, all sitting around the battered metal table.

None of them looked up.

I tried to speak. The words stuck. I tried to move, but my legs went soft, bones turning to taffy.

Zevelune’s voice cut through the memory, low and dry: “You miss them, don’t you?”

I spun, but she wasn’t in the room. Instead, she was at the window, leaning in from outside, her smile too wide for the angle. Her eyes had gone dark, no light in them at all.

“I don’t,” I said, and it was the world’s worst lie.

The memory looped. Again. Again. Every time I reached for the door, my hand bled a little more. Every time I tried to call out, the words tasted of rust.