Page 162 of She Who Devours the Stars

Solance: “You’ve always wanted to matter.”

Kairon: “You’ve always wanted to watch.”

Solance: “You want to be loved.”

Kairon: “You want to be seen.”

My mouth went dry.

Aenna rolled, face turned toward me. Her eyes opened. They were glassy, unfocused, but they landed on me with a weight I’d never felt from her before.

Her voice was a whisper. “You’re not Fern.”

I flinched. “No.”

A long silence. Then, softer: “Are you here to kill me?”

I blinked, caught off guard. “No. I—I don’t know why I’m here.”

Aenna smiled, a small, broken thing. “Me neither.”

We just looked at each other. The mythprint on her wrist glowed brighter, and the air in the room grew heavy, thick with the residue of whatever she’d become. I felt the urge to reach for her, to see if the new her was still soft, or if the mythic had made her untouchable.

The AR overlay flickered. Solance said, “You are both necessary.”

Kairon echoed, “And you are both already lost.”

I reached out, hand trembling, fingers brushing the edge of the blanket. Aenna watched, curious but not afraid. She flexed her wrist, letting the mythprint catch the light.

We stayed like that for a while—two points on a graph, both waiting to see which would move first.

I broke the silence. “What happens now?”

Aenna’s smile widened, just a fraction. “I think we burn.”

The air in the room went hot, then cold, then back to hot. My AR flashed warnings I ignored, and somewhere behind my eyes, I felt the mythships leaning in, waiting to see how we’d break next.

I wasn’t scared.

I was ready.

This was the story, and I was in it now. No more sidelines. No more being nobody.

If it ended in fire, at least I’d be there to see it.

Thread Modulation: Kall Drennic

Axis Alignment: Nova Helix Accord Resonance Analysis Center

I always thought the world would end with a bang, or at least a really convincing press release. Maybe both. Instead, it started with a spreadsheet.

To be precise, it started with the denial of a spreadsheet: [SYSTEM ACCESS: TEMPORARILY REVOKED. NARRATIVE BLACKOUT IN EFFECT.] I blinked at the red banner, then at the four other blinking error messages layered over my diagnostics feed like a child’s attempt at a collage.

This was not how the Nova Helix Accord Resonance Analysis Center was supposed to operate. There were protocols. Hierarchies. A color-coded badge system that meant if you wore blue, you never had to talk to someone in orange, and if you wore orange, you could always blame your mistakes on the blues. But tonight, none of that mattered. Everyone’s badge was just a new way to collect sweat.

In theory, the job was simple: Observe. Record. Don’t intervene. Underline that last one three times, then tattoo it on the insideof your eyelids, because the only thing worse than a mythic event was a bureaucrat who thought they could fix one.

It had been less than an hour since Eventide went dark.