Page 167 of She Who Devours the Stars

I recognized the signature before the tone: Jhenna the Crown. Judicial, predatory, always a little too disappointed for comfort.

I stared at the playback, hands white-knuckled on the edge of the desk.

“This isn’t my job,” I whispered. “I’m not the vector. I’m not—”

But the mythship voices were insistent.

Asterra, again: “You’re closer than you think.”

Jhenna: “You’ve always known it would end this way.”

I closed my eyes. The silence in the room cracked, then rebuilt itself around the rhythm of my breathing.

The next ten seconds were the worst of my life.

I paced the room, back and forth, nails digging crescents into my palms. Every step brought Fern’s face back to mind, sometimes her real face, sometimes the Lioren overlay, sometimes just thememory of her mouth pressed against mine, hungry and a little cruel.

I tried to think of anything else, but the world didn’t allow it.

On the fourth lap, I stopped dead, turned to the nearest console, and stabbed in the Trivane override code. It was old, from a war that never officially happened, but Vireleth had never scrubbed it. The interface hesitated, as if daring me to finish what I’d started.

I pressed Enter.

The ship’s lights flared, then dimmed. A security panel opened in the far wall, the path to the lower docking bay illuminated by a line of red LEDs.

I went, because what else was there to do?

At the door, Vireleth’s voice cut in, dry and careful:

“Dyris. If you do this, there’s no walking back.”

I laughed, sharp and mean. “No one walks back from her anyway.”

I keyed the final code, and the door opened.

The docking bay was empty, except for a single, gleaming drop pod, one built for mythprint events, sealed at the joints with blacked-out signatures that screamed “do not touch” in a dozen languages.

I didn’t care.

I stepped inside, heels clicking against the carbon mesh, and locked the hatch behind me.

The pod’s display blinked alive. “Destination?” it asked, all formal and clinical, as if it hadn’t been waiting for this moment since the universe coughed up Fern Trivane and dared someone to do something about it.

I stared straight ahead, the pulse in my neck matching the blue-white corona of Fern’s last AR ping.

“Take me to the Ruins,” I said.

The engine cycled up. The world outside shrank to a pinhole, then vanished altogether.

Inside the pod, I was alone.

It felt like the first time in weeks I’d been able to breathe.

My mythprint burned, brighter and steadier than ever.

For the first time in my life, I felt absolutely, perfectly ready.

I closed my eyes.