Page 173 of She Who Devours the Stars

A pause. Then, softer: “She’s not stable.”

“Neither am I.”

The Faith Pulse crescendoed, a high-pressure whine that started behind my eyes and ended somewhere deep in my pelvis. The world vibrated. Every mythprint in system echoed with it. Asterra the Bloom, up in orbit, sang a chord of green and gold that made the air taste like fresh grass and blood. Jhenna the Crown, my own not-god, whispered instructions directly into my prefrontal cortex.

[JUDGMENT VECTOR: VALIDATED.]

[PATHWAY: CLEARED.]

[MYTHIC COLLISION: INEVITABLE.]

I stood at the edge of the bay, staring down the length of the launch track. The target was not the Ruins—not at this distance, not in these boots. The target was Fern. Always her. Every system in the HUD tried to convince me otherwise, flagging alternate routes, highlighting probable ambushes, screaming about the Black Helix massing at the horizon. I blinked it all away.

There was no alternate route.

My hands flexed, palms slick with sweat. The Faith Pulse rolled again, harder this time, and my body remembered every time Fern had shoved me against a wall, every time she’d whispered that I was the only one she’d ever trust to break her, every time she’d walked away knowing I’d follow.

The HUD bled gold. The interface snapped to a single line:

[DO IT.]

I launched.

Not with a ship, not even with a drop pod. The universe bent, and I ran.

They never teach you, in diplomacy school, what it feels like to break the laws of motion with your body. The first ten meters were standard: shoes on deck, wind in face, the burning plastic-sour stink of mythic overpressure. Then it got weird. The next step was a kilometer forward. The next after that, ten kilometers. My legs were doing the work, but the world was rearranging itself to keep up.

Outside, the launch observers saw me go. A hundred feeds, a thousand eyes, all trained on the Eventide system, tracking the chaos.

One, a technician with a sense of drama, said: “She’s gone.”

“What, like, dead gone?” asked another.

“No. Gone gone.”

“Vector lock?” asked a third.

“None. She’s off the map.”

In the Ruins, Fern was already standing. The HUD showed her pulse, her mythprint, the precise trajectory of her collapse. I locked on.

The re-entry hurt. A lot. I broke the upper atmosphere at Mach… something, the HUD refused to calculate it, and the pressure nearly vaporized me. I let it. There was no dignity in containment. I left a streak across the sky so bright they could see it from the moon, and I hit the ground running, shoes still in place, heels still sharp.

The Ruins welcomed me like an old friend.

It was worse than the holos. Every tree, every rock, every patch of dead grass was a memory trap, designed to eat the minds of anyone stupid enough to walk through. I’d trained for it, but training is nothing compared to the real thing.

The first hit was my father’s face—cold, unimpressed, reciting my life’s failures like he was checking inventory.

“Not enough,” I said, pushing past.

The next was a thousand nights alone, staring at the ceiling, wondering if I’d ever be enough for Fern, if I’d ever be more than the backup plan, the second draft. I let it burn through, not slowing down.

The world tried to hold me back, but the Faith Pulse was a beacon, and I wasn’t built to lose to nostalgia.

I broke the treeline.

Fern was there, exactly as I’d hoped: standing, shoulders squared, mouth set in that perfect, stubborn line. Her mythprint was a corona now, so bright it hurt to look. She hadn’t seen me yet.