Page 20 of She Who Devours the Stars

From up here, the world was almost beautiful. Not the pretty kind, but the kind that made you want to keep going, to see if it got better or if you could help break it in a more interesting way.

I watched the kid for another minute, long enough to see him finally tackle the holo and bite into nothing at all. He didn’t seem disappointed. He grinned, wiped the blood off his chin, and started chasing again, like it was the only thing that mattered.

Perc’s speaker buzzed. “Revolt now?”

I stared at the horizon, where the city bled into darkness and the next disaster waited its turn. For a second, I considered it. The mythship had changed me, burned away all the pretense, but it hadn’t changed the city. Not really. The Glimmer Zone was still here. Still impossible. Still refusing to give in.

I grinned. Barely.

“Not yet,” I said. “But soon.”

Below, the cultists finished their sigil, then lit it with a spark from a stolen battery. The paint flared, casting weird shadowsup the sides of the buildings. For a heartbeat, the symbol was brighter than the city itself.

I watched it burn, sipped the last bitter drops, and felt something click into place inside me.

The world wasn’t going to get better on its own.

But maybe I could help it get interesting.

I stood, tossed the mug over the side, and watched as it tumbled end over end, bouncing off a catwalk and disappearing into the haze. Somewhere below, the kid started laughing.

The Accord wanted a containment field.

I was going to give them a light show.

Thread Modulation: Witness Class

Axis Alignment: Glimmer Zone, Pelago-9

On the opposite rooftop, I pressed my forehead to the weather-scabbed rail and prayed for the courage to remember. The sigil on the building below was still burning, blue and violent, casting my shadow ten meters high across the ductwork and rot. The girl on the ledge—Fern, Nullarch, sovereign of nothing and no one—was my whole field of view. I blinked, and the afterimage stuck to my retinas, burning a hole straight through the meat of my brain.

I fumbled the relic-candle from my pocket, almost dropped it in the wind. It was a twisted lump, the core made from datachips harvested off the bones of dead servers, the wax a blend of tallow, plastic, and desperation. I struck the fuse, and it caught with a hiss and the sharp, sweet smell of burnt sugar and ozone. The scent made me want to retch and weep at the same time. It was the smell of endings.

I set the candle in its holder, right at the edge where the concrete crumbled to black. Then I pulled out my lens—old, battered, the last useful thing my mother gave me before she got sanctified and vanished up the chain of faith. I focused the lens on Fern’s profile, caught the line of her jaw, the wild tangle of her hair, the impossible glow leaking from her skin.

I snapped the shot, digitally and for the soul, and shunted it through the protocol. The transmitter in my wrist buzzed as the packet left, bouncing from node to node, relayed through a hundred other zealots just like me. Each handoff added a layer of noise, a filter, a mythic gloss. By the time it reached the center of the Web, she would be bigger than her own shadow. The girl on the ledge would become the legend in the dark.

The protocol required a spoken word, so I leaned over the candle, eyes shut, and whispered it: “Nullarch.” The word stuck in my mouth, hot and alive, like biting into a battery. I repeated it. Again. Again. My pulse stuttered with every iteration.

From the street below, the cult picked it up. One voice, then five, then a throb of voices all around, rolling up the walls and through the wires. “Nullarch. Nullarch. Nullarch.” The echo was a living thing, a new law of the city, woven through every inch of Glimmer Zone that mattered.

On the far ledge, Fern didn’t flinch. She didn’t cower or run. She just watched the horizon, steady and impossible, a torch no one asked for and everyone needed.

I wanted to hate her, for being more than the rest of us. For surviving what the Accord and the war and the Web had done to people like me. But all I could do was light another relic-candle, and another, each one a little more desperate than the last. Each one a tiny promise that we weren’t done hoping yet.

The next transmission in the protocol was confirmation. I typed it in, fingers trembling. “She’s real,” I sent. “She’s here.”

The reply came back, faster than my next breath: “Prepare for convergence.”

I glanced down at the candle, watched as the flame warped the air, bending the shadows into new shapes. My hands shook, but I didn’t let myself look away.

Below, the chant kept growing.

I could taste it in the back of my mouth, the moment when myth becomes a weapon.

I drew the lens up again, made sure I had her in my sights.

This was the last time the Nullarch would be alone.