Page 25 of She Who Devours the Stars

She’s the catalyst.

I stood alone with the smell of burnt algae and the faint echo of her laughter, and waited for the city to catch up.

Thread Modulation: Fern Meldin

Axis Alignment: Meldin Apartment, Pelago-9

The apartment walls groaned in sympathy with my mood, or maybe just from the weight of impending disaster.

Even the lights, which were usually resilient to storm surges and domestic violence, flickered overhead, casting the kitchen in alternating strips of orange and migraine blue. Dyris stood by the door, her outline so sharp it made everything else in the room look unfinished. The heat of her presence pressed against my skin, even as she pretended to be composed.

She raised her wrist, tapped a sigil into the Accord holo, and read her final decree. Her voice had a new edge. She’d been holding this one back, saving it for when she thought I was at my weakest.

“Under Emergency Accord regulation, resonance subjects may be remanded to permanent stasis until their anomaly is resolved, or their agency is proven non-hostile. If you refuse immediate compliance, you waive all rights to civil appeal.”

I let her say it. I let the words hang, like a threat that didn’t know how to land.

I turned my back on her. Walked to the window, ignoring the way the glass vibrated under my hands. The city outside was the same mess it always was: a kid running barefoot through rain, chasing a ration-steak hologram that would vanish the second he got close enough to taste it. Farther down, I watched a cluster of cultists ignite votive screens, each one glowing with a differentcolor, all of them facing the sky, like they were expecting a reply from something that actually cared.

Dyris waited. She didn’t move, but I could feel her watching. Cataloguing every tremor in my spine, every shift in my breathing, every subtle way my body threatened the structural integrity of the room.

I let the silence stretch until I felt her composure fracture.

“You think I’m unstable,” I said softly, but the words split the air like a hairline fracture. “But I’m the only thing here that’s adapting. The Accord’s still pretending hunger can be filed under ethics.”

She didn’t answer, so I kept going.

“You want to keep the world safe? Start by making it less worth destroying.” I looked over my shoulder, caught her in the act of staring at my mouth.

I turned. Stepped toward her, slow and deliberate. I could feel the power bleeding from me, pulse after pulse, like breath held too long and finally exhaled. The table beside me vibrated. The mug next to her arm cracked, then fused back together, the light around it bending in new directions.

“You came to make me safe,” I said. “But you didn’t bring enough safety.”

Her jaw worked, like she was about to say something, but she couldn’t get the words past her teeth.

“Not scared of me yet,” I teased, letting the charge build, making it personal. “That’s your second biggest mistake.”

I stopped an inch away, close enough for her to smell the ozone and adrenaline leaking from my skin. Her eyes locked on mine, wide, hungry, afraid.

“Your first,” I whispered, “was wondering what I’d sound like moaning your name.”

She broke then, not out loud, but in every muscle. I could see the way her boots tried to anchor her, how her fingers curled tight behind her back to keep from reaching for me.

For a second, we were both suspended, waiting for the world to decide if this was a fight or a fuck, or something else entirely.

The apartment groaned again, but I barely heard it over the sound of my heartbeat.

“Now,” I said, not needing to raise my voice. “Do your job, Dyris. Or get out of my kitchen.”

She blinked. Once. Twice. Then she stepped aside, opening the path to the door, and let me pass.

But I didn’t leave. Not yet. I just stood in front of her, waiting.

She swallowed, audibly. “You’re not supposed to be like this,” she said, voice almost hoarse.

I grinned. “Neither are you.”

I let her stand there, every system in her body screaming to retreat or to escalate. But she didn’t move.