Page 31 of She Who Devours the Stars

The world paused, for just a moment.

I could see everything. The firestorm above me, the black-lace network of snapped power lines, the arc of a second kinetic round slicing the sky in perfect, blood-orange parabola. Down the shaft of the ruined building, I saw the rest of my life replayed in twenty frames per second: every time I’d run from pain instead of facing it, every time I’d said no when I should have said yes, every time I’d let someone else take the hit because I was too tired to be strong.

I saw Dax.

He was three floors below me, upside down, tumbling through the void with all the grace of a man who’d been preparing for this moment since before I was born. His eyes were open, his mouth caught in a half-smile, and his left hand was reaching out, not for me, but for the soldering iron he’d never let go of, even in freefall.

For a split second, our eyes met.

The blue-white light arced between us, connecting me to him, and him to the reality we were both about to be subtracted from.

I reached out, not with my hands but with the part of me that wasn’t constrained by the usual limitations. The world heard me, and then it bent.

Every fragment of debris between us stopped, shuddered, and then curved around, forming a shield of twisted, magnetic intention. The blast wave, still echoing from the first impact, went silent as it passed through the barrier. The second and third kinetic rounds hit the ground outside, detonating in a staggered bloom of flame and dust, but inside the shell of what used to be our home, everything was quiet.

I blinked.

The light faded a little. The pain returned, a lot.

I hit the ground hard, but not fatally so, and rolled through a curtain of smoke and pulverized memories. When I finally stopped, I was on my back, staring up at what remained of the sky.

It was still dark, but now the dark was layered: the afterimage of the explosion, the residual glow from my skin, and a single, pinpoint star I was pretty sure wasn’t there before.

I coughed, and my ribs screamed at me. I spat out blood, or maybe it was just the taste of the past hour condensed into a single, bitter molecule. My hands worked, my legs worked, my brain was still jury-rigging reality in the background.

I lay there, counting my breathing, until I realized I wasn’t alone.

Dax was there. Not dead, not broken—just lying on his side in a cradle of twisted steel and whatever passed for hope in the aftermath of an orbital strike. He groaned, then rolled over, propping himself up on one elbow.

His first words: “Did we win?”

I laughed, and it hurt so much I almost passed out.

“Define ‘win,’” I said, once the world stopped spinning.

He wiped the blood off his chin and grinned. “Still alive. That’s a start.”

I nodded, though the motion made everything worse. I tried to get up, but my left leg was pinned by a chunk of wall the size of an existential crisis. I braced, pushed, and the wall moved, just a little, but enough for Dax to see me struggling.

He crawled over, and together we shifted the debris, inch by inch, until my leg came free. The pain was real now, bone-deep and electric, but nothing felt broken that wasn’t already on the list.

Dax looked at me, eyes wide. “You’re glowing.”

“So are you,” I shot back, though it was a lie.

He snorted. “That’s just the adrenaline. Yours looks… different.”

I flexed my hand, and the blue-white light spiraled down my veins, pooling in my palm. It flickered, then steadied. I held it up, watching it illuminate the dark.

“Think it’s permanent?” I asked, only half-joking.

He shrugged, which in Dax Meldin language meant “could be worse.”

Above us, the building creaked. Somewhere in the distance, alarms were starting up, and the orange pulse of emergency drones was already lighting the rubble. But in our little pocket of aftermath, everything was still, almost peaceful.

I closed my eyes, tried to remember what it felt like to be ordinary, but the memory wouldn’t load. All I could remember was the last few seconds: the feeling of the world bending, the taste of potential in my mouth, the way the blue-white light connected me to everything around me.

I wasn’t scared, not exactly. But I wasn’t ready, either.