Page 36 of She Who Devours the Stars

He swallowed, then checked the numbers. “If it fires, the whole system is gone. But it’s not charging anything. It’s just… hovering.”

Dyris set her tea down and leaned in, letting the glow of the screens wash over her. The image resolved. There was the city, or what was left of it. And above, impossibly vast, the mythship Vireleth. The hull was wrong, shifting, bleeding energy, fractal at every scale, but it was hers, all the same.

The bridge dissolved into whispering, fear, the muffled cries of people who’d seen their own deaths in every simulation. Dyris listened, the sound soothing, and then returned her attention to the planet.

“Ma’am, we’re picking up a new signal. It’s…” The tech hesitated. “It’s a Trivane signature.”

Dyris closed her eyes, just for a second. “Patch it through.”

The screens cut, then flickered back, this time to a projection so sharp it made the world outside look like a child’s drawing.

Lioren.

He was shirtless, of course. He was always shirtless, even in the most official Accord record. He lounged in a ridiculous chair, legs draped over one arm, the other hand holding a mythglass half-full of something that looked like liquid morning. His hairwas wild, Trivane black with frosted tips, and his eyes were the same impossible blue as the event horizon eating the city below.

He grinned, then lifted the glass in a salute.

“If you’re seeing this, congratulations,” he said, voice carrying over the comms with a warmth that could sterilize a city. “It means someone tried to kill my recursion. Bold. Stupid. Predictable. But I respect the effort.”

The bridge went silent. Even the techs stopped breathing.

Lioren leaned forward. “By now, you’re panicking. The Accord always does. You’re wondering: Is the Closure Protocol active? Will the mythship fire? Am I going to get sucked into a planetary toilet? The answer to all three is: Probably.”

He sipped the drink. “But don’t worry. I’m not here to end the world. I’m here to wake it up.”

A second image appeared, this one of Fern, standing at the center of the blast, wild-eyed and alive. The words flashed in dead-white text beneath: “Nullarch Confirmed. Trivane Awakens.”

Lioren’s projection winked out.

Static danced across the bridge, the echo of a laugh too big for the bandwidth.

Just as the bridge noise started creeping back, another alert flickered onto the main interface. Not a comms request. Not sensor telemetry. Just a single-line system directive, stamped with Vault-level authority no one on this ship could override:

“Mythic Bandwidth Saturation: No Further Actions Permitted.”

Dyris read it twice. Then a third time.

Someone behind her swore. Someone else started crying.

Another alert popped, this one flagged for public distribution across Accord channels. Dyris barely glanced at it, but the headline burned bright:

“Incident Responsibility Determined: Unauthorized Action by Field Commander Halvec Strain (House Grel). Immediate Recall Pending Tribunal.”

Dyris smiled without humor. Of course. Someone had to bleed before the Vaults started noticing.

She didn’t flinch. Just lifted her tea, aimed it toward Lioren’s last transmission, and said, quiet and resigned: “Yeah. That tracks.”

She remembered the archive. The locked room, the old, suppressed feed. The legend: Zevelune, before she broke with the Accord, standing in the council chamber, her arms bare, her voice a hammer.

“If Lioren ever dies properly,” she’d said, “he’ll trigger something catastrophic. Probably smug. Possibly shirtless.”

Dyris had never understood why it made her want to smile, even in the moment of existential terror.

She watched as the city below started to come alive again, survivors picking their way through the debris, new myth weaving itself into every step.

The sensor tech spoke, voice barely a whisper. “What do we do, ma’am?”

Dyris considered, then shrugged. “We watch. And hope there’s something left to report when it’s over.”