Page 68 of She Who Devours the Stars

Ania paused. She was one of the few who remembered the real version, not the Accord myth. She circled behind me and, for a second, I braced for a blow. Instead she clapped my shoulder—harder than protocol allowed—and barked a short laugh.

“She’d better not be.” She flared her hands, a gesture that included the entire city outside her window. “There’s not enough left to burn.” She spun back to the desk and dropped into her own chair, a ring of glass and mythic suspension field that made her float half a centimeter above the floor. She flicked open a new file, eyes darting. “I’d hoped your friend would acclimate before the start of term. Maybe develop an allergy to headlines.”

I kept my voice neutral. “She acclimates by eating. It’s her style.”

“It’s a style that’s going to kill us all.” Ania snorted, then waved off her own melodrama. “You’re not here for a reprimand. You’re here because there’s something else.” She looked at me then, eyes gone dead serious, the bureaucrat dropped for the veteran. “Zevelune sent notification last night. She’s joining the faculty as a guest lecturer. She did not ask. She just timestamped her arrival and attached a security waiver.”

The words hit like a cold shower after a tranquilizer dart. “Zevelune—here?” I almost choked on the word. “Why?”

Ania grinned, all teeth and old scars. “Why else? She’s coming to finish what she started.” She eyed me. “She’s also requested you as her official liaison.”

I swallowed. “That’s not possible. House protocol—”

“Is meaningless to Zevelune.” Ania shrugged. “She doesn’t play the game, she writes the rulebook. And unless you’d like to explain to the galaxy why your Nullarch is running unsupervised, you’ll play along.”

I stared at the mythstone in my armrest, a swirl of blue-black catching the office lights. “Understood.”

She leaned back, satisfied. “You always were quick. That’s why I liked you.”

I glanced up, studied her for a moment, then said: “Anything else?”

Ania reached for her holo-pen, tapped the end of it on the desk like a gavel. “You wanted her alive, Dyris. This is what alive looks like.” She almost smiled. “Welcome to the future.”

I let the silence stretch, then answered: “And now the rest of the galaxy gets to suffer for it.”

Ania beamed. “That’s the spirit.” She dismissed half her overlays and keyed a private alert. A chime sounded, gentle but insistent. “One more thing,” she said, spinning the console toward me. “There’s a student already flagged for resonance instability and observational drift. The AI flagged her as…’unusually attentive.’”

The file popped up: Alyx Vieron. Face: young, guarded, jaw clenched like she expected the world to bite first.

Ania tapped the entry. “Keep an eye on her. Wouldn’t want a little curiosity to get the better of your containment protocols.”

I stared at the image, let my mind process the pattern of names and faces and what might break first.

“Then she’d better learn quickly,” I said.

Ania nodded, and for a moment, I caught the flicker of concern behind her bravado.

I left the office. The corridor outside pulsed with the world’s best insulation, every sound swallowed into mythic hush. I let my own feet carry me, mind already rewiring for what was next.

Alive. That’s what alive looked like.

I hoped the galaxy was ready for it.

Thread Modulation: Alyx Vieron

Axis Alignment: Lecutre Hall 7, Eventide

Professor Ipsum’s voice was so thoroughly weaponized against consciousness that, were he let loose on any other population, entire civilizations would have collapsed in a day from cumulative psychic boredom. He stood at the prow of Lecture Hall 7, projection clicker trembling in one hand, the other lost somewhere in his robes—no one had ever confirmed if he even had a left hand or if it was some kind of vestigial department legend.

“The mythic body,” he intoned, “is not merely a vector for resonance, but a contested site for the performance of desire, violence, and… mimesis.” Ipsum’s gaze swept the amphitheater, half-daring anyone to contradict a sentence whose main crime was existing. Most of the student body was already surfing REM cycles, heads bobbing like kelp forests in an invisible tide. The only exceptions were the Vaelith delegation—never slouched, never caught off guard, their attention laser-scorched by genetic mandate—and a handful of other legacy house kids, all of whomwould have rather died than be caught inattentive in front of an administrator with tenure.

I sat third row from the back, legs stretched so far into the aisle that the next person who tried to pass would either have to break my femur or make eye contact, and I could tell from experience which one they’d pick. My compad was open, but not to the lecture stream—never to the lecture stream. Instead I was updating my masterwork: a growing catalog of meme stencils, satirical heraldry, and a newly-launched series of stick-figure executions performed by personifications of the seven deadly data heuristics. Most of them involved impalements by protractors. One featured a death by “syllogistic immolation” that I’d been particularly proud of.

The assignment hit as predicted, exactly one quantum before the end of the session. Ipsum waited until just after the bell so nobody could leave, then conjured the prompt onto the projection wall with the dramatic flair of a priest lighting himself on fire for ratings.

“You will write three thousand words on the core of your resonance and what it reveals about your inner cosmology,” Ipsum announced, voice peaking at “threatening” before sliding back to terminal. “Due next cycle. Your silence is not a valid protest.”

The room groaned in unison, a choir of suffering, but I didn’t bother joining in. Instead I scrawled “bless this mess” in a fat serif at the top of my page and surrounded it with jagged little stars. Then I drew a miniature Ipsum being torn to shreds by a mob of angry thesis papers, each one labeled “Why?” or “Who is this for?”