Page 89 of She Who Devours the Stars

Fern stroked my back, slow and gentle, and whispered, “You’re fucking incredible, you know that?”

It wasn’t just the words, it was the way she said it. Like she was starving. Like I wasn’t just someone she wanted, but someone she’d been aching for, dangerous, rare, impossible, and now that she had me, she didn’t intend to let go. There was hunger in hervoice, enough to shake the air between us, enough to make me realize the Nullarch wanted me. All of me.

That truth landed like a blow, beautiful, but also terrifying. I wasn’t sure I could survive being wanted like that.

I laughed, shaky and happy, and didn’t say anything. There was nothing left to say.

The trial’s mythic overlay flickered once, then resolved into a single, perfect line:

I looked up at Fern. She smiled at me, soft now, almost shy.

“You did it,” she said. “You owned the world.”

I smiled back, and for the first time, believed it.

Thread Modulation: Fern Trivane

Axis Alignment: Trial

Alyx’s body didn’t calm down, not right away.

If anything, she got worse: every breath glitched, every heartbeat hit like a detonation. The city around us shuddered, code peeling at the edges. Her skin flared too hot and her eyes shifted, no pupil, no brown, just burning data drifting into the air like a system crash in real-time.

She was smiling. Wide and bright, maybe too bright, cracked at the edges like she was riding a high that would kill her.

I wrapped both arms around her and held on, because she was vibrating so hard I thought she might break apart, or take off and leave me behind. Her chest heaved, slick with sweat, her skin fever-hot. My hand skimmed over her abdomen to flick some sweat away, to cool her down, but the second I touched her, she shuddered—full-body, like the contact pushed her closer to the edge.

She whispered something, breath hitching on each syllable, half sob, half code.

“Zero, one, yes, fuck—align, collapse, align—”

Her hands went to my back, nails digging in. She was lost, and loving it, but I could see the cracks in her: her mouth bled blue light, her eyes had been consumed by the Astrum, iris and sclera both gold, no brown left.

Recognition of the astral resonance flooded my mind, not just hers, but my own, too.

It slotted in like a circuit completing, a signal fired through a world’s bones. I could feel Eirona-Null, the machine intelligence, the city-mind—a Gestalt world, artificial and infinite, and now part of me. The Trial hadn’t just tested us, it had awoken another Astral Resonance inside of me, a real resonance to a real place, not the illusory world of the trial.

I could feel it in my skin, in the code-rush under my pulse: I could control machines. Disrupt technology, bend artificial environments like they were clay in my hands. I didn’t need to guess what Alyx had gained, but whatever it was, it was burning her alive, and she was loving it.

And no, as gratifying as it would be to claim I fucked her into meltdown, I didn’t. This wasn’t me. This was an unstable resonance, a powerful, sentient world, overwhelming a woman who couldn’t accept she was special, part of the story, a prominent member of the cast, and instead, she burned.

This is what everyone warned her about. A resonance unlocked in fire, and burning uncontrolled with mythic jet-fuel as a primer.

I stared at her mouth, familiar blue-white mythfire leaking from her lips: her eyes, all gold, all fire, no mortal left. If I didn’t catch her now, I’d lose her, forever.

So I pressed both palms to her chest, right on her heart, right between the breasts I’d just worshiped, and said, “Alyx. You’re not my echo. You’re the signal that followed.”

The world listened. Even Alyx listened. Her eyelids fluttered, and I could feel her attention on me, the struggle to remain aware, thinking, and her refusal to be swallowed by the Astrum or myth.

For a split second, everything froze. The city, the sky, even the air. Then my HUD screamed:

[SECONDARY STABILIZER IDENTIFIED: VIRELETH THE CLOSURE.]

The overlay rippled. Alyx collapsed into me, body limp, head on my shoulder.

I kissed the top of her hair, tasted salt, and wondered if Vireleth ever got tired of having to support a fuck up like me.

Alyx, burning bright with astral resonance and my mythfire, had trusted me to catch her. And gods help me, and her, I had. I didn’t deserve her, but I’d caught her anyway.