Page 98 of She Who Devours the Stars

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I froze.

For a nanosecond, something looked back: an eye of light, wide as a galaxy, so full of gravity it threatened to swallow the room whole. It was her. Not Fern, not the myth, but the thing behind both, the hunger that built the world and wanted to remake it. It saw me. I saw it. The room shuddered, every plastic surface humming with power, my own hands shaking with the rawness of the connection.

My glasses almost fell off. I caught them, gasped, and started laughing. Not out of fear, but pure, perfect delight.

She was real.

And so was I.

I wiped the blue ink on my lab coat, ignored the blood beading where I’d gripped the stylus too hard, and started writing again, faster this time, certain that if I just chased the waveform far enough, I could catch up.

I would see her again. I would survive it. I would not look away.

Chapter 13: The Crack in Her Core

Thread Modulation: Fern Trivane

Axis Alignment: South Tower

Dyris’s quarters were supposed to be off-limits to everyone but disaster response. That made sense, given the quarter-megaton of containment wards woven into the frame, the micro-singularity that hovered in the sub-basement, and the fact that last time I broke in, the door spent a week apologizing to the rest of the building.

But this time, I didn’t even have to try.

I stepped through the seal like light through old glass. The security arch barely bothered to flicker, just shuddered, then reset behind me, the air in the gap re-welding itself with a magnetic snarl I felt in my teeth. Not a click or a slam, but something more permanent. Like the room wanted me in and didn’t plan to let me out.

Dyris stood at the far end of the chamber, silhouetted against an arching window. Her war silk hung open, the folds shifting as she moved, if she moved. Hair still damp from whatever cleansing ritual she’d practiced after the last diplomatic bloodletting. She didn’t turn. She never needed to.

The rest of the suite was empty of witnesses, though the air was thick with the kind of hush that made even the furniture think twice before creaking. The walls were mythstone, black, threaded with platinum, and curved up and in, funneling every stray photon toward the window where Dyris held the city at bay.

I let my boots tap a little too loud on the way in, just to prove I hadn’t died overnight. Each step pulled the room’s gravity a fraction sideways. The floor sloped under me, subtle but definite, like it wanted to pour me forward and keep Dyris grounded where she was. I rolled my foot, found the balance, then lost it again because the only way to stay upright here was to let the place own you.

I didn’t speak. Words would have been an insult, or worse, a stall tactic.

Dyris spoke anyway. Her voice was so low I felt it before I heard it, a vibration that started in my ribs and worked up.

“Do I have to beg for a goodbye this time?” She didn’t move. “Or do you only steal exits when no one’s watching?”

If she’d stabbed me, it would have been easier. She was always like this, sharp as a law and twice as binding.

I could have played coy. Could have deflected, made a joke, blamed the Accord or the Astrum or even Alyx. Instead, I let the silence stretch. I could feel her sense it, taste the way my mythic signature threatened to blow out the dampeners. The walls fuzzed at the edges of my vision; little arcs of static ran along the mirror frames, spidering out like veins.

“I’m not here to leave,” I said, finally. My voice didn’t sound like mine. It sounded like the room’s. “Not tonight. Not you. Not ever.”

She exhaled, and that was all the invitation I needed.

I came closer. The gravity bunched under my heels, threatening to flip, but I let it. My body hummed, not with violence, not with the old hunger, but something else. Something newer, stranger. I wanted to break the place open, but not in the way I used to. This was not entropy. This was… maybe the opposite. Did that make it creation?

My hands flexed at my sides. I watched my fingers: the glow there was not starlight, not the blue-white I’d bled into half a dozen mythscapes. This was darker, denser. The kind of light you only got when you squeezed photons until they begged for release.

Dyris didn’t turn, but she tensed, just a fraction. I felt the change in her posture, the way her hands went from relaxed to ready. She could have killed me if she’d wanted to. She could have triggered some fail-safe and ended the room, or even the tower, with a word. But she didn’t. She waited.

“You’re losing restraint,” she said. It was a warning, and a dare.

I clenched my jaw, then relaxed it. “If you wanted restraint, you’d have married an accountant.”

She snorted, but it was almost a laugh. The air in the chamber thickened, curdling with tension. It didn’t help that my coat was already unraveling behind me. Threads tugged free, rising in slow spirals that reversed gravity, then time. Each filament glowed, then faded, then rebuilt itself, only to dissolve again. I couldn’t make it stop, so I just let it happen.