Page 33 of She Who Devours the Stars (The Astral Mess #1)

Perc, who’d been silent until now, spoke with a reverence I’d never heard before: “EN ROUTE TO: Bean Vault. Security Override Accepted.” He pulsed twice, then shut down all secondary lights, the coffeepot equivalent of a religious trance.

For a few seconds, no one moved. Then they all turned to look at me, like maybe I had a better idea of what was happening, like maybe I could explain why the mythship had suddenly decided to bribe us all with our most unhinged, embarrassing cravings.

I stared at my own notification: ENJOY: UNLIMITED REPLICA CARNITAS TACOS (AUTHENTIC) & PEACE OF MIND. Did Vireleth just bribe my family with presents that would distract them from even thinking about the world we orbited? Was my ship that in tune with me?

I laughed, hollow and shocked, and showed them my screen. “It’s got us pegged.”

Velline’s eyes sparkled, a fresh, rare joy in her face. “It’s perfect,” she whispered, then immediately vanished down the corridor to go try on every outfit in history.

Dax lingered, conflicted, but after a second, the draw of Lioren’s forbidden diary was too much. He nodded at me once and disappeared, already queuing up the first transmission.

Perc, in his way, seemed to levitate, zooming toward the maintenance deck with a speed that felt almost obscene.

It took less than a minute for the lounge to clear out.

I sat there, alone with my fizz, the taste of it lingering. It was a perfect bribe, and I didn’t even resent it. It was just… efficient.

The loneliness hit a second later, sharp and familiar. Not sad, just real. The world had a way of reminding you that even family had a price, and sometimes the price was the promise of “just five minutes to myself.”

I raised my glass. The garnish had dissolved, the smiley faces melting to bright pulp.

“Bitches,” I said, but I meant it with love.

Then I laughed, drained the glass, and waited for the next disaster to call me home.

Thread Modulation: Fern Meldin Axis Alignment: Aboard Vireleth the Closure

It started as a tickle on the back of my neck. The kind you get when you’re one step ahead of a static shock, or when you sense someone watching from a window you forgot was open.

I ignored it at first. The mythship’s air system ran on a cycle, and with half the crew ghosting around their bribes, the ducts ran cold.

But as I walked from the lounge to the observation corridor, the sensation sharpened.

Not pain—more like a phantom hand, tracing the edge of my pulse just behind the left ear.

I rubbed it, fingers searching for a patch of sore muscle or maybe an early warning sign that my resonance was about to spike. Nothing. Just skin, soft and warm, humming with a slightly higher voltage than usual.

I kept walking. The corridor lights strobed from blue to gold, reacting to my approach, but I barely registered them. My focus narrowed to the feeling—a pressure, a low-grade magnetic drag, like I was caught in the tractor beam of someone’s memory.

I ducked into an alcove, pressing my back to the wall, and exhaled. The ship was silent. I checked the nearest panel—nothing but a scrolling feed of Eventide’s surface news, now obsessed with “Nullarch Arrival Party” coverage and rumors of my preferred taco condiment.

“You okay?” came a voice, close and sudden.

I jumped. Velline’s face peeked around the corner, eyes framed in a new violet shade I hadn’t seen before.

“Fine,” I said, “just… thought I felt something.”

She grinned, but softer than usual. “Maybe the mythship is flirting with you.”

I rolled my eyes. “Can ships get crushes?”

Velline considered. “If any ship could, it’d be this one. Besides, you’ve got that look.”

“What look?”

She shrugged. “Like you’re about to punch a ghost.”

I laughed, but it came out short and jagged. “Maybe I am.”

She reached out and squeezed my shoulder, just once. “You need anything, I’m a room away.”

Then she was gone, trailing the faint scent of sugar and ozone.

I lingered, letting the paranoia settle. My hand found its way back to my neck, and I pressed hard, half-expecting to draw blood. The sensation didn’t fade, but now it felt less like a warning and more like a countdown.

I walked to the end of the hall, found myself staring at the ship’s primary bridge display. Vireleth’s systems ran quiet, but every so often, a single console would flicker, then reroute its output through a series of encryption gates before vanishing from view.

I’d seen this pattern before: just after the mythship had erased a kill team from the planet’s surface. Back then, the reroute felt like a closing of ranks, a reflex to protect itself, or maybe its pilot. Now, it felt different. Less defensive, more… curious.

I let my fingers drift over the inactive keys, feeling the ship’s pulse vibrate through the panel. The chill was gone. In its place: a distant warmth, like the echo of laughter after a blackout, or the memory of a hand that never quite left your shoulder.

I closed my eyes. I could almost hear a voice, deep in the ship’s bones:

I see you.

It wasn’t menacing. It wasn’t even kind. It was just… attention. The kind you get when the world finally stops looking past you, and instead decides to watch, really watch, to see what you’ll do next.

I opened my eyes, and the feeling faded to background noise. The reroutes on the console stilled, and the news feed scrolled on as if nothing had happened.

I left the bridge, mind buzzing with the sense of being both more minor and more important than I’d ever been before.

In another place, maybe inside the mythship, maybe nowhere at all, a presence blinked. It remembered me. Or perhaps it had never stopped.

A thread had been pulled, and now the universe was waiting to see if I’d unravel or just get a little more interesting.

I flexed my hand, tracing the shape of the sensation, and smiled.

If someone was watching, I hoped they had a good seat.

This was going to get weird.

Thread Modulation: Dyris Vaelith Axis Modulation: Inside Vireleth the Closure, Captain’s Cabin

When I finally got off comms, my brain felt like a used battery: heavy, hot, and two seconds from leaking acid all over the rest of my body.

The captain’s quarters were dark, lit only by a pinprick of city-glow from the planet below.

I expected to find them empty, but Fern was there, sitting on the edge of the bed with her legs tucked to her chest and a ration bar balanced on one knee.

She stared straight ahead, chewing with the kind of intensity usually reserved for last meals.

I closed the door behind me, let the hiss of recycled air fill the space between us.

“Good news,” I said, voice flat. “We’re not being nuked. Bad news: they’re making us wait twenty-four hours before landfall. Something about ‘ceremony, tradition, symbolism.’” I mimed a jerk-off motion, just to see if she was still in there.

She didn’t look up. “Can’t wait to see what they roll out for ‘welcome the new mythic deviant.’”

I moved closer, but not too close. The last thing I wanted to do was crowd her.

“What’s that?” I nodded at the bar. It was half-unwrapped, mostly untouched.

She shrugged. “Lunch.”

“You know you don’t have to eat those anymore, right?” I tried for a joke. “You could conjure a five-star meal just by wishing it, or ask the ship for a nine-course tasting menu and get it instantly. Why ration paste?”

Fern peeled another sliver of the bar, popped it in her mouth, and chewed. “Because it doesn’t taste like anything.”

I sat on the floor, cross-legged, and let the silence stretch. I’d spent a decade learning to read every kind of hunger, but this one was new.

She picked at the wrapper, voice barely above a whisper.

“The more I say yes, the tacos, the mythship, the fizz, the louder it gets. The resonance is building up, and I want more every time. I can feel it in my bones. In my teeth. Even when I sleep.” She licked her lips, like the words themselves were a flavor she couldn’t get rid of.

“This stuff? It doesn’t want anything from me. ”

I thought about that for a while. The mythtech in my blood, the way my body sometimes forgot to breathe because the need to control, to suppress, was more substantial than the need for oxygen.

“Maybe you’re allowed to want things too,” I said. Not gently. Not cruelly. Just true.

Fern let the words hang, then finally looked at me. Her eyes were rimmed in blue, the resonance pulsing there. “That’s the scary part,” she said. “Not being hungry. Being allowed to eat.”

She set the bar down. Didn’t finish it.

I scooted over, so we were almost shoulder to shoulder, and leaned my head back against the wall.

“Tomorrow,” I said, “we’ll have to look like we’re ready for this.”

She snorted. “Do you even own a shirt with sleeves?”

I grinned. “I’ll make you a deal. I wear sleeves, you wear something other than regret and trauma.”

Fern smiled, real and small. “No promises.”

We sat together in the dark, just breathing. Sometimes that was enough.

Most times, it was all you got.

I closed my eyes, and for the first time in months, the ache behind them wasn’t from loss or terror.

It was just… wanting.

And that felt almost human.

Thread Modulation: Fern Meldin Axis Modulation: Inside Vireleth the Closure

I was, to put it mildly, deeply fucked up on sugar and existential dread.

The mythship’s corridors blurred at the edges, lighting striping my vision in aquatic colors as I navigated them barefoot, a half-dissolved churro clutched in my left hand like it was the last honest thing in the galaxy.

Some asshat had adjusted the grav settings, and every few steps my weight rebounded, like the deck wanted to launch me through the ceiling or push me into the floor.

I loved it, mostly. It meant I could float down the halls and not feel so heavy for once.