Page 43 of She Who Devours the Stars (The Astral Mess #1)

We broke for lunch. Fern vanished in under a second, trailing only a vapor trace of sass and maybe a curse for whoever updated the cafeteria menu with “sovereign nachos.” I lingered near the door, thumb hovering over my screen, pretending to read messages I hadn’t checked in weeks.

Most were from my scholarship sponsor, a bot with the personality of a thumbtack, reminding me to “network and represent.” The rest were unfiltered memes of Fern, some from the class itself: her face, exaggerated, with laser eyes and captions like “Nullarch: She’ll Eat Your Lunch (and you). ”

I didn’t save them. I didn’t have to.

They were already burned in.

#

Combat Resonance Training came after. It was the only class that didn’t bore Fern into self-mutilation. She loved it, not because of the violence, but because it was the one arena where the rules were clear: you either held your ground, or you didn’t.

The instructor, a retired mythic with a jaw rebuilt from three different alloys, walked us onto the practice floor and lined us up in pairs. The lesson of the day: “Controlled Discharge.”

“Today,” the instructor said, “we’re not testing your power. We’re testing your restraint. Understood?”

Fern nodded, but her eyes didn’t agree.

She was paired against a practice dummy with the structural integrity of a riot wall. The rest of us got the standard foam-and-polymer mannequins, programmed to simulate resistance and then shatter if you overdid it. She faced hers like she already knew its secrets.

“In your own time, Ms. Trivane,” the instructor said.

Fern gave a two-finger salute, then snapped her hands forward.

The dummy didn’t just break. It ceased to exist. One millisecond it was there; the next, it was a cloud of perfectly spherical, prismatic droplets, each spinning so fast it made me dizzy just to watch.

For a second, the entire room froze, every eye locked on the glittering aftermath, until Fern waved her hand and collapsed the droplets into a single, flawless taco shell, which she caught midair and took a bite from.

She turned to the instructor, mouth full, and said, “I was hungry.”

The instructor blinked. “We were trying to evaluate your restraint.”

Fern wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then shrugged again. “Didn’t feel like holding back.”

You could feel the mythic field stutter, as if even the AI couldn’t decide whether to log it as an infraction or an upgrade.

Somebody in the back clapped. It might have been me.

#

After class, I found myself trailing Fern as she stalked the corridors, all movement and nervous energy and the faintest whiff of ozone. I kept my distance, but I knew she knew I was there.

She stopped at a vending node, punched in a code, and waited for the machine to decide whether it wanted to live or die. It spat out a can of Fizz, which she cracked open, then offered the second can to me without looking.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “it’s not laced. Unless you want it to be.”

I took the can, felt the chill in my hand, and waited.

She downed half her drink, then let out a sound somewhere between a sigh and a snarl.

“They think it’s about power,” she said, almost to herself. “They think if they measure it, name it, pin it down, it’ll stop mattering.”

I took a sip. It tasted like what the color blue would taste like if you turned it up to eleven. “You’re not wrong,” I said. “But you don’t have to burn every bridge on your way out.”

She grinned, all teeth. “I like the fire.”

We stood in silence. Somewhere down the hall, the System reset the lights, then stuttered, then reset again.

“You’re not what I expected,” she said.

I tried to play it cool. “Neither are you.”

Fern finished her Fizz, crushed the can, and tossed it over her shoulder. It ricocheted off the wall and landed in the recycling slot without a sound.

She looked at me, really looked, for the first time.

“Hungry?” she said.

I wanted to say yes.

But the words stuck in my throat.

She shrugged, as if she understood, and walked away, leaving a trail of mythic afterburn in her wake.

I watched her go, the taste of my voice echoing on my tongue, and wondered if maybe, just maybe, there were hungers even a Nullarch was afraid to name.

Thread Modulation: Fern Trivane Axis Alignment: South Tower, Eventide

South Tower wasn’t really a tower. It was a mythic prank built into the bones of the Academy, a gravity flex, a void with windows, a place where the rules got tired and let you do whatever you wanted as long as you didn’t bring glass.

The spa floated in the middle, a disk of mineral water and soft blue stone, the temperature set exactly to “don’t ever leave. ”

I did not leave. I hovered over the pool, half-dressed, hair in lazy zero-G orbit around my head, body stretched the wrong way across three deck chairs I’d magpied from the lounge.

My boots were missing; I’d lost them in an earlier, less dignified argument with the anti-slip mats.

The only thing I wore right was the jacket, because it was bonded to my pulse and would have started a small civil war if I tried to take it off.

Dyris sat at the edge of the pool, one knee hugged to her chest, the other foot dipping circles in the water.

Her hair was up, face framed by the kind of casual shadow you only get when you’ve mastered self-illumination.

She didn’t lounge, didn’t sprawl; she arranged herself with the geometric precision of a knife block.

She watched me, silent, for a long time.

I broke first. “I thought the point was to get stronger,” I said, staring at the ceiling. “Instead, it’s all ‘find yourself’ and ‘harmonize your trauma’ and ‘what are you terrified of?’”

“You’re afraid of yourself,” Dyris said, without judgment. “So is everyone else.”

I let my arm flop into the pool, watched the refraction cut my hand in two. “You’re not.”

She smiled. “I didn’t say I was everyone.”

We let the water ripple.

Outside, the campus was a soft chaos of other people’s dreams. In here, it was quiet enough to think, if you dared.

“Doesn’t it get old,” I asked, “being the only one who knows what you want?”

She considered. “Not really. Most people don’t want anything real. They want something they can lose without bleeding out.”

I rolled onto my side, slouching so my head hung over the water’s edge. “You ever lose something that mattered?”

“Once,” she said. “Never again.”

For a second, the room hummed. Mythic tension, the kind that makes the walls want to tell secrets. I almost asked her what she meant, but I didn’t. Because that would make it real.

We watched each other. Or maybe just listened.

The silence made my skin itch.

So I did what I always did: sabotage.

I flicked my fingers, called the smallest possible white hole, and let it hover between us. It was a trick I’d learned by accident: call the void, shape it, feed it a little memory, and see what it spat out.

This one, barely big enough to swallow a marble, spun and glowed and then birthed a butterfly: pure energy, wings made of mythic math and old heartbreak. It zipped once around Dyris’s head, then spiraled into the pool, shedding blue stardust as it died.

I grinned. “Look,” I said, “education.”

Dyris tracked the butterfly until it vanished, then turned back to me, eyes sharp. “You make jokes like someone who’s never seen what happens when a white hole doesn’t close right.”

I bit my thumbnail, hiding a smile. “Then you haven’t seen my jokes land.”

Dyris’s mouth twitched. She didn’t laugh. But she let herself smile, and that was a bigger win than breaking a practice dummy in half.

“That’s why I’m planning ahead,” she said.

I let my hand drift, splashing water toward her. “You expecting me to blow a hole in the school?”

She shook her head, slow, deliberate. “No. I’m expecting Alyx to rupture, and you to blame yourself. And I’d rather not be caught unprepared when that happens.”

The words hit, low, and steady.

I didn’t say anything for a while.

Then: “...Sexy of you to admit.”

She let the silence do its job. Then: “I do everything sexy.”

I snorted. The sound echoed off the water, a little too loud, but I didn’t care.

We sat like that for a while, neither of us willing to give up the last word.

Finally, I stretched, let my feet graze the surface, and said, “You know, you’re not the only one planning ahead.”

Dyris tilted her head. “No?”

“I started making a list,” I said. “Of all the ways you might try to outmaneuver me.”

“And?”

I shrugged. “You’re winning. But I’m closing the gap.”

She grinned, genuine this time. “That’s all I ever wanted.”

Outside, the lights of the city pulsed, the world busy forgetting its own tragedies.

In here, we floated. Waiting.

Dyris looked at me, perfect and impossible, and said, “You’re going to save her. Even if it destroys you.”

I almost denied it.

But she was right.

So, I just grinned, wide and unapologetic, and said, “You are the worst Sexretary.”

She laughed, then, a soft sound, bright as a butterfly and gone just as fast.

When she stood to leave, I watched her go, counting every step.

When the door closed, I let myself fall into the pool, let the water take me whole, and thought about every joke that never landed, every hunger I still hadn’t named.

It was nice, for a minute, to just drift.

But I knew the next minute would be war.

And I was ready.

Thread Modulation: Fern Trivane Axis Alignment: Eventide Halls

It was late, or maybe early. The corridors were empty except for the mythic lighting, set to “low threat, moderate regret.” I was on my way to nowhere when I heard the footsteps behind me, bare, unhurried, intentional. Alyx.

I didn’t stop. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.

But she was faster. “You scare them,” she said, voice echoing in the high-ceilinged hush. “Not because you’re powerful. But because you don’t care.”

I turned, because I couldn’t not. She stood in the center of the hallway, all soft-edged and angry, like she’d just spent the last hour arguing with herself and won.

I grinned. “Who says I don’t care?”

She took a step closer, eyes locked to mine. “You pretend like nothing gets to you. But it does. It gets to all of us. You just don’t let anyone see it.”

I leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “So, what is it you want to see, Alyx? The meltdown? The Void Event? I’ve given them both already.”

She shook her head. “I want to know what’s left. After the joke, after the power, after everyone else runs away or burns out. What do you actually care about?”

I started to answer. Stopped. Started again.

“Dyris,” I said, voice low. “She’s the only one who ever got my number. She’s planning three moves ahead even when she says she isn’t. She makes the world feel smaller, and I like that.”

Alyx didn’t flinch. “What else?”

I thought about the spa, the way the water carried sound, the way Dyris let me talk until I ran out of ways to sabotage myself.

“You,” I said, before I could overthink it.

That stopped her.

I pushed off the wall, stepped into her space, and felt the air thicken. “I care about you, Alyx. Even if I’m not good at saying it. Even if I can’t say it without making it a punchline.”

She let the words settle. Her hands balled into fists, then relaxed, then hovered at her sides like she was getting ready to fly or punch me, maybe both.

“And the world?” she asked.

I shrugged. “The world’s a mess. Maybe I’ll care more if it ever bothers to care back.”

She smiled, but there was nothing soft in it. “Maybe you should make it earn you.”

Something trembled in the air, a deep background note. The mythscape around Alyx rippled, the ambient light flexing in time with her pulse.

I caught it, and my breath, both at once.

“Alyx…”

She shook her head, hard. “Don’t.” She bit her lip, and for a split second, I thought she might cry, or scream, or Awaken on the spot. She didn’t. She just breathed.

“You haven’t Awakened yet,” I said, softer than I meant.

She met my eyes. “I don’t need to. Not for this.”

For once, I was the one who didn’t have a comeback.

She stepped in closer, until we were nearly touching. The air between us was charged, not with myth, but with something rawer.

“Then maybe stop trying to carry me,” I said, voice almost a whisper. “I can handle it.”

She grinned, sudden and feral. “Was that flirting?”

“Only if you want it to be.”

She leaned in, just enough to make my heart stutter, then pulled back. “If it was, it was accidental.”

We laughed, together this time, and for a second, the world felt lighter.

Down the hall, I saw Dyris. She stood in the shadow of an arch, arms crossed, unreadable. I wanted to wave, or call out, or ask her to referee, but before I could, she turned and walked away, leaving us alone with the aftermath.

Alyx watched her go, then looked at me, and in her face I saw a million possible futures, all of them dangerous.

“Good night, Fern,” she said, and this time, she was the one who left first.

I waited until she was gone, then leaned against the wall, let the chill of it seep into my back, and counted the beats until my heart stopped racing.

I could still feel the pressure of her voice, lodged somewhere behind my sternum.

For a second, I let myself feel it.

Then I flicked a tiny illusion into the air: a little Alyx, making finger-hearts and smirking like she owned the place. I watched it dissolve, the afterimage lingering longer than it should.

“Better luck next time,” I said, but not loud enough for anyone but the wall to hear.

I walked on, the corridor empty, the world outside still a mess.

But for once, I didn’t mind.

Not even a little.