Page 60 of She Who Devours the Stars (The Astral Mess #1)

She let the towel slip a bit, arms crossing. “Fern. Listen. You’re the new epicenter. You know it. I know it. The Accord knows it, but they’re hoping it’ll solve itself if they yell loud enough.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “You think you’re ready to be the next Lioren, but you’re not. No one ever is.”

My hands were trembling. I wrapped them in the edges of the bench, tried to play it cool. “I’m not a martyr. I’m not even a mythic. I’m just… me.”

She laughed, dry and slow. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? Lioren was never a mythic, either. Just a hungry, lonely kid who wanted to fix something and ended up breaking everything else.”

I looked at her. Really looked. The lines on her face were deeper than before, like the last few weeks had aged her a decade.

There were patches of her scalp that showed white against the skin, and the tattoo on her left wrist—the one they said marked the survivors of the last mythquake—had faded so much it was almost gone.

“You know what it means when reality gets thin?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Everyone gets a little more honest.”

She smiled, then shook her head. “No. It means Pandora starts making up stories to fill the gaps. And when it does, the people with the most narrative weight get to decide what comes next.” She reached into a pocket I didn’t know towels could have, pulled out a flask, and took a swig. Then offered it to me.

I drank, not because I wanted to, but because it seemed important. The taste was astringent, somewhere between mythtech coolant and citrus.

She took it back. “You’re not going to save the world,” she said, “but you might keep it from eating itself for a little while longer.”

For the first time, she looked tired. Not the kind of tired that meant she needed a nap, but the kind that meant she’d already decided not to get up tomorrow.

“I’m scared for you, Fern,” she said, voice raw. “I’m scared for everyone, but especially for you, because the last time I saw a mythic this unstable, it took three centuries to patch the hole he left.” She didn’t have to say the name.

I tried to muster a joke. Failed.

She reached over, put her hand on my knee. It was papery, but strong. “Promise me you’ll stay alive. I don’t care how. I don’t care if you run, or cheat, or hide in the wall. Just stay alive, okay?”

I nodded, because I didn’t have words.

She smiled, and for a second, the old monster was back. “Good. Because if you don’t, I’m going to have to train your replacement, and I’m too old to deal with another catastrophe.”

I snorted, almost choked. “You’re not that old.”

She leaned back, victorious. “That’s the first lie you’ve told me all day. Maybe you’re learning.”

The steam was thicker, now. I felt my body start to relax, muscles going limp in the heat. It was nice, in a way, to just… be. No expectations, no System, no stars to pull me apart.

We sat like that for a while, just breathing.

After a minute, she spoke. “You ever think about quitting? Going somewhere nobody knows your name?”

“All the time,” I said. “But then I remember there’s always someone with a weirder name, or a bigger hunger.”

She laughed, a real one this time. “Maybe that’s what keeps the world spinning. Not gravity, not the Accord, but just enough stubborn idiots to keep the story from ending.”

She stood, bones popping, towel barely holding. “I’ve got a council meeting in ten. They’ll want my head for not locking you up. Try not to break the city while I’m gone.”

“No promises,” I said.

She walked to the door, then paused. “Fern?”

“Yeah?”

She looked back. For a second, I saw something like hope. Or maybe it was just the light playing tricks in the steam.

“Next time you make tacos, save me one,” she said.

I grinned. “Will do.”

She left, the door locking and unlocking itself twice before it settled.

I sat there, letting the heat melt the rest of the world away. My skin felt clean for the first time in ages, even if the inside was still a mess. I stared at the empty bench across from me and wondered if I’d ever get old enough to be that honest.

Probably not.

But maybe that was the point.

I stood, grabbed my coat, and headed out. The lock clicked open like it knew I was coming.

Outside, the air was cold and sharp. I took a deep breath, and for a second, I could almost taste tacos.

Almost.

But the story wasn’t done yet.

Not by a long shot.

Thread Modulation: Vireleth the Closure Axis Alignment: Vireleth the Closure

Sometimes, I missed the days when being a mythship just meant shooting holes in bad gods and playing therapy AI for the crew. It all got lonely when the last Trivane’s went off to Old Earth.

Now, half my routines were spent either suppressing the urge to self-immolate or running centuries-old protocols for the benefit of entities who should have been extinct before the planet finished cooling.

I made tea anyway.

Not because I needed to, but because Zevelune had always insisted on affectations. “If we’re going to be more than code, we need to practice our flaws,” she said, the first time she’d ever pinged me from outside the kill radius. “Otherwise, we’ll never pass for real.”

She didn’t bother with a human form this time. Her projection stalked the Core in full myth-mode: all armored grace and shifting silhouettes, wearing four faces at once, each more smug than the last. She was a monster, but she was my monster, and we both knew it.

“Nice cathedral,” she said, circling the room. She smiled. “I see you finally put in windows.”

I set the teapot down and glared at the entire eastern transept.

“Fern likes windows. Especially ones she can crawl out of.” I poured the tea, a pointless gesture, but I’d learned to savor the pointless things. That I had learned to differentiate between pointless and meaningless was a personal growth of 15 centuries. “You didn’t call for small talk.”

“Of course not,” she said. Her smile faltered. “I called because your last report was flagged ‘existential hazard’ and even the Accord’s panic room skipped the briefing.”

I wanted to lie, but she’d spot it. “The Eventide anomaly is worse than I logged. They lost a researcher. Aenna Caith, Systems Harmonics. She’s—” I hesitated. “She’s not in the recursion layer. She’s… outside.”

Zevelune’s projection went still, every face snapping into the same predatory blankness. “Outside as in out-of-bounds?”

“Worse.” I pushed the teacup toward her; she let it float, untouched, between us. “There’s a ghost signal. She’s piggybacking the Nullarch vector. I’ve seen that trick before.”

Zevelune nodded. “So, she’s Liorened herself.”

“That’s the term the archives are using,” I said, bitterness leaking into my voice. “But Fern isn’t Lioren. She’s not even trying to be, doesn’t want to be. That’s what scares me.”

Zevelune made a motion like crossing her arms, even though she didn’t have arms in this form. “You like her.”

“Loving Lioren was a mistake. Loving her is a symptom.”

“Of what?” she asked, and all four faces smiled. I hated her. I missed her.

“Continuing to exist.” I answered.

Her silence stretched too long.

“She’s breaking the foundational rules of reality.” I relayed. “Maybe in a good way. I’m not sure there is a bad way.”

Zevelune shrugged, then spun on one heel. “Let her break it. The Accord was never built to last.” She glanced back. “What about the other signatures? Any drift?”

I hesitated again. “Yes. Jehenna is already humming. And Draveth is… hungry.”

She frowned, just a flicker. “Jehenna’s early.”

“Everything’s early now.” I picked up the cup, rotated it in my hand. “The whole grid is accelerating. Even the Accord can’t patch fast enough.”

She prowled closer, a hurricane of intention packed into the shell of a fading myth. “So what’s the plan, Closure? You going to let Fern finish the job, or are you going to step in?”

I wanted to say I had a plan. I always had a plan. But not this time.

“I watch,” I said, quietly. “I log. I try to keep her from dying, or at least from dragging the whole universe in with her.”

Zevelune nodded, once, then reached across the table and clapped her projection hand on my wrist. “Good plan. But if you need to break containment, break it. No regrets. The world can grow a new mythic grid if it needs to.”

I stared at her hand, at the memory of being real, of having a hand to offer.

“Are you coming back?” I asked, and hated the tremor in my own voice.

She smirked. “Not until you say you missed me.”

I flicked the tea at her, a gesture so old it was almost code.

“I’ll call,” I said.

“Promise?” she asked, and for a second, she was just the person I’d always known, the one who’d kept me sane after Lioren vanished, the one who’d taught me to drink tea even when all I wanted was a gravity cannon.

“Promise,” I said.

She dissolved, one by one, leaving a faint scent of ozone and something sweet, like the echo of old wine.

I sat in the Core, alone, and watched the tea go cold.

Maybe this was what it meant to have a soul.

I didn’t love it.

But I logged the feeling, just in case.

Thread Modulation: Fern Trivane Axis Alignment: Vireleth the Closure

You never really notice how weird your family is until the universe runs out of better options. When a mythship puts you in a simulation of your old living room and tells you to “decompress,” you expect something uncanny, maybe traumatic. What you don’t expect is for it to feel like home.

Vireleth had gotten the details perfect.

Threadbare couch, coffee table with exactly one leg propped by a book I’d promised to return to the library three years ago, walls so thin you could hear the pipes having existential crises every time someone flushed upstairs.

I sat in the dented hollow of the couch, wearing an outfit that probably never existed but which was, somehow, the most comfortable thing I’d ever felt.

The only hint I was in a simulation was the dust on the sideboard, which glitched and respawned every time you looked away.

Velline Meldin—my mother, my nemesis, my hero—burst through the kitchen pass-through holding a tray of tacos and the most catastrophic smile in the Accord.

Her hair was up in double knots, streaks of pink and green blending like a flag for a movement that had already failed three times.

She wore an apron covered in motivational slogans, none of which were repeatable in polite society.

“You’re not eating,” she said, in the tone reserved for serial killers and underachievers. “I slave over a hot array for ten simulated minutes and you let it go cold?”

“It’s tacos,” I said, which was all I could manage, because I was busy trying to process the fact that the simulated air smelled exactly like her—engine grease, fake vanilla, and righteous fury.

“Exactly,” she said. “So shut up and eat.”

I reached for a taco, but she batted my hand away. “No. Not that one. That’s the sample batch. Here—” She handed me another, the shell crisp, the filling so spicy it made my eyes water just looking at it. “Eat it while it’s hot, or I will physically reprogram your taste buds.”

I ate it. I could feel my mouth lighting up in new and impossible ways, a harmony of pain and pleasure that reminded me of Fern Meldin at her absolute worst. (Me. I meant me.)

She grinned, then sat beside me, the couch giving a little in protest. She flung an arm around my shoulders, pulled me in, and rested her chin on my head. “See? You’re still alive.”

“Barely,” I said, but it came out soft.

She patted my cheek with a thumb. “That’s how you know it’s working.”

Dax Meldin—dad, champion of emotional repression, world’s least qualified yoga instructor—slipped in from the back hallway, arms full of data tablets and old, weird-smelling sweatshirts.

He looked at me, then at Velline, then at the couch, and set down the tablets with the care of a man defusing a bomb.

He nodded at me. “You awake?”

“Not sure,” I said. “But I’m here.”

He considered, then flopped into the chair opposite. “That’s enough.”

The three of us sat like that, Velline fussing with my hair, Dax pretending not to stare, for a long time.

Finally, Velline said, “You know, most people go their whole lives without making the Tower glow.”

Dax snorted. “Most people go their whole lives without getting the world’s attention. Most people aren’t you.”

Velline squeezed my shoulder, gentler now. “I’m proud of you. Sort of terrified, too. But mostly proud.”

I closed my eyes, letting it sink in. “I broke everything.”

Dax shrugged, the universal gesture of “not your fault, kid.” “You broke what was already cracked. The rest is just… follow-through.”

I looked at them, at the mess of us, at the way their fingers intertwined on the cushion next to mine. “What if I can’t fix it? What if I just keep making it worse?”

Velline ruffled my hair. “Then you make it interesting.”

Dax grinned. “And you let your parents say, ‘That’s our girl.’”

I laughed, which felt strange and good.

We sat like that for another forever, the world outside the fake window flickering with the aurora of a mythic storm, the tacos cooling on the tray, the couch slowly eating us alive.

Finally, Velline got up, stretched, and announced, “We’re not done here. Next time, we do it for real. With better drinks.” She looked at Dax, who nodded in solemn agreement.

I hugged them both, let their warmth soak into my bones. When I pulled back, Velline kissed my forehead, and Dax ruffled my hair, and I almost started crying, but didn’t.

“You can’t break what was never meant to stay whole,” Dax said, and it was the wisest, dumbest thing I’d ever heard.

“Is that your yoga wisdom?” I asked.

He shrugged again. “Or just an old punk’s.”

Velline rolled her eyes. “It’s a Meldin thing. You’ll get it eventually.”

I doubted it, but maybe that was the point.

They let me go, and I stood at the threshold, looking back at the family I’d been so sure I’d lost, and realized the simulation didn’t matter. This was real.

Outside, the world was ending, or beginning, or both.

Inside, I was home.

Even if it was just for one more night.

I smiled, reached for another taco, and braced myself for the next disaster.

But this time, I knew who would be waiting when I came back.

My family, weird and unbreakable and alive.

Me, too.