The descent was a slow, quiet fall through a shroud of gray.

  The Ghost Step stayed in orbit to keep watch as The Cradle of Gravity moved down like a solo act mourning procession, the engines breathing fresh sound into the dead world. As they watched through the viewport, the ground resolved into a monochrome wasteland, a landscape painted in a thousand shades of ash and ruin. There were no greens, no blues, no vibrant colors of life that Soren remembered in his fractured memories.

  There was only gray sky, black glassed earth, and bone-white dirt.

  Raine set the ship down with a gentle tremor, the landing struts crunching on the fused, crystalline surface with a sound like breaking teeth. For a long moment after the thrusters wound down, no one moved. They just stared out at the tomb of a world that had birthed humanity. Then he realized everyone was waiting for him.

  So he turned from the viewport, slowly making his way out of the common room. Aurania, Amalia, Brolgar, Brana—they all fell in step with him. As soon as they reached the stairs, Inelius and Raine were there too. The group descended to the cargo hold without a word, extending the ramp and cycling the bay doors open.

  The air that met them was thin, cold, and tasted of ancient metal and dust. It was breathable, barely, but it felt wrong in his lungs, like an empty echo of a memory. He stepped down the ramp and onto the ground, his boots crunching on a surface.

  He looked out over the ruins of Rome.

  Or what was left of it.

  The iconic shapes he had dreamed of with Aurania, the proud lines of the Colosseum, the grand arches—they were gone. Melted. Erased.

  All that remained were skeletal, slagged structures, their forms warped and twisted into grotesque sculptures by an unimaginable heat. A perpetual gray haze hung in the still air, diffusing the weak light of the distant sun into a flat, shadowless gloom.

  The rest of the team filed out behind him, their footsteps a quiet, deafening cadence in the silence. Aurania came to stand beside him, her hand a comforting presence on his back, but she said nothing. Raine and Amalia, their usual bright energy extinguished, looked around with wide eyes of somber awe. Even Brolgar and Brana, their usually gruff demeanors, stood in reverent shock.

  Inelius stepped across the ashen ground, all four arms crossed as his gaze swept the devastation. He kicked at a piece of fused metal and muttered, "It looks just like that pirate base where we ran into the Lilithists."

  Soren snarled at the words, disgust washing over him. Inelius was right. He stared out at the ruins of his home planet, at the scorched evidence of a purge, and the fragile ember of hope in his chest smothered out. He had come here for answers. For closure.

  But now he just wanted to know what killed this world.

  The Ghost Step was an island of calm in a sea of stars, hanging gently above the husk that used to be Earth.

  Tamiyo sat cross-legged on a floor cushion, a heavy cable plugged into the base of her skull, connecting her to Echo’s digital world. The Graviton Anchor's encrypted data swirled between the two CIPHERs in a hurricane of defiant code. They were deep in the trenches, untangling layers of code so complex they felt more like ancient spells than modern algorithms.

  As the two of them knocked a fractal matrix back and forth, whittling it down to release its secrets, Tamiyo could hear the low murmur of conversation in the background of reality.

  Violet and Veolo were lounging about Lucien’s advanced ship, they’d go down and see the planet later, after Soren had taken his first breaths of return. They had already made themselves at home and were currently making Lucien just shy of uncomfortable.

  “Wait, so your legs are cybernetically enhanced?” Veolo asked excitedly.

  “Yes,” Lucien said in a small voice. “A lot of me is. I have undergone many surgeries to make me more effective in the field.”

  “How did you select which upgrades to get?” Violet asked, voice full of interest.

  Lucien hesitated. “Not all of them were… my choice.”

  After a moment, his voice got a little firmer. “Before I broke ties with the Conservatory the first time, they kind of owned me. Mission success was always priority, even if well-being or comfort was sacrificed to achieve results.”

  “Shit,” Veolo breathed hotly. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Thank you,” he said quietly. “I started operating more independently before I officially split—growing distant from them, not seeing eye-to-eye. Then I met Echo and she… accelerated the changing of my perspective.”

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  They laughed genuinely.

  Veolo said, “You two are really cute together—”

  The ship's systems died.

  One moment, Tamiyo and Echo were in cyberspace, dismantling decryption with surgical precision—the next, she was slammed back into reality as The Ghost Step was plunged into a dead, suffocating silence.

  Red emergency lights flickered to life, washing the room in crimson.

  "Status!" Lucien was on his feet in an instant, already reaching for the mask on the console. "Echo, report! What was that?"

  “External cyber-attack!” Echo’s hologram appeared, glitching violently. Her form dissolved into a shower of static for a second before snapping back.

  “Who the fuck could’ve snuck up on us?!” Lucien roared, dropping into the pilot’s chair.

  “It's Conservatory,” Echo yelled out. “Top-tier. They bypassed my primary defenses... I didn't even see them coming! Ship's systems are completely locked down. We're dead in the water!”

  Lucien placed the mask onto his face, the seals hissing as they locked into place. "That's impossible!" The filtered rasp of Pulse returned like an angry, electric demon. "No one should have been able to get a lock on us out here. The level of tech required to bypass our systems—”

  "Mr. Thorne,” a voice broke over the comms, so cold and calm it surpassed smug. “Such a shame you had to throw your hat into the ring with these pitiful creatures. I’ll be taking back the Conservatory property you have in your possession."

  A cold pit of terror gripped Tamiyo’s chest.

  "Sable?!" Pulse breathed furiously.

  Violet rounded on Pulse, snarling like she was ready to tear his heart out. “You know that piece of shit?!”

  "Mainly by reputation," Pulse bit out, ignoring her fury. "I can't fuckin’ stand him."

  Outside, the black of space was no longer empty. The sleek, white forms of Conservatory frigates and at least one heavy warship had materialized around them. They were surrounded, disabled, and utterly defenseless.

  “What property are they talking about?” Veolo growled.

  "I’m guessing the CIPHERs," Pulse said. "But he wouldn't have come all this way just for me."

  “Oh yeah, we’ve tangled once before with this asshole.” Veolo’s eyes burned with cold fire. “He killed a good friend of ours. They want a fucking fight, let me at 'em.”

  "They won't give us one," Pulse said, his tone a flat line of resignation. He stood from his chair to face them. "They’ll gas us and knock us out before we can even present a target."

  As if on cue, they felt a heavy thump reverberate through the hull, the jarring, metallic sound of a docking clamp latching onto their ship.

  “What a bunch of fuckin’ cowards!” Veolo roared.

  Violet looked directly at Tamiyo, and the two locked eyes, a shared understanding of the dark threats staring them all in the face. Then Violet turned to Pulse. "Lucien, listen very close."

  Her voice carried the firm resolve of a true lacravida warrior. "I have a plan, but it’s a risky one. Tell me everything you know about the field gear Sable’s men may have on them.”

  A violent burst of static crackled over the comms, ripping through the quiet reverence of the ruined world. It was followed by a panicked cry from Tamiyo.

  “S—ren! —rania! —Sable! —He’s here!”

  The world seemed to tilt on its axis.

  Soren’s blood went from ice to fire in a roaring instant. He spun, his gaze snapping upward to the sky.

  "Everyone get to the ship!" Aurania roared.

  Raine had already started sprinting.

  The Aether Dust ignited, a searing heat that flooded his veins. The world snapped into a hyper-aware, vibrant clarity. Amalia had told him to fly—he was going to launch straight into orbit and tear their ships apart with his bare hands.

  But as soon as he bent his knees to leap—

  The sky fell.

  Streaks of pure, white-hot energy rained down from above, a storm of ordnance that screamed through the thin atmosphere.

  The first struck The Cradle of Gravity, an explosive blast thundering outwards and slamming Raine off her feet. She flew backward with a squeal, barely saved by Aurania diving to catch her.

  Three more blasts impacted near their group, and Soren threw his hands out on pure instinct. A domed shield of pure gravity formed around them. An instant later, one of the blasts rang off the barrier.

  It would have killed everyone but him.

  Another large volley impacted a hundred meters away, the ground erupting in a ground-shaking explosion of molten rock. The blasts were clearly intended to keep him pinned while they made their escape.

  The world became a symphony of concussive force. Explosions hammered against the barrier—deep, gut-wrenching WHUMPS shaking the very foundations of the dead world. From inside, the sky was a terrifying light show, the ordnance blooming into blinding flashes against his transparent wall. He could feel the strain, pulling back more and more golden shards to draw on his silver-green sphere of power as the immense, crushing pressure of a warship's fury slammed down on him. The ground beneath his feet cracked and groaned, but he refused to yield.

  He would not fail this time.

  Another blast clipped The Cradle of Gravity and the ship seemed to scream in pain with a high-pitched shriek of tortured metal. He looked down beside him to see the rest of his group circled around Raine.

  She lay in Inelius’ arms, unconscious. Burns covered the front of her—the purple hair singed and smoking. Her left arm and left leg were gone, the metallic limbs mangled into twisted chrome and severed cables. Beneath her synthetic skin, metal was peeled back to reveal a sparking framework underneath.

  Soren gritted his teeth as his muscles screamed. He cracked every shard apart and let the sphere lay bare, fully tapped into what he had at his disposal. His vision started to blur at the edges as he poured every ounce of his love and sorrow into keeping them alive.

  He was a man filled with power, standing on the corpse of his home with tears in his eyes.

  He was a powerless god, holding back hellfire that rained down from heaven.