The first explosion rocked the Magnus so violently that Elion was thrown face-first into the wall. His nose crunched against the metal, blood immediately hot and thick down his lips. The emergency klaxons screamed, their wail cutting through the groaning of stressed bulkheads.
"All hands—breach in sectors seven through nine," the ship's automated voice announced calmly, as if discussing the weather. "Void Maw Reavers boarding."
Elion wiped his face with his sleeve, the fabric coming away red. Around him, the corridor was chaos—janitors scrambling, enforcers barking orders, sparks raining from ruptured conduits. The pirates had come out of nowhere, their attack perfectly timed with the shift change when security was thinnest.
THE CAGE
He didn't see Vorian until it was too late.
A hand clamped onto his shoulder, fingers digging in like steel talons. Elion twisted, but the Executor's grip was unbreakable. Vorian's usually pristine robes were torn, his cybernetic eye flickering erratically—but his glaive still hummed with deadly intent.
"Did you really think," Vorian murmured, his breath minty and cold against Elion's ear, "that a little pirate raid would save you?"
The Executor dragged him backward, toward a door marked PROCESSING. Inside, a single glass cylinder stood waiting, its interior lined with needle-thin tubes.
Elion's breath came in ragged gasps. He'd seen what those tubes did.
Then—
BOOM.
The entire ship lurched as something massive impacted the hull. Vorian staggered, his grip slipping just enough—
Elion drove his elbow into the Executor's ribs and ran.
THE SUIT
The exo-suit locker was in disarray, most of the rigs already taken or damaged. Elion grabbed the only one left—a battered Rusthound model with peeling paint and stiff joints. He slammed the activation rune, the suit hissing as it unfolded around him.
The HUD flickered to life, displaying:
[O2: 00:30:00
THRUSTERS: OFFLINE
WEAPONS: OFFLINE
A glorified coffin with legs.]
The locker door exploded inward.
Vorian stood framed in the wreckage, his robes now singed, blood trickling from his cracked ocular implant. He raised his glaive—
—and the Magnus screamed as its hull split open.
THE VOID
The decompression hit like a god's fist.
Elion was ripped backward, the suit's mag-boots tearing free of the deck. For one terrifying second, he saw the stars—then the breach yawned before him, a maw of pure blackness.
He hit the edge of the torn hull, fingers scrambling for purchase. Below, the battle raged—pirate skiffs swarming like locusts, their mechas tearing into the Magnus with brutal efficiency. One of them, larger than the others, had claws made from what looked like salvaged starship prows.
Vorian stepped toward him, glaive raised.
Elion let go.
The void swallowed him whole.
THE DRIFT
"And here we are at the beginning of everything which was also the end of me as I float towards the endless space", Elion groaned.
Silence.
Not the quiet of an empty room, but the absolute silence of the vacuum. Elion tumbled slowly, the Magnus shrinking in the distance. His suit's oxygen counter ticked down with cruel precision.
00:04:59… 00:04:58…
He closed his eyes.
Then—
Heat.
Burning, blistering heat against his ankle where the Key was hidden. The pain was so sudden and intense that Elion gasped, his breath fogging the visor. The suit's HUD flickered, then rebooted, displaying a single line of text:
[CELESTIAL COORDINATES ACQUIRED]
Ahead, the stars twisted.
Something vast and jagged loomed in the darkness—a shattered dimension, its broken edges glowing with eerie blue light.
The Celestial Forge.
And it swallowed him whole.