They camped that night by the smoldering remains of the wreck.
Kael sat apart, perched atop a jagged boulder, the smoke curling around him like old memories. His armor, still humming softly with latent energy, receded into a simpler form—lean, quiet, almost human again. He watched the children huddle around a makeshift fire, whispering in low voices, their glances drifting constantly toward him.
He understood their fear.
He had become something more beast than man on this world. The old Kael—the soldier, the leader—had long since rotted away, buried under years of survival and silence. All that remained now was a weapon shaped by regret.
And yet… when he looked into their eyes, he saw something he had not expected.
Faith.
Not the blind fanaticism he had seen on the battlefields of the empire. Not the desperate worship of starving colonies.
Real faith. Hope.
He cursed quietly under his breath and rose, the ground crunching beneath his boots.
As he approached, the youngest flinched, but one did not.
A boy, maybe fifteen standard cycles old, with tangled black hair and a jagged scar running from his jaw to his brow. His labor suit was ragged, parts fused together from three different models, but he wore it with a stubborn pride. He didn't look away when Kael stopped before him.
"What's your name?" Kael asked, voice rough.
The boy hesitated, then squared his shoulders. "Tarin."
Kael nodded slowly. "You fought back."
Tarin's mouth tightened. "I tried." His voice was hard, brittle, too old for his years. "They killed the ones who did better."
Kael's jaw clenched. His fists curled unconsciously.
Tarin took a shaky breath, meeting Kael's gaze. "You're him. The Ivory Dread. You were supposed to be dead."
Kael let out a low, humorless chuckle. "Dead would've been easier."
The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks into the air. The other children watched in silence, waiting.
Tarin stepped closer. "Can you teach us?"
Kael stiffened.
He had survived by rejecting the galaxy, by burying his past in the soil of this savage world. Taking these children under his wing would mean more than just survival. It would mean hope. Responsibility. War.
And war always demanded a price.
"I can teach you how to survive," Kael said finally, his voice low and grim. "How to fight. How to forge yourselves into something no one can ever break again."
Tarin's eyes blazed with fierce determination. "Then we'll learn."
Around them, the fire crackled higher, as if stirred by the boy's resolve.
Kael looked over the group—half-starved, broken, terrified. Yet in each of them, he saw the same ember, the same stubborn light. It was faint, but it was real.
The Aegis Forge within Kael stirred, sensing the potential, the raw psychic energy tangled inside these children, dormant but waiting to be called forth. The suits they wore were primitive, but that didn't matter. What mattered was the mind. The will.
Kael turned back to Tarin.
"Tomorrow," he said. "We begin."
⸻
They rose with the sun—what passed for a sun on this wild world—a bloated, blood-red giant hanging heavy in the sky. The beasts of the jungle stirred around them, and Kael led them into the wilderness without a word.
Training didn't begin with weapons. It began with survival.
They scaled cliffs of razorstone. They crossed rivers teeming with fanged leviathans. They learned to move silent, to strike hard, to trust their instincts.
At night, Kael showed them the first techniques of the Aegis Forge—how to reach into their suits with their minds, how to mold the armor to their will. It was brutal, painful work. Most collapsed from exhaustion. Some cried. Some screamed.
But Tarin never broke.
Each day he grew stronger, his labor suit beginning to shift under his touch—primitive, clumsy, but unmistakably alive. He was the first to shape a weapon from his suit: a jagged blade, born not of metal, but of thought and fury.
Kael watched him with a silent, guarded pride.
He remembered what it had been like, long ago, to stand on the edge of greatness and fear what you might become.
⸻
Weeks passed, and the children became something new. No longer frightened prey. No longer slaves.
They were warriors being forged in fire and blood.
And the galaxy—broken, chaotic, hungry—was not blind. Word of the crashed ship, of the survivors, of the ghostly warrior who had risen from legend—had begun to spread.
Kael knew it wouldn't be long before others came.
Slavers. Warlords. Zealots hungry to bind the Aegis-wielders to their cause.
The old world he had fled was reaching for him once more, clawing through the stars to drag him back.
And this time, he would not run.
Kael Riven, the Ivory Dread, would carve a new future from the ashes of the past.
Or he would die trying.