Gunjo slept, and his mind unraveled.
But there were no dreams of peace—no childhood laughter in sunlit fields, no comfort. Only the echo of forgotten memory, each one blooming in vivid, fractured color like dying stars gasping one last time.
He was a baby, just barely mobile—arms and legs too small for the gravity of the world around him. He crawled across a dying planet, its sky split into jagged black lines that bled fire. The ground was made of glass-strained obsidian, cracked into hexagonal plates like broken armor. Storms of ash floated like slow snow, and the corpses littering the land were no longer fresh.
Twisted bodies hung from inverted trees with hollow eyes. Their skin was peeled back like molten paper. Some had been fused together—limbs sewn into strange constellations of flesh by unknown weapons. Scorched symbols lined their torsos. Words in languages that had never been spoken aloud.
Gunjo, barely old enough to even make sense of his own limbs, crawled through their remains—unbothered, unafraid, guided only by instinct. Around him, the world mourned silently, the atmosphere thick with death and unspoken violence. But then—
A shadow fell.
From above, something descended. Slowly. Purposefully.
It wasn't a man. It wasn't even a god.
It was a constellation, walking between dimensions as easily as one walks across a field. It had no face, no skin. Its body was forged from the emptiness between stars, shaped vaguely like a humanoid figure, yet impossible to truly comprehend. Limbs that shimmered, flickered, vanished. A thin, black halo crackled over its featureless head, and two horns coiled upward like obsidian serpents. It radiated neither warmth nor cold—only gravity. Presence.
It said nothing.
It knelt.
And reached out a hand.
Gunjo, gurgling, eyes wide and gleaming with dark curiosity, reached back.
Their fingers almost touched.
Gunjo was thirteen now—faster, taller, sharper, though still unrefined. His breath fogged in the crimson woods, tall trees with knotted trunks made of translucent bone. The leaves were slanted, blood-red, sharp enough to slice open skin when they fell. The air smelled like rust and memory.
He sprinted barefoot, leaping over thick roots and fallen stones. Behind him—
Screeches.
The woods were alive with monsters: Yir'thlak, Draumkin, and Slaughorns. Creatures that should not exist. The Yir'thlak were serpentine wolves with twin mouths on their sides and eyes that blinked vertically. Draumkin floated with no legs, faces carved into their stomachs, leaking smoke and secrets. Slaughorns were hulking, eyeless, with masks of jagged bone covering where their heads should be—flesh shivering like silk.
Gunjo's hand tightened around his blade—a sleek thing, carved from some unknown metal that shimmered in rhythm with his heartbeat. Runes slid across the blade's surface like fish under ice. With every swing, it hummed with comet-born power.
He slashed through a Draumkin, split a Yir'thlak's spine mid-jump. But he slipped—tumbled. Blood spilled from his ribs. Another Slaughorn roared, raising its heavy claw.
And then—
He was there. Again.
The black-haloed constellation stepped between Gunjo and death. Wordless. Effortless.
He drove his hand through the creature's chest, and it imploded with a wet scream, flesh curling inward into nonexistence.
Gunjo, panting, blood in his mouth, looked up. "I didn't need you," he spat.
The constellation stared.
Didn't move.
Didn't respond.
Only watched.
Gunjo stood at the edge of a crumbling plateau now—older, maybe eighteen. Beside him, the black constellation loomed like a storm given shape. The sky boiled. Comets passed overhead, and in the far distance, a mass of life approached.
A wave.
No—a horde.
At the front, Atralyth, untouched by time, eyes gleaming with cruel delight. Behind him marched his twisted spawn—beasts born from divine decay. Slugs with screaming faces. Wolves of glass. Crawling things with one eye and many mouths. The land quaked beneath them.
Atralyth stopped, arms open.
"You've gotten pathetic," he said to the black constellation. "Drip-feeding your strength to this… flesh-rat? You're weaker than I thought." He smirked. "But I suppose that's what hope looks like to your kind now. A mortal with a broken sword and a bleeding heart."
The black constellation didn't speak. Only turned to Gunjo.
And raised its hand.
A torrent of power flowed outward, black and white and flickering in colors unnamed. It burned through the sky and poured into Gunjo, who screamed as his body fractured in light. Bones reforged. Eyes burned. His veins filled with a comet's wrath, and the stars above began to warp.
Then—
Gunjo woke up.
(Present day)
He gasped. His chest rose violently, and he nearly broke the restraints holding him. White glowing ropes, softly thrumming with soothing energy, kept his arms and legs bound—not cruelly, but cooling him, regulating the divine overload surging in his body.
He looked around, breathing like a caged beast.
The inside of the Seraph ship was humming with quiet activity. The ship floated through interstellar silence, a corridor of colored nebulae twisting outside the thick-glass viewing panels. The walls were black steel lined with etchings of celestial runes, pulsing faintly. Hanging lights drifted above like suspended lanterns, shifting color based on ambient pressure and ship health.
The floor was warm beneath him. Everything smelled faintly of lavender, gun oil, and burnt sugar.
'Where am I…? I fainted again…? Damn that power…'
Just across from him—
The squad.
Ryo was laid back on one of the floating chairs, one foot on the table, scarfing down some kind of spicy protein wrap, his scythe leaning nearby with chains draped over the wall.
"So there I am," he was saying, mouth full. "Completely naked. Covered in fish blood. Cornered by three worm thingies. And I still got a kiss before I got away. Right, Kaela?"
Kaela, wiping her blade with a cloth that looked surgically precise, didn't even glance up. "You hallucinated that entire event, Ryo."
"Details," Ryo grinned.
Naru was bouncing in place, adding marshmallows to a bubbling pot of star soup, her gauntlets covered in stickers of weird faces. "Gunjo~ Gunjo~ Gunjo~ I love that name! Say it again, Ryo! Say it while pouting!"
"I'll say it while kicking your face in," he muttered. "Damn psychotic creep."
Caldrin was sitting sideways, flipping through three tomes at once, murmuring footnotes to himself. "The black comet phenomena is… ugh, unprecedented. Possibly divine residue in physical form? Aetheric rot? Aaaa I need more ink…"
Then—
"Hey. He's awake."
Ryo looked up. So did Kaela. Naru stopped mid-giggle. Caldrin swallowed hard.
Silence.
Gunjo was looking at them, barely breathing.
'They captured me. Bet they're gonna try and take me to their boss. Probably another fucking vessel of the constellations wanting to take the credit for taking me in. I can't let them get the upper hand on me.' He thought.
The ropes glowed softly.
Everyone stared, not moving.
Gunjo stared at them.
His body remained tense, barely shifting, the white glowing ropes crackling softly around his limbs as they cooled the storm within him—celestial bindings, laced with cooling sigils meant to pacify volatile prisoners without sedating them. The glow of the ship's interior lights washed across his face, illuminating the sharp angles of his cheekbones, the smudge of dried blood at the corner of his lip. But he didn't speak. He only watched.
And then—
The bandage on his face began to peel.
'No!'
It had been wrapped sloppily over his left eye, barely clinging after the force of his awakening. With the slow tilt of his head, it came loose, floating downward in the ship's thin gravity. A soft hiss escaped the air, and the moment dragged—
—until the cloth fluttered to the floor and revealed it.
The birthmark.
It bled over the skin above his left eye like splattered red paint, the texture strangely organic, as if it had been branded into him by something cosmic and ancient. It shimmered faintly in the light, dark red with filaments of black inked deep underneath, as if the mark existed in layers beneath the skin. The color looked alive, like it pulsed faintly with each of Gunjo's heartbeats.
Naru gasped—not in fear, but in awe.
"That's… perfect," she said, clapping her hands, voice bright as always. "You look like a murder prince in a love poem. I love it."
Ryo snorted, one eyebrow raised as he leaned forward in his chair. "Damn, and I thought my scars were cool. I'm not that impressed."
Kaela, unfazed, rolled her shoulders and pulled down the collar of her armored jacket, turning slightly. "Mine looks like his. Same splatter shape. It's on my back."
She reached behind her and tugged up her shirt—just a bit—to reveal a deep crimson mark just above her shoulder blade. It was jagged, almost floral in its branching, mirroring Gunjo's own, though dulled by time. A birthmark shaped like a rose that had been smashed on stone.
Ryo, of course, leaned in too far.
Kaela turned sharply—blade already unsheathed—and nearly took his head off.
"Try it again," she muttered, and Ryo was already laughing, leaning back with his hands up.
"I swear I was looking at the mark. Just the mark. Totally not your—"
"Y-You're going to get murdered one day and it's going to be so boring for you," Caldrin muttered, nose still buried in a datapad.
Gunjo turned his head slowly. His voice was hoarse, low—drenched in warning.
"Let me off this ship."
Ryo's smile died, eyes narrowing a bit. He stood from his seat, dusting his hands.
"Yeah, see. About that. Can't."
Gunjo's gaze sharpened.
"You're walking around with the Black Comet inside you," Ryo continued, crossing his arms. "Not a fragment. Not a sliver. The entire core. That's not just unusual—it's impossible. Even the best vessels can only hold parts of a constellation's power, and even then, most die after a few months. You're holding a living cosmic event in your body like it's nothing, weirdo."
Kaela stepped forward, arms behind her back, tone measured. "It has to be Soul Resonance. But this isn't resonance with a constellation fragment or a symbolic echo. You're fully synchronized with an entire divine body. That's… unprecedented."
She knelt beside Gunjo, eyes calm and calculating.
"You know about Soul Resonance, right?"
Gunjo said nothing.
'Of course I do. But I'm not revealing my secrets. These people are the enemy. Maybe I'll hold off on killing them, might see what information they have..'
Kaela continued anyway.
Soul Resonance.
The magic system of humankind, born from desperation and myth. A dance of soul and starlight.
She explained:
"Every human has a Soul Template—something etched into them from birth, like the blueprint of who they could become. In ancient times, the old star-seers discovered that these templates could connect with the constellations—actual ones, not myths. By entering a trance, tracing the pattern inside their soul, humans could attune to that celestial power. Not steal it. Not hold it. But resonate. But it's dangerous. One misstep and the soul burns. Some go mad. Others vanish. Some think they become the stars themselves."
Caldrin added from his corner: "It's not supposed to be sustainable. The human body isn't a divine conduit. We're not vessels—we're clay puppets scratching at thunder."
"And yet," Kaela said, nodding to Gunjo, "you're holding the Black Comet. A whole constellation. One that doesn't even appear in most charts. A vanished god. Full resonance. No trance. No meditation. Just being. That's why Atralyth wanted you for the constellations to have you for some reason. That's why we can't just let you go.
Ryo scoffed, "Yurei will never tell us the deep stuff."
Gunjo looked up at them.
His voice was ice.
"Then I'll rip this ship apart." No shout. No threat. Just promise. "I have things to do."
The white ropes around him hummed louder, sensing the pressure in his chest rise.
Ryo said, "What's with you? On some revenge quest or something? The one who gave you this Black Comet is probably dead, isn't he? Wanna kill for him?"
"You don't know me. Buzz off, freak."
Gunjo then thought, 'Revenge…? No. It's not that. It's more than that. The constellation that raised me…I want to find a way to bring him back, and then ask why did he torture me like this? Why did this bastard scar me for life with a power I never wanted? A destructive power that is meant to destroy me from the inside out if overused or misused? I have no self worth because of it. I'm an anomaly, when I used to be innocent. I can't trust a soul, I can't like anyone, because I've already lost myself. How can I even like my own self when I'm the very thing I used to hate as a child: the power of the constellations themselves…? So no, it's not revenge. I feel cursed..I feel like a monster..the one thing my parents didn't want me to be.'
The squad tensed—except for Naru.
She walked toward him.
Unbothered. Barefoot, humming.
She crouched in front of him and held out a weirdly shaped food wrap, wrapped in layers of soft astral grain and sizzling with some kind of floating meat—Ghalven-wing, a delicacy harvested from winged beasts that only flew above storms on gas planets. It shimmered faintly with spice dust, glowing turquoise and gold, and steam curled upward, swirling around Gunjo's face.
"Here," she said cheerfully. "You haven't eaten, your stomach keeps growling. Don't blow up the ship on an empty stomach. That's just sad. You can wait until we all leave, and Ryo is here alone! Then yog can blow it up!"
Ryo scoffed, "Damn you!"
Caldrin chuckled, and Kaela just rolled her eyes.
She waved the food beneath Gunjo's nose, teasingly close, and Gunjo locked eyes with her.
He didn't speak.
Didn't move.
But the scent—the scent hit him like memory.
It smelled like home. Like crackling firewood. Like meat roasted on spires of volcanic rock. It smelled like something warm. Something he hadn't had since—
His stomach growled.
He felt it. Shamefully loud.
And then he snapped—not in rage, but like an animal.
He lunged forward and bit into it—straight from her hand. A vicious, desperate snap of the jaw.
Naru didn't flinch.
She grinned wider.
"Good boy," she whispered.
Gunjo chewed, then stopped chewing, saying, "Don't say that to me. I'm not a pet."
Naru smiled, "Got it!"
Caldrin, on the side, said, "Incredible...he actually eats.."
Kaela responded, "He's human, obviously. Now please do not do or say anything he won't like or we're all doomed."
"H-How will I know what he doesn't like?"
Ryo said, "Being told what he can't do, telling him no, belittling him, that's all I can think about."
Gunjo kept eating.
He devoured it—savoring nothing, tasting everything. The spice burned and the meat melted on his tongue, and it was better than air. He didn't say thank you. He didn't say a word.
But Naru kept watching him.
And Gunjo kept eating, and he had finished chewing.
His mouth slowed, each bite less like a desperate animal and more like a creature discovering something buried in his blood. He swallowed the last of the steaming ghalven-wing and exhaled softly, breath warming the cold air around him.
'That rotten winged bastard hadn't fed me for days, he never fed me actually. My stomach was growing the entire time I was killing him, it made me even more mad. Maybe these enemies on this ship are trying to soften me up to catch me off guard, to try and get answers out of me, answers I don't have. All I want is to bring back the constellation who raised me, just to ask why he forced this power in me, and to make him take it out.'
Then—his nose twitched.
A scent.
No— scents. Plural. Complex and impossible. Toasted black root sugar. Cracked abyss fruit, sweet and spiced. Heated marrow-sticks soaked in phoenix oil. Roasted skyflame eels in salted algae crust. He could smell them all—hidden in cabinets, in the cold-unit, out on the counter. The ship was stacked with food. He could hear a freezer humming. A bread oven's low thermal ping.
His eye twitched.
'There's more?!'
Ryo stepped forward, still calm, folding his arms. "Alright, listen. You're gonna meet someone soon. Goddess Yurei. Constellation of Chaos. Don't ask me why. I don't know why. She wants to see you. That's all I've got. She might kill you, she's super tough."
Gunjo blinked slowly. He didn't react. Not right away.
Then, faintly, his lips parted. "Let her try."
And then—
BOOM.
The white bindings snapped like threads of starlight exploding from a dying sun.
Gunjo vanished.
Literally—his form blurred like he phased between frames of reality, and then—
CRASH.
He was on the kitchen table.
CRUNCH.
He'd already shoved two sky-eel rolls into his mouth.
SNAP.
'So good..'
A storage cabinet exploded open behind him, and bags of preserved emberfruit scattered across the floor like confetti. Gunjo moved too fast, blushing red from head to toe as he devoured everything in sight. His hands were a blur. Crumbs and spices flew through the air like shrapnel from a flavor bomb. He let out muffled groans of joy, chewing with such intensity it looked violent.
"WHAT THE HELL—!" Ryo shouted, lunging after him. "THAT'S MY FRIDGE!"
Gunjo hissed—actually hissed—before tearing open another container with his teeth. He stuffed two tentacle buns in his mouth, the filling dripping down his chin.
Kaela had moved without a word, standing a precise three feet away, one eye twitching as a single drop of sauce landed on her armor. She calmly wiped it off, sanitized the floor beneath her with a portable cloth, and began cleaning around herself like the chaos didn't exist.
"I just cleaned that cabinet," she muttered flatly. "I just—cleaned it."
"Get him!" Ryo shouted, lunging again. "You little—! That's my Talanth bacon! Do you even know how hard that is to get?! Had to travel like 4 planets to get it!"
Gunjo didn't care.
Gunjo was glowing from how good the food was. His mouth was coated in fire-spice. His hands were a mess. He had two jars of preserved eggfruit tucked under his arms like war trophies and was shoving dried soul petals into his mouth like popcorn.
Naru was in heaven.
She was clapping, tossing him food like treats for a trained beast. "Go, Gunjo, go! Eat everything! You deserve it! You've earned the calories!"
"Y-You're encouraging him?!" Caldrin yelled nervously,, gripping his datapad like a shield. "Do you even realize what he is?! He could detonate the engine by burping! And those are our rations for when we are on missions!"
"Exactly," Naru sang. "That's why he needs snacks to keep his power stable! We might run into some weird constellation or their vessel again because we have him! We want him at full full strength!"
"I don't think that's—"
Kaela sighed, "She does have a point. We have the Black Comet holder in our possession. The vessel of Vornath charged the vessel to hold Gunjo still until they were ready to use him, and we've taken him. If we stand a chance against one right now, Gunjo is our number one trump card. And if a constellation god arrives..I don't know."
Gunjo leapt from the counter to the open fridge like a cat, body twisting midair. He kicked the fridge door shut mid-landing, sandwich in his mouth, eyes wild.
"You're eating the wrapping paper!" Ryo screamed, face red, panting as he ran after him.
Then—
FOOM.
Ryo summoned his weapon.
A curved black-metal scythe, its handle made of hollowed bone and veined iron, erupted into existence. Red flames howled along the edge of the blade, licking the air around him, casting molten shadows on the ship walls.
Gunjo paused mid-bite.
Ryo grinned. "You're done now, fridge thief."
He swung.
Gunjo's eyes flared wide, about to move—
But then the alarm blared.
WEEOOW. WEEOOW.
[INCOMING HOSTILE SIGNAL]
[DISTANCE: 9000 CELS AND CLOSING FAST]
[UNREGISTERED SHIP ID — CLASS: ROGUE VESSEL]
The room fell silent.
A large holographic screen burst to life on the far wall, the lights dimming as the feed came into view.
Seraph's voice came through the system, calm and synthetic:
"Bandit ship approaching vector from Quadrant-3. Designation: OLAGG. Signal classification: Fractured. Structure integrity: 47%. Speed: 6x standard Hunt cruiser. Brace for potential boarding action."
On screen appeared a monstrosity of a vessel—a rusty, asymmetrical hulk of jagged metal and exposed bone. It looked like something built from corpse ships, glued together by war and madness. Its engines screamed with dying light. You could see hundreds of glowing red eyes behind broken steel viewports.
And then came the crew.
The camera enhanced.
Olagg.
Towering, brute-like beings—some with tusks curving backward like hooks, others with flayed metal grafted into their flesh. Their skin was grayish green, but covered in armor made of scraps: hull plates, broken weapons, repurposed Hunt gear. Their weapons were mismatched—one held a massive jagged club made from crushed constellium, another wielded what looked like a railgun fused to a femur.
They had names, but no language. Titles etched into their skin with burns.
Churn-Slave. Bonehowler. Gutted-Mouth. Teeth-Father.
They weren't soldiers.
They were warlords born in pits. Their armor still dripped with black ichor. Their helmets were skulls turned backward, with glowing red lights fixed into the eye sockets.
There were at least a hundred.
All armed.
All grinning.
All coming straight for them.
Gunjo was still eating.
Now seated cross-legged on the floor, he had fully raided the cold cabinet and now munched through what looked like a molten honey root pie, mouth smeared with syrup, jaw working in blissful silence. Beside him, Naru cheerfully tossed him supplies, feeding him like a zoo keeper with a starved lion. Every few seconds, she'd toss him a steaming dumpling, a protein-glazed bone, or a tub of irradiated nebula rice, and Gunjo caught them all with zero wasted motion, chewing fast, like he'd never eaten in his life.
"Here comes another!" Naru chimed, flicking a deep-fried fish-snake roll toward him.
Gunjo didn't even look. He bit the air. SNAP. Gone.
Meanwhile, across the chamber, the others huddled in front of the holographic screen.
"That's definitely them," Ryo muttered, narrowing his eyes at the grotesque vessel drifting ever closer. "The Olagg. Never thought I'd see one in the flesh."
Kaela's mouth twitched. "I've read the archived war logs. Rumors. Half-mad pilots screaming about ships patched from corpses and scrap. Never confirmed."
"I've seen their symbol before," Caldrin said softly, pointing to the jagged blood-stamped sigil along the Olagg's ship hull—a split jaw over a flame. "But only once. On a beacon left near the Asterbelts. It said 'Tread this Void, and your bones are wages.'"
"They're space plunderers," Ryo muttered. "They take whatever they find. No one's survived close contact long enough to negotiate. Which is why—" he turned, grinning as he gripped the handle of his scythe, "we hit first."
Kaela sighed. "That is the worst plan possible."
"It's efficient."
"They're unknown. Unstudied. Possibly more advanced in tech than we are. And you want to swing your weapon just because they exist."
"Exactly."
Kaela ignored him. "We wait. We talk. Assess. We nrevr strike first at an unknown enemy until we know his power. That's the rules of the Hunt. That's what we learned the first day we joined."
The moment she spoke, the Seraph shuddered.
Thoom. Thoom. Thoom.
Something was landing on the outer hull. No—multiple things.
A red alert flashed across the holographic screen:
[HULL IMPACT DETECTED. BOARDING CLAMPS ENGAGED.]
[UNAUTHORIZED DOCKING IN PROGRESS.]
[EXTERNAL SYSTEM BREACH IMMINENT.]
Then came the voice, guttural and garbled, filtering through static over the Seraph's internal comms:
"OPEN HATCH. WE DISCUSS. IF TALK FAILS—WARFARE WILL BE INITIATED."
Ryo grinned wide. "Now that's my kind of diplomacy."
"Let them board," Kaela said calmly, already tapping her console. "We talk first."
The hatch hissed open.
And the Olagg came marching in.
One. Two. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.
They stomped through the main corridor in imperfect, thudding rhythms, towering and hulking, each one leaving muddy, metallic footprints and dripping rot across the Seraph's pristine floor. Their armor clanked. Their breath sounded like steam hissing from crushed machines. Some had blades fused into their arms. Others had teeth sown into their armor plates. One dragged what looked like a dead mini-black hole contained in a reinforced glass cage.
Kaela's eye twitched.
She immediately began spraying antibacterial mist across the floor and walls. "You stink. All of you. Unacceptable. Back up. Step to the left. No—left. Yes, you. You're leaking."
Behind them, more Olagg began chanting and clapping for her like she was performing sacred rites. "She cleans! She purifies! She wards us from filth-wraiths!"
Kaela recoiled in horror. "You are the filth."
Then came the leaders.
The male Olagg stepped forward first—taller than the others, his armor fused with obsidian spine metal that jutted upward like volcanic glass. His skin was etched with living scars that glowed faintly blue, and around his neck hung a chain of dismembered mechanical hearts.
His name was Vhar'grosk the Huskmender.
His eyes burned a smoky red. "We are not raiders today," he rumbled. "We seek talk. Trade. Survival. Do not make us bleed first."
The female emerged beside him—slimmer, but no less terrifying. She had a crown of coiled iron tusks and wore an aether-burned cape that trailed lightless flame. Her face was painted with ritual soot, and her right arm was replaced by a clawed piston-arm that hissed and clicked with every gesture.
She was Senn-Grava the Knuckleflame, First Mouth of Olaggse.
And when she spoke, her words were smooth, almost queenly—until her tone dropped like an avalanche.
"We come from Olaggse," she said, as her kin fell silent behind her. "The planet beneath planets. The world buried in orbiting slag. A world with no sun. Only heat vents and corpse winds. No flora. No clean air. Just mineral salt and stone. We eat rust. We drink cracked coolant. Our oceans boil. Our skies are machines. And still—we live."
She pointed a clawed finger at them.
"We plunder not for greed. But because your gods made a world where we were forgotten. Your constellations bled their light elsewhere. We were not chosen. We were abandoned."
The Olagg behind her pounded their weapons on the floor, chanting.
"Grava speaks. We listen. Vhar leads. We strike."
"Olaggse devours light. We devour in return."
Gunjo was still eating. Still blushing. Still somehow now licking sauce off a lid. Naru was bouncing beside him, clapping her hands in sync with the chanting. "I like them!"
Caldrin was sweating through his shirt. "This is… getting out of control. They could be lying. They could be stalling while preparing to—"
Ryo raised his flaming scythe, twirling it once before it landed in his grip.
"Alright then," he said, voice hard. "What's the play? You want to talk? Or you here to take? I'll take you all on." He leaned forward, grinning. "You're not getting shit from us either way."
Behind him, the Olagg immediately began spreading through the chamber, some eyeing the weapons rack on the wall, others sniffing tech consoles and poking the control panels like curious kids in a museum.
One accidentally triggered a minor defense shield, got shocked, screamed in joy, and clapped.
"IT TASED ME! GLORY BE TO SERAPH!"
Kaela sprayed him with disinfectant. "Gross. Hands off."
The tension rose.
Caldrin's voice trembled as he stepped back. "They're—raiding. Ryo. They're raiding our weapons right now."
Ryo didn't lower the scythe.
The female Olagg stepped forward again, her glowing claw cracking once.
"Last offer," she said.
Then—
And just like that—
Boom.
The camera of reality snapped and they were all seated at the Seraph's central war-table, now littered with grease-stained platters, half-eaten alien delicacies, broken mugs, dice, beads, smoking cards, and what looked like the upper half of a melted robot used as a scoreboard. The entire Olagg entourage had crowded around, their massive bodies hunched over or standing on boxes just to see.
And in the very center, red-faced and snarling, Ryo was arm wrestling Vhar'grosk the Huskmender, their elbows denting the steel table beneath them, sweat pouring, muscles bulging like they were going to split their bones.
"TWIST HIM, VHAR!!" one Olagg bellowed, banging his war-ax on the floor.
Another screamed, "BREAK HIS ARM OFF AND USE IT AS A TOOTHPICK!"
Kaela, perched on a chair with her arms crossed and a cleaning rag still in hand, calmly leaned forward and whispered in Ryo's ear, her voice like a knife in velvet.
"If you lose, I swear to the astral winds I will sterilize your toothbrush with starfire."
Ryo, teeth clenched, eyes popping, growled through a forced grin.
"No pressure, right?!"
On the sidelines, Caldrin chewed his nails and leaned nervously over Naru, whispering, "So wait—if we lose the game… the losing side has to give up their supplies? Like everything?"
Naru nodded cheerfully. "Mhm!"
"…Okay." He sighed, slumping in relief. "We're all gonna survive. That's nice. I really didn't want to be turned into a decorative spine candle."
Then—CRACK.
The table dented. Ryo slammed Vhar's arm down with an explosion of force.
Victory. The Olagg howled in pain. Vhar gasped. "HE BENDS METAL WITH SPITE!!"
"Damn right I do," Ryo said, shaking his arm out. "Next!"
And so began the Game Gauntlet.
Blaydstick RumbleAn Olagg tradition. Three players each stand on floating discs over a pit of churning magnetized goo, and must use long, flexible poles tipped with static-charged spheres to try and knock each other off. The catch? The poles occasionally discharge electric shocks if you swing too hard.
Ryo was all too eager to play. "Let's do this…"
He lasted five seconds.
"AGH—DAMN IT, IT SHOCKED MY FACE!!" he screamed, spinning through the air as Naru clapped.
"Good job!"
Kaela won by just poking everyone's ankles calmly and keeping perfect balance while muttering about germs in the goo pit. "Easy."
Crackle-Tile BluffA card game crossed with a bomb puzzle. Each tile drawn could either give you points—or detonate in your hand and launch your chair backward. Bluffing was key.
Caldrin played for the first time, cautiously drawing a card.
BOOM. His chair launched into the ceiling. "AGHH!"
Ryo, eyes gleaming, went full beast mode. "BETTING ALL MY TILES ON RED-EYED SHARD QUEEN!"
He lost. Horribly. Kaela wiped the table.
"It's not a strategy if you shout it aloud, idiot."
"I knew that!"
Snare-Jump BoneballA physical team sport played with five rubberized skulls, three buzz-saws, and a gravity-flipping field. Points are scored by launching the skulls through floating rings without getting shredded.
Naru: "OOOH! I wanna play!!"
Caldrin: "This has… saws… and floating buzzsaws. I'm gonna cry."
They both played. Naru scored six points by double-backflipping through a vortex and dunking a skull with her foot. Caldrin got stuck upside down for ten minutes, and the saws shaved his sleeves off. He thanked them afterward.
"I did it..I did it!" He then looked at his team, "Y-You saw that, right?"
Kaela nodded, "Yes."
Ryo replied, "I think we're in the lead."
By the eighth game, everyone was flushed, panting, laughing, or slightly injured. Ryo now wore a bandage over his cheek, Kaela had thrown out three contaminated chairs, and Caldrin had actually high-fived an Olagg.
The Olagg, despite initial tension, had devolved into loud cheerleaders.
"THE CLEANER IS SAVAGE!"
"RED MAN'S FLAMING BLADE IS GLORIOUS!"
"PINK ONE DO TRICKS. KEEP PINK ONE."
"NERVOUS ONE CRIES GOOD. HONOR TO HIM."
And for one moment—just one—the mood was light. The tension gone.
Until—
They all turned.
Gunjo.
Standing in the corner.
Still.
Silent.
Back turned to all of them.
The food on the table now untouched. The air seemed to thin around him.
A faint black fire curled around his shoulders. It flickered upward like smoke being pulled into a god's lungs. It made no sound, but it sucked the joy from the room, a pressure building in everyone's chest like they'd been dunked underwater.
His aura pulsed once—flameless and immense.
The edge of the wall behind him cracked.
Naru was the first to whisper. "…Gunjo?"
Kaela tensed. Caldrin's smile vanished. Ryo's fingers gripped his scythe again—slowly, cautiously.
One of the Olagg stepped forward.
And without turning his body, Gunjo turned his head and said, "I'm still hungry, and you've run out of food."