Months had passed since the noble fleet unearthed the monolith on a dead star, and the report filed by Lord Varyn Solari still officially listed the site as barren and unstable—a failed excavation.
But Varyn had lied.
He knew what they'd found: a fragment of something older than the Empire, older than the stars. A slumbering force bound in black alloy and cosmic silence—the Heart of the Galactic Reaper.
Now, against Varyn's recommendation, the monolith had been moved. Knight-Commander Thorne, acting under orders from the Solari High House, authorized a covert retrieval mission. The artifact was sealed in a relic containment vault, buried deep within the decks of a noble-class cargo ship, en route to a classified imperial research site.
Officially, the mission was listed as a high-security tech transfer.
Unofficially, they were transporting a god.
Docking Station
The checkpoint sat like a forgotten limb at the far edge of Docking Corridor Three. Half-manned, half-alert, and fully convinced that nothing important ever happened this far from the ship's command spine.
Four guards slouched behind waist-high barricades made from supply crates and mobile field walls. Their helmets were off. Their armor unsealed. They were betting on card games, sipping ration coffee, and arguing about whether the nobles had smuggled in a new generation of plasma ordnance. None of them were ready.
The first sound wasn't an alarm.
It was coughing.
Wet, unsteady, like a lung collapsing one wheeze at a time.
A figure staggered from the shadows—cloaked in filth-stained rags, armor mismatched and dented, a heavy flask dangling from a torn strap across his chest. He reeked of rot, of fermented breath and recycled air scrubbed too many times. His face was sunken, beard unkempt, hair falling in greasy coils around bloodshot eyes.
He tripped, rolled over a crate, then stood again—wobbling on one leg. One arm dragged behind him like it was broken.
"Hey!" barked a guard, rifle raising. "Identify yourself!"
The figure blinked at them. Then grinned with too many teeth.
"Shipment run off course…" he slurred. "Think I left my daughter in the gravshaft… or my lungs…"
He laughed. Coughed. Spat blood.
The sergeant stepped forward. "Is this a joke? Where the hell did you come from?"
The man pulled out a cracked plasma knife with shaking fingers. Its blade sputtered weakly. "Heard there were drinks on board. Thought I'd carve myself a welcome."
The guards raised weapons.
He lunged—barely.
The swing was pitiful. One guard sidestepped it easily. Another cracked him across the jaw with a rifle butt. He dropped like a sack of trash, groaning on the floor.
"Stupid bastard," the sergeant muttered. "This guy even real?"
The figure coughed again—blood pooling from his lips. But his eyes, bloodshot as they were, gleamed with something too lucid. Too deliberate.
"You can kill me," he rasped, lips cracked and bleeding, "but it's already inside your vault."
The squad leader froze.
Vault?
Before the execution order could be given, a new voice cut through every squad channel, cold and precise:
"This is Knight-Commander Thorne. Belay that. Bring him in alive. Detention Level Six. I'll have questions."
Uneasy now, the guards bound the stranger in magnetic cuffs and hauled him upright.
He didn't resist. He didn't speak again.
But as they dragged him away, his ragged form hunched in mock defeat, the faintest flicker of crimson shimmered beneath his skin—just once, like a pulse trying to remember its rhythm.
And his smile—though hidden behind blood and grime—never faded.
Cargo Halls of the Noble transport ship
Somewhere between the outer cargo halls and the sealed vault decks, two ghosts moved through the bones of the ship.
Kael crouched low beneath a flickering maintenance beam, adjusting the seal on his borrowed security uniform. It was a patchwork job—stitched from surplus Solari guard gear, scavenger wiring, and Jin's obsession with detail. The ID tag on his wristband pulsed with false clearance codes, handwoven through layers of old imperial datasets. It wouldn't survive a direct scan, but it would fool most automated checkpoints for the next thirty minutes.
He glanced behind him.
Jin was already hacking the wall terminal, crouched with one knee down and a worn, custom blade balanced against his other leg. Wires connected his wristband to the console. His face was half-lit by blue light from a floating toolkit drone that hovered silently at his shoulder.
"Almost done," Jin whispered. "Local cameras now see us as two maintenance techs inspecting an arc valve failure. Motion sensors down to 10%—they'll register us as rats if we move slow."
"Clean work," Kael murmured.
"You're welcome, by the way. If I get space-hauled for tampering with Solari code, I want it in writing that this was your idea."
Kael didn't answer immediately. His hand had drifted to the wall beside them, palm resting against the cold alloy. Something vibrated beneath the surface—something old. Not in age, but in presence. In gravity. Like an eye opening in the dark.
He pulled his hand away slowly.
Jin noticed. "That feeling again?"
Kael nodded.
Jin smirked. "You always get that look right before we find something rare."
"You ever think it's a warning?"
Jin shrugged. "I've seen you follow that instinct into a collapsing archive and come out holding a relic that sold for enough to fund our last five ops. You say 'go,' I'm right behind you."
Kael cracked a small smile. "Appreciate it."
"I know." Jin winked. "I'm very lovable."
Kael glanced at the map Jin had patched onto the corner of his HUD. Their current route would lead them past storage bays and down to secondary fusion tanks. But the pull wasn't in that direction.
His eyes shifted to an alternate path: a narrow shaft spiraling down past environmental control and cutting under the ship's power grid. Not officially mapped. Not part of the Foundry's plan.
"I'm changing course," Kael said quietly.
Jin paused, mouth half-open, then sighed. "Which way?"
Kael pinged the route. "There. Downshaft. No camera coverage. But the signal pull is stronger down there—I know it."
"That's not a vault, that's a damn tomb," Jin muttered. But he was already re-patching the signal spoof.
They moved, dropping silently through the shaft's access point. The interior reeked of ozone and damp insulation. Kael took point, pistol lowered but ready, eyes scanning for movement.
Halfway down the vertical tube, a red light blinked on in his HUD.
"Movement," he said.
They froze.
Above them, a patrol drone drifted into view. Its scanning cone flicked through the shaft like a knife, humming softly. It paused—for just a second.
Jin held his breath. The drone passed. Barely.
When the hum faded, Kael exhaled. "Close."
Jin grinned. "I live for the drama."
They reached the end of the shaft and cracked open the next maintenance hatch. Behind it was a low, dark corridor—sealed from standard traffic, with frost creeping along the corners.
Kael stepped in first. The pull now was constant. It buzzed against his skin, ran through his bones like static trapped beneath the skin. It wasn't pain.
It was recognition.
Something here knew him.
And it was waking up
Interrogation room
The cell was silent.
Dull gray walls. Thin oxygen vents. Bare light strip flickering overhead. Even the shadows looked exhausted.
Marcos sat hunched on the metal bench, stripped of armor, wearing a form-fitting jumpsuit. His skin looked sickly. His hair hung in greasy cords. Dried blood stained his chin. His breathing was steady.
Too steady.
He mumbled to himself, incoherent—strings of syllables slurring together like his brain had melted.
One of the guards grimaced. "Can someone shut him up?"
The other rolled his eyes. "Drunks and brain-fried mercs. Always the same."
Then the door hissed open.
The guards snapped to attention.
Knight-Captain Velian Dross entered with the full weight of noble command behind him. His polished darksteel armor gleamed beneath his cloak, and the insignia of House Solari—a lion with a sun in its mouth—shone bright against his chest. At his hip hung a ceremonial blade—a blue-silver scabbard shaped like a comet streaking downward.
Velian's eyes didn't blink as he stepped into the cell. "Report."
"Unarmed, unresponsive. Just keeps rambling. No ID tag, no Foundry neural burns. Came out of nowhere."
Velian stepped forward, folding his hands behind his back. "You mentioned the vault," he said. "Do you know what's inside it?"
Marcos swayed slightly, muttering under his breath.
Velian narrowed his eyes. "What are you?"
"Think he's broken," one guard said. "Could be mind-sliced. Or high on gate gas."
Velian watched him carefully. "He's not broken."
He was about to say more—
When Marcos suddenly stopped moving.
The muttering ceased.
He raised his head slowly, eyes still glazed—but now… tracking something.
He turned toward the far corner of the cell. The metal groaned faintly, like it sensed something was coming.
Marcos smiled.
"It's about time."
His face began to shift.
First, subtly—like someone shedding a twitch or a bad dream.
Then deeper. His skin peeled back. His bones cracked. His spine realigned.
The hunched, ragged form melted away, revealing lean muscle, sharpened features, and glowing crimson lines beneath the skin.
"He's transforming—!"
Before anyone could react, Marcos flickered. A ripple of blood-red energy erupted from his skin as he vanished from the bench and reappeared directly in front of the closest guard.
With one blow, he punched clean through the man's chest—the impact cracking the wall behind him as blood sprayed in a perfect arc.
The second guard screamed and opened fire. Marcos spun the corpse in his grip like a shield, plasma bolts tearing through it as he moved.
Before discarding the body, Marcos paused and looked at Velian.
The Knight-Captain had already drawn his blade, blue aura flaring as Blue Star Stream ignited across the weapon's edge.
Then the ship rocked—Nova had breached the hull.
Marcos grinned. "Chaos. Right on cue."
He flickered again—reappearing behind the third guard and slamming the man's face into the floor hard enough to dent the plating.
Velian dashed forward, blade glowing. He struck in a clean arc—
But a blood-forged shield surged from Marcos' palm, intercepting the blade with a screech of metal-on-metal.
Blue and red auras collided—starborn will versus corrupted god-tech.
Velian planted his foot and drove into the clash, activating his full cultivation. His armor gleamed with noble flare. The air around him shimmered with the Blue Star aura, bending light and sound.
"I don't know what you are," Velian hissed, "but I will break you."
"Try," Marcos whispered.
Their blades met again—blood-red arc versus comet-blue slash.
The guards in the hallway cheered. "Knight-Captain! Hold the line!"
But Velian's face told a different story.
Every exchange pushed him back.
Marcos fought like a predator circling its prey—measured, graceful, enjoying it.
His smile never faded. It wasn't a smirk. It wasn't cruel. It was worse.
It was satisfied.
Like he was eating this fight alive.
"You're going to have to fight back if you want to live, little knight," Marcos said, voice low, almost playful. "Unless you're just here to entertain me."
Velian gritted his teeth, rage rising in his throat. His blade flared brighter, aura expanding as emotion surged through his system.
He roared, overextending—
Marcos sidestepped, and with a twisting motion, a small orb of condensed pressure struck Velian dead-center in the chest. A contained blood-force technique—subtle, brutal.
Velian dropped to his knees. His limbs twitched, but wouldn't respond.
He looked up, chest heaving—his eyes filled with fury and disbelief.
Because Marcos was still smiling.
Still savoring every second.
Still the Blood Star.
Then the pulse hit.
A deep, cosmic hum rolled through the ship. Tech across the cell glitched, flickered, and stalled. The lights dimmed to pitch. Grav plates fluttered.
The Reaper Heart had awakened.
Marcos staggered briefly. His body shimmered as if trying to hold its form.
He grabbed his face with one hand. Pieces of his disguise slipped, briefly exposing something inhuman beneath the surface—fluid data lines, starbone etchings under flesh.
Velian saw it.
He screamed.
Marcos chuckled, voice raw.
"Little knight… you're lucky."
He flicked the blood blade shut with a hiss and turned toward the door.
"My time here is done."
Then he flickered once more—vanishing in a stream of crimson light.
Velian collapsed onto his hands and knees, gasping for breath, the echoes of the pulse still ringing in his ears.
The cell lights returned seconds later.
But Marcos was already gone
The Bridge
The bridge of the Solari-class noble transport was a polished spine of dark alloy, reinforced glass, and quiet chaos.
Knight-Commander Thorne stood at the forward console, hands clasped behind his back, a razor-thin vein pulsing at his temple. Red warning glyphs flooded his HUD, casting reflections across the command platform. Outside the ship's viewport, plasma bolts streaked like shooting stars—Nova forces had breached three hull layers and were fighting their way inward with a ferocity that didn't match their usual patterns.
"Multiple contact points confirmed," reported Knight-Lieutenant Helra from her station. "Decks three, five, and cargo wing two. Nova forces—no clear objective. Just… carnage."
Thorne's jaw clenched.
"Unfocused. Undisciplined. They weren't here for a theft," he muttered. "They were sent to create chaos."
"Foundry signatures also detected, sir," Helra added. "They're moving with precision. Not here to fight. They're targeting storage vaults. They knew what was onboard."
Of course they did, Thorne thought. He should've buried the monolith deeper. Or better yet, destroyed it.
But he didn't have that authority—not when the Solari High Council wanted it recovered, studied, weaponized.
"Deploy strike units to reinforce Storage Bays. Lock down outer hull gates. Initiate sweep-and-burn protocols on deck five."
Helra's fingers danced across her controls. Then she paused.
"Sir… Vault Sector security shows movement."
Thorne's gaze snapped toward the lower schematic readout. The Vault had been sealed. Only two doors in or out, both encrypted with High Command authorization.
But someone was inside.
Or something.
"Get me Knight-Captain Velian."
"...He's not responding."
Thorne's face darkened.
"Send the Obsidian Unit. Full armor. Full weapons. Tell them to kill anything that doesn't respond in noble code."
He turned back to the viewport as the stars pulsed faintly against the dark glass. Somewhere below him, a god was waking up, and it had chosen this ship to draw its first breath.
Sera's Pov
Sera hated Nova jobs.
Not that this was a Nova job—Foundry and Nova didn't run together. That was the point. But right now, crawling over a half-destroyed cargo hold while Nova mercs torched everything on the upper decks sure felt like a bad Nova job.
She crouched behind a reinforced crate marked with a noble seal, pried it open with a sonic spike, and let out a low whistle. Starforged alloy sheets. Polished. Untagged. Worth enough to fund ten rotation-cycles on Helion IV.
She tapped her comm.
"Ghosthand to Sweep Four. Package confirmed. Reroute extraction to shaft route seven."
"Copy. What's your status?" a voice crackled back.
"Loud," she said. "Too loud. Nova's hitting too many places at once. This wasn't just coincidence."
"Orders from up top are unchanged. Get what you can and fall back before the Imperials lock down the vault decks."
Sera clicked off the channel and exhaled through her teeth. Her visor scan kept glitching around the edges, giving false motion warnings. Every twenty seconds, the grav pressure dipped slightly, like the whole ship was exhaling.
She hated when ships breathed.
Footsteps echoed behind her—light, fast. She drew her sidearm instantly, but it was just Bresh, her spotter.
He looked nervous.
"Two squads didn't check in."
"Nova?"
"No. Ours."
Sera narrowed her eyes. "Could be just noise. Or…"
"Or someone knew we'd be here," Bresh finished. "And made sure we walked in blind."
She stood and holstered her weapon. Her suit's inner sensors were still buzzing—wrong air pressure, wrong sound profile, wrong silence.
"Change of plans," she said. "We get to the Vault Level. Now."
Bresh blinked. "That's not our op."
"It is now."
Because if Foundry teams were disappearing—and the vault was the only place Nova hadn't hit—then something important enough to manipulate three factions at once was waiting below.
And if it was tech?
Sera wanted to be the one to see it first.
Back to Kael+Jin
The last door wasn't locked.
That, more than anything else, unsettled Jin.
He stood beside Kael at the edge of the corridor's end, staring at the massive alloy bulkhead. It was ancient—not just by design, but in presence. Runes were carved along its surface in no language he could translate, and the metal didn't reflect light so much as drink it in.
And it was open.
"I don't like this," Jin whispered. "Doors like that don't open themselves."
Kael said nothing.
The hum in his chest had become a steady drumbeat. Every step he took closer to this place made his bones feel heavier. Not in weight—but in purpose. Like gravity remembered him here. Like something inside had been waiting a long time and was just now waking up.
The corridor curved downward. Vault walls loomed high overhead like the ribs of a long-dead beast. In the distance, pale light spilled from a chamber carved into the ship's core.
Jin pulled his pistol. "Just say the word and I'll slice our signal and pull us out."
Kael kept walking.
"Right," Jin muttered. "So we're doing the creepy god-tech vault thing. Cool. Love this plan."
As they entered the chamber, the temperature dropped ten degrees. The lights—if they were lights—didn't shine. They pulsed. Slow, heavy thumps that timed themselves to Kael's breath.
And at the center of the room stood the Monolith.
It was not elegant.
It was not designed.
It was placed—as though dropped from the edge of the galaxy and left to rot. Jagged black stone, embedded with fractured glyphs and strange veins of dull red light. It stood motionless, yet somehow vibrated with unspoken power.
Kael stepped forward, drawn as if by gravity.
Jin didn't follow. "Kael…"
"I have to," Kael said quietly.
"You don't. You know we don't touch unknown relics during recon. That's a Foundry rule. That's your rule."
Kael reached out.
The space between his hand and the Monolith buzzed. Static. Energy. Memory.
The surface began to glow faintly—purple and silver intertwining like two halves of a dying star.
Welcome, Fragment-bearer…
The voice wasn't spoken. It was felt.
Kael flinched, but didn't pull away. His fingers brushed the stone.
A pulse exploded through the ship.
Systems flickered. Grav-nodes blinked offline. Weapons jammed. Lights across seven decks dimmed simultaneously.
From the command bridge to the lowest prison cell, every sensor pinged one word in a dead language.
And then the signal vanished.
Kael collapsed to one knee.
Jin rushed to him. "Kael! What the hell was that?!"
But Kael wasn't answering.
Because Kael wasn't here.
He was somewhere else.
Floating in a void of stars and bones and memories that didn't belong to him.
And the Monolith was speaking.