Chapter 1: The Madness of Stars
Royal Quarters – Olgeran High Palace
Kirek was seven years old when he first saw a god break his uncle.
He woke to screaming.
Not the sharp, ordered shouts of palace guards, nor the hissing, venom-laced arguments of his parents. No—this was raw. Guttural. Something unmade. It vibrated the walls and crept through the blackstone of the royal chambers like a dying star's echo.
Kirek's four eyes snapped open, irises narrowing against the dim violet glow of his room. The walls, carved from lunar stone mined beneath the palace, pulsed faintly with bioluminescent veins—living rock that resonated with their people's ancient touch. The air was thick with medicinal oils and burnt incense, meant to honor the ancestors, but tonight it felt like it was choking.
Something was wrong.
He slipped from his sleeping pod. His exoskin bristled against the chill, the sensory filaments along his spine twitching. Silence never fell on the Olgeran High Palace. The living metal that formed its bones always hummed with heat, power, voices. But now it whispered in frantic static.
He crept to the arched doorway. Pressed his ear against the seal.
"—cannot let him leave again!" His father's voice—cold, metallic. A commander's voice.
A sob—his aunt's.
Then "THEY'RE CALLING ME!"
Kirek flinched.
Uncle Darr.
That couldn't be. Darr didn't scream. Darr was the strongest of them all—Commander of the Void Fleets. A walking colossus clad in bio-steel, with six scars carved into his breastplate for six wars won. The one who had lifted Kirek on his first zero-gravity flight and whispered, "The stars fear us, little claw."
Now it sounded like the stars had answered.
Kirek dared to peek through the doorway's seam, his secondary eyelids filtering the brightness.
The royal infirmary swarmed with medics—silver-robed, multi-limbed, their carapaces etched with healer's runes. Their chittering voices overlapped in a language of urgency, all centered around the thrashing figure on the medslab.
Uncle Darr.
But wrong.
His once-gleaming exoshell was cracked and flaking. Faint blue ichor oozed from beneath his segmented armor. His forelimbs spasmed with unnatural jerks, and his four eyes—two dominant, two recessed—were blown wide, black and bottomless. His mandibles twitched erratically, dripping clear saliva onto the floor. A low keening escaped him, vibrating with something beyond grief.
And he was chanting.
Not in any Olgeran dialect. Not in Vythexi, nor the snarled consonants of Zenthic war-cry. This tongue slithered—the syllables slick, curling through the air like wet smoke.
"Shining ones... return... must open... see me... see me..."
Aunt Veyla stood beside him, her claws trembling as she pressed them to his chest. Her voice was soft, too soft for a battle-mate. Her secondary eyes shimmered.
"Darr. You're home. You're home, love. Please—come back."
For a moment, Darr's eyes flicked to her. A glimmer of recognition—gone in the next breath.
"You are not her," he rasped.
Veyla's breath caught. Her claws withdrew, shaking.
Then Darr screamed again—long and shattering.
"THE SHIP! I HAVE TO GO BACK!"
Three medics moved in unison, injecting black-tinted serum into the root of his neck. His limbs bucked once more—then sagged. The chanting stopped, but his mouth still moved, soundless now.
That's when Kirek's mother appeared.
Her armored silhouette cut through the chaos like a blade. Her exosuit glinted gold—a matriarch's mark. She spotted him instantly.
"Kirek." Her voice cracked like a whip.
He froze.
She strode forward, her claws careful as they wrapped around his wrist—but firm, commanding. She was always like that. Not cruel, but never soft.
"You should not be here."
"But—Uncle Darr—"
"Is ill." Her primary eyes blazed, her secondary pair scanning the corridor like hunting drones. "Void sickness. It happens."
Lie ...
Kirek had studied void sickness. It made old pilots tremble. Made their balance fail, their limbs heavy. It didn't make them chant in alien tongues.
As she led him away, he looked back.
Darr stared at the ceiling, lips still moving. Ichor pooled under his back.
"Let me hear them again... just once more... please..."
Then the medseal hissed shut, and the room was sealed in silence.
Kirek's mother didn't take him back to bed.
She took him to the observatory.
The dome of crystalline armor retracted at her command, revealing the sprawl of the Olgeran Empire. Beyond the palace walls lay the glittering lattice of their world—cities layered in orbit, ships like daggers suspended in formation, and distant moons veined with life-harvesters.
Stars filled the void, bright and cold.
"Look," she said, standing behind him, claws on his shoulders. "This is ours. The Empire of Olgera stretches from the acidic rings of Malthur to the ice clouds of Zenithrax. The Vythex bow. The Zenth shatter beneath us. We are ascendant."
Kirek said nothing. The void stared back.
She turned him to face her. "What you saw tonight—that is weakness. The stars do not love us. They test us. Only the strong endure."
He swallowed. "What did he see?"
She paused.
That scared him more than anything else.
Finally, she whispered, "Three cycles ago, a derelict vessel was found near the Vythex border. Not Olgeran. Not Zenth. Not anything we know."
Her claws twitched. "It pulsed with energy we couldn't trace. Nothing inside matched known biology. No crew. Just... presence."
"Uncle Darr went inside?"
She nodded. "He led the boarding. Standard protocol. Fifteen soldiers. Only six returned. All changed."
"Changed how?"
Her grip on his shoulders tightened. "They began to worship."
Kirek frowned. "Worship? But… that's heresy. That's what the Vythex do."
"Exactly." Her mandibles clicked once. "The Olgeran bow to nothing. We consume. Conquer. The stars are ours to command."
Kirek thought of the way Darr had screamed, the blue ichor, the words that weren't words.
You are not her.
"Who is her?" he asked.
For the second time, his mother paused.
Then she stood.
"No more questions. When you are Emperor, you will erase this stain. Purge it from record. Burn every name connected to that ship."
She turned toward the exit. The crystal dome slowly closed overhead, blanketing them in shadow once more.
And Kirek, left alone, looked back at the stars. The ones they were taught to own. To dominate.
But tonight, they didn't feel like something to command.
They felt like they were watching.
And for the first time in his short life, Kirek whispered a thought he would carry for decades.
What if uncle darr didn't break?
What if he saw something true?
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