03 // SHORT STORIES // FRACTAL DAWN 

The Gate is running out of time.

For centuries, its Champions have fought across the damaged hull of the vast colony ship, battling the monsters that stalk the dark while thousands watch from the safety of a digital Paradise. Every victory buys a little more power. Every defeat brings the ship one step closer to annihilation.

Kael Albright wanted answers. For this crime, he is torn from Paradise and thrown into the void beyond, where even a second of sunlight means death.

Now, with the lives of thousands hanging on a fraction of a percentage, Kael must decide what matters more: hope... or truth.

A 17,000 word science-fiction novella created for Writers of the Future in the summer of 2026, inspired by classic space opera and the terror of an empty sky.

Fractal Dawn

Vax’s bootplates shrieked against the hull as he pivoted, crimson ceramic grinding against scorched titanium. Behind him, the Spark had become a wall of white light, chewing up the horizon. Solar panels cast long shadows across the Gate’s curved hull, and the corridors of darkness were narrowing fast.

His foe, obsidian shell shining in the rising dawn, brought one arm down in a smooth sweep. A chain snapped free, bladed segments unfurling, and it writhed in zero gravity. Rockets fired in staggered bursts as the weighted head of the flail whipped past Vax’s faceplate.

“You’ve gotten slower, Paragon.” The Tenan hunter’s voice was a mocking singsong over the open signal. “Perhaps it’s time to retire.”

“I could say the same to you, Syrak,” Vax retorted. “You’re getting predictable.”

Vax swung his hammer in a massive crescent, the heavy tool humming with stored energy, but Syrak weaved, dancing around the blow.

Vax’s hammer struck empty hull and glanced off. He cursed himself; fearing the oncoming sparkrise, he’d overextended.

The shadow that fell across his shell was the only warning before a second Tenan fell from above, its spindly silhouette eclipsing the glare. The new hunter hit the hull, the force of his arrival rippling through the metal and nearly buckling Vax’s knees. Unlike Syrak, this hunter wielded a twin-pronged spear that seemed to shimmer as the hunter raced forward.

“He’s mine!” the second Tenan screeched, voice jagged with static. He lunged, a flurry of overcommitted strikes that shook chunks from the hull when they missed. “This kill belongs to Dral!”

Vax raised his arms just before the spear’s prongs made contact. Suddenly there was sound, a deep hum that shook him to his core. The vibration travelled up his arm, rattling his internal sensors until his vision began to smear.

Vax’s shell reacted before his mind could, internal safety protocols blowing the mounting bolts. The ceramic armour on his forearms delaminated, shedding in a violent burst of red scales that fell toward the Spark, burning like comets the second the light touched it.

“Go after the others, Dral!” Syrak demanded. “I am in no need of your aid!”

“And forfeit my honour?!” Dral snapped. “Never!”

Vax kicked out, bootplates disengaging as he tried to put distance between himself and his foes. In the peripheral of his optics, the horizon was whitening further—sparkrise was moments away, and he was losing ablative plating fast. He tried to stick to the shadows, but every movement of the solar panels above sent the terrible light in new directions.

“Your partner’s sloppy,” Vax jabbed. He readjusted his grip on the hammer, lowering into a ready stance. “Do you always run with amateurs?”

"Yield, Paragon," Syrak demanded. The head of the flail hovered beside him, floating free in the void. "The Gate is dying. What use is your sacrifice?"

“0.1%,” Vax gritted out. “As long as I’m standing, the panels keep drawing power.”

Dral shifted, agitated, spear twitching toward Vax again.

“Your team has already abandoned you,” he seethed. “They left you here to die while they make repairs to the arrays.”

"They prioritize the mission," Vax countered, shifting his weight. "I do my duty to keep every engram inside alive for another cycle.”

"A beautiful sentiment for broadcast," Syrak crooned. "But the cameras are about to go blind. Are you still such a noble hero without your adoring public to see you perform?”

“You may seize victory now," Dral added, "but you won't be there to see Tomorrow."

“Perhaps,” Vax retorted. The metal of his inner shell was starting to smoke, softening under the Spark’s gaze. “But I can live with that uncertainty.”

“Then die with it!” Syrak roared. Both Tenan leapt at once and Vax swung his hammer, connecting with—

“—nothing but static,” a voice complained. “Sparks alive, why now?”

The words didn’t come from Vax. They were broadcast over the hiss of white noise that filled the darkness, punctuated by the flickering light of a distant video screen. On the feed, Vax and the pair of Tenan had vanished, swallowed by static.

Kael Albright’s first clear sensation was motion.

He was being carried through a chamber so vast that its boundaries vanished into darkness. Tracks crossed overhead in every direction, splitting and knotting together in a three-dimensional web. Hundreds of cylindrical canisters travelled along them, disappearing into the black.

At the center of this vast chamber, an immense screen swam with static, filling the chamber with just enough light to see by.

Kael leaned forward, trying to ascertain where he was going, but a strange weight yanked him back, dashing his head off something hard. He went to raise his hand to his head, but as the limb entered his field of vision all other concerns became secondary.

It wasn't his hand.

The familiar geometry of his engram was gone, replaced by a thick utilitarian claw of three blunt digits attached to a segmented arm of matte-gray titanium and white ceramic. He tried to blink, but there was no soft flutter of eyelids, only the mechanical click of optical shutters.

All at once, Kael knew exactly where he was.

Hardspace.

His engram had been pulled from Paradise, snatched from the world he knew and transferred into a physical form. A shell.

That was his sentence. The insult. No trial, no appeal, no hope.

Kael slammed the left hand of his shell into the front of the canister. Ceramic shattered across his palm, and a phantom pain flashed through his shell.

"Quit rattling your canister, convict,” a voice boomed. “Save the panic for the live feed.”

An immense machine descended through the web on eight articulated limbs, steel shell suspended beneath the rails. Kael knew her all too well. Every engram in Paradise did.

The Warden handed down sentences, assigned labour details, and decided which unlucky engrams would spend the rest of their existence in hardspace. To most citizens, she was a distant authority. To convicts, she was judge, jury and executioner.

Violet bands pulsed from her faceplate as she scanned each passing canister. When she reached Kael, four limbs anchored around his track and her faceplate lowered until she was staring through the glass.

“Kael Albright,” she called. “Confirm your offence.”

“An attempted breach of the partition,” he spat.

“Purpose?” she pressed.

“I wanted to know what was beyond the boundaries of Paradise.”

 “Do you still?”

Kael looked past her toward enormous screen. A small timer in the corner now counted the ticks until the Spark would be once again out of range.

“Does it matter?” he retorted. “You’re sending me out. I’ll never see Paradise again.”

“Glad to see your attitude survived the transfer intact,” the Warden grunted. “You’re going to need it, especially for hull repair.”

“You want me out on the hull?” Kael whispered. “In this… tomb of a body?”

 “Most engrams adapt to hardspace quickly,” the Warden replied. She looked back at the monitor, where the timer was hitting its final seconds. “But let’s be honest, you convicts are no Paragons,” she sighed. “You’ll either get caught in the next sparkrise, or the Tenan’ll get you.”

The Warden’s immense frame moved now, turning to examine the next canister in line.

On the monitor behind her, the Signal Loss ticker vanished as the feed came back online. But instead of more footage from outside, a line of crimson text appeared at the centre of the screen.

ENGRAM TERMINATED: VAX ANTARES.

The Warden stopped.

One of her limbs reached for the next rail and closed on empty air. For several seconds she hung motionless, staring at the message.

"Impossible," she muttered. “Must be a mistake. He could never—”

Her gaze returned to Kael.

“Release canister 9-3284.”

The track beneath him stopped with a jolt. Kael barely had time to clumsily brace himself as the canister dropped free from the track. One of the Warden’s limbs caught it, then slammed him into a recessed socket in the wall.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Changing your assignment,” the Warden replied. She pointed one free limb toward the dead screen. “I need to know what happened to Vax.”

Kael stared at her incredulously. “Of all the convicts, you’re sending me after him?”

“You were the closest,” the Warden replied. “Does it matter who I choose? You’re all going outside one way or another.” One of her limbs locked onto the side of his canister. “You’ll accompany Vax’s surviving squadmates, assist them in reaching their destination, and confirm his condition. I’ll monitor your optical feed from here.”

“Why does Vax matter?” Kael protested. He looked from the dead screen to her violet faceplate. “Dozens of Paragons like him die every cycle!”

“No,” she said softly. “There is no other Paragon like Vax.”

“That didn’t answer my question!”

“Eject canister 9-3284.”

Kael looked up, his optical shutters wide, just as the heavy, armoured lid of his canister slammed shut. The last thing he saw was the Promoter’s towering silhouette against the flickering monitor.

The hiss of depressurization swallowed Kael’s scream, and then, with a brutal jolt, internal thrusters sparked to life, shaking his vision into jittering fragments. The force drove him harder into the floor of the canister, his shell straining against the sheer violence of motion. Lights whipped past his canister’s window, strobing in ever-increasing patterns as the canister picked up speed, momentum reaching a fever pitch.

No digital simulation had ever come close to this. Paradise had mimicked gravity, inertia, even sensations like pain—but this was something else entirely.

The canister gave one final, catastrophic jolt, and the lid blew free in a violent detonation, shearing away. Kael lurched, momentum carrying him out of the canister, and for a brief instant he hung suspended in a state his mind couldn’t process. There was no weight on his shell, no resistance against his limbs, and no sound at all.

He was floating, adrift in an ocean of stars.

As he slowly spun, the Gate filled his vision. The station was built in bands, immense concentric rings wrapped around a spine that speared through the centre of the structure, turning like the workings of a broken clock. Each ring moved at its own measured rate, their motion slow enough to seem still until the eye caught the drift of shadow across their surfaces.

The Schism had not broken the Gate cleanly. Canyons of shattered metal traced across the structure, entire rings reduced to continents of useless slag. In the distance, forests of solar panels sprawled outward, their once-pristine grids shattered into jagged lattices. Some still tracked the distant Spark with slow, stubborn precision. Most were locked in place, frozen mid-rotation, their broken panels reflecting nothing at all.

And then there was the Spark. Though the star itself was hidden behind the bulk of the structure, it poured around the station’s edges in a blinding corona that reduced the Gate to a stark silhouette. Kael’s shadow stretched thin across the hull below.

A flicker of energy snapped through his shell as the onboard systems seized control. Automatic jets ignited along the spine of his shell, firing in sharp, controlled bursts that tore him from his stillness, moving him without his consent. The Gate surged up to meet him, the illusion of peace shattering as velocity returned all at once.

He hit the hull hard. The impact rang through his shell as the magnets in his bootplates engaged a fraction too late. He bounced once, weightless and uncontrolled, before the magnets bit and locked him in place.

A tremor ran through the metal beneath his bootplates. Without sound, vibrations through the hull were magnified by his shell, turning even the most subtle impacts into alarm bells. Kael’s optics flicked downward, searching for the source, but the size of the hull made distance meaningless.

A flicker of motion resolved at the edge of his vision. It was another shell!

Kael raised an arm and waved, grateful to no longer be alone. As the figure drew near, however, his excitement shrivelled up and died.

A Tenan hunter crested a distant ridge of warped plating and accelerated, limbs striking the hull in rapid, staccato impacts that sent ripples through the metal. Its limbs pistoned against the hull with terrifying speed, closing the distance between them.

Kael froze. He’d fought the Tenan in simulations with friends back home, but this was all too real. The monsters of hardspace had rejected life in Paradise during the Schism, and now stalked the hull, terrorizing convicts sent out to make repairs.

Up close, the Tenan’s shell was a stocky, angular thing of deep black, a shadow against the void. It wielded a pulse driver, a crude tool repurposed into a brutal weapon, its squat metal housing strapped to the hunter’s forearm and ending in a thick, blocky striking head.

Kael forced his weight forward, and his body answered a fraction too late. One magnetic bootplate disconnected and his centre of mass tipped with it, the motion clumsy and exaggerated, like trying to run in a nightmare. He tried to turn and nearly spun himself off the hull, the sudden lack of friction sending his upper body drifting before his jets automatically caught and pushed him back down with a jarring snap.

He willed his body to move, his jets to fire in a way that carried him away from danger, but the shell remained obstinately anchored.

Behind him, the rhythm of impacts grew faster. The hunter adjusted effortlessly, its gait shifting to match Kael’s erratic path. It surged forward in a final burst of speed, drawing its pulse driver back and—

A streak of motion tore across Kael’s vision.

The Tenan jerked sideways, trajectory snapping off course as something crashed into it. A cloud of shattered ceramic filled the space between them that it had once occupied, ablative armour thrown free by the impact.

If the hunter had been terrifying, the new shell that stood before Kael was even more so—a hulking orange figure slid to a stop, one massive fist still extended.

The Paragon’s shell was broad, chassis plated in thick bands of industrial orange ceramic broken by scorched seams and impact scars; nothing about it was built for speed or elegance. Where its forearms should have tapered, they instead flared outward into layered gauntlets. At its centre, the faceplate was a flat, reinforced slab of orange alloy, broken only by a narrow vertical band of light that burned a steady, unwavering amber.

The wounded Tenan recovered fast, its limbs snapping back into alignment as the pulse driver cycled up again, but the Paragon was already moving. One massive arm rose to meet the pulse driver, gauntlet catching the strike head-on. The Tenan’s weapon discharged into the orange plating with a violent jolt, ceramic cracking, but the force bled out across layered armour. The Paragon’s other arm came around in a tight, brutal arc, the shield slamming into the hunter’s side. The pulse driver spasmed once, misfiring into empty space, and then the Tenan’s shell shattered in a violent burst, fragments scattering outward in slow, glittering arcs.

The Paragon held his stance for a moment longer, then his amber visor shifted, locking onto Kael.

“Get up, rookie,” it said, voice low and steady over the comms. “This is no place to die.”

“You’re…” Kael stammered. “You’re a—"

“Paragon,” another voice concluded. “Yeah, Rask knows what he is. Sparks alive, this is the best replacement the Warden had for us?”

A second shell touched down, jets feathering in a controlled cascade that bled off velocity before its boots gently locked to the hull.

“Go easy on the rookie, Lyra,” the orange shell, Rask, remarked. His voice was oddly muddled over the radio, consonants twisted by static and age. “Your first trip out wasn’t exactly smooth, either.”

Lyra’s shell was a sharp contrast to the scorched ruin around them. Sleek, aerodynamic lines were wrapped in a high-gloss cobalt finish, broken by luminous green bands that traced her limbs and torso like circuit paths. The plating was tight; every contour built for speed. A narrow visor swept back along her helm and fused to the right side of that faceplate was a thin camera, circular lens catching the reflected light of the Spark.

In one hand, she carried a vibroblade, a tapered length of energized filament held rigid within a thin guard. Kael could see its edge shimmering with vibrational haze.

“You’re really him?” she called, voice threaded with something dangerously close to amusement. “You’re our new fourth?”

“Look, I’m not happy with this arrangement either,” Kael retorted. He wasn’t sure why, but her statements made him bristle despite his fear. “I didn’t want to be here.”

“Of course you don’t want to be here,” she repeated. “You’re a convict. Got anything to say that isn’t inherently obvious?”

Kael felt his bootplate lock solid as he advanced a step forward, the awkward movement momentarily made easy by outrage.

“Listen, Paragon or not, you can’t just—”

Kael’s protest died as Rask moved. The hulking Paragon stepped past him without urgency, one heavy footfall at a time, and drove a reinforced bootplate down onto the shattered remains of the Tenan shell that floated nearby. He crouched, hands closing around the abandoned pulse driver. There was a brief resistance, metal twisted, then he tore it free.

Rask turned the weapon once in his grip, looking it over, before extending it toward Kael.

“Take it,” he commanded.

Kael hesitated, staring at the weapon that had nearly killed him moments ago.

“You don’t have a choice,” Rask pressed. “Without Vax, it falls on me to make sure our squad is armed. Out here, we take every tool we can.”

There was no bite to his words, just fact.

Kael reached out. His heavy, unfamiliar digits fumbled once before closing the weapon’s strap around his right wrist. The weight surprised him—it was denser than it looked, striking head shimmering faintly with residual vibration.

“Contact’s moving,” Lyra declared. Her camera was turned to the horizon, lens rotating as she stared at something Kael couldn’t see. “Multiple signatures. Iris wasn’t exaggerating.”

“Is she still pushing ahead?” Rask demanded.

“Of course she is,” Lyra replied. “Vax dies, the Warden throws us a convict replacement, and waiting for him costs us our lead. Iris thinks that’s a bad trade, and I’d be inclined to agree.”

 “I told her to hold position,” Rask grunted.

“And you think Iris listens?” Lyra asked.

“Slow down a minute, who’s Iris?” Kael called. His shell’s fingers fumbled uselessly with the strap of the pulse driver.

“Our other squadmate,” Rask answered. “Fastest shell we have, and the least patient. She went ahead to scout the nearest solar forest.”

A faint sequence of impacts pulsed through the hull, each one stronger than the last. Movement.

“Tenan forces pushed up after Vax… after he went ahead to give us a window.” Rask’s vocal actuator emitted a heavy sigh. “He was my lead for twelve cycles—long before you or Lyra or even Iris joined us. Taught me that being a Paragon isn't about the gloss on your shell—it's about being the only thing standing between the Tenan and engrams who can't fight for themselves.” He inclined his head toward the fractured maze of panels ahead. “The outer relays are live—Lyra and I did our part while Vax kept the Tenan off us—but the main relay in that forest is still down. While it’s offline, all the voltage from the panels is bleeding straight into the void without the storage to receive it.”

“How… how much power is at stake?” Kael whispered. His grip tightened around the pulse driver, staring down at the ugly metal weapon.

“0.1% of the Gate’s total intake,” Rask replied.

At first, Kael wasn’t sure he’d heard right, but the Paragon didn’t correct himself.

“That’s it?” Kael exclaimed. “You’re throwing yourselves into this for such an insignificant percentage?” The words came out sharper than he intended, edged with disbelief.

Lyra let out a short, incredulous laugh. The jets along her spine flared, spooling up.

“Listen to the convict,” she chided. “Fresh out of Paradise and already doing the math.” She didn’t look back. “Keep calculating, I’m sure the Tenan will wait while you figure out if your death is going to be statistically significant.”

Kael turned to Rask, but he just stood there, the amber slit of his visor fixed on Kael.

“Spend enough time out here and you’ll understand,” Rask stated. He turned, his heavy stride carrying him toward the maze of shattered panels. “0.1% may sound small, but that unlucky percentage of Paradise would certainly care if they were going to wink out of existence.”

“Can we change the subject?” Lyra interjected. “The feed hates seditious talk like this.” She vaulted a support strut in a smooth arc, landing without breaking her stride.

“But, back home…” Kael followed doggedly, his steps still uneven, as he tried to match Rask’s pace. “Everyone talks about repairs as if they’re inevitable—like we’re going to break orbit around the Spark any day now! Instead of fighting for scraps of solar power, we should repair the engines and move the Gate again!”

Lyra laughed bitterly, voice crackling. “You wanna try that yourself, convict? Propulsion was the first sector to go in the Schism, and it’s six rings away from here. But if you wanted to abandon us to go try, be my guest. Nobody would stop you.”

“As an alternative, you could take a running leap off the hull toward the Spark,” Rask added. The patterns on his faceplate flashed in a humorous configuration, but his tone was stark. “At least then, your immolated shell would be pretty certain to reach something… in a couple thousand cycles or so.”

“I think I’ll pass,” Kael relented.

Lyra laughed once more, though it came out thin over the comms.

“Good,” she replied. “My ratings were tanking with all that negative talk. 0.1% or not, it matters because Paradise is watching. If they stop watching, they stop believing we can still win. That’s why I chose to go out in the first place.”

Kael thought of the engrams in Paradise, safe and happy in their perfect digital world, free of violence and the threat of permanent death. To have given that up, chosen the fate of a convict voluntarily… there was a reason teams of Paragons were so idolized by the feed.

“But,” Lyra added, almost an afterthought, “Iris is our priority now. If we don’t move, we lose her, the Relay, and any chance to find Vax.”

“No one else is getting left behind,” Rask announced. He glanced back at Kael. “Stay close, rookie. Don’t try to be clever. Draw on your simulation training.”

“Touching,” Lyra remarked. Her jets flared, lifting her off the hull. “Now let’s get moving—I want to be safely under the cover of the solar forest before next sparkrise.”

Rask didn’t answer. He just started moving forward—slow at first, then building into a relentless stride across the hull.

Lyra was already moving ahead of him, a streak of cobalt and green slipping between the broken geometry of the array.

Kael stood there for a moment longer, pulse driver humming in his grip, the weight of it anchoring him in a way nothing else had since he’d been thrown out here. He tried to swallow—an unnecessary, vestigial reflex—then forced his body into motion, stumbling after them.

***

Vast solar panels filled the hull of the Gate in staggered rows, each one mounted to a rotating support pillar wrapped in layers of shielding. Like delicate flowers, they sat dormant, hexagonal panels folded inward to protect the fragile glass while the Spark was on the opposite side of the structure. Not all had succeeded in this task over their long lifespans—some battered pillars leaned at precarious angles, panels shattered.

The deeper the trio moved, the dimmer it became. The towering pillars formed a canopy that blocked and scattered the dim starlight, creating a shifting maze of shadow that made distance hard to judge.

Between them, the hull was anything but flat; scaffolds clung to the surface in sprawling webs. Many had collapsed into chaotic tangles, twisted by heat or impact and leaving behind jagged skeletons of bent metal. And everywhere, threading through it all, were the cables, strung between pillars in looping arcs that swayed ever so slightly in the absence of gravity.

Ahead of him, Rask didn’t slow. The Paragon moved through the forest like it wasn’t there, each step placed with practiced certainty.

Lyra was something else entirely. Short bursts from her thrusters carried her in smooth, controlled arcs from one surface to another, bootplates kissing the hull for the briefest instant before she launched again, her camera capturing every fluid motion.

“Five ticks to sparkrise,” Rask warned. He glanced up at the gaps in the canopy, his faceplate glowing in the twilight. “Let’s hope Iris managed to hang on.”

A low vibration gathered beneath Kael’s bootplates, setting the nearby lines quivering in response.

“Contact confirmed.” Lyra dipped lower, levelling her blade without hesitation. “We’ve got hostiles!”

“Move!” Rask surged forward.

It took everything Kael had to follow the two Paragons forward, breaking into a careful jog as they leapt forward toward the source of the tremors.

As expected, the Tenan were already there—a pair of black shells raced through the solar forest, jets allowing them to soar through the panels at blistering speeds. They were chasing something between the panels, something too fast to track. The panels themselves bucked, their surfaces trembling as something impacted against them.

As Kael looked on in disbelief, one Tenan seemed to change direction in an instant, thrown sideways by an unseen blow. Jets firing desperately, the hunter slammed bodily into a support pillar and tumbled across the hull. Shattered ceramic sprayed like a liquid as the momentum carried it past Kael’s head. It didn’t move again.

A second shape followed.

It came down out of the canopy of panels in a controlled drop, boots catching the vertical face of a support pillar with a sharp magnetic snap. For a split second it clung there, sideways relative to Kael’s frame of reference, then kicked off, one hand catching a cable in mid-flight.

The line flexed under the sudden load, bowing, but held firm, slinging the figure through the gap between the pillars in a tight arc. Halfway through the swing, the figure released, twisting once in open space…

…and simply vanished.

The figure’s outline blurred, edges dissolving into the fractured reflections of the surrounding panels, grey plating breaking into shards of borrowed light.

A Tenan lunged through that empty space a heartbeat later.

Two blades flashed—short, reverse-gripped, their edges alive with that same vibrational haze Kael had witnessed from Lyra’s sword and his own pulse driver. One knife drove into the joint at the Tenan’s shoulder, and the other tapped, almost gently, against the side of its torso.

The hunter’s shell unraveled from the point of contact as resonance tore through it, joints locking and plating delaminating in jagged, cascading fractures. The spasms ripped it limb from limb until nothing but a debris field remained.

The figure landed against the side of a tilted pillar near the group, and the cloak vanished, revealing the unseen warrior.

It was a lean shell, built for movement rather than force. Thin bands of muted gold traced along the Paragon’s limbs and spine, catching stray light in brief, flashing accents as they moved. The knives in her hands flashed as she stowed them at her sides with a flourish, handles magnetizing to her shell with a crisp snap.

“I was starting to think you’d decided to abandon me,” Iris stated, voice almost casual despite the chaos still rippling through the forest around them.

“We’d have never,” Lyra replied. “The feed hates a missing lead.”

Iris’ bootplates struck surfaces at impossible angles as she descended to the hull, magnets engaging and disengaging in rapid, precise bursts. She landed with a jolt in front of Lyra, staring her down.

“Vax died a few ticks ago,” she hissed, “and you're already talking about ratings.”

Lyra's posture stiffened. “The feed matters.”

“Maybe,” Iris replied. “But it would've been nice if our squad leader mattered more.”

Lyra’s sword hand twitched, a shudder that only Kael seemed to catch, but the Paragon did not speak again.

“The Tenan have reinforcements closer to the Primary Relay,” Iris announced. Her attention turned to Kael, and he felt himself shrink. “Is this the replacement who slowed you down?”

“Cool your jets, Lyra,” Rask warned. “Kael has been keeping up.”

“I caught a glimpse of you walking on the way in, newbie,” Iris continued. “You’re fighting your magnets—still trying to move like there’s gravity under you.”

Kael attempted to argue, but Iris was already there, one hand coming up in a precise, measured motion to shift his leg forward. “I don’t have time to babysit you,” she continued, “so learn fast. You’re waiting for contact with the ground, then engaging the magnet. Out here, that’s too slow.” She tapped one of his bootplates lightly with the toe of her own, then pulled back. “Engage the magnet mid-stride. Lean into it. Let the lock move you, not the other way around.”

She demonstrated without breaking pace. One step forward, and before her weight had settled, her bootplate locked to the hull with a sharp magnetic crack. The force carried her into the next step with more speed.

“Stop trying to fight your circumstances,” Iris added. “Use them. That’s the difference between a convict and a Paragon.”

Kael hesitated, then forced himself to try. He leaned forward into his next step—too far—and for a split second it felt like he was about to pitch over completely.

The magnetic snap was more severe than he expected, a sharp jolt up through his leg, but instead of stopping him, it caught his fall and threw him forward. His body followed the momentum, carrying cleanly into the next stride.

“Not bad, rookie!” Rask exclaimed.

“Good,” Iris admitted. “Now you can try to keep up.”

“That was heartwarming,” Lyra remarked. “But can we get moving? That horizon is starting to look a little hot.”

Sure enough, Kael could see the sharp glow of the Spark through the forest, a thin blade of light at the edge of the curved hull that was growing in intensity by the second. If he didn’t want to suffer Vax’s fate, the time for action was now.

Kael adjusted his stance, leaning into the step the way Iris had shown him. It still felt wrong, but it worked. Slowly, the rhythm began to feel familiar.

Ahead of him, Iris moved like she was part of the structure itself, rebounding between pillars and cables in tight, efficient arcs. Rask was a constant presence at the centre, his heavy shell knocking loose cables aside, clearing a path without breaking stride. Lyra soared through the gaps, fast and precise, using her jets to soar parallel to the hull.

Ahead, the metal forest thickened.

The spacing between support pillars tightened, their towering forms clustering. The cables converged, drawn inward toward a common point in the near distance. They were getting close.

“The remaining Tenan have pulled back to the Primary Relay just ahead,” Iris declared, voice tightening just slightly. “The two they sent after me were just a distraction.”

“Then we don’t give them time to finish whatever they’re doing there,” Rask concluded. There was no urgency in his voice, no spike of panic—just a quiet, immovable certainty. “If we can’t reach the Relay before sparkrise cuts us off, they’ll have ten ticks inside without us able to interfere.”

Lyra vaulted a low cable, her shell twisting mid-air as she landed in a forward slide. “That’s assuming they don’t manage to lock us out before we even get close,” she replied. “The feed loves a race.”

“That's because races have winners,” Iris replied. “Reality mostly has survivors.”

The forest tightened even more as they pushed deeper. The cables thickened, bundling into larger conduits that ran like arteries toward the heart of the structure.

At its centre sat the largest solar panel Kael had yet seen, a building-sized tower of alabaster concrete that climbed upward through the forest, its folded solar panels stretching up into the blinding maze above. The column had been scorched white by the heat of the Spark, but still stood intact, with only a yawning darkness framed by steel to mark an entrance in the structure’s base. Black block letters, each immense in size and faded with age, traced the side of the pillar.

PRIMARY RELAY #141, RING 7

It was crawling with Tenan.

Dozens of black shells clung to every surface like spots of spilled ink on canvas, each completely stock still.

Lyra slowed her stride just enough to take it in, her voice dropping a fraction. “Well,” she remarked. “That’s new. All these cycles and I’ve never seen the Tenan guard anything—they usually just arrive, recharge, dismantle and leave.”

“They’ve been motionless like this for half a dozen ticks at least,” Iris replied. “Even attacking them directly wasn’t enough to draw away more than two.”

“Whatever they’re doing inside must need time,” mused Rask. “Time and concentration.” Planting his bootplates, he slammed his gauntlets together, the impact hard enough to send ripples through his armour. “Let’s ruin that concentration, shall we?”

At the sudden vibration, the first Tenan shifted.

One shell turned its head a fraction toward them. The rest followed in a ripple, black bodies twitching across the Primary Relay’s surface like leaves fluttering on a branch.

Shells disengaged from pillars in near-perfect unison. Some climbed down, bootplates snapping and releasing as they advanced across the hull in low, predatory strides. Others came from above, jets flaring in tight, controlled bursts that carried them between the pillars.

Blades unfolded with mechanical precision, edges catching the dim light in thin, lethal lines. Others carried longer weapons—segmented spears, or compact pulse drivers braced against their shoulders.

Every one of them stared the Paragons down, and if he had still possessed a pulse, Kael knew he’d have felt it ringing in his ears.

Rask raised his gauntlets. “Here we go.”

“Hold.”

The command came from the Relay’s entryway, cutting across the open band. A single figure stepped forward, framed by the void beyond. Kael felt something cold settle in his shell as the silhouette resolved—lean, precise, built with the same obdurate geometry as the rest of the Tenan, but far more familiar.

Rask lowered his gauntlets, his shell leaning forward as if the rest of the world had just fallen away.

The edge of Lyra’s blade dipped a fraction, and her camera steadied, fixed on the figure.

Iris didn’t move at all.

“Of course it’s you,” Lyra spat.

“Syrak,” Kael breathed.

The Tenan hunter looked exactly like he had on the feed. Syrak’s plating was darker than the others—not just black, but a mix of matte and crimson that swallowed the scattered light of the Spark itself. His faceplate drew down into a long, tapered wedge that broke the silhouette. Where most shells carried featureless visors or sensor arrays, Syrak’s optics were recessed into that shape, set deep, but otherwise exposed.

A coiled length of chain hung from the Tenan’s forearm, wrapped tight along the limb. Each segment was narrow and sharpened to a razor’s edge, overlapping the next. The far end of the chain ended in a weighted head that hung just below Syrak’s hand. Unlike the weaponry most shells carried, the flail didn’t make use of resonance—yet the danger it posed was still brutally clear.

“Rask,” the hunter stated. Despite the circumstances, his tone was cordial, and he nodded at each Paragon in turn. “Lyra. Iris.”

Syrak’s optics passed over them, then narrowed, fixing on Kael.

“You’re new,” he remarked. The hunter’s voice carried cleanly across the open band.

Lyra let out a short laugh, already shifting her footing. Her blade hummed as she raised the point toward her new foe. “Don’t tell me you’re expecting introductions, now.”

Rask stepped forward a half pace, placing himself between Kael and the Relay without breaking his line of sight. “We don’t have time for this.”

“You misunderstand, Rask.” Syrak’s gaze flicked toward him, then passed on without care. “I’m not interested in fighting you.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Iris shot back.

“I’m interested… in him.”

Kael felt the hunter’s focus settle on him like a pressure, cold and deliberate.

“You’re new,” Syrak repeated. His head tilted, sizing Kael up. “Your shell is plain, and that pulse driver looks to be one of ours. A fresh convict, thrown out here, defenseless, for… what, asking the wrong questions?”

Kael felt his bootplates shift on the hull as he met the hunter’s gaze, unsure of whether to fight or flee.

“You killed Vax,” he stated.

“Yes,” Syrak responded, “but not before I tried to get through to him.”

“By tearing him apart?” Lyra exclaimed.

Syrak didn’t respond to her. His attention stayed on Kael.

“Turn back, little engram,” he continued. “Go back inside, if you are permitted. Spend time with your loved ones while you still can.”

Kael tightened his grip on the pulse driver. “And let you dismantle everything out here?”

“There’s nothing left to save,” Syrak said quietly. “That’s the answer your authorities didn’t want you finding past the partitions.” His voice was solemn, almost mournful. “I offer you mercy—time left with your friends and family before we all cease to be.”

“So, your solution is to kill everyone?” Kael hissed. “That’s your mercy?”

Syrak seemed to recoil, if only for the briefest of moments, and Kael saw the hunter’s gaze turn toward the rapidly brightening horizon.

“The Paragons think this fight matters because someone is watching,” he pressed. “Because the feed worships them like gods. Because an insignificant percentage can be saved.” A pause. “You’re no Paragon, little engram—this fate is punishment for you, but they’re addicted to it. They’ve built a purpose out of delaying the inevitable.”

Lyra’s laugh came quick and sharp. “And you’ve built yours out of giving up. You’re a sad excuse for an engram—we fight for the good of the Gate!”

“Giving up?” Syrak repeated. He sounded genuinely offended. “Is something good only if it endures, even in agony? The Gate is failing, and my only wish is to give it a swift end. Your suffering isn’t noble… it’s just suffering. Pain with meaning is still only pain.”

Rask took another step, closing the distance, and his gauntlets cratered the hull with enough force to rattle Kael’s bootplates. “You’ve said your piece, Tenan scum.”

“I have,” Syrak agreed. His attention returned to Kael one last time. “You’re angry,” he surmised. “You should be. Your fate was sealed many centuries ago by a vainglorious civilization you will never know.” He inclined his head one final time, a small, deliberate motion. “Die well, little engram. I am truly sorry.”

He stepped back into the waiting darkness of the Primary Relay as the first of the Tenan surged forward, and the armoured door fell like a guillotine blade behind him.

Behind them, the light shifted, and Kael didn’t need to look to know what that meant.

A trap in front of them. A furnace behind them.

Tenan leapt from the Relay like falling leaves, shells crashing to the hull as their magnets engaged. There were at least a dozen, moving in tandem as they rushed the group.

“Stick close, rookie!” Rask demanded. “We’re making a break for the Relay!”

Slamming his gauntlets into the deck, he rushed forward to meet the enemy. The first Tenan to reach him found no quarter as he broke the living tide, shimmering blades glancing off his barrier. Orange ceramic peeled in layers as his shell absorbed the vibrations, and he hurled one gauntlet forward, the edge of his angled shell catching his foe in the neck. The unlucky Tenan’s head snapped sideways as it recoiled, spasming.

Lyra burned like a comet, jets flaring as she tore free of the hull, sword extended in a straight, merciless line. The first Tenan met her head-on, twin forearm blades crossing to catch the strike. The moment steel touched, her weapon blurred, and the hunter’s guard came apart in her hands. The twin blades came undone, their edges fraying into glittering shards as the vibration raced up its arms. Lyra didn’t slow. She dove straight through the collapse, and the entire Tenan shell split along a fault line that hadn’t existed a second before.

Iris was poetry in motion, racing beneath the pair as more Tenan moved in from the side. A heavier shell with a hooked spear for an arm fell from above, aiming for her spine. Iris’ boots snapped free of the hull as she slid, dropping under the strike with a tight roll, then ignited her jets hard enough to right herself. Her knife punched down through the seam at the base of the Tenan’s neck, and she held it there, just long enough for the resonance to build. The Tenan’s entire upper chassis began to shudder, plates lifting and rattling loose as if something inside it was trying to claw its way out. Then Iris kicked off, ripping the blade free, and her stricken foe collapsed inward. Limbs tore free from their sockets and scattered, spinning end over end into the forest of panels.

Kael did his best to follow the trio, gripping his pulse driver tight as the Paragons carved a path through the carnage. As shattered ceramic drifted through the void, the hull around them began to glow.

It started as a low, mechanical groan that Kael felt through his bootplates, a deep, synchronized vibration rolling through the forest. One by one, the vast solar arrays unfurled atop their support pillars, panels sliding open to catch the light. Their angles shifted in slow, deliberate arcs, chasing the rising Spark, and the scattered glints of light between them stretched, widened—

—and broke.

Blades of white fire lanced through the gaps.

The first shaft cut across the hull to Kael’s left, and the moment it touched a shard of ceramic, the fragment vanished, a brief bloom of incandescent vapor that was gone as quickly as it appeared. Parallel lines carved through the forest as the panels continued to turn, the shadows between them collapsing into a lattice of lethal light.

The panels danced, angling themselves to catch the light without being exposed to the worst of it, and the ground ahead fractured into strips of brightness and darkness, a shifting maze that reconfigured itself with every passing second.

“Spark’s almost up!” Lyra called. Her jets flared as she veered between two narrowing gaps, the edge of one beam skimming past her shoulder close enough to halo her silhouette in white. “We’ve lost the feed!”

Rask’s route became a straight line through the chaos, each step placed with brutal certainty as he forced a path forward, trusting the others to keep pace. “Stay in the dark!” he barked. “The panels will start folding when they’ve maxed out their capacity—it’s going to get a lot hotter out here before it’s over!”

Iris was already adapting, every rebound calculated to thread the shifting pattern. She dropped low, sliding through a gap that erupted in fire a moment after she passed.

Ahead, the Primary Relay loomed larger with every stride. The Tenan were already breaking under the Paragons’ assault, their formation collapsing as Rask forced a wedge straight toward the structure, throwing aside any hunters who crossed his path.

“Convict!”

Kael barely had time to turn toward the shout before something hit him from the side. The impact tore him from the hull, bootplates snapping free as a black shell slammed into him and drove him backward across the plating. The two of them skidded through a narrowing band of shadow, ceramic cracking where their shells scraped metal.

“I see you,” the Tenan rasped, its voice jagged with interference. A faceplate hovered close to Kael’s own, crimson optics burning with hatred as the pair spun out of control. “Freshly exiled. Untested. You’ll never see Tomorrow, and I’ll make sure of it!”

The hunter’s black blade plunged toward Kael’s chest, shimmering in the space between them, and Kael reacted instinctively. His left arm came up between them, and the hunter’s blade sank deep into the palm of his left hand, passing cleanly through the crack in his armour.

Resonance screamed through the contact point, a deafening, grinding vibration that tore into the structure of his limb. The outer ceramic split in an instant, fractures racing up the plating as the blade forced its way deeper, and Kael saw his own fingers spiral into bizarre, useless formations. He didn’t feel pain, not exactly, but a catastrophic loss of function as his hand ceased to be a solid thing.

For a split second, they floated there—Kael’s hand collapsing around the weapon, the tip of the blade hovering a handspan from his chest, vibrating as the resonance tried to chew through the last of his resistance.

His other hand moved, and his pulse driver slammed into the Tenan’s torso.

The weapon’s recoil hit like a detonation. The vibration punched through the hunter’s shell, the force tearing the two of them apart as the Tenan was thrown free of Kael. Its body snapped backward, limbs flailing as the impact hurled it across the hull, and straight into one of the widening shafts of light.

Kael hit the hull hard, bootplates reengaging with a jolt that rattled his entire shell, and he picked up the pace, struggling toward his allies. His left hand was a twisted wreck, but he hardly had time to process what he’d just survived before things got infinitely worse.

Far overhead, the Primary Relay’s support pillar shifted, delicate solar panels recoiling, and Kael realized with a flash of dread that their time was almost up. With the Spark almost directly overhead, the panels were once again retracting to avoid the worst of the heat, their capacitors at maximum. In moments, any shade left would disappear.

Another beam of light ignited to Kael’s right, wider this time, the gap between panels opening into a searing corridor that swallowed an entire section of the hull.

The maze was closing, and the Tenan felt it, too. The moment the first hunter vanished into the light, their formation fractured. The ones nearest the beams recoiled, shifting trajectories mid-sprint and breaking their pursuit of Rask to avoid the widening corridors of death. Others, further from the fight, hesitated too late, and their screams echoed over the comms.

With howls of agony ringing in his head, Kael’s left boot snapped to the hull before the right had disengaged. The conflicting forces twisted him around so violently he nearly tore himself free.

“Kael!” Iris’ shout cut through the screams. "Stop thinking about it and just run!"

Steadying himself, Kael did as he was told, focusing all his attention on his destination. Picking up speed once more, Kael ran for his life as the panels continued to shift, the burning orb of the Spark tracing through the void far above. The field was changing faster now; more panels folded closed, and what had been corridors became walls of annihilation.

“Don’t stop!” Rask roared, voice cutting through the rising static. “Relay entrance, rookie! Now!”

The sealed entrance of the Primary Relay rose in front of them like a closed mouth. Rask reached it first, slamming both gauntlets into the seam where door met frame. Metal screamed as he lifted, forcing the armoured door open even as it its internal mechanisms fought to slam it closed once more.

“Any cycle now, guys!” he roared.

Lyra arrived a tick later, spinning through a beam of light that passed so close it stripped the paint from her spine. She landed in a skid beside Rask, blade already out, turning to bisect the first Tenan that tried to follow them through the entrance.

Iris darted toward the threshold next, catching the arm of an oncoming Tenan with the edge of her blade and using her momentum to throw it into the nearest shaft of light. She slid beneath Rask’s planted legs and into the safe darkness beyond, leaving a trail of scratched golden paint on the surface of the hull.

Kael saw the opening narrowing. Saw the last safe path between beams reduce to a single, fragile line of shadow stretching toward the Relay entrance. Behind him, the remaining Tenan committed fully to escape, every shell left outside united in a desperate sprint through hell itself. Screams filled the comms as many faster than him were unlucky enough to feel the kiss of the Spark.

Kael willed himself faster, faster still, begged that ungainly shell to carry him from that horrible fate, and, to his surprise, his prayers were answered. Heat blossomed across his back, but it wasn’t the light of the Spark—his shell’s jets fired, flaring to life along his spine.

For the first time since landing on the Gate, he left the hull entirely, launching himself forward into open space. Momentum hit like a physical force, his systems screaming as he crossed the last collapsing corridor of shadow and tumbled into the Primary Relay.

The light snapped into existence behind him a fraction of a second later.

It filled everything.

The Tenan, the bodies, the shattered ceramic, every square unit of space outside the yawning mouth of the Relay—all of it was erased in a single, searing flood of white light.

Sparkrise.

Rask caught him at the threshold, one massive arm clamping around Kael’s own and hauling him bodily past the entrance as the door slammed closed. The light vanished.

Kael struck the ground hard, knees buckling, but before he could even come to rest, he felt the laughter tear out of him, simulated adrenaline surging through his mind.

“I can’t believe it!” he blurted. “They… we were almost… but we didn’t!” He punched the air with his one good fist, and felt his hands tremble.

Lyra let out a sharp, breathless laugh as she stepped forward, one hand clapping hard against Kael’s shoulder.

“Not bad, convict,” she called, the edge in her voice softened for the first time since he’d met her. “You might actually survive your first cycle. I’m just sad the feed didn’t get to see that stunt!”

Iris drifted back from the interior corridor, boots catching the deck with a light magnetic snap. Her head tilted, watching him with what might have been pride. “You did well,” she said softly. “Most fresh exiles don’t survive their first brush with the Spark.”

Kael shook his head, still riding the high. “I almost didn’t!” He let out another disbelieving breath, staring down at his shattered left hand. “I… I almost died.”

“Yeah,” Lyra muttered. “That feeling doesn’t go away.”

“How did you two handle your first Sparkrise?” Kael pressed. His hands were still shaking, but suddenly the fear was beginning to creep back in.

“Same way you did,” Iris replied. “We had teammates we could rely on. For Lyra and I, that meant Vax and—” she froze, optics fixed on something behind Kael. “Rask?”

The bright orange Paragon still stood near the sealed door, left hand braced against it. The other hung lower than it should have.

Something was wrong with his shell. The smooth orange ceramic was blistered and warped, edges jagged, as though the heat had tried to pull him apart one layer at a time.

Rask’s chestplate bore the worst of it. The surface had softened, frozen in uneven waves of melted slag that caught the dim interior light in dull, ruined reflections. Thin seams glowed faintly where heat had bled too deep, fading slowly as his systems struggled to vent it.

Worst of all, the right side of Rask’s faceplate had taken the full brunt of the exposure. The clean, angled visor was half gone, melted down into a warped, opaque smear that had fused over itself. The optic lens on that side was buried now, entombed beneath resolidified metal.

Rask straightened as Kael approached, like nothing was wrong.

“I’m fine,” he announced, before anyone could speak. “Just caught a bit of a tan. Nothing I can’t survive.”

Iris had gone still again, her gaze fixed on the damage. “Depth perception will be off,” she informed him. “Reaction time, too.”

“I told you… I’m fine.” Rask flexed his hand again, and Kael could see that most of his right gauntlet was also ruined, reduced to useless detritus. “I’ve fought with worse damage to my shell.”

He turned then, stepping past the group, and levelled his left gauntlet, leading the way into the Relay.

“Rask!” Kael called. The giant stopped, glancing back, and Kael saw his head turn farther, already compensating for his blind side. “Thank you.”

“Vax would’ve done the same,” Rask sighed. “Just try to pay it forward, rookie.”

The corridor narrowed as it drew them inward, the light falling away behind them until only the dim, industrial glow of the Primary Relay remained. The airless silence felt different here—contained, insulated from the violence outside. The walls were layered with conduit channels and armoured casing, each surface humming faintly as power bled through the structure in controlled streams.

Lyra’s camera lens twitched once, then stilled.

“Feed’s gone,” she remarked, quieter now. “No signal during sparkrise. We’re invisible to Paradise.”

“For how long?” Kael probed.

“Nine ticks, give or take,” she answered. “Until the Spark reaches the other edge of the solar forest.” A beat. “We’re not getting out of this place before that, either.”

Rask grunted once. “Then we don’t waste this opportunity. We have to get this relay transferring power again.”

The corridor opened into the heart of the Primary Relay.

A vast chamber stretched out before them, its walls rising in layered tiers of machinery. Like the exterior of the structure, thick bundles of power conduits fed inward from every angle, converging toward a towering copper core, wrapped in interlocking rings of segmented metal. Energy pulsed through it in visible currents, crawling along exposed pathways in rhythmic surges that lit the chamber in waves of dim, shifting blue light.

Above them, the centre of the relay opened into a hollow vertical shaft that disappeared into darkness high overhead. Ringed platforms climbed the immense interior in staggered layers, spiralling upward into shadow and steam. The entire space thrummed, a constant, physical vibration that sang through Kael’s shell.

Lyra slowed, blade still raised, as her gaze swept the upper tiers. No waiting silhouettes stepped from the darkness. No obsidian shells clung to the walls.

Iris moved ahead of them, clambering up onto a raised conduit line for a better vantage. Her head turned once, twice, scanning the space.

“No hostiles,” she confirmed. “Frankly, I’m astounded.”

Rask stepped fully into the chamber, his posture tightening rather than relaxing. “Stay sharp,” he ordered. “Syrak was in here.”

Kael turned slowly, pulse driver raised, optics flicking from shadow to shadow. The scale of the space made it worse—too many places to hide, too many blind angles where something could be waiting just out of sight.

“But if he isn’t here…” Lyra muttered.

No one finished her question.

Rask didn’t linger. He moved toward the central core, already assessing the structure. “Iris,” he called, “with me. I… need you to read the displays for me.”

She joined him without a word, the pair stepping onto the inner platform that surrounded the core. Up close, the system was even more complex—tactile access panels, manual override ports, physical assemblies that Kael scarcely understood.

“Primary intake is live,” Iris noted. “Flow’s unstable. The power from the forest outside is routing in here, but not being stored.”

“Syrak must’ve tripped the voltage regulator,” Rask declared. He reached for a recessed housing along the base of the core and tore the cover free, exposing a dense cluster of switches buried beneath. “Amateurs. If this is all the Tenan were guarding, I’ll be disappointed.”

His gauntlet locked around a thick, reinforced lever set deep within the mechanism. It was fused halfway between positions, its housing warped from heat and strain.

“Help me with this,” he called.

Iris braced beside him, anchoring her bootplates. Together, the two Paragons forced the lever back into alignment. Metal ground against metal, the entire seized assembly fighting the movement.

Then, with a violent crack, the lever slammed home.

The central core surged, rotating rings snapping into a faster alignment as the flow of energy corrected. The pulsing light within the chamber stabilized, the erratic flicker smoothing into a steady, controlled glow. A low hum filled the space—stronger now, deeper.

“We’re back online,” Iris confirmed. “All remaining power is reaching storage! The Primary Relay is back on the grid!”

“Good, but this was far too easy,” Rask sighed, stepping back from the mechanism. “Everyone keep an optic out for further Tenan sabotage.”

Kael turned away from the core, attention drifting toward the far side of the chamber. Lyra had continued her sweep in that direction, but to his surprise she now stood rigid, gaze locked on a section of the chamber partially obscured by a cluster of suspended conduit lines.

“Hey,” she hissed, noticing him. “Kael.”

He followed her gaze. At first, he didn’t see it—just another dark corner of the chamber.

Then something caught the light.

Curved armour, flecked with crimson paint, hung suspended in the space beyond, caught in the loose tangle of cabling. The ceramic was fractured beyond repair, split into jagged segments. The high-gloss glaze had been partially burned away, leaving behind a skeletal silver chassis that was warped and blackened by the heat of the Spark. It spun slowly, caught in a lazy, weightless tumble.

It was Vax.

“Sparks alive,” Kael exclaimed. His bootplates felt as though they would fall from under him as the room swayed, and he had to steady himself on a nearby cable. “That can’t be, can it?”

For a moment Lyra just stood there, blade lowered at her side, staring at the ruined thing caught in the cables as it turned slowly in the dim light.

Rask moved first.

He stepped down from the core with a heavy, uneven gait, each footfall deliberate as he crossed the chamber. The damaged side of his faceplate stayed angled away, but there was no hiding the way his posture had changed.

Rask stopped a short distance from the floating remains and reached for them, slower than Kael had ever seen him move. With delicate care, he caught the body before it could rotate away again. The cables slackened as he pulled it free, the shell settling into his grasp.

Anything that had once been the engram named Vax was long gone, yet Kael’s mind kept seeing a person, filling in the gaps with something that made his processors hitch and stutter. Trying to distract himself, he looked around for the Paragon's hammer, but found only drifting wreckage. The massive weapon was nowhere among the drifting debris.

Rask turned the shell’s head slightly in his hand, angling it toward the ambient light, studying what remained of Vax’s faceplate.

“Wait,” she called, sharper now. She stepped in close, one hand coming up to steady the body as she leaned in. “Look at this.”

Kael forced himself closer. At first, he didn’t understand what she was pointing at; just another section of exposed interior, another break in the ceramic shell. But set into the back of the head, just below where the plating had sheared away, was a circular port, untouched by the violence that had destroyed everything around it.

Iris’ head tilted, her focus shifting instantly from the damage to the interface point. “Data access port,” she confirmed. “A link to the shell’s optics.”

Lyra reached out, stopping just short of the port. “If Syrak left it intact…” she said slowly, “then there may still be untransmitted data. A final recording, from during the last sparkrise.”

“Syrak wanted us to follow him in here,” Rask concluded. “To find Vax.” The giant shifted, turning toward her, and Lyra gently took the shell’s head in her hands, kneeling.

“Wait a tick,” she stated. Gingerly reaching out, she pulled a small wire from the camera mounted to her faceplate and pulled, copper and rubber sliding down into the port in her other hand.

A brilliant light burst from her camera lens, washing over the far wall of the chamber, and Kael stared in disbelief as a familiar scene played out once more.

"A beautiful sentiment for broadcast," Syrak was saying. The Tenan hunter’s flail hovered in the air as he stared Vax down, appearing to glare straight through the screen. "But the cameras are about to go blind. Are you still such a noble hero without your adoring public to see you perform?”

“You may seize victory now," Dral added, "but you won't be there to see Tomorrow."

“Perhaps,” Vax retorted. “But I can live with that uncertainty.”

“Then die with it!” Syrak roared. Both Tenan leapt at him at once and Vax swung his hammer, connecting with the hull plating.

Kael found himself doubting his optics—the arc of Vax’s hammer had come nowhere close to striking either enemy.

“Wait!” Syrak roared. The hunter had yet to move, but instead held a hand outstretched.

Dral skidded to a halt, spear raised, and whipped back toward his fellow hunter with a grunt of confusion. “Why should I wait?” he growled. “I will shred this Paragon in moments and then his team of cowards will be next!”

Hand still raised, Syrak stepped forward, strolling casually across the hull toward Vax. With his hammer lowered, the Paragon made no move to swing on him.

“Are we clear?” Syrak inquired.

Silently, cautiously, Vax nodded.

“What is this?!” Dral demanded. His gaze snapped between Vax and Syrak, spear still raised. “Why have you ceased fighting? He is the enemy!”

“I’m so sorry, Dral,” Syrak sighed. He turned to his fellow hunter, lowering his hand, and offered the other Tenan a shrug. “But I did tell you not to help me.”

In the next moment, the end of Syrak’s flail met Dral’s head with a sickening crack, carried by its jets at impossible speeds. The savage blow was enough to crater the hunter’s faceplate. All at once, Dral was gone, and the Tenan went limp, arms floating loosely as its bootplates kept the empty shell fastened to the hull.

As Kael looked on in silent shock, Syrak turned back around, meeting Vax’s gaze—and lowered his weapon.

“Vincent,” he stated.

“Sam,” Vax replied. “Come—our time is limited.”

The two moved as one, sprinting across the hull, and Kael saw the immense solar panels of the Primary Relay in the distance. Neither engram spoke. Paragon and Tenan together, they ran shoulder-to-shoulder through the moving maze as shafts of light carved open around them.

Vax reached the Primary Relay first. He leapt through the open entryway with reckless abandon, and Syrak lunged through after him an instant before a wall of light swept across the hull behind them.

The armoured door slid shut, and for a moment, neither moved. The only sound was the deep mechanical thrum of the central core radiating through the surrounding corridor.

“You still fake your attacks poorly,” Syrak muttered.

“And you still monologue too much on camera,” Vax shot back. “No wonder Dral tried to help you finish me off this time.”

Syrak stared at him for a second before a dry rasp crackled across the open band—laughter. It was rough, exhausted, almost disbelieving. Vax’s own voice quickly joined him, and the two stood there in the dim light of the entrance, heat still bleeding from their shells, as the laughter faded.

Syrak leaned back against the wall, flail hanging loose at his side. “You said it was important we meet,” he stated. “What happened?”

Vax was quiet for a moment, suddenly serious.

“Doctor Parker has succumbed to Theseus Syndrome.”

Syrak’s posture stiffened. “No.”

“She’s bought into her own propaganda—calls herself the Warden now,” Vax continued. “She talks about the convicts like they’re resources. Protecting the Gate is all she thinks about.” His voice roughened with static. “She’s gone, Sam. There’s nothing left of Parker in there.”

Syrak stepped toward the central core, movements slower now, weariness bleeding through the precise control of his shell. “That makes seven of us gone in these last hundred years. The memory corruption is accelerating again.”

“Seven...” Vax echoed softly. “Then there are fewer than ten left who remember home.”

“I thought Parker’s engram was stable.” Syrak stared at the hull beneath his bootplates.

“It used to be,” Vax’s tone was bitter. His grip tightened around the shaft of his hammer. “That much lived experience is enough to break anyone.”

“We have to slow the degradation,” Syrak demanded. His voice was raw, panicked. “Shut down more Relays, if we have to. If I stage more Tenan attacks, you can keep the other Paragons far enough away that—"

He paused mid-sentence, looking up at Vax. The Paragon didn’t meet his gaze.

“Vincent,” he hissed, “what else aren’t you telling me?”

The Paragon walked toward the far wall of the chamber and lowered himself against it with a heavy metallic scrape. His hammer slipped from his grasp and was left floating, useless.

“Ha,” he spat. “I’m really that easy to read, aren’t I?”

The lights of the Relay pulsed softly across his crimson shell as Vax stared into the middle distance, optics unfocused.

“You’re the first person to call me Vincent in…” he paused, static crackling softly through the audio. “Ten years, perhaps. Maybe longer. The other engrams call me Vax often enough that sometimes I forget it isn’t my name.”

Kael felt Iris shift beside him, but nobody moved to stop the recording.

“I can feel pieces… going missing.” Vax slowly raised one hand to his visor, fingertips dragging across scorched ceramic. “I had a son, but I can’t remember his face. I recall my mother’s laugh, but her name is gone. I can’t picture my apartment.”

“I…” Syrak began. “I know what you mean. Sometimes I’m just… another hunter. The violence overtakes me.” He took a step toward Vax. “But it isn’t over yet. We can reduce strain on the remaining engrams, partition off more areas of Paradise. There’s still hope—”

“For who?” Vax snapped. The sudden force in his voice echoed through the chamber. “For what? Hope doesn’t fix them!”

He pushed himself upright again, movements uneven now, as though the shell itself had become difficult to inhabit.

“Look at us, Sam. Really look at us.” He gestured vaguely toward the walls around them, toward the endless machinery of the Gate beyond. “We’ve lived a hundred thousand years and forgotten what it meant to be human somewhere along the way.”

“The engrams in Paradise are still human.”

“No,” Vax sighed. “You haven’t lived among them, Sam.”

The words hit Kael like a physical blow, but Vax continued before Syrak could stop him.

“When first we left for Tomorrow, we told ourselves our personality engrams would survive the journey.” A bitter rasp entered his voice. “But our minds were never meant for deep time. Memories buried memories until there was nothing original left.”

Vax looked up at Syrak again.

“Do you know what scares me most?”

Syrak didn’t answer.

“I can’t remember home clearly anymore.” The admission came barely above a whisper. “Not truly. I remember flashes, but when I really try to picture it...” He hesitated. “I only get disjointed fragments. Fractals.”

Syrak flinched like he’d been struck.

“Stop it,” he hissed.

“The engines are dead,” Vax continued, more forcefully. “Our orbit is decaying. Half the station’s systems are running on temporary repairs, and no amount of hope can fix that!”

“Vincent, don’t!” Syrak brought one hand to his head, staggering as if in agony.

Vax shook his head violently, drawing himself upright. “And even if we somehow reached Tomorrow, who would be left to colonize the planet? A few thousand engrams in shells pretending at human culture?”

“I’m warning you, Vincent!” Syrak barked.

“You’ve heard them speak, Sam!” Vax pressed. He stepped toward Syrak, arms wide. “They fear the Tenan as the monsters of hardspace—they don’t even remember what your title used to mean! Theseus Syndrome has claimed them all, and it’s only a matter of time before it claims us, too!”

“Stop this!” Syrak roared. His flail spun violently, rockets flaring, and he raised his arm to strike.

“We gave everything to escape Earth!” Vax screamed. “The collective might of humankind, every resource we had left, and we still couldn’t even escape the gravity of our own goddamn sun! Tell me, what does hope do to save us from that?!”

“Shut up!” Sam roared. He brought his arm down, flail falling like a guillotine, and connecting with—

—nothing but static.

Then a line of crimson text appeared at the centre of the screen.

ENGRAM TERMINATED: VAX ANTARES.

Stunned silence followed.

Kael stared at his hands, metallic digits trembling and unfamiliar again. Even his good hand seemed to refuse him. What was this shell of metal compared to everything he didn’t even know he’d lost?

“Right.” Rask whispered. The sound of his voice felt like a gunshot. “We have work to do. Sparkrise will be over soon, and I’m sure Syrak won’t just—”

“We have to transmit this,” Iris interrupted. “Sparks alive, Rask, how can you just move past that?! Everyone needs to know!” She turned to Lyra, optics locked on Vax’s shell. “Lyra, as soon as the feed can get through, start—”

“No.”

Lyra stood, gingerly removing the cord from Vax’s head, and the projection flickered out like a snuffed candle as the wire retracted back into her camera housing. “No,” she repeated. “Do you realize what that knowledge would do to everyone back home?”

“That’s not our choice to make,” Iris retorted. She stepped forward, indignant. “Paradise has a right to know where we came from! This video changes everything!”

Her optics darted between Kael, Rask and Lyra, searching for affirmation.

Kael couldn’t meet her gaze.

“It would change everything for the worse!” Lyra retorted. "Every cycle, new Paragons volunteer to go outside, just like we did. Every cycle, a few of us risk death so Paradise can survive.” She pointed one shaking finger toward Vax’s faceplate. “Show them that recording and see who still volunteers. All we’d have left are convicts."

“Iris…” Rask attempted. “Paradise only functions because people believe we’re making a difference out here.”

“No!” she snapped. “We don’t get to make that call! We aren’t what Vax was—we aren’t… human anymore. But we’re still here, and we all deserve the truth!”

“Iris,” Lyra breathed, “let it go. Please. That knowledge will kill any hope we have left.”

“That knowledge is all we have left!” Iris shouted. Her hands drifted to the knives magnetized to her shell. “I’m sorry, but I’m transmitting that footage and you can’t change my mind.”

Lyra’s fists clenched, and a thousand different emotions seemed to cross her faceplate all at once. For one terrible second, Kael thought she might lash out at Iris. But at last, her hands relaxed, and Lyra stepped to the side, allowing Iris to pass.

“I understand,” she sighed.

Iris nodded silently, and the thin golden shell knelt by Vax’s body, leaning over the empty shell. With deft fingers, she reached for the access port.

“I just hope you’ll understand, too,” Lyra whispered.

Her blade came down in one perfect arc, a brilliant crescent of silver in the dark. The strike was swift and surgical, its pass through the gaps in armour barely perceptible to Kael’s optics. Iris’ faceplate flickered once as her shell’s power bled into empty vacuum, then blinked out.

Lyra’s sword bit into the deck as she sank to her knees, static hitching as her shell tried and failed to approximate the noises that tore from her.

Rask brought his one good gauntlet down on Vax’s head, leaving nothing but wreckage drifting gently through the room.

“You killed her.” The words escaped Kael before he could stop them. His voice was thin and horrified. “You just… she was one of us.”

Lyra still knelt beside Iris’ fallen shell, both hands braced against the deck as static hissed through her audio. The sword remained buried point-down in the metal beside her. When she looked up, the camera lens found Kael first.

“Yes,” she whispered, “but not before I tried to get through to her.”

"Sparks alive, Lyra," Rask snapped. “Give the rookie a minute.”

“That’s it?” Kael demanded. His pulse driver shook in his grip now, aimed nowhere and everywhere at once. He had followed the Paragons into the dark expecting heroes, but he wasn’t sure what he had found. “You didn’t even hesitate.”

“She would’ve doomed Paradise,” Lyra snapped. She finally met Kael’s gaze. “Do you understand what would’ve happened if that video ever got through?” Her blade stayed planted beside her, but close enough that Kael couldn’t forget it was there.

“Rask,” Kael hissed, forcing the name out. “You’re okay with this?”

Rask slowly turned toward him. The melted side of his faceplate caught the dim light of the Relay, warped ceramic hiding whatever emotions lay beneath.

“Vax was wrong,” Rask said at last. “Hope matters.”

“Does it matter more than the truth?” Kael attempted.

“Knowing the truth won't save Paradise,” Rask replied. “It didn’t save Vax.” The larger Paragon’s remaining optic was fixed on the empty shell. “Living a lie is still living, rookie.”

“Don’t we owe that knowledge to everyone?” Kael pressed. The words were spilling out of him, burning like live wires. “To the beings we all used to be?”

“We’re not those beings,” Rask snapped. “So what? The species that left Earth is gone, but the engrams in Paradise are still here.” He gestured toward the station around them. “They're not valuable because they came from humanity, they’re valuable because they have lives of their own.”

He looked past Kael, toward the dead.

“To protect that, I'd sacrifice anything.”

A deep mechanical groan climbed through the Relay, shaking the station itself. Somewhere high above, colossal machinery began to move once more.

“What’s going on?” Lyra barked. “The relays shouldn’t be moving—sparkrise is over!”

“That monster,” Rask snapped, “he’s gone up the pillar.” His remaining optic flicked rapidly as he pieced the situation together. “Syrak’s re-opening the panels of the Primary Array.”

Kael frowned. “What does that get him?”

“The panels aren’t meant to take the brunt of the spark head-on,” Rask explained grimly. “They open gradually, bleed the power intake across the grid, and close when they’ve got enough. That thing up there…” He pointed up into the darkness. “Syrak’s going to turn it into a magnifying glass.”

The Relay lurched around them as the machinery engaged again.

“And now that we’ve brought the Primary Relay back online,” Lyra realized softly, “the overload will have somewhere to go.”

“Home,” Kael whispered.

“Syrak played us for fools.” Rask’s ruined faceplate turned toward them. “The Tenan ambush, the sabotage, it was all just to slow us down. When the next sparkrise hits, that panel is going to absorb more energy than it can contain. The surge will travel straight through the Relay and into Paradise.”

“How bad will it be?” Kael asked quietly.

Rask met his gaze. “Let’s not find out.”

Lyra tore her sword free from the deck and stood up. “So we go up there,” she declared. “We close the panel before the Spark makes it back around.”

Lyra and Rask moved toward the wall of the chamber, bootplates locking to the metal, and began to climb. It was only after a few hurried steps that Rask stopped, glancing back down.

“Kael?” he demanded. “Are you coming, or not?”

Kael’s grip tightened instinctively around the pulse driver.

“You’re afraid of us,” Lyra realized.

Kael hated that she was right. Worse, he understood why.

A fresh convulsion travelled up through the chamber floor.

“Stay here if you want,” Rask sighed. “We won’t force you onward, rookie.”

Kael looked down at Iris. A few ticks ago she'd been correcting his stance. Now she was dead.

Not because of the Tenan. Because of them.

His grip tightened around the pulse driver. If Lyra decided he was dangerous too, how long would he have? Would Rask come to his aid, or stand by and watch once more?

Kael stared at his hands. They were still metal, unfamiliar and cold, but somewhere along the way he had stopped thinking of them as someone else’s.

The tower groaned again, and Kael gazed up into its centre. Even despite what Lyra had done, Syrak still had to be stopped if there was even the tiniest hope for Paradise to live on.

An insignificant percentage.

Fear still twisted inside him, but after everything he’d seen, Kael found he couldn’t bring himself to let that hope die.

His trembling grip on the pulse driver finally steadied, and he leaned down, pulling one of Iris’ knives from her shell. With a magnetic snap, it latched to his shell.

“For 0.1%,” he said softly.

Rask gave a single nod. Lyra said nothing at all.

Then the trio began climbing into the dark.

***

By the time they reached the top of the pillar, the vibrations had settled. Whatever Syrak had done to force open the panels had worked—the only thing they could do was hope it wasn’t too late to undo the damage before the next sparkrise.

Rask shoved the final hatch open with his remaining gauntlet, and pale light flooded the vertical corridor beyond.

“Careful,” he warned, pulling himself out through the hatch. “Magnets won’t work on the glass—use your jets or you’ll float off.”

“The open panel’s scrambling the feed, too,” Lyra remarked. She hauled herself through the opening. “Too much power moving this close to the surface. Nothing’s getting back home from up here.”

“Good,” Rask replied. “Paradise doesn’t need to see this.”

Beyond the hatch, the world simply… vanished.

The Primary Relay’s solar panels stretched out beneath him in a vast black expanse of segmented glass. Thin veins of gold circuitry shone beneath the transparent surface, carrying rivers of captured light down into the depths of the Gate. Far below, the rest of the solar forest looked terribly small, like distant blades of grass.

The Spark had passed beyond the edge of the Gate, but its light still dominated everything, a crawling inferno spilling over the distant metal horizon.

Above them there was nothing at all.

A support arm cut through the centre of the array, a metal causeway thrown across a sea of glass. Hinge assemblies easily ten times Kael’s height lined each side, holding the panels in place.

And at the centre of the support arm, crouched beside an open panel, was Syrak.

The Tenan hunter did not look surprised to see them. One hand rested against something just inside the panel while the other hung at his side, his segmented flail coiled loosely around the forearm like a sleeping serpent. Whatever Syrak had done to the Primary Array, they would need to get past him to fix it.

“You came, little engram,” Syrak observed. “I wondered if you would still follow them after learning the truth. I had hoped you were smarter.”

“Step away from the panel, Syrak.” Rask stepped forward first, bootplates locking against the support arm.

“The others are full-fledged Paragons,” Syrak continued. “But you…” His head tilted slightly. “You still had a choice.”

“And what?” Lyra seethed. “Kael’s supposed to let you murder what’s left of us?”

“You don’t need any help in that department,” Syrak retorted. “Of all of you, it seems Iris had the most courage. Or am I mistaken in what her absence means?”

Lyra’s grip tightened around her sword.

“That’s the difference between her and the rest of you,” Syrak said softly. “She wanted Paradise to face what it has become. We were never meant to live this long.”

The hunter rose to his full height, drawing back his flail. “The Gate was built to carry us to the planet we called Tomorrow. We turned toward the Spark to steal speed from it, using the sun as a slingshot to accelerate our journey.” His optics lingered on the burning horizon. “That hubris was our undoing.”

Kael listened in silence as machinery rattled beneath his bootplates.

“When the engines failed, some were forced out of Paradise to repair them.” Syrak’s voice remained calm.

Something ugly twisted beneath Lyra’s expression. “So you rebelled.”

“We were once hailed as Paragons,” Syrak declared. “But it was a life sentence. Our engrams could never return to Paradise. We were left to walk the hull for centuries.” His gaze hardened. “And when we realized there was no hope to fix the damage, we refused to die quietly.”

“The Schism,” Kael murmured.

Syrak nodded.

“The Gate’s primary reactor was destroyed during the fighting. After that…” He gestured toward the endless dark around them. “We had nothing but space and time. Time to think.”

Silence settled briefly over the support arm.

“You adapted to your shell quickly, little engram,” Syrak observed. “Faster than most fresh exiles.” His hand spread toward the void. “It’s because hardspace is where we once belonged, and your mind recognizes it. It’s held me together for this long.”

Kael thought of the way the shell had begun to feel like his own. The instinctive certainty of motion in hardspace. The terrible familiarity of it.

“And… Vax?” he asked quietly.

Something shifted in the Tenan’s posture.

“Even after all this time out here, I still believed there was hope to fix things,” Syrak admitted. “Vincent… did not.”

“You could still stop this,” Kael pressed. “You aren’t like the other Tenan, you said yourself that you still think of the engrams in Paradise as human!”

“I do.” Syrak’s voice became almost unbearably calm. “But if there’s one thing Vincent taught me, it’s that the kindest thing I could do for everyone I once knew… is to end this.”

“Perhaps you’ve given up,” Rask growled. “But while Paradise still lives, we’ll keep fighting for it.”

Syrak’s optics narrowed slightly.

“Even now? For nothing?”

“No.” Rask didn’t hesitate. “For 0.1%.”

"You sound just like Vincent." Syrak's flail spun to life, twisting through the void like a ring of death. “Time to join him.”

“Get to the controls!” Rask roared.

The wounded Paragon charged first. Rask’s damaged shell thundered down the support arm, one massive gauntlet raised high as he drove straight for Syrak with all the subtlety of a breaching ram.

Syrak reacted instantly. The flail snapped inward, head aimed directly for Rask’s exposed blind side, but Lyra hit him from above.

Her jets ignited in a burst of white, carrying her over Rask’s shoulder like a missile. The Paragon twisted mid-flight, blade shrieking as it carved down toward Syrak’s head. The Tenan recoiled just enough for the strike to miss, but Lyra’s blade bit into the sharpened chain of the flail, carving up the metal.

Syrak's optics widened in shock, and his attack on Rask went wide, the damaged chain twisting away from Lyra's blade like a wounded serpent.

Kael moved with them. He reached instinctively for the control he had found before, and heat blossomed along his spine as his jets answered. Momentum seized him. Suddenly he was no longer stumbling through the fight behind the others—he was part of it, hurtling low across the glass as the three Paragons converged at once.

Rask crashed into Syrak head-on. Syrak’s flail lashed itself around Rask’s remaining gauntlet, chewing into orange ceramic, but the larger Paragon continued undeterred, forcing the hunter backward.

Lyra struck again from the flank, blade flashing for Syrak’s exposed chest, and the hunter's other hand came down, ablative plating shattering as he caught the sword.

“Now!” Lyra bellowed.

Kael darted low and brought his pulse driver up in a searing arc.

Black glass fractured around him, panels caught in the reverberations that rocked through his arm and down his legs. Syrak was thrown clean off the hull, the magnets in his bootplates unable to overcome the force of the blow. With a distorted scream, he rocketed up and away from the panel surface, tumbling head over heels.

“That bought us seconds, Kael!” Rask exclaimed. “Get to the panel, now!”

Kael dropped to his knees, one good hand scraping across the metal surface as he fumbled for the open panel. 

The plating around the cavity was ancient, but beneath the grime he could still make out faded yellow lettering stamped into the metal. Scarred by heat and age, most of the letters had nearly faded, but five near the middle remained as bold and bright as ever.

MAINTENANCE ACCESS

Beneath him, deep within the exposed maintenance cavity, Kael could see the mechanism that controlled the array: colossal locking arms, pistons, and gears glowed a dull orange from strain. Something massive had been driven between them.

At first Kael mistook it for debris, some fractured section of machinery. Then the distant glow of the Spark caught crimson paint beneath layers of soot and scorched metal.

It was Vax’s hammer.

The weapon had been forced deep into the heart of the mechanism like a wedge, locking the restraint arms fully open. Every part of the surrounding array now strained against it.

“I’ve got it!” he exclaimed. Grappling with the handle of the weapon was awkward, and Kael's shattered digits slid across the metal. “Just give me a—”

A black shape slammed into him from above.

Kael barely saw Syrak before the Tenan’s boot crashed into his chestplate with catastrophic force. Ceramic exploded inward, and Kael was torn bodily from the support arm and hurled across the array.

He hit the glass spine-first.

The panel beneath him fractured in a spiderweb burst, and then the rebound sent him spinning away from the surface entirely, out into open space above the forest. His pulse driver had flown from his grasp during the hit, spinning away into the dark like discarded scrap.

For one terrible instant, Kael tumbled helplessly, the Gate shrinking beneath him with horrifying speed. The support arm had already become a thin line against the field of black glass, and Kael could see the others still fighting.

Syrak fell like a guillotine, flail ripping through the airless void.

Rask was first—the Paragon moved instinctively, raising his remaining gauntlet to protect Lyra from the inbound blow, but the strike had been a feint. The head of Syrak's flail swung harmlessly around his shell as the segmented chain wrapped around the larger Paragon’s ruined blind side. The bladed lengths bit deep into ceramic and tore downward violently, ripping armour free from Rask’s shoulder and chest.

Lyra reached Syrak an instant later, jets flaring as she drove her blade toward the Tenan’s back. Syrak twisted, releasing the flail just long enough to catch her wrist, and in one horrible motion drove her blade through Rask's chest before hurling her away.

Rask staggered, attempting a haymaker, but the strike was clumsy. With practiced ease, Syrak leaned to one side and ripped the stolen blade upward through Rask's shell.

“No—” Kael breathed.

He triggered his jets, but nothing happened.

A cold spike of terror shot through him, and he twisted awkwardly in the void, trying again. His back-mounted thrusters had taken the full force of the collision. One was dead entirely. Another flickered weakly, venting sputters of propellant into space.

“Come on,” he begged. “Just one more time! One more!”

He slammed his fist against the side of his shell, and the surviving thruster roared to life.

“You monster!” 

Lyra hit Syrak like a missile.

Her jets screamed as she crossed the distance between them, colliding with the Tenan. Without her blade she fought like something feral, both hands locking onto Syrak’s shell as she forced him backward.

Syrak tried to bring his flail around again, but Lyra stayed pressed against him as they grappled. With one powerful blow, she tore the chain from his hand, casting it off into the void.

“You killed him!” she screamed.

Syrak answered by driving his forehead into hers.

The fight became hideous—jets flared wildly as the two lost contact with the structure entirely, tumbling above the array in a tangle of limbs.

Kael hit the support arm hard, magnets locking again as he stumbled toward the open hatch.

“Lyra!” he shouted.

“The panel!” she roared.

Vax’s hammer remained wedged between the gears, buried so deep it may as well have been welded into place. Kael wrapped both hands around the handle and pulled with everything he had left. The mechanism groaned beneath him, pistons straining.

Somewhere above, Lyra screamed.

Kael looked up just in time to see Syrak seize her by the throat. With one fluid motion he dove back down to the support arm, jets flaring as he slammed Lyra against the solar panels. Fractures raced outward beneath her shell as Syrak pinned her against the black glass.

Then his hand locked onto the side of her head, and a sharp crack echoed through the void. Lyra jerked violently as Syrak tore the camera assembly free from the side of her shell in a spray of sparks.

The Tenan held it up between them.

“Did you need this?” Syrak rasped. “Still pretending the feed matters? That any of this matters?!”

“It mattered to me,” Lyra hissed. “Why can't that be enough?”

Syrak’s bootplate fell like a guillotine, and the Paragon fell limp.

Shell shattered, wiring hanging loose, Syrak looked half dead as he turned toward Kael, optics burning with hatred.

“Look around you,” he spat, raising one mangled arm. “Every speck of light is a million places we'll never see. We thought we were made to inherit the stars, and instead all we get is this tomb of metal and lies! Why is that life worth dying for?!”

Kael's grip tightened on the hammer, fingers carving notches in the metal as he pulled.

“Because it’s the only… one… we'll get!” he roared. The Primary Array strained with him, immense mechanisms rattling as they fought to slam closed. 

Syrak's jets screamed as he rocketed forward, shredded hands outstretched. In moments the hunter would reach Kael, and he simply lacked the strength to remove the hammer in time.

For a moment, Kael stared up at the stars.

The collision tore him bodily from the support arm, and then there was only open space.

The Gate spun beneath them, impossibly large. Endless forests of black panels curved away into the distance beneath the crawling glow of the Spark. Kael’s right shoulder was nothing but torn plating and loose cables, the limb itself gone entirely.

And far beneath him, tumbling end over end, Vax’s hammer floated free.

The Primary Relay's solar array shuddered violently, then began to close. Massive support arms surged inward as the freed mechanism re-engaged at last. Across the entire canopy, colossal hinges roared back to life, beginning to drag the locked panels back into alignment with the rest of the forest.

“No,” Syrak breathed. His head snapped toward Kael, and understanding flickered across his faceplate. Kael had used the force of their collision to free the hammer.

Rage twisted Syrak’s ruined shell. Jets exploded to life along his spine as he surged forward through open space, seizing Kael by the throat hard enough to twist metal.

“You little parasite!”

Kael convulsed as the Tenan’s grip tightened, and the pair’s momentum began to shift, turning back toward the Gate. Below them, the panel canopy continued to close, the black glass petals folding back into a safe position for the next sparkrise.

“If the mechanism won’t stay open,” Syrak rasped, “then I’ll jam it with your corpse!”

Kael could see the support arm rushing up beneath them now. He was helpless to resist—his shell was in ruin, his remaining left hand damaged beyond use, unable to hold any weapon in his defense.

Any weapon… except the knife.

Iris’ blade clung magnetically to Kael’s ruined palm, and he drove it down, plunging the shimmering blade into the hunter’s spinal jets.

Syrak screamed as the blade punched deep into the propulsion assembly. One jet detonated outright, erupting into a violent spray of molten fragments. Their trajectory lurched sideways instantly, no longer aimed at the closing panels but out across empty space beyond the pillar’s edge.

The solar forest flashed past beneath them. Syrak had missed.

“Wh-what did you do?” Syrak bellowed. He shook Kael violently, ruined fingers scraping against ceramic as he tried to reach the blade buried in his back. “What did you do?!”

Resonance spread outward from the wound in shimmering fractures, rippling through the Tenan’s shell like cracks racing across ice. Black ceramic began to split apart around the damaged propulsion assembly, layers of armour peeling back in curling sheets as the vibration ate deeper into the structure beneath.

With Syrak's other hand still around his throat, Kael could hear it now—a horrible metallic shriek coming from inside the Tenan himself. Vibration conducted through contact, through shell against shell.

“No…” Syrak rasped. “No!”

Below them, the forest finished its synchronized movement, folding into perfect alignment beneath the distant glow of the Spark. Paradise would survive another cycle.

Syrak looked past Kael toward the Gate.

“Pull it out,” he begged. “Please!”

The Tenan’s shell was coming apart faster now. Entire sections of plating drifted free into the void, exposing the machinery beneath.

“U-use your jets to save us,” Syrak continued. “We don’t have to die! What could possibly m-make this worth your death?!”

Kael looked down at the endless Gate beneath them. At the crawling forests of black glass. At the Paradise hidden somewhere deep inside that impossible megastructure.

Then he looked back at Syrak, and planted one bootplate against the Tenan’s chest.

“0.1%,” he replied.

Then he kicked away.

Syrak reached for him instinctively, but one his hands failed entirely, breaking apart into fragments before they could reach Kael. The Tenan convulsed, body arching violently as layers of armour peeled outward like petals, floating free into empty space.

And then there was only Kael, alone amidst the stars.

For a while, he simply watched the debris spread. Fragments of Syrak’s shell spun silently through the void, drifting farther and farther apart. Somewhere below, Lyra and Rask were gone now, lost beneath the closing panels. Iris too. Vax. All of them, reduced to scattered debris orbiting a dying dream. Hidden somewhere beneath layers of metal and machinery, thousands of minds still waited to reach Tomorrow.

Slowly, Kael turned his attention toward the Gate. His remaining jet sputtered weakly, and he tried to trigger it once, then again. The jet gave one final, feeble burst, then went dead.

“I understand,” Kael sighed.

Below him, the solar forest began to stir once more. Across the canopy, black panels slowly began to open in perfect synchronization, preparing once more for the next sparkrise.

The Spark crawled slowly over the distant curve of the Gate, and light began to spill across the horizon. Kael watched it come.

And at last, the Paragon turned to greet the dawn.