||The Weight of Forgotten Stars||
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The mirror was gone.
Or perhaps it had never existed at all.
Code Seven stood in a hollow chamber now, its stone etched with faded light. The symbols that had once pulsed with meaning were inert, buried beneath the suffocating silence of ages. Dust drifted from cracks in the ceiling—dust not made of earth or time, but of forgotten memory.
His breathing steadied.
The burning at the base of his skull faded.
Whatever that fragment of the Infinite had shown him, it hadn't granted power. It had only whispered a truth:
He did not belong.
Not to the real, nor the false. Not to the Empire. Not to the Infinite.
Yet both watched him now.
He left the ruins behind and stepped into the wind once more. Somewhere far beyond, storms were rising. Armies. Eyes. Names.
He needed answers.
He needed time.
But above all—he needed to disappear.
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Two Systems Away – The Edge of the Valgrin Belt
In a gravity-scarred fortress nestled within the rings of a collapsed moon, a gathering convened.
Thirty-five warlords. Each a sovereign ruler of death. Each carrying a sigil burnt into flesh. These were the Covenant of Ashes—a war cabal that had outlived a thousand empires.
And they were angry.
A holoscreen burned at the center of the chamber, rotating slowly. It showed distorted footage—broken frames of a shadowed man tearing through Scour Sentinels.
"Who is he?" barked Warlord Drask, a behemoth with burning veins and teeth like obsidian knives.
"Doesn't matter," muttered Lady Xhen. "He killed three Sentinels. You know what that means."
There was silence.
Even Drask didn't speak.
The youngest among them, Warlord Kye—a man whose left arm was carved from wyrmbone—grunted.
"If he's marked… and not registered…"
"…Then the Planes see him," said Xhen.
Drask stood, eyes burning. "Then I say we kill him before the Oracles sniff him out."
A quiet voice answered from the shadows.
"You will not find him."
A figure stepped from the dark—robed, faceless, silent.
The others tensed.
"Oracle," Xhen whispered.
The masked figure inclined its head. "He is not yours to claim."
Drask snarled, "We rule this sector—"
"You rule until he walks through it," the Oracle said.
Then it vanished in a pulse of mist.
The chamber remained still for a long time.
And for the first time in a thousand cycles, the warlords of the Covenant of Ashes knew fear.
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Elsewhere – A Dying Planet Beneath Black Suns
An old man burned.
Not with fire, but with power too vast to be contained.
He knelt at the edge of a canyon that stretched into the void, his hair long and silver, his skin seared with ancient runes. Around him lay the remnants of a destroyed cult—bodies twisted, their lifeforce siphoned into the very ground.
The air was thick with charred whispers.
He raised his head, and his eyes—burnt-out and glowing—stared into the sky.
"Something stirs," he rasped.
A raven landed on his shoulder. Not a creature, but a construct of bone and starlight.
The old man's name was lost to history.
But the few who dared speak of him whispered one name:
Vaelor.
An old monster.
He reached into the void with a hand that no longer obeyed flesh, and whispered:
"He moves. The flame-child. The marked soul."
Then he smiled.
And it was not a kind smile.
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Back With Code Seven – Border Town of Kaarn
Kaarn was no capital.
Just a town choking on rust, caught between two minor trade routes and one smoldering crater of old tech. Smugglers came here to vanish. Mercenaries came to forget. Exiles came to rot.
It was perfect.
Seven walked through its dusty streets, blending in. His cloak was repaired, his blade hidden. His stride? Casual. Almost bored.
He passed broken market stalls, flickering neon signs, and bored guards too underpaid to care.
He kept his senses sharp.
Because it wasn't the living that concerned him.
It was the watchers.
He felt them.
Eyes.
Not of people.
Not even of flesh.
Of things deeper. Older.
In every reflection—puddles, cracked glass, polished metal—he saw faint glimmers. Blinks. Tilts of perception.
The Planes were still watching.
But they said nothing.
Good.
Let them watch.
Let them wait.
He approached a bar cut into the side of a decommissioned crawler-tank. The name above it flickered: "DEEP COIL." A local dive. Dangerous. Forgotten. Exactly where one might find—
"I didn't think I'd see you alive."
The voice came from a table in the far corner.
Seven didn't react visibly.
But his hand did pause.
Then he turned, and saw her.
Ezreth.
Alive.
She looked tired, her black hair tangled and streaked with dust. A fresh scar ran from her cheek to her ear. Her eyes? Still cold. Still brilliant.
She slid a drink across the table.
"You owe me five explanations."
Seven sat down without a word.
She sipped hers first.
Then smirked. "Well?"
He raised an eyebrow. "You're not dead."
"No thanks to your silent exit."
"Wasn't silent enough. Sentinels found me."
She flinched slightly. "How many?"
"Four. Three died. One ran."
Ezreth swore under her breath. "They'll know you're unstable now. They'll send something worse next."
"They already did."
And he told her.
Everything.
The mirror. The message. The shifting of time. The Planes. The mark on his soul.
Ezreth didn't interrupt.
When he was done, she looked at him differently.
Not with pity.
Not with admiration.
With calculation.
"You're dangerous."
"I've always been."
"No," she said softly. "Now you're important. And that makes you a target."
He met her gaze.
"I need to know who I was. Before the code. Before the numbers."
She smiled sadly.
"You're asking the wrong questions."
"Then give me the right ones."
Ezreth leaned forward.
"Why did they design you with a soul?"
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Far Away—A Hidden Observatory in the Fractured Belt
Within a vault of living crystal and shifting timelines, a creature writhed.
Its body was shaped from nebula-thread and frozen time.
It had no name, only purpose:
Observer.
It leaned toward the flickering scry-screen, where Code Seven and Ezreth shared whispered thoughts over drinks and quiet tension.
The Observer did not speak.
But it sang.
A song of entropy. Of ascension. Of recursion.
And it watched.
Because something impossible had begun to stir.
A soul that should not exist was touching the Infinite.
And soon, the hunt would begin in earnest.