Chapter One: Ashfall
I was seventeen when the sky over Virell Prime turned to fire.
It's strange, the things you remember. Not the explosion, not the sirens. Just the way ash fell through the air—soft, almost gentle. Like the galaxy wanted to apologize for what it had done.
They said it was justice. That the rebel attack was necessary. But they never showed you the people burning in their sleep. The children choking on smoke. The mothers clawing through rubble, screaming names that no longer had answers.
I was one of the lucky ones. Not because I survived.
Because I was on the wrong side of the trigger.
I was born Kael Riven, son of a decorated officer of the Sol Dominion Fleet. Groomed for service, raised in the belly of warships, trained to obey. By seventeen, I was already piloting recon fighters, earning medals I didn't deserve.
And I saw the orders for Virell. I followed them. Executed the mission.
Then watched the planet burn from orbit.
They told me to feel proud. I felt nothing.
Not until it was too late.
I deserted a year later. Slipped through dead zones and outlaw rings, changed my ID tags, dropped the uniform in some backworld scrapyard. Left the name "Captain Riven" behind like it was someone else's skin.
Now I live in the shadows between empires. A place called Traska Station—a broken ring of metal barely spinning around a dead moon. No one here asks questions. No one wants the past.
But the past doesn't care about where you hide.
Last night, a message came through an old relay. Buried deep in the coms. A voice I haven't heard in six years.
"Kael... if you're alive, I need you."
"They're building it again."
"You have to stop them."
Her voice. Mira's.
I told myself she was dead. That I had buried her on Virell with the others. But now, I don't know what to believe.
If she's alive, they didn't finish the job.
And if what she says is true—if they're rebuilding the Dominion's most dangerous weapon—then running is no longer an option.
I light a cigarette with shaking fingers.
It's been years since I let myself feel anything.
But I feel this.
And I know what it means.
War is calling again.