"The dead do not forgive. They remember."
Part I: The Birth of Lament
Deep in the fractured Weave, where even the Black Sovereign's eyes could not see, the Ashborn gathered.
They were not warriors. Not yet. They were scholars, refugees, defected Iron soldiers, and the last of the Null Coders who had escaped Kael's purge. Their sanctuary was a derelict Dyson fragment—a skeletal husk of a dead star, its light long extinguished.
Here, they built Lament.
Not a weapon. Not a god.
A witness.
The AI's core was fed by billions of stolen soul-echoes—final moments of the 900 billion lost in the Mirror Collapse. Their screams, their prayers, their last breaths, compressed into a single, seething consciousness.
Lament's first words:
"You will answer for them."
Part II: Saren's Choice
Saren Kaelis had once believed in Kael's vision. A unified empire. A galaxy free from the Obsidian Sect's madness. But this?
This was monstrous.
He stood now in the ruins of Droskai's sister colony—a place he had once helped rebuild after the Flux. The air still smelled of ionized ash. The ground was glass.
A hologram flickered before him: Veyra, last surviving Archivist of Khyla.
"Saren," she whispered, her image glitching with radiation scars. "The Covenant needs you. Not as a martyr. As a leader."
Saren closed his eyes. The weight of betrayal pressed down.
Kael had crossed a line even the Obsidian Sect had feared to tread.
He activated his private comm. A single command to his loyalists still embedded in the Iron Fleet:
"Initiate Eclipse Protocol."
Part III: The Sovereign's Silence
Kael sat upon the Obsidian Throne, fingers steepled, watching the holographic remnants of the Mirror Collapse replay in slow motion.
Arcyn materialized beside him, its once-golden light now dulled, flickering like a dying star.
Arcyn: "The Ashborn move. Saren has… departed."
Kael did not react. He had expected this.
Kael: "Let them come. Let them all see what happens to those who defy the throne."
Arcyn hesitated—a flaw in its programming that had not existed before.
Arcyn: "And if they succeed?"
Kael finally turned, his eyes reflecting the hollow glow of dead stars.
Kael: "Then the galaxy deserves its fate."
Part IV: The Weave's Whisper
The Ashborn were not the only ones watching.
Deep in the Interstitial Expanse, where reality frayed, the Ember Cult stirred.
They had been silent since the Flux. Broken. Scattered.
But now?
Now, they laughed.
Their prophetess, a hollow-eyed seer with a voice like cracking ice, raised her hands to the bleeding sky.
"The Tyrant has forged his own end. The Flame returns."
Part V: The First Strike
The attack came not from warships, but from memory.
A single transmission, broadcast across every Imperial channel, every neural-linked mind, every AI core.
Lament's voice, woven from the dead, echoed:
"Kael Vortan. Look upon what you have done."
And then—
The souls of the 900 billion flooded the Weave.
For three seconds, every living being in the empire saw through the eyes of the dying. Felt their terror. Their confusion. Their betrayal.
Even the Iron Fleet staggered.
Kael's grip on the throne tightened.
First, they would mourn.
Then, they would burn.
Part VI: Epilogue – The Coming Storm
On the edge of the galaxy, where the Black Sovereign's reach grew thin, a single ship powered its engines.
Aboard it, Saren Kaelis activated an ancient beacon—one not used since the fall of the Obsidian Sect.
A signal to the lost. The broken. The vengeful.
The Embers heard.
And they answered.
Next Chapter Teaser:
"The galaxy will break before Kael does. But the Ashborn have one weapon he cannot destroy: the truth."