Chapter Fifteen — Ash Without Flame
The Dominion's response did not come as thunder.It came as a whisper, wrapped in paper and salt.
Kaelen's scouts intercepted the first sign three days after the battle at the trenchline—a courier drone drifting low, its propulsion deliberately inefficient, as if begging to be caught. Lira slit its casing open to reveal a single sheet of pale vellum, sealed with resin. No insignia, no ink. Only a faint indentation where letters had once been pressed and later erased.
Kaelen held the paper against the dawn light. The letters bled into visibility, not as words but as numbers—coordinates.
Dominion territory.
They were not being hunted.They were being invited.
Selene's voice was tight. "It's a trap."
"Everything is," Kaelen replied, folding the paper neatly and sliding it into his sleeve. "But not every trap is meant to kill. Some are meant to measure."
"Measure what?"
"Our depth."
The march toward the coordinates was slow, deliberate. Kaelen ordered no direct path—zigzags, false trails, abrupt halts to test for pursuit. Nothing followed. That was stranger than an attack.
By the fourth day, they reached the outskirts of a Dominion relay hub—a cluster of low steel domes sunk into the ground like buried seeds. No guards, no sentries. Only an open hatch leading into black.
Marik spat on the soil. "Feels wrong."
Kaelen agreed, but wrongness was sometimes more useful than safety. He ordered Selene and Lira to remain above ground with half the Choirites, then descended with the rest.
The air inside was cold, dry, too clean. Dominion engineering was never this pristine unless someone wanted it noticed. The corridors bent like ribs, leading them inevitably toward a central chamber.
At the center stood a single figure.
Not armed.Not armored.Clad in plain Dominion grey, hands folded.
A liaison.
His face was unremarkable—deliberately so. The kind of neutrality bred into mid-tier bureaucrats whose only task was to be replaceable.
He did not speak until Kaelen stopped three paces away.
"The Choir remembers," the man said, voice flat. "But memory fades if it is not… cultivated."
Kaelen tilted his head. "Is that why you brought me here? To give gardening advice?"
The man did not smile. "The Dominion does not require your eradication. Not yet. Your existence serves a purpose."
"Which is?"
"To be a problem greater than other problems. An enemy useful enough to justify certain measures."
Kaelen studied him. This was the kind of offer that was less alliance and more containment—a leash disguised as negotiation.
"What do you want?" Kaelen asked.
"Direction. If you strike where we choose, the Dominion will… overlook certain trespasses."
Selene, listening through the comms, hissed into his ear: They're trying to use you as a knife.
Kaelen ignored her. "And if I refuse?"
The man's eyes did not change, but something colder slid beneath them. "Refusal is still useful. It teaches us your limits."
Kaelen stepped closer. "And what if I remove you here and now?"
"You could," the man said. "But someone else would take my place. And they might lack my restraint."
Restraint. A word designed to make the listener imagine worse fates. Dominion negotiation at its most distilled.
Kaelen decided then: he would not reject the offer. Not yet. Acceptance gave him a way in. And ways in were always better than ways out.
"I'll need proof," Kaelen said. "Of what you can give."
The man inclined his head. "You will have it, within three cycles."
On the surface, Selene confronted him.
"You're letting them dictate the next move."
"No," Kaelen said, watching the horizon. "I'm letting them believe they are."
"And the difference?"
"In one case, they're in control. In the other, they're bait."
The proof arrived on time.
Not by courier. Not by broadcast.
By collapse.
On the dawn of the third cycle, smoke rose from a Dominion listening post twenty leagues east—a site Kaelen had considered targeting months earlier but deemed too fortified. Now it was nothing but ash.
Dominion channels blamed a systems failure. The Choirites who scouted the ruins found no signs of internal sabotage—only precision strikes that bypassed every layer of defense.
Selene eyed Kaelen. "That was them."
"Yes," Kaelen said. "And now they've proven they can remove their own pieces. Which means the board is changing."
Lira frowned. "In whose favor?"
Kaelen did not answer immediately. He was thinking about the Womb again—not the dream of lungs and endless breath, but the idea behind it. A source. Something the Dominion might also be circling.
If they wanted him alive, it wasn't mercy. It was because he was a compass pointing toward something they couldn't find without him.
That meant he could make them follow.
The next week became a test of control.
Kaelen fed the Dominion false intentions—targets he never planned to strike, routes he had no intention of walking. He let whispers slip in ways that seemed careless but were calculated. Each time, Dominion assets moved where he expected.
And each time, he noted how far they were willing to go without revealing themselves fully.
They were holding back.Which meant they were afraid.
But fear in the Dominion was never passive. It was always an equation—fear measured against gain.
The question was: what did they stand to gain from him that outweighed the risk?
One night, as the Choirites camped in the shadow of a ruined signal tower, Kaelen spoke to Selene alone.
"They'll turn on us," she said, not as a warning, but as inevitability.
"Yes," Kaelen said. "But when they do, they'll believe they're doing it on their terms."
"And you'll make sure it's on yours."
He gave her a rare smile. "Exactly."
Selene leaned forward. "Then tell me the real plan."
Kaelen's gaze drifted to the dark sky, where invisible frequencies still carried the Dominion's silent orders.
"The Dominion wants a leash. I'll give them one," he said. "And when they've grown used to holding it, I'll make sure it's wrapped around their own throat."