Aria Vale had always believed that if she worked hard enough and stayed quiet enough, the galaxy would forget she existed.
That was her plan. It was not ambitious, but it was practical, and practicality had kept her alive for twenty-three years in Sector Nine.
Sector Nine was not the part of the galaxy that people posted on public feeds. It was not full of shining towers or clean white transit rails that floated in perfect lines through the sky. It was metal and rust and recycled air that always smelled faintly of burnt circuits. It was the place where damaged ships came to be stripped for parts, where outlaw vessels were dismantled quietly, and where the Central Intelligence Core pretended not to look too closely.
Aria liked it that way.
She stood on top of a half-disassembled cruiser that afternoon, one boot pressed against a cracked hull panel while sparks flew dangerously close to her sleeve. Her dark hair was tied back in a messy knot, and grease stained her fingers so deeply that even industrial cleanser could not fully remove it anymore.
"Hold the stabilizer steady," she called down to Milo without looking.
"It is steady," Milo shouted back, even though the entire platform wobbled slightly.
Aria rolled her eyes and adjusted the magnetic clamp herself. The hull piece groaned, metal grinding against metal in a way that told her it had been through at least one battle. Maybe two. The ship had arrived with its identification codes scrubbed clean, which meant it had done something illegal or something political, and in this galaxy, those were often the same thing.
She worked carefully, humming under her breath, because careful work meant fewer accidents and fewer questions. Questions led to audits. Audits led to inspectors. Inspectors led to her name appearing somewhere it should not.
And Aria Vale did not want her name appearing anywhere important.
"Why do you never try to leave?" Milo asked suddenly from below.
She paused just long enough to consider ignoring him.
"Leave and go where?" she replied, tightening a bolt.
"Anywhere. Core systems. Cleaner air. Better pay."
She laughed softly. It was not a bitter sound. It was just realistic.
"People like us don't migrate upward, Milo. We get transferred sideways."
Milo muttered something about her being dramatic, but he did not argue further.
The truth was simpler than ambition. She had grown up watching her mother take two shifts a day in the maintenance corridors of the same dockyard. She had learned early that survival was a skill, not a dream. You kept your head down. You fixed what was broken. You did not touch things that did not belong to you.
Which was exactly why she should have walked away when she saw the glow.
It was faint at first, almost hidden beneath a torn interior panel inside the cruiser's core chamber. Most mechanics would have missed it. Aria would have missed it too if she had not been the type to notice when something felt wrong.
Ships had rhythms. Engines hummed in predictable patterns. Power grids pulsed with familiar frequencies. This one had an extra pulse.
She climbed down into the exposed core and crouched beside the damaged reactor housing. The glow was soft blue, steady, almost… patient.
"That is not standard issue," she murmured.
"What?" Milo called.
"Nothing."
She slid her fingers beneath the broken panel and pulled it free.
The object beneath it was smooth and circular, no bigger than her palm. It looked almost organic, like polished stone, but lines of light moved slowly across its surface as if it were breathing.
It was not connected to any wiring.
It was not embedded into the ship's systems.
It was simply resting there, hidden.
Aria's first instinct was to report it.
Her second instinct was curiosity.
Curiosity won.
She reached out and touched it.
The world did not explode. There was no dramatic flash of blinding light. There was simply a quiet shift, like the feeling of stepping onto a moving walkway without realizing it was active.
The object warmed beneath her fingers.
Then it pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
And then it sank into her skin.
Aria did not even have time to scream.
The sensation was not pain exactly, but it was overwhelming. It felt like something vast and ancient had just inhaled sharply inside her chest. Her heartbeat stuttered. The air around her thickened. Every loose screw and scrap of metal within three meters trembled violently.
"Aria?" Milo's voice sounded distant.
Gravity tilted.
That was the only way she could describe it later. It felt like the floor had become confused about which direction was down. Tools slid upward instead of falling. A heavy panel lifted slowly into the air as if invisible hands were holding it.
Aria stumbled back, breath coming fast.
"Stop," she whispered, though she did not know who she was speaking to.
The trembling intensified.
Across Sector Nine, surveillance drones recalibrated.
Deep within the Central Intelligence Core, an anomaly alert triggered for the first time in seventy-three years.
In the dockyard, Milo stared in horror as an entire rack of metal components rose off the ground and hovered, suspended in impossible defiance of physics.
"Aria, what did you do?"
She did not answer because she did not know.
The pressure inside her chest built sharply, like a storm trapped beneath her ribs. Panic flared, and with it the floating metal twisted violently, slamming against the cruiser hull.
Then everything dropped.
Every piece of metal crashed to the floor at once.
Silence followed, heavy and stunned.
Aria remained crouched on the ground, staring at her empty hands. The skin where the object had touched her was smooth. There was no mark. No scar. Nothing to prove it had ever existed.
Except for the feeling.
Something was there now. Not a voice. Not a presence exactly. More like awareness. As if the space around her had widened, and she could sense the weight of objects without looking at them.
Milo backed away slowly.
"You need to report this," he said, and for the first time since she had known him, he sounded afraid of her.
Report it.
The words echoed in her mind, followed immediately by another thought.
If she reported it, she would never see Sector Nine again.
Within seconds, red warning lights began flashing across the dockyard walls. A calm mechanical voice echoed overhead.
"Anomaly detected. Sector Nine is now under observation. All personnel remain stationary."
Aria's blood ran cold.
Observation meant scans. Scans meant identification. Identification meant removal.
She stood slowly.
"Milo," she said carefully, her voice steady in a way she did not feel, "if anyone asks, the reactor surge caused the interference."
He stared at her as she had just suggested rewriting gravity itself.
"Aria, that was not interference."
She met his gaze.
"I know."
Across the galaxy, in a hidden station beyond official star maps, a man stood before a panoramic window watching distant constellations burn softly in silence.
A holographic projection flickered beside him, displaying data streams.
"Unregistered Starborn signature detected," the projection reported.
The man's expression did not change, but his eyes sharpened slightly.
"Location," he said.
"Sector Nine."
He turned toward the stars slowly.
"Prepare a ship," he replied.
Because anomalies did not happen anymore.
Magic was not supposed to awaken.
And yet somewhere in the lowest dockyard of the empire, gravity had just bent.
Aria Vale did not know his name yet.
But Kael Draven, the Star King, was already on his way.
And the galaxy had just made a mistake by noticing her.