The stars stretched endlessly ahead, but no one looked at them.

  The crew sat scattered throughout the battered ship—silent, scraped, and heavy with the weight of what they’d just witnessed. The destruction of a world had scorched itself into their minds. Even now, the sensors still picked up radiation spikes and debris from the imploded base behind them.

  In the cockpit, Brinn knelt beneath a damaged console, stripped down to his undershirt, arms slick with coolant as he fought the mess of exposed wiring. Sparks snapped around him like angry bees.

  “Pepe,” Brinn growled, voice muffled under the panel, “I swear, if you plugged yourself into the coolant again, I’m turning you into a paperweight.”

  Pepe hovered overhead, slightly singed. “Correction: I only fell into the coolant tank. Gravity and I are no longer on speaking terms.”

  Brinn yanked a wire. Something buzzed violently overhead. The lights flickered.

  “Guys,” Ramm said from the back, eyes on a flickering screen, “I think the engine just blinked at me. Like, aggressively.”

  “We’re flying on patched thrusters and prayer,” Jarek muttered from his seat. “Be grateful we’re still in one piece.”

  “Define ‘one piece,’” Ramm replied, gesturing to the smoldering hallway panel behind him.

  Sai sat near the viewport, shrouded in stillness. His hood was pulled low, shadows dancing across his face in the dim cabin light. He hadn’t spoken much since they’d left the planet behind.

  He didn’t need to. They all felt it.

  A planet gone. Billions of lives erased in a flash of light and collapsing stone.

  “Veiss knew,” Jarek said finally, his voice low. “He warned us about what they were doing... and we couldn’t stop it.”

  Brinn wiped sweat from his brow. “We stopped some of it. We got out. That base is gone. That means something.”

  “But not enough,” Sai replied quietly.

  Silence again.

  Ramm leaned forward, voice softer than usual. “Do you think the Weavers will come after us now? That they know we’re the ones who blew up their nice little death trap?”

  “Oh, definitely,” Pepe said cheerfully from above. “We're on at least four hit lists, a few ancient prophecy scrolls, and one rather angry bounty board.”

  Ramm sighed. “Can’t we ever be on a nice list?”

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  “You’re on my list,” Pepe said sweetly.

  “…I don’t like that.”

  Jarek finally stood, stretching the soreness from his back. He walked toward the central chamber, passing Brinn, who hadn’t stopped working. He paused beside him.

  “How bad is it?” he asked.

  Brinn didn’t look up. “She’s limping. Thruster integrity’s at fifty percent. We can’t make any sharp turns, and if the nav system fails again, I’ll be flying blind.”

  “But we’ll make it?”

  Brinn exhaled slowly. “If nothing else goes wrong? Yeah. Barely.”

  Jarek nodded once. “Then that’s what we’ll take.”

  At the rear, Sai stared through the porthole again. “We need to be ready. If Relic has any survivors left, we need to get to them before the Weavers do.”

  “They’re not gonna let us waltz back in,” Ramm said. “Not after what we did.”

  Jarek looked over. “Then we don’t waltz. We land fast, we keep our heads down, and we get to the Hollow Flame.”

  “Assuming they’re still alive,” Sai added.

  The idea sat heavy in the air.

  “Still think we’re just a crew of idiots scraping through the stars?” Ramm asked lightly, trying to find a smirk.

  Pepe hovered into view and beeped thoughtfully. “No. Now we’re a crew of traumatized idiots with a heavily dented shuttle, psychic scars, and one very poor escape record.”

  Brinn reached up and smacked a panel. The ship rattled.

  Pepe whirred. “Make that very poor.”

  Despite everything, Ramm chuckled. “Feels like old times.”

  No one disagreed.

  As the hours passed, the team took turns resting, repairing, or simply sitting in silence. No one wanted to sleep—not after what they’d seen. But exhaustion has a way of catching everyone.

  Eventually, Jarek drifted into the cockpit.

  “Anything on the scanners?” he asked.

  Brinn tapped a screen. “Faint signal. Could be Relic’s beacon.”

  Pepe swiveled midair. “Confirmed! Bearing ninety-seven mark ten. Planet detected.”

  Jarek stepped closer, watching as a distant, dusty blue orb came into view on the screen—its surface cracked by time, but unmistakably familiar.

  Relic.

  Their broken home.

  “We made it,” Brinn said.

  Pepe buzzed softly. “Well. Almost.”

  Sai stepped in behind them, his voice barely above a whisper. “Now we see who’s still breathing.”

  Jarek tightened his grip on the console edge. “And we find out what comes next.”

  Outside, the stars stretched forward like an open road—and Relic, scarred and stubborn, waited at the end of it.

  The ship’s frame rattled softly as they adjusted trajectory, Brinn manually recalibrating the thrusters with careful precision.

  “Entering Relic’s orbit in thirty seconds,” he announced.

  Everyone made their way to the viewport.

  The planet grew larger with every second—its dusty surface painted in streaks of rust and grey, the massive city-clusters clinging stubbornly to the crust. From here, it looked… untouched.

  For a moment, there was silence.

  Pepe tilted slightly. “Well, that’s anticlimactic. Everything looks normal.”

  Sai stepped closer to the glass. “Zoom in.”

  Pepe complied, and the view shifted—closer, sharper, sweeping over the familiar geography until the scanner locked on to a specific location.

  Where the Black Ring once stood, there was now a jagged, blackened scar.

  A crater at least a mile across tore through the surface like a wound in the world.

  The team stared.

  Ramm swallowed. “So, uh... turns out when we blow something up, we really blow it up.”

  Jarek’s jaw clenched. “We did what we had to do.”

  Brinn narrowed his eyes. “The crater looks… clean. Like it was burned out from the inside.”

  Pepe zoomed again. “No energy readings. No movement. No survivors.”

  “Or no one left to move,” Sai murmured.

  The silence stretched.

  Jarek finally stepped back, nodding toward the planet. “Take us in. Let’s see who’s still standing.”

  Brinn nodded and adjusted the controls.

  The ship angled downward, and Relic’s surface began to rise to meet them, vast and silent.

  The descent had begun.