It was just over a thirty-hour journey to Earth, and Aurania had felt restless the entire time.

  Sleep came in shallow, fractured bursts, leaving her mind sharp but her body buzzing with a low-grade tension she couldn't shake. She had tried to burn it off in the cargo hold, sparring with Amalia until they both were laughing and breathless. But even the familiar rhythm of combat hadn't been enough to quiet the itch beneath her skin.

  The ship itself was quieter than usual.

  Brolgar moved like clockwork, delivering food and drink with a paternal focus like he had them on a schedule. Brana was inspecting every piece of their gear, over and over again like she expected something to be different than the last three times she checked. In the cockpit, Inelius and Raine flew in overlapping shifts, solo, then together, each giving the other support for whatever awaited.

  But The Cradle of Gravity felt empty.

  Lucien was flying his own ship, of course. The Ghost Step was a dark shadow just off their port bow. Tamiyo was with him, aiding Echo with the decryption of the schematics. But Violet and Veolo had chosen to go as well, a decision that had surprised Aurania. Violet had said something about wanting a different perspective, a quieter space to process before they reached humanity's birthplace. Veolo was probably sizing Lucien up for a fight.

  Aurania just laughed quietly and let them go.

  Soren, though.

  Soren was meditating. Intensely. He’d started not long after they set out, and he was still there, a silent, powerful presence down on Deck 4.

  She could feel him. Even from three decks up, his power was a steady, resonant thrum that vibrated at the edge of her own senses. It wasn't the chaotic, wild energy of his rage, nor the quiet, contained heat of their shared moments. This was something else—a focused, immense pressure, like a star holding itself together against its own gravity.

  She had given him space, told herself he needed to center himself before confronting the ghost of his lost world. But thirty hours of this silent, building power was enough. Finally, she rose from her seat in the ops center and started down the stairs.

  The door to the empty room on Deck 4 hissed open, and the light that spilled out was brighter than she expected—brighter than when she had found him meditating with Violet. The entire room was awash in a soft white glow, harmless Aether energy bleeding from his meditation like a steady tide. It clung to the walls like mist, the air inside warm and buzzing.

  He was in the center of the room, his body in a seated position with his eyes closed. But he was hovering mid-air as his hair glowed softly.

  “Whatever we find there,” Aurania said, cutting through the silence, “it will be okay.”

  The Aether energy wavered, then began to recede. The light pulled back into him like a slow, deep breath until the room returned to its normal state. He drifted down onto the floor and opened his eyes, but he didn't look at her. His gaze was fixed on the far wall, on a future or a past she couldn't see, the nova in each eye gently receding.

  “What…” he began, the bass of his voice vibrating the floor under her hooves. “What do you think we will find?” He sounded… small. A boy asking if there were monsters in the dark.

  Aurania walked toward him. “Probably what we expect,” she said softly. “There’s a chance the Conservatory has been lying, that it still supports life, but my gut tells me that’s not the case.”

  She stopped in front of him and reached out her hand. He looked up at it, then at her, and she felt the fragile hope in his eyes like a weight in her own chest. He took her hand, and she pulled him to his feet.

  When he looked into her eyes, her heart skipped a beat.

  “Come on.” She smiled and pulled him toward the door. As they walked up the stairs, she asked, “Will you be alright? After we visit?”

  He was quiet for a moment, the only sound their shared steps on the deck plates. “Yes,” he said finally. His voice was steadier now, absent the ethereal reverberation. “I just need to see it with my own eyes.”

  When they reached the common room, Amalia was already there, curled on one of the oversized floor cushions with a thick, hard-backed novel in her hands. Brana was at a workbench in the corner, meticulously cleaning a rifle with a focus that bordered on meditation. Brolgar was seated at the galley counter, sipping from a large mug as he prepared ingredients for some intricate dish.

  They all looked up as she entered with Soren.

  Aurania went to grab a drink from Brolgar as Soren went to sit cross-legged in front of the large viewport. He didn't speak, but his presence filled the room. Amalia closed her book and grabbed an armful of floor cushions, making her way over to drop them next to Soren. She laid down on her side, placing her head on his leg in a simple, grounding way.

  He looked down at her, a small, grateful smile touching his lips. He rested a hand on her head, his fingers gently stroking her hair, and playfully asked, “You didn’t want to go hang out with the rest of them?”

  “Mmm,” she answered, releasing the corner of a pillow from her teeth. “I think I came on too strong, might have made Lucien uncomfortable. Figured I’d give him some space.”

  Soren just laughed quietly in response.

  Brana set down her cleaning cloth and hopped off her stool to go sit near the window. “I’m intrigued to see what this place looks like.”

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  “Won’t have to wait much longer,” Soren said, his gaze still on the stars. "We’re close." He looked at Brana, then back to Brolgar and Aurania. "Thanks for... y’know. For coming."

  Brolgar grunted, a sound that was more acknowledgment than agreement. “Maybeh when we’re done, w’can head t’the d’moria homeworld. Been a minute since I went back.”

  Soren’s brow crept up. “That a serious offer, old man?”

  “Old?” Brolgar instantly shot back. “How long’s’it been since y’stepped foot on where we’re headed?”

  Soren let out a soft snort. “Point taken.”

  Aurania watched them, a warmth spreading through her chest. This was her family. Flawed and scarred, but unbreakable. They didn't just fight together, they showed up for each other, even when the silence was heavier than battle.

  “We're here,” Raine's voice came over the ship’s internal comm. “Jump Drive reduced to low burn, welcome to the Sol System.”

  Aurania felt Soren’s heart leap through their link.

  The view outside the main viewport shifted, the streaking, abstract lines of blurred starlight collapsing into near stillness. A single, bright star burned at the center of the black, just like the one Nox was slowly falling into.

  But this was Sol—the sun of humanity.

  Soren pushed himself up, moving to the viewport with a slow, reverent purpose. He placed a hand on the glass, his reflection a ghostly overlay against the starfield. She strode over to stand with him, not taking his hand, but close enough that he could if he wanted.

  "There it is," he murmured.

  As The Cradle of Gravity moved deeper into the system, gliding past the silent, distant orbits of gas giants and frozen worlds, Soren became their guide. He brought up an overlay for the viewport, allowing them to zoom in.

  "That's Mars," he pointed to a small, red-orange sphere hanging far, far out in the void. "We had the first off-world colonies there. Mostly scientists, engineers. They were trying to build a self-sustaining atmosphere... I guess they never finished." He traced the line of a massive, dead canyon on its surface.

  A larger planet came up on their left—Jupiter, a colossal, swirling giant of gas and storms. Soren stared at it for a long time, his expression a mixture of awe and deep, aching loss. “Holy shit,” his breath caught. "The Great Red Spot… It's gone."

  Amalia stood and wrapped her arms around one of his, the side of her face pressed against it. "What was it?"

  "A storm," Soren said, his gaze unfocused, lost in a memory eight millennia deep. "A hurricane bigger than entire worlds. It had been raging for centuries. We used to watch it through telescopes... it was beautiful. Terrifying, but beautiful."

  “Sounds like you,” Aurania told him.

  His eyes darted to her, and he smiled, taking her hand.

  He told them stories, fragmented and dream-like, of a humanity that was both familiar and distant. He spoke of crowded cities that reached for the sky, of oceans teeming with life, of a world so full of noise and color and motion it reminded Aurania of both the Conservatory, Lacravi, and Nox, all put together into one.

  He described art, music, philosophies born from a thousand different cultures, all crammed onto a single, chaotic, beautiful world. He spoke not as a historian reciting facts, but as a man mourning a ghost, trying to describe the face of a lover he could no longer perfectly recall.

  The ship turned slowly, bringing a new world into the viewport. It was small from this distance, a tiny marble suspended in the infinite black. It was pale and hazy—a mix of muted, tired blue and a sickly, uniform gray.

  Soren stepped closer to the viewport, his grip tightening on her hand. His breath fogged a small circle on the glass. “See that one? That pale blue dot there? That’s Earth.”

  Aurania stared, her own breath caught in her throat. She had seen countless worlds, some wracked with storms, some barren, some covered in metropolises too grand to imagine without seeing.

  But this… this felt different.

  This was more than a planet, it was a legend. A myth. The cradle from which Soren—and in a twisted, secret way—all of them had been born.

  As Raine guided the ship closer, the details began to resolve, and the full, devastating scope of the tragedy became clear. The vibrant, living blues she had seen in Soren’s memories were gone, replaced by the flat, lifeless gray of dead oceans. The surfaces on some were completely still, while others roiled violently. The swirling white patterns of clouds were thin, almost transparent, wisps of toxic vapor clinging to a dying atmosphere.

  And the continents… they were scars.

  Vast burns, hundreds of miles long, marked the surface. Some areas were fused into plains of obsidian-like glass that reflected the distant starlight with a cold, dead sheen. There were no city lights on the night side. No glittering web of civilization. Just an absolute, unbroken darkness.

  Aurania felt Soren's hand tremble in hers. He wasn't speaking anymore. He was just watching. She looked from the dead world on the screen to the man beside her, a living ghost staring at his own tomb, and her heart ached with such empathy that she thought her heart might fall from her chest.

  Raine’s voice came over the comm again. “Bringing us fully out of Jump.”

  The ship banked slowly, and the dead planet rotated beneath them. A new fractured continent came into view. There was a sharp intake of breath beside her, and Soren’s hand slipped from hers to lay flat against the glass. He made a small, choked sound in the back of his throat.

  Aurania tore her eyes from the display to look at him. His face was ashen, his eyes wide, fixed on the devastation below.

  "Soren? What is it?"

  He pointed a trembling finger at the viewport.

  "There," he whispered. "That's... that's where I was born."

  Aurania looked back at the planet.

  What had once been a single, massive continent was now an archipelago of shattered, razed islands, their coastlines jagged and unnatural. The land between them was a dark, churning sea, not of water, but of some thick, chemical slurry that steamed faintly in the dim light. Vast, circular scars, miles wide, were burned into the crust, the ground around them fused into black, reflective glass.

  The Conservatory had been lying.

  This wasn’t a world that could no longer support the growth of its population.

  This was the site of an execution.

  "North America..." he breathed, the name a spectre on his lips.

  Aurania felt a cold dread seep into her bones. She grabbed his hand again, her own grip now a desperate anchor in the face of such absolute destruction. She had to get him away from this view, give him a focus, a purpose.

  "Where do we go?" she asked. "Tell us where to land."

  He was silent for a long moment, his gaze still lost in the ruins. Then slowly, he turned to look at her, and in his eyes, she saw not a request, but a plea. A shared memory. A place of warmth and sun and stone.

  He still couldn’t seem to speak.

  “Raine,” Aurania barked firmly, looking up. “Head east. I’ll tell you where to land.” She looked out at the dead sphere below them, a single word stuck in her mind.

  Sicura.