Silence.
Not peace — not yet — but silence.
The kind that hangs thick in the aftermath of violence, humming with tension, vibrating through every bulkhead of the Zephyr Wasp like the echo of a scream still bouncing through the bones of a corpse. Myrrha leaned back in the pilot's seat, her hands shaking ever so slightly against the controls. Her breath came hard, shallow. Her Riftglow flickered in the back of her mind, painting afterimages across her vision — glimpses of roads unchosen, lives unlived, deaths narrowly avoided.
She pushed them down. She had to.
The ship soared upward, riding the current above the low-tier cloudbanks where the highstorm hadn't yet bitten deep. Lightning spiderwebbed along the outer sails, harmless — for now — thanks to the kinetic buffers woven into the hull. It was a miracle this skycutter even had them. Most civilian-class ships didn't. Which meant this wasn't civilian-class, not really.
Which meant someone very powerful was going to want it back.
Myrrha tapped the navigation panel. Static. The local grid was fried — probably storm interference — but even the long-range beacon was blank. No star charts, no flight path, no positioning data.
"Great," she muttered, slapping the side of the console.
The ship was flying blind.
She stood. Let the auto-glide take over for now.
The bridge was larger than she'd expected, a curved command room with high steel-bone archways and hexagonal viewports that dimmed automatically against lightning bursts. Every corner gleamed like money. Too clean. Too quiet. It felt less like a ship and more like a tomb.
She headed aft.
The corridor lights flickered overhead as she moved, her boots clicking against the silver-trimmed flooring. Her pulse regulator was still active, soft-green glow pulsing slow against her belt. A reminder: no backup, no allies, no way back down.
Only forward.
She passed sealed doors. Crew quarters. Maintenance bays. An empty lounge with a shattered holo-projector lying in the corner like it had been ripped out, not deactivated.
She frowned.
No bodies. No blood.
No signs anyone had ever flown this ship at all.
And yet… the cushions in the lounge were still indented. A half-melted ration pack sat half-open on the table. A scarf — deep crimson, frayed at one end — hung limply over the back of a chair.
Her breath hitched.
Not abandoned. Vacated.
She stepped into the lounge and picked up the scarf.
It was warm.
The Riftglow surged.
She staggered, hand clutching her eye.
— the scarf wrapped around a throat not hers — blood on a metal floor — screams echoing into vacuum —
She gasped, dropped it. The vision snapped off like a severed wire. Her knees hit the floor. Sweat dripped onto the deck.
She couldn't keep this up.
Not without a Burn.
She fumbled inside her coat and pulled out the vial. Silver-black liquid shimmered inside — Rift Suppressor, high-grade, stolen, dangerous. One dose burned the glow down to manageable levels. Two, and you lost sensation in your limbs. Three, and you stopped dreaming altogether.
She uncorked it with her teeth and drank.
Cold.
Burning.
Her vision cleared.
The hum of the ship came back into focus.
And then she heard it.
A knock.
Metal on metal.
From inside the engine bay.
She froze.
The Zephyr Wasp wasn't empty.
She crossed the hall in five silent steps, pulse regulator down to bare minimum, and pressed her ear against the door.
Nothing.
Then—
Slam. Slam. Slam.
A pause.
One knock. Two. Three.
A rhythm.
Not random.
Not a malfunction.
Someone was trapped.
She pulled the emergency crank, and the bulkhead groaned open. A hiss of cold air burst out, carrying the scent of burning oil and charred leather.
The engine bay was a cathedral of power — three rift cores suspended in anti-grav cages, rotating slowly with arcs of red-blue lightning. Pipes ran like arteries through the walls. A broken crate lay smashed near the entry, sparks flickering where a fuse had burst. And chained to the rearmost console — wrists cuffed, mouth gagged, face bloodied — was a boy.
Or something close.
He blinked at her, eyes pale gray, almost silver. His skin was dust-dark, his arms laced with circuit-like scars that shimmered faintly.
He wasn't human.
Or not anymore.
She moved closer, knife drawn just in case.
He watched her calmly.
No fear.
Just… recognition.
Like he knew her.
She crouched.
"Who the hell are you?"
He tilted his head.
The Riftglow surged behind her eye.
— a name whispered in flame — a door sealed shut — the boy standing over a grave with her name on it —
She hissed through her teeth.
"What are you?"
He smiled, bloodied and slow.
And then he spoke.
With no mouth movement.
With no voice.
Just a thought, projected straight into her skull like lightning across glass.
"You stole my ship."
She blinked.
He pulled against the cuffs once, gently.
The cuffs snapped.
Not broke.
Evaporated.
The Riftglow burned like wildfire now, screaming in her skull.
She stumbled back, blade raised.
He stood.
Tall. Calm.
Wings of broken light flickered briefly at his back — skeletal, fractured, like a memory half-formed.
He stepped forward, barefoot.
"Relax," he said, this time aloud. His voice was soft, clear, too even. "You're not my enemy."
"Funny," Myrrha snapped, "I don't remember asking."
"You will."
He glanced around the room.
Then up at the rift cores.
"They found me before I could finish. That's why the ship's blind. Why the map's locked. Why the coordinates are scrambled."
He turned to her again.
"But now you're here."
She narrowed her eyes.
"What were you finishing?"
He smiled again.
Like a secret.
Like a promise.
Like a threat.
"I was unlocking the path to the End of the World."
And then the Zephyr Wasp shuddered.
Alarms blared.
The nav screen on the bridge came to life.
Incoming ships.
Six of them.
No insignia. No ID. No warnings.
Just black sails and silent engines.
Myrrha ran.
Back to the helm.
The boy followed.
She slammed into the pilot's seat and pulled the comms online.
Nothing.
"Pirates?" she asked, flicking the scanners. "Military?"
The boy sat beside her and calmly strapped in.
"Hunters," he said. "Sent by the ones who built this ship."
Her throat went dry.
"Why?"
He looked at her.
Dead calm.
Dead certain.
"Because now, you and I are both thieves of the sky."
The Zephyr Wasp dove into the clouds.
The chase had begun.