Clinging to the ship's outer hull, I moved along its surface, my body pressed tight against the metal as we drifted silently through space.
Up ahead, the defence satellite loomed—the same one that had shot Thorn and me off course when we first tried sneaking into Idaten-II.
Thorn groaned. "Don't tell me that hidden station is that thing?"
The orbiting war satellite hovered like an iron monolith, fused to the planetary ring that encircled Idaten-II. It rotated in perfect sync with the world below, always locked above the prime city—a brilliant place to hide the Empyrean, if you were an idiot. First thing to fall in any real war would be this station. And with it, the Empyrean.
"Just how dumb are Idaten's gods of justice to think that was a smart idea?" Thorn mused.
The ship adjusted course, its magnetic clamps preparing for docking. A final thud echoed across the hull as it locked against the satellite's outer shell. The docking arm latched firmly—no drifting now.
I pulled myself across the surface until I reached the lone window—the cockpit.
[Skill: Hollow Void — Void Steps!]
With a burst of silver-orange light, I phased into the cockpit. The warmth struck me immediately, and so did the two startled pilots.
[Aspect: Taken Devourer — Manifestation!]
Inky hands bloomed into existence, emerging like ghostly weeds. They seized the pilots mid-breath, stretched them wide like pinned insects, then clamped over their mouths. I tapped their foreheads with a finger, and aether surged through their skulls—locking them into deep coma-like sleep.
Thorn phased through the glass with his usual flair, trailing fire and feathers. He slapped the pilots aside like toys and perched on my shoulder.
I inhaled the thick, volatile air through my helm. The aether here reeked of divine pressure. I could taste the Empyrean's signature in the atmosphere. "It's close."
"Then move, princess! The ship won't stick around forever!" Thorn squawked.
I started forward. The floating ink-hands followed, hovering behind me like silent wraiths.
"You say that like you don't want to break this thing apart," I muttered.
"I do," Thorn replied. "I just want to start from the inside. Find the RAM, pull its brain out. See if it twitches."
After a short walk, I reached the docking corridor—the narrow connector between ship and station.
"And I'm the sadist?" I muttered.
[Aspect: Taken Devourer — Manifestation!]
The crew unloading cargo turned as I stepped through. Their mouths barely opened before dozens of inked hands erupted across the space, grabbing bodies and smashing them into the walls. One by one, the fifty men fell unconscious—a perfect rhythm of head-meets-metal.
I walked past them without slowing, crossing into the satellite proper.
Then it hit me.
The aether inside was dense—crushing, chaotic, mad. It spoke in layered, dissonant tones.
"–The devourer of the taken arrives!–"
"–The traveler in the curious sea comes to free the writer in the lyrics!–"
"–Free us! Liberty us! Gratis us!–"
My own aether—split between three hearts—swirled restlessly in response, parsing the gibberish of the trapped Empyrean's madness. All I could decipher was desperation. It wanted out. Fine. That was the plan.
"-Thieving singers!-"
"-Take the lyric! Devour the note!-"
"-Make ruin the new eulogy! Unmake the splendour of song!-"
"Easy," I murmured, calming the storm within. My aether hated the Empyrean, aether different from itself. But it obeyed only me. "Just hold together long enough for me to drain the thing and throw it into space."
The turmoil in my chest quieted. It didn't like it. But it listened.
Duuung~
A bell chimed through the station, metallic and deep. Ahead, three holograms flickered into view—eyeless men in wooden masks, radiating faint, unnatural blue. Their bodies glowed softly, light bleeding into the corridor like fog.
Holograms.
The one in the middle stepped forward, voice trembling with fury. "What are you doing here, Traveler? Was the chaos you left on Idaten's surface not enough? Do you now challenge the gods themselves?"
"I came for the Empyrean," I said flatly. "Hand it over, and I won't have to kill you."
"Ha! You think you can negotiate with gods?" spat the one to his right, giddy and shrill. "You're a filthy transcendent. A lesser. You should be grateful we even show ourselves to you!"
Unamused, Thorn leaned forward, voice cutting through the blue static. "Really? I can smell the piss in your robes. And the shit in your voice ain't doing you any favours."
"Silence, vermin!" the third roared. The walls shivered. The floor trembled. Metal groaned like a frightened animal.
Thorn, as always, snapped back without hesitation. "Or what? I've eaten cows more divine than you! Hah!" He flashed his middle feather from my pauldron. "Kiss my ass, wooden-heads."
The air soured with hatred. I smiled beneath the helmet.
"I offered you a choice," I said as I walked forward, phasing right through the projections. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
The central god snarled. "SEIZE HIM! The one who slays the Traveler shall be my next apostle!"
Footsteps thundered. Dozens—no, hundreds—of men poured into the corridor, armed to the teeth, hungry for divinity.
[Stigma: Equal Correlation — Sequence: 6.4]
I exhaled through my nose, barely phased. The [stigma] awakened, feeding me data, weakening me by three ring sequences to match them. I saw through them—all of them. Their skill. Their heartbeats. Their meaningless titles.
Gods of justice? Please.
[Skill: Autumn King's Conquest — Leviathan Maw!]
Seven orbs of silver water formed in the air around me, pulsing with my breath. I snapped my fingers. The orbs exploded outward, morphing into roaring leviathans. Serpents of storm and tide. They tore through the corridor, devouring the soldiers like rivers swallowing leaves. None reached the cargo hold. None got close.
Thorn cackled beside me. "Now that's justice."
"Fire!" A voice roared from above, angry and commanding.
[Skill: Winter Inverse — Armour Adaptation!]
Lasers rained down onto my chest and shoulders, catching me off guard. I looked up—rows of soldiers lined the platforms above, firing relentlessly. My armour struggled to keep up, its integrity compromised by the [stigma]. The sheer volume of aether flooding the station made detection nearly impossible.
"Thorn!"
He launched from my shoulder like a bullet, weaving through the laser fire with serpentine precision. Tail feathers sharp as knives, he slipped past the hail of bullets and pierced hearts with terrifying grace. "I got them!" he chirped proudly.
[Skill: Winter Inverse — Repair]
I brushed ash from my chest where the lasers had hit. My armour had held, but not completely—several scales had disintegrated and my aether was forced to disperse in the air, briefly exposing skin now covered in fresh crystalline plating, solidified from raw aether. "Anti-kralscell weapons... someone's been busy."
Silver leviathans howled somewhere deeper in the station. Their guttural roars merged with the screams of dying men. I could feel their rampage in the walls beneath my boots. But as they neared the core, a strange pulse scattered them—one that tore apart their forms of aether like mist under a fan.
"Stay close," I muttered.
"Since you asked so nicely, princess." Thorn reappeared, curling onto my shoulder.
We moved through the station. The halls were silent, heavy. Water pooled from melted steel and broken pipes. Bodies floated or slumped against the walls, their blood diluted by the silver remnants of leviathan essence.
My aether senses were drowned—useless in this saturated atmosphere—but my ears picked up what my sight could not: faint breathing. Trembling exhales. The quiet terror of people trying to hide from me.
An aether dissipator had gone off here recently. That pulse... it didn't just kill the leviathans. It made the humans think they had a chance.
I walked deeper, calm, confident—pretending not to hear them.
A shriek shattered the air. "Die!" A woman stepped into view, gun shaking wildly in her hands.
[Aspect: Taken Devourer — Telekinesis!]
I raised a hand. She flew to me, gasping, fingers clawing at her throat as I lifted her into the air—then slammed her into the ceiling. A wet crunch. Her body dropped, limp, beside me.
"Dammit all! Open fire!"
Twenty more emerged, shouting, screaming. Lasers cut through the air, searing into me. I grunted. Even Thorn had to dive into my body to avoid the worst of it, curling into the heart of my chest like a serpent hiding in stone.
[Skill: Autumn King's Conquest — star parade!]
Aether stars—small, orange-silver points of power—flared into being. I sent them soaring upward. One by one, they broke the lights above until the room plunged into darkness.
"Hold fire!" a man barked, panic creeping into his voice. A flashlight flicked on, its beam scanning the floor—finding only the scorched imprint of where I had once stood.
"Wh–where is he?"
"I don't see him! Does anyone have visual?!"
[Aspect: Taken Devourer — mad fang!]
Behind the man, a blade manifested in my gauntlet—black energy with molten veins of silver and orange, vibrating with cruel hunger. It sliced through his neck before he even felt it.
The flashlight dropped. My boot crushed it as I advanced.
"Over there!" someone yelled.
But they were already too late.
Lasers whipped through the air—I caught them mid-flight, deflecting one, two, three back into their shooters. I wove through shadow and firelight, my sword an extension of will, each slash a signature of death.
"Ahhh!"
"Stop him!"
They screamed and fired blindly, but I was already behind them, slicing, slashing—leaving only echoes and corpses in my wake.
"Regroup! Regroup!!"
Twelve survivors scrambled toward the exit. One woman ran directly into me, eyes wide with disbelief—my sword opened her from waist to throat, cutting her in half.
"Shut the door!" someone screamed.
I stretched out my hand. The door slammed closed, locking them inside with me.
Banging fists. Screams. They begged before resisting.
"Help! Anybody, help us!!"
"Keep firing!"
Lasers lit the darkness again. They couldn't see me, but I could feel every movement, every heartbeat.
[Aspect: Taken Devourer — Telekinesis!]
I reached out. One by one, they were lifted into the air, dragged screaming toward me. My blade rose to meet each of them.
"No! Noooo—agh!!"
Their cries were sharp, jagged things, ending in silence. Ten. Eleven.
Only one remained.
He hammered at the steel door, sobbing. "Please... please..."
I stepped behind him. My sword fell in a single arc, carving from shoulder to waist. The man fell, his blood hissing against the floor.
The door now bore a streak of scorched light, carved through by the same blade that ended him.
With a flick of my wrist, the door flung open. Harsh white light from the corridor poured into the ruined chamber, illuminating my bloodied silhouette. My armour—cracked and scorched—gleamed beneath the stains.
[Skill: Conceptualization — Matter Severance]
I clenched my fist. The blood coating my armour turned to dust, then to sand, then to nothing—falling from me like ash in the wind. My black sword dissolved, fading back into the aether.
I stepped into the corridor, leaving the slaughter behind. And did not look back.
Then, from the shadows, movement caught my eye. A woman stood there—dressed in a nurse's outfit, the pristine white stained faintly with red. Her short green hair glowed like a neon beacon in the gloom. She regarded me with clinical disinterest, her gaze drifting over the trail of severed bodies behind me. She frowned—not in horror, but in disapproval.
I narrowed my eyes. She wasn't reacting like a survivor. She wasn't afraid at all. The realization struck like a shard of ice. "Sathuna? Another one of your personas?"
Her frown deepened. That was confirmation enough.
"Love the sexy nurse getup, by the way," Thorn purred as he reappeared on my shoulder. "Short leather skirt and boob window do wonders."
"This isn't for you to enjoy, wraith." Sathuna's voice cut like glass, venom laced in every syllable. She shot Thorn a withering glare before turning away, beginning down the corridor with an elegant sweep of her hand. "You got here by luck. The schedule was accelerated an hour. Had you left any later, you'd be ash."
There was something tight behind her words—an edge of anxiety she couldn't fully bury.
She pointed down the corridor. "Go. They're waiting. Don't keep them waiting."
I passed her with only a glance, and as I did, her form scattered—dissolving into hundreds of glowing moth-like fragments that scattered through the cracks and vents like dying embers.
[Skill: Autumn King's Conquest — Mach Rush!]
[Skill: Eternal Hole — Time Excel!]
Amber lightning flared to life. The world bent around me. In a breath, I vanished—rushing forward with time peeling back at my heels, the hall a blur of light and slowing motion.
The guards ahead barely had time to widen their eyes.
By the time they reached for their triggers, their skulls were already split open, halves sliding apart in slow-motion ruin. I didn't stop. I didn't blink. I cut through them all—one after another, until the corridor fell still again, littered with twitching limbs and broken armour.
At the far end, the final door stood.
[Skill: Astral Third Eye — detection!]
I stopped just before the turn. Aether pulsed in my mind like a sonar ping. Over thirty men were waiting, guns primed—each one equipped with anti-Kralscell rounds.
Glancing at Thorn. I asked, "You want to handle it?"
"Stretch my feathers?" Thorn flared, his ghostly body crackling with silver fire. "Don't mind if I do. They're all dinner."
"Go for it," I muttered, smirking. "I've already killed everyone else in the station."
Thorn cackled with unholy delight as he darted around the corner. One man screamed—and then the hallway erupted in silver fire.
Roars and death echoed through the corridor. Thorn's laughter cut through the flames like a banshee's wail.
"Roasted humans! I love it!"