Homecoming

The Krasnikov moved soundlessly through the abyss, a warship built for battle, now ferrying only a father and son in silence. Beyond the thick observation glass, Orion watched as their homeworld grew larger, its atmosphere a swirl of blues and deep violets against the void. He should have felt relief returning home, but his mind was elsewhere—fractured between the weight of his father's words and the unknown frontier that had been thrust upon him.

He wasn't just training for the academy anymore. That path had been stripped away before he'd even had a chance to walk it. Instead, he was being molded for something else—something beyond even the Apex candidates.

Orion sat alone in the observation deck, fingers tightening against the armrest. His body still hummed with the energy of his recent training session, but the adrenaline had faded, replaced by something colder. Cassian hadn't said much since their last conversation on the shuttle.

There was nothing else to be said.

The Dysarchial Raptures.

The name felt like an omen.

He had never heard of them before, never came across them in any of the texts available to him. How could something so important—so integral to humanity's greatest gains and losses—be hidden from an heir of an archon family?

The answer was clear. The Confederacy either stood to lose too much profit from public access—or the Raptures were still relatively new phenomena, and they were racing to solidify their control over them before another power could stake its claim.

Orion wasn't naive enough to think that the Confederacy's secrecy was purely for humanity's safety. No, there was always an underlying calculus. If the Raptures had been responsible for their greatest technological leaps, then monopolizing them wasn't just about containment—it was about power. Whoever controlled the Raptures controlled the future.

But there was something more unsettling about it. If the Confederacy's hold on the Raptures was still being cemented, then that meant much about them remained unknown. The fact that even an heir like himself had never heard of them suggested the level of control being exerted over information flow. How much had been deliberately erased? How much did they still not understand themselves?

The implications gnawed at him. If humanity had already benefited from discoveries within the Raptures—the Genesis Strain, breakthroughs in physics and warfare—then what horrors had remained buried, too dangerous to be revealed?

Orion exhaled slowly. It was a rare moment of stillness, but his mind refused to rest. His father's warship continued its approach, the homeworld looming ever closer. Soon, they would land. Soon, he would step off this ship and be expected to fall back into normalcy.

As if anything about his life had ever been normal.

A soft pulse from the interface on his wristcom alerted him to the change. The device, seamlessly integrated into his combat training gear, acted as both an identification key and a device for communication.

As he lifted his wrist, holographic data streamed to life above his palm, cascading through a list of newly unlocked files. The security clearance had been rewritten at the highest level Cassian could authorize for him, which was level four clearance.

His terminal now glowed with classified data streams.

The first document was a list of missing teams. Expeditions that had ventured into the Raptures and never returned. The logs were clinical in their assessments—dates, coordinates, the names of crew members.

However, several data points were either missing or restricted at his level, preventing any clear understanding of what had truly gone wrong.

What gnawed in his mind was not the missing data nor the greyed-out ones, but one sentence:

STATUS: LOST

Orion scrolled further. Mission reports.

The details weren't much better. Some expeditions had returned, but what came back wasn't whole.

Report #2175-A: Subject exhibited signs of extreme cognitive deterioration. No recollection of mission parameters or crew. Claimed to have never left the station.

Report #4362-C: All members accounted for, but psychological evaluations reveal fractured memories. Each crew member insists they completed different objectives. No two testimonies align.

Report #5958-X: Final transmission received 14 days after presumed disappearance. Crew had been declared lost a month prior. Message contained incoherent speech and static. Words deciphered: "We were never meant to see her."

Orion swallowed, a weight settling in his chest. This was what he was training for.

His fingers hovered over the next file—a corrupted video feed.

The playback stuttered, flickering between frames. Shadows danced on the screen, humanoid figures moving through a fog-laden corridor. The timestamp suggested this footage was from one of the earliest known Rapture incursions.

For a brief moment, the screen stabilized.

A voice, distant and distorted, came through the transmission.

"It's not... It's... not time. It's—"

A flicker. The camera jerked. Then—static.

The footage cut out. The timestamp kept running. Orion's hands clenched.

He forced himself to move past the feed. One final file remained.

Survivor testimony.

He read the words slowly, methodically. But the meaning burned itself into his mind.

"I know my wife's face. I remember our wedding. But when I came back... she was wrong. Her smile, the way she spoke—it was all wrong. My son doesn't exist. They say I never had one. I remember him laughing. I remember his name. But the world doesn't."

Orion exhaled sharply, his pulse a steady drum in his ears.

For all the talk of scientific advancements, for all the progress that had come from exploring these phenomena, the cost was insurmountable.

The Dysarchial Raptures were not just dangerous.

By the time Orion stepped onto the landing platform, the weight of what he had just read still clung to him. His fingers twitched at his side before he forced them to still—a brief, involuntary response to the thoughts still unraveling in his mind.

The sense of unease refused to fade. The air was crisp, the faint hum of distant transports filling the space between towering spires. This was home. The same sky, the same streets. And yet, it felt... different.

Orion walked down the ramp, his posture composed despite the storm inside his head. Cassian followed a step behind, silent as ever.

At the base of the platform, a woman waited.

Valeria Zey'ran Reyes. His mother. The moment Orion stepped off the ramp, she was there, striding forward without hesitation. Her eyes flickered between him and Cassian, sharp as ever, but when they met Orion's, the scrutiny softened—just slightly. Then, in an unexpected gesture, she reached for him. A gloved hand against his cheek, the warmth barely dulled by the fabric.

"Welcome home, Orion." she murmured, almost to herself, before drawing him into a brief but firm embrace. The scent of star jasmine lingered.

Orion stood still for half a breath before he let himself return the gesture, just barely. It was fleeting, but enough. When she pulled back, her hands rested briefly on his shoulders before she studied him again, this time with something closer to concern than mere analysis. 

Orion exhaled, giving a small nod. He knew better than to think she hadn't already been informed of everything. Cassian never kept her in the dark. But for now, she didn't press.

Instead, she glanced at Cassian. "The preparations are underway."

Orion barely registered the words until his gaze flickered to a nearby data slate resting in the hands of an attendant.

The guest list. He caught a name before the servant turned away—Elias Virellian. A familiar name, a potential rival. His presence at the celebration meant only one thing: this wasn't just about family—it was about politics.

It took Orion a moment to remember. His birthday.

Nineteen days.

Talk of guests, alliances, expectations.

It felt impossibly distant now.

As they entered the estate, the hum of conversation and movement surrounded them—servants coordinating arrangements, hushed discussions of the guest list, the inevitable political implications of the event.

Orion barely heard any of it.

His mind was still in the archives. Still trapped in the past, in the flickering light of corrupted data logs, watching phantoms of people who had ventured into the unknown and returned as something... else.

Still reading the words of a man who no longer recognized his own family, whose reality had fractured beyond repair.

His birthday was approaching. A grand celebration awaited.

But all Orion could think about was the moment he would step into the unknown.

The moment he would walk into the Raptures—and wonder if he would come back the same.

Would his mind fracture like the others? Would he return to a world that no longer fit him, a reality that had shifted imperceptibly in his absence?

Would he even return at all?