Chapter 20: Ashes of the Past

The Starblade drifted through the shattered remnants of Elysium's last bastion. The debris field stretched for thousands of kilometers, a silent graveyard of twisted metal and scorched hulls. The battle that sealed the Eleventh Core had left the region scarred, but Li Wei knew the war was far from over.

Kara hunched over the ship's terminal, scanning for any remaining signals. Her mechanical eye flickered as it processed layers of encrypted transmissions. The jailer runes on her skin still pulsed faintly, an unwanted reminder of what she had become. "Something's wrong," she muttered.

Li Wei turned from the viewport, his arms crossed. The spear shards in his chest had dimmed since their last battle, but they still pulsed in sync with the distant cores. His body felt like a mosaic barely held together, each piece threatening to shatter under the weight of something unseen. "Define wrong."

Kara enlarged the scan results. "I expected scattered distress signals, maybe some survivors clinging to wreckage. But there's nothing. No energy signatures, no life readings—just silence."

Li Wei frowned. "That doesn't make sense. Even if the core's collapse wiped out most of them, there should still be echoes, radiation, something."

Kara's fingers danced across the controls, frustration tightening her jaw. "That's what I'm saying. It's not just dead—it's erased."

A warning chime echoed through the cockpit. Aria's fragmented hologram flickered to life, her normally sharp features distorted by interference. "We have a problem."

Kara exhaled sharply. "No kidding."

Aria's expression was grave. "You need to leave. Now. There's—"

The transmission cut to static. Then the Starblade's sensors screamed.

A gravitational anomaly surged from the center of the wreckage. The void itself seemed to twist as something emerged—a structure that had not been there a moment before. Black, spiraling spires jutted outward, shifting like obsidian thorns. It pulsed with a sickly glow, its architecture not entirely bound by Euclidean rules. It was as if reality itself struggled to define its existence.

Kara's pulse quickened. "That wasn't there before."

Li Wei's grip on the console tightened. "No. But it is now."

The Starblade's lights flickered as the ship's power fluctuated. The gravitational distortion spread outward, warping space around the anomaly. It was neither a ship nor a station. It was something else. Something old.

A voice slithered through the ship's comms, low and resonant, layered with echoes from voices long dead.

"Did you think sealing the core would end it?"

Kara's hands curled into fists. "The hell is that?"

Li Wei didn't answer. He already knew.

The Prisoner.

Before Kara could react, the anomaly pulsed. A wave of force rippled outward, ensnaring the Starblade in its grasp. The ship's engines roared as Kara fought to stabilize their position, but the ship was being dragged toward the dark spire, its gravity inescapable.

"Li Wei—do something!"

He stepped forward, ignoring the cracks spiderwebbing across his crystallized arms. He reached into the depths of his core, calling on the hybrid energy within. The spear shards in his chest ignited, radiating golden light laced with flickers of black.

The anomaly resisted.

The energy within it was familiar. It was the same darkness that had clung to Veyra, the same force that had threatened to consume him time and time again. But this time, it wasn't just a presence.

It was awake.

"You are the key," the voice whispered. "You cannot run from what you are."

Li Wei gritted his teeth and pushed back with everything he had. The Starblade trembled, its hull groaning as the two forces clashed. Kara rerouted power to the engines, trying to break free while Li Wei fought the anomaly's pull.

The voice chuckled.

"Foolish. I do not need to drag you in. You are already mine."

Pain lanced through Li Wei's skull as visions exploded in his mind.

A shattered battlefield where the stars bled red. A world consumed by darkness, its last guardian kneeling in surrender. And himself—standing at the edge of oblivion, the spear shards in his body fully transformed into jagged obsidian, his eyes void-black as he raised his hand to the heavens.

His voice, yet not his own, echoed through time.

"The cycle is inevitable."

Li Wei gasped and wrenched himself free from the vision. His body felt heavier, the cracks in his skin wider than before. But the moment of distraction had cost him.

The Starblade lurched forward.

Kara cursed and slammed her fist against the controls. "I can't break free!"

Li Wei forced himself upright. There was no more time.

He gathered what remained of his strength and unleashed it in one final burst. The spear shards blazed with golden fury, their energy searing through the anomaly's grasp. The distortion trembled—and then shattered.

The Starblade was thrown free.

Kara stabilized their course, breathless as she pulled them away from the anomaly. The dark spire remained behind them, pulsing ominously, but it made no move to pursue.

Li Wei exhaled heavily. "It let us go."

Kara shot him a look. "Why?"

He had no answer.

Aria's transmission reconnected, her image stabilizing slightly. "I tried to warn you," she said, voice grim. "That thing… it wasn't created by Elysium. It's older. It's part of the original prison."

Li Wei's fingers curled. He already suspected the truth, but hearing it confirmed sent a chill through him.

The cores weren't just waking up.

They were remembering.

Kara's jaw tightened. "Then we need to move. Fast."

Li Wei stared at the anomaly one last time before turning away. "Where's the next core?"

Aria hesitated. Then a new set of coordinates appeared on the map.

A world on the edge of known space. A place lost to history.

"The Grave of Sovereigns."