CHAPTER 1 ｜Deadly Delivery on the Sulfur Sea

The sulfur sea clawed at the freighter Stormcrow's rusted hull. Hayate's boots magnetized to the shuddering deck as the Stardust Engine coughed dying blue flames. Reverse thrusters tore through corrosive fog, his right eye swirling into a galaxy vortex—

Three seconds: gears jammed, cryopod locks disengaged, twelve mech-hounds awakening.

"Damn it!" His wrench struck the energy conduit, cursed gauze absorbing the recoil. A memory flashed—mother humming while calibrating her pocket watch, blood from the contract-shard chain forming a Paradox Pirate flag.

The cryopod's glass cracked. Frozen air reeking of mech-oil spilled out. Hayate spotted the frozen morays—cult-embedded spies, their scales hiding micro-cannons targeting his spine.

"COD delivery, huh?" He backflipped as Stardust armor erupted, blue energy blade bisecting the first hound.

As the mech-hound's carcass smoldered, Hayate's Stardust Eye tracked silver streaks darting from the cracked cryopod—dozens of bio-mechanical morays writhed like liquid metal, their scale gaps flashing the cult's crimson authentication codes. Hollow spinal tubes pulsed with violet fluid, emitting a frequency that made teeth ache.

"Even the damn fish?" He jammed his wrench into a moray's sensor cluster, recoiling from the feedback burn. A memory surfaced—his mother's warning about "living surveillance," once dismissed as a fairy tale.

The morays froze. Their eyes projected holograms of the contract clause: "Soul forfeiture upon cargo damage." Hayate crushed a coin pried from a gill slit—purple light erupted, warping projections into Vela's smirking face.

"Lie-Coins? She's betting on corpses now?" He dodged acid jets as the coin shard burned a Paradox Pirate sigil into the deck.

The wrench's vibrations drilled into Hayate's palm, his mother's lullaby surging through the engine's death rattle—"Sleep, paradox child…"—as cryopod shrieks yanked him into memory.

Ten winters past: her un-calloused hands mending Grandfather's pocket watch with stardust fuel. He'd hidden behind crates, watching contract chains slither from the timepiece to bind her wrists. "Don't fear flaws," she'd smiled, blood dripping down chains. "They're freedom's tattoos."

Reality burned—acid sprays searing his arm. The morays attacked fiercer, but the wrench turned leaden. There, fused into the engine core: her watch, its chain entwined with a Paradox Pirate rag.

"Even you're cargo now?" He shattered the watch face. Stardust armor engulfed him as the lullaby morphed into a shockwave, obliterating every moray's sensor.

As moray remains dissolved into glowing dust, Hayate's wrench magnetized a yellowed parchment. Blank—until his blood hit the surface.

Ink snakes awoke, slithering into cult contract clauses. Blood fingerprints pulsed with micro-engraved Paradox Pirate flags, their rebellion screaming across millennia.

"Sakabane Hayate, gene sequence confirmed." The paper vibrated with a synthetic voice. His Stardust Eye auto-scanned: "Party B consents as Stardust Catalyst, soul ownership perpetually transferred to the Conclave…" His mother's fingerprint glowed beneath his unsigned name.

"You signed this a decade ago?" Chains erupted from the parchment, binding his wrists. A memory struck—her pressing the pocket watch into his palm, its underside etched: "Flawed reject destiny."

Cult battleships lit the horizon with quantum artillery. Hayate shredded the contract. Burning fragments mid-air coalesced into the full Paradox Pirate flag—its cracks mirroring his collarbone crest.

The pirate flag's embers glowed as glowing nursery rhymes erupted from deck cracks—

"Paradox child counts the stars, three breaths and the cannon mars."

Hayate's eye burned—three seconds until cult artillery cores the ship. The cryopod exploded in blue light. Rin's blade sheath split, cobalt umbilical cords lashing his wrist.

"Don't resist." Her voice buzzed with mech-harmonics. The crystal arm speared the deck. Rhymes warped into gene codes as the sheath snapped open, cords drilling into the nearest cannon.

Hayate heard mechanical screams—no, human voices. Cult lab holograms flashed in Rin's eyes: children bound by blue umbilici, singing the rhyme till their throats bled.

"You're part of the rhyme too?" His wrench struck the cords, Stardust resonance awakening the sheath's memory—a mother severing infant Rin's cult umbilical with the blade.

As Rin's blade glow faded, the last frozen moray's scale dislodged. Suspended shards rearranged into pulsating stellar coordinates—the cult's quarantined Flawed Graveyard. Hayate's Stardust Eye scanned, seared by quantum encryption.

"Delicious. The scales talk better than their master." A woman's voice vibrated from the coordinates. Vela's hologram materialized, her mechanical eye flashing cult codes while Paradox Pirate tattoos crawled across half her face. "Wrong delivery, birdie. That cryopod's hauling a gene key to their corpse vault."

The moray carcass exploded. Violet liquid energy formed a micro singularity, swallowing Hayate's wrench. Vela's laugh glitched: "Want it back? Dig through the graveyard—and bring crystal girl's blade."

Before vanishing, the coordinates morphed into a countdown: 23:59:59.

Rin's crystal arm speared the singularity's afterimage, retrieving the wrench. Hayate glimpsed matching code tattoos on her neck—identical to Vela's.

As Rin's crystal arm yanked the wrench from the singularity's afterimage, Hayate glimpsed the matching code tattoo on her neck—identical to Vela's.

"What's next, a loyalty discount?" He spun the wrench, Stardust armor forming serrated shields. Twenty-three cult hounds erupted from deck cracks, their ocular sensors locking onto his DNA. Throat armor plates snapped open, revealing whirring Stardust resonators.

The first sonic barrage obliterated cargo containers. Hayate's right eye tracked trajectories as his mother's lullaby hummed in his eardrums. He charged through soundwave afterimages, wrench smashing the lead hound's core—

"Resonance Strike!"

Cobalt energy spiderwebbed outward. Mech-hounds froze mid-lunge, joints spewing acrid smoke. The cost struck faster than pain: Hayate forgot the tune his mother hummed while fixing watches, only recalling her blood droplets shaped like fragmented Paradox Pirate flags.

The second wave dove from above. Three winged hounds screeched downward. Hayate rolled beneath claw strikes, jamming his wrench into a spinal joint. During the Stardust resonance flash, he saw the machine's "past life"—a fishing village boy trembling as he signed the cult's pact.

"Damn it…" Hayate's hesitation cost him. A tail-blade grazed his cheek. Blood splattered Rin's blade sheath, triggering cobalt umbilici that choked the hound and slammed it into the deck.

"Distraction kills." Rin speared another hound's chest, extracting glowing data chains. Hayate's eye auto-decoded—stolen memory backups of "Flawed" subjects. A fragment flickered: his mother clutching infant him, prying open a cryopod with a wrench.

"They steal even this?" Hayate crushed the chains underheel, Stardust armor overloading into plasma. The void of lost memories gnawed at his nerves as he laughed raw: "Come on! Take more! I've fucking forgotten anyway!"

The final five hounds merged into a behemoth, its chest emblazoned with an inverted Sakabane crest. Rin's sheath dimmed: "That's… my gene certification code?"

"Double feature, huh!" Hayate hurled his wrench skyward, detonating overloaded energy tubes. Stardust cheetahs of light devoured the beast's armor seams. Catching the falling wrench, his mother's last words echoed—

"SEVER FATE!"

The wrench struck the crest. The core exploded into memory shards. Hayate saw his child-self gripping his mother's hand in the luminous storm—as she forgot him.

The behemoth disintegrated into azure ash. Cracks now veined to Hayate's temple. He wiped nose blood, finding his palm lines nearly faded.

Rin silently offered a half-empty Lie-Fuel bottle. Vela's scrawl glared: "First sip free. Consequences unrefundable."

Hayate tilted the half-empty Lie-Fuel bottle, violet liquid refracting patterns from Rin's crystalline arm. "This cover the tab?" His thumb traced cracks heating with Vela's hidden script: "Speak truth before empty, get one memory unlocked."

Rin's blade sheath clicked against his throat, cobalt umbilici coiling the bottle. "Your Stardust levels are critical." Her eyes mirrored cracks in his right eye's galaxy swirl, diagnostic scans flickering. "Next overload burns your brainstem via cult trackers."

"Touched." He yanked his collar, revealing the Sakabane crest tattoo weeping blood. "This thing ticks, I forget shit. Last week it was how eggs taste. Before that… hell, who cares."

The sheath glowed red-hot. Umbilici pierced his tattoo, blood coalescing into a spinning Paradox Pirate micro-flag. "Confirmed." Matching fissures crawled across Rin's crystal arm. "Sakabane's pact corruption—even infants get branded."

Hayate gripped the umbilici. "Says the girl with a soul-sucking blade." His wrench struck the sheath, Stardust resonance projecting holograms—child Rin in a lab, crystal arm bound by blue cords, mech-voices droning: "Subject E-Ω777, memory purge 87% complete…"

Rin's blade quivered. As she severed the projection, both their neck tattoos seared. Cult battleships broadcast through sulfur winds: "Sakabane Hayate, repay your mother's debt—with your partner's memories, or your Stardust Eye."

"Option C." Hayate gulped Lie-Fuel, Stardust armor fusing with Rin's blade. "I'll flip the damn table."

The moment Stardust armor fused with the cursed blade, Hayate's Lie-Coin liquefied. Violet energy seeped into deck fissures, shaking the freighter like a ragdoll. The countdown "23:59:59" glowed on every metal surface, edged with Vela's smirking tattoos.

"Table's already ash, sweetheart." Vela's hologram dangled upside-down from the ceiling, mech-eye scanning Hayate's cracked Stardust Eye. "The cult's lighthouse ruins hold treasures—like your mom's unburned contract." She snapped her fingers. A quantum vortex erupted mid-deck, sucking moray carcasses into reforming coordinates: a chained giant skeleton, its heart pulsing with a Paradox Pirate flag.

Rin's sheath glow died. "The First Sakabane's lighthouse?" Her crystal arm stabbed into the vortex against her will, data streams flooding through umbilici. A memory surged: seven-year-old her strapped to a lab table, screens showing the same skeleton as researchers hissed, "Flawed belong in lighthouse furnaces."

Hayate tore the data chains binding Rin. Lie-Fuel toxicity now etched galaxy patterns across his retinas. "Vela! What's your damn game?"

"Reality checks, birdie." The projection morphed into a steam leviathan's carcass silhouette, rusted ribs impaling cult battleships. "That 'gene key' you're hauling? It's the lighthouse's ignition spark."

The countdown accelerated. The deck quantum-disintegrated. Rin plunged her blade into her own crystal arm, azure shockwaves freezing the collapse. Hayate's wrench grazed Vela's mech-eye projection, inputting a final command—

"Consignee: Vela Paradox. Payment: fucking retribution."

A leviathan's roar shook the horizon. Before full disintegration, Hayate glimpsed the skeletal lighthouse's true form—and the rotating "Flawed Graveyard" star chart atop its spire.

(End of Chapter 1)