36. Shadows of Valen

The silence aboard the Wraith was deafening.

Elara sat alone in the medbay, the hum of the engines a distant echo to the storm raging in her thoughts. Valen. Her brother. The boy who used to sneak her sweets under the dining table, who shielded her from their father's cold discipline. He was alive. And twisted into something she couldn't recognize.

Damien entered quietly. "The rest are sleeping. Or pretending to."

She didn't look up. "He's not dead."

Damien hesitated. "But he's not who you remember."

She finally turned, her eyes bloodshot. "Then I'll make him remember.

Lyne decrypted one of the files recovered from the forge. Coordinates emerged—hidden beneath layers of corrupted metadata. A location in the Altherion Range, once a city of scholars, now a ghost town. Rumors said it had vanished during the first war.

"It's underground now," Lyne explained. "They buried it, but Requiem dug it back up. They needed its archives."