The Pact of Cold

The ships had scattered like insects before a flame.

Above the frozen plains of Ellejort, the skies cracked with silence. One by one, vessels had vanished, consumed by an eye that did not blink, did not question. The Eye of the Presence floated steadily, unwavering in its judgment. It had paused once—when the Book vanished from its detection net.

Only once.

And then it began to accelerate.

---

Inside the command deck, alarms wailed like dying birds.

Henriech gripped the rail with white knuckles, eyes locked on the main feed. The orb was moving—not drifting anymore. It was choosing. Hunting.

> "Get the pod out," he growled. "Now."

Metal groaned as the primary escape module detached from the ship. Inside, Carl sat stiffly beside Commander Basen. Between them: the Book of Voyages, locked inside an isolation pod humming with static nullifiers. It masked everything—heat signatures, divination trails, aura echoes.

Even gods would be blind to what was inside.

Carl stared through the port at the dying fleet behind them. Basen didn't speak. He was clutching a strip of old fabric—his late daughter's scarf.

> "You should survive," Carl said.

Basen smiled faintly, though it didn't reach his eyes.

> "I want to. But in the presence of that... thing—what hope is left?"

Carl's voice dipped low. "Enough to fly."

They didn't hug. They didn't cry. They had no time.

Only a nod.

Only that.

---

Seconds later, the pod's internal cloak flickered on. To the Eye of the Presence, the Book was gone.

And that… confused it.

---

The Eye stopped. Mid-flight.

Its iris narrowed, glowing lines running like rivers across its metallic skin. The halo above it cracked with static arcs. It hovered there—processing. Searching.

For a second, it did nothing.

Then it changed direction. It lunged forward—toward the ship Carl had left.

Toward Henriech.

---

Henriech saw it coming and didn't blink.

The ship was silent now, most systems disabled or fried. Only the manual eject units remained.

> "Deploy decoys," he barked. "All of them. Scatter them across the sector."

A storm of pods burst from the dying hull—flickering with diverging signals, each coded to mimic the Book's aura trail. False trails. Diversions. Misdirection.

For a moment, the Eye hesitated again—its gaze twitching mid-air, calculating.

Henriech turned back once.

He'd already sent the boy and the commander. Already done what little a man could do against a god.

> "How worthless," he whispered, "that just as I found hope, a god descends to crush it."

He launched himself toward the last escape pod.

The wind screamed past the ruptured hull, carrying with it the last heat of the dying ship. Henriech's boots scraped metal as he sprinted across the failing launch corridor, sensors flickering red.

The pod door opened.

He was almost there.

Then—

A flash.

A pulse.

A detonation deep within the ship's spinal engine bay.

The blast wave hit him like a hammer, throwing his body backward through the corridor. Sparks rained. Steel twisted. Something ruptured behind him.

Henriech reached—

Grasped—

And vanished from sight.

---

Down below, from Carl's pod—

The sky fractured into silent flames.

Carl turned, his eyes scanning the chaos behind them through a warped viewport. A pod—burning, spinning—tumbled toward the snow-covered plains of Ellejort.

> "...Henriech?"

No signal came.

Basen's voice was hollow beside him. "Could've been a decoy pod. Or—"

> "Or it was him," Carl said softly.

> "Was?" Basen asked.

Carl didn't answer.

---

Later, on the ground—

All that remained was silence and smoke. No body. No wreckage. No trace.

Just a streak of blackened frost where something had crashed into the ice.

And the distant, fading hum of the Eye — moving away.

---

In a chamber where time itself felt suspended, where every surface gleamed with memory and invention, the Constellation Council convened.

169 Belts.

169 realms.

169 voices—echoing in cold light.

Holograms shimmered into existence, each representative seated before obsidian consoles laced with glowing ley-circuits. Threads of ancient languages and data shimmered on the walls, part scripture, part surveillance.

At the center of this communion sat Korou, the only non-holographic presence. Not a ruler, nor a warlord. Merely a man in a black tunic lined with royal sigils — tired eyes, anxious fingers, but a mind sharp enough to serve the First Ruler.

Assistant to Eldrith V Pharsa.

And today, more than ever, he was afraid.

> Where are the Yaisha?

Still no sign of Yaishna… and her brother—still missing.

Atiya Yaisha.

Heir-presumptive, vanished during the ANSEP incursion. A Yai-blooded anomaly. And still no word.

Korou knew the Yaisha rarely bowed to any power — not even the King's shadow. But the silence now felt less like pride, and more like strategy.

Then the lights bent.

A ripple passed through the core of the chamber. From nothing, a figure stepped forward.

Inteja V Pharsa.

Her hologram cast a blue-tinged light — head held high, gaze cold, the void-wounds of centuries held behind the curve of her back.

Korou sat up, lips parting slightly.

> She's attending? After all this time? Then the rumors… they're true.

The murmurs across the council began immediately.

A representative from Belt 34 flickered forward, voice sharp:

> "Is it true? About the Box?"

The question didn't even echo before more followed — overlapping voices, panicked whispers veiled in diplomatic language.

> "Is it confirmed?"

"Was it opened?"

"Is this a true Box of Origin or another failed artifact—?"

Inteja didn't raise her voice.

Yet the chamber fell still the moment she spoke.

> "It is real. The Box passed all initial verification. We were preparing the final rites of confirmation when… the attack began."

A hushed silence fell.

Then another voice broke it — high, proud, from Belt 77:

> "Retrieve it. No matter the cost. If it is the true artifact… it may awaken Him. The one who ended God."

Korou flinched.

He caught Inteja's jaw tighten. But she nodded.

> "We tried. During the ANSEP invasion… a man named Nongban stole the Box. Two researchers intercepted him — Cornicius Corell and Cerejeira. Cornicius… vanished. Likely consumed by the rift the Box created. We haven't been able to track it since."

Another representative hissed, "And the thief?"

> "Nongban," Inteja said, "claimed he was from Ellejort."

That name hit like thunder.

Even the more arrogant delegates stopped moving. Ellejort — the frost realm untouched by conquest. Where even the King's word walked carefully.

Korou leaned forward now, voice clear:

> "We all know what Ellejort represents. And we all know… the Empire has no direct control there."

Another pause.

Then, in the stillness, Korou's mind echoed with only one name:

Atiya Yaisha.

The boy who vanished.

The brother of the Flame Princess.

A Yaisha raised far from the eyes of the court.

If he's death, Korou thought, then Ellejort won't remain untouched for long.

A hush fell over the meeting chamber, as if the stars themselves paused to listen.

Korou, still seated and half-shadowed by the glow of his terminal, finally spoke—not as assistant to the Ruler, but as historian of the void.

> "There is… one truth most of you have chosen to forget."

The holograms flickered uneasily. Across the obsidian table, several delegates leaned forward.

Korou's eyes narrowed. His voice was low—measured, grave—but it carried the weight of old frost.

> "Ages ago, at the dusk of the Cosmic War, Earth and Ellejort signed a pact. A silence between worlds. A vow, written not in ink, but in entropy."

The room dimmed subtly. The ambient light within the hall shifted to a faint, icy hue, as if the temperature had dropped in sync with his words.

> "The terms were absolute: Ellejort shall remain untouched. No Belt, no Fleet, no Sigil-bearing Sovereign shall set foot upon its snows uninvited."

He paused, fingers steepled before him.

> "Not even the King himself was exempt."

The oldest among the holograms murmured, their images briefly flickering like candlelight in a blizzard. One dared to whisper what others feared:

> "And if the pact is broken?"

Korou answered without blinking.

> "Then Ellejort will remember the war."

Silence, again.

> "They know cold," he said. "Better than the stars. Better than flame. Better than us."

> "And if they rise again…"

He didn't finish the sentence.

He didn't need to.

Because every Belt that had survived the Cosmic War remembered what Ellejort did to the ones that didn't.

---