The ramp of The Cradle of Gravity hissed open, touching down in the Red Consortium's hangar bay with a groan of protesting metal. The mission began with the sensory overload of a fresh, silent hell. Air rushed in, thick with the scent of smoke, super-heated steel, and something else—a sweet, cloying smell like overcooked meat that made Soren's stomach turn.

  He led the team down the ramp, his greatsword held in both hands for the first time outside of practice. Aurania was right behind him, greataxe held low and face a mask of grim disbelief, taking in the destroyed space station. Violet held right flank, Morgan’s Mercy in hand, her expression chillingly still. Amalia was on their left; she made a small, choked sound, NMW dropping slightly as one hand flew to her mouth and her eyes widened in horror. Inelius and Veolo silently brought up their rear.

  They moved as a smooth unit, a single body of lethality descending from an alien starship. As they reached the bottom of the ramp, Pulse’s ship, The Ghost Step, came gliding into the hangar, touching down next to their ship.

  He exited quickly, his large custom handgun aimed low and ready. He joined up with them as the oppressive, unnatural silence pressed in from all directions, punctuated only by the crackle of a few dying fires and the groan of shifting metal from the asteroid's damaged superstructure. Soren noticed a faint, almost sub-audible hum vibrating up through the soles of his boots, a residual energy that made his teeth ache.

  He noticed the scorched silhouettes first. They were everywhere. He saw the outlines of pirates burned into bulkheads in poses of panic and agony. One was frozen mid-stride, arm outstretched toward a weapon that had melted into a useless lump on the floor. Another group was an ossified tableau around a card table, their forms little more than blackened shapes of ash and shadow. The metal of the deck had been slagged into a glassy, obsidian-like substance, reflecting the flickering embers like a dark, shattered mirror.

  There was no battle here.

  It looked more like judgement.

  And then he recognized it.

  The hum. A cold echo of Aether Dust, a psychic residue left in the wake of unimaginable power. It wasn't the wild, chaotic, emotional energy he emitted when his control slipped. This felt different: impossibly powerful, yet controlled—precise, and utterly ruthless. It was a cold fire, an absolute and dispassionate force of annihilation.

  It terrified him more than his own chaotic surges.

  "Move," Aurania's voice cut through the stunned silence, her tone sharp and grounding. "Sweep the complex. Find survivors."

  They moved into the base in a tight formation like they were navigating a tomb. The destruction was methodical. In the barracks, they found pirates turned to ash in their bunks. In the mess hall, the cooks were charred silhouettes against the galley wall. It was a path of absolute annihilation, yet precise.

  The further they went, the more Soren felt the strain on Aurania. Every new horror seemed to chisel away at her commander's composure, leaving something raw and shaken underneath. Violet, on the other hand, seemed to grow stronger with resolve. It was like she was staring into the results of a future she’d been moving towards, and realizing she still had a chance to turn away.

  They descended another level, and the purpose of this place became impossible to ignore. The wide chamber opened into what could only have been an auction floor. A raised dais stood at the center, scorched black but still intact enough to show its purpose—restraints bolted to the platform, a half-melted spotlight hanging above. Rows of tiered seating curved around it, their edges fused together by heat, the silhouettes of slavers still frozen in the act of leering, jeering, or raising bids that would never be paid.

  Behind the stage, smaller rooms branched off like veins. What remained inside them turned Soren’s stomach even more than the battlefield of ash outside. Iron pillories, warped and half-melted, but unmistakable in their design. The restraints locked bodies forward at the waist, bent and exposed—shackles fused into place by the same inferno that had consumed their keepers. One room still bore the slagged remains of a holo-projector, its warped frame flickering with static as if trying to replay the grotesque “show” it once displayed.

  Aurania’s nostrils flared with every breath. A low growl emanated from Veolo’s throat. Inelius’ jaw was flexed rigid, teeth slightly bared.

  “Jesus Christ…” Pulse muttered under his breath, a quiet exclamation Soren hadn’t heard in eight millenia—one he doubted anyone else understood.

  They found the massive detention block on the lowest level. The slavers' guard posts were incinerated, the occupants little more than blackened husks fused to their consoles. The cell doors along the corridor had been surgically blown outward, their locks melted into useless lumps of slag. The path to freedom was cleared with the same terrible power that had executed the captors.

  Soren felt the Aether Dust echo strongest here. It wasn't just a residual hum anymore; it was a palpable presence, a stain left on the very fabric of the place. Whatever did this had lingered in this corridor.

  It felt personal.

  "Clear!" Amalia's voice echoed from the end of the detention block, the word sounding hollow in the oppressive silence. She walked back toward them, NMW held tight to her chest like a shield. "No hostiles. No... anything."

  They found the survivors in what looked like a secondary mess hall, a sprawling, utilitarian space tucked away near where the prisoners had been kept. The room was packed wall to wall with people—easily over three hundred souls crammed together on the floor, wrapped in thin thermal blankets scavenged from storage. They were quiet, but not silent; the low murmur of shifting feet, stifled sobs, and hoarse whispers created a fragile hush that pressed against the walls. Most were women, their faces hollowed by hunger and fear, their eyes wide and unfocused, as if they had witnessed something too large for their minds to fully hold. The chamber itself was untouched by fire, a pocket of improbable safety in the middle of the strange, surgical inferno.

  Aurania was the first to approach. She handed her greataxe to Soren to help keep from frightening anyone. She knelt before one of the survivors, a young woman with tear tracks etched through the soot on her face.

  "It's over," she said gently. "You're safe now. What happened here?"

  The woman flinched, her gaze snapping into focus for a moment before clouding over again. Her voice was a hoarse, trembling whisper, the words tumbling out in a disorganized, breathless rush.

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  "We were... we had been praying… for it to end," she choked. "For anything. For death."

  She described the sound first—not an explosion, but a low, resonant hum that vibrated through the station's hull, followed by a sudden, blinding white light that had moved too fast to see. Then the screams. She described hearing the pirates screaming from the other levels, sounds that were cut off with unnatural speed.

  "The white fire..." she whispered, her eyes looking past them, back into the memory. "It went around us. It didn't touch a single one of us—only them." Her voice broke on a sob. "I don't know what it was. A weapon? A... a god? All I know is that everyone who hurt us is gone. Not a single captive was harmed." She looked up at Aurania, a fragile, terrifying hope dawning in her eyes. "Someone answered our prayers."

  The woman fell apart into a slump of broken sobs.

  Soren felt a cold sickness spreading through him. If he had been on a darker, lonelier path, imbued with the power he’d been learning to control…

  He could have done this.

  He was the same type of weapon that was aimed here. And he wasn't just seeing the dark potential of his power; he was witnessing the birth of a myth around it. Had someone else begun to crack the mystery of Aether Dust the way The Professor had before?

  He understood how easily terror and awe could be twisted into worship and it sickened him. He looked away, his gaze falling on the scorched doorway, unable to look the survivor in the eye.

  Tamiyo's voice suddenly crackled over the comms, sharp and urgent: "Multiple ships inbound. Identities unknown."

  The team immediately snapped into a defensive formation, weapons raised, eyes scanning the exits. The survivors flinched at the sudden shift.

  “More pirates?” Pulse asked.

  "The last thing these people need is another firefight," Aurania growled. Her eyes snapped to Soren. "Go—get to the hangar. Amalia, Veolo, Inelius—you're with him. I don't care who's on those ships—you make damn sure they know they picked the wrong place to land."

  Soren nodded once. He tossed Aurania her axe and led the small strike team out at a dead sprint.

  Tamiyo directed them to which hangar the ships seemed to be heading to and they reached it just as the first of the unknown ships began its descent. It was a repurposed freighter adorned with strange, hand-painted symbols of fire and ash. Two more followed, not warships, but personnel transports.

  "Soren," Veolo said, her voice a tense hiss as they took cover behind a skeletal ship frame. "Time to be flashy, go scare the fuck out of them."

  He hesitated for just a moment, looking at her. Then he took a deep breath, reached inward for the Aether Dust, and let it surge.

  "Yeah," Amalia added, a wide grin on her face. "And fly, you fool! I keep telling you to. No better time than now to show off."

  “Amalia,” he faltered for a second. Then he stood and said, “Never change.” He focused the gravity on himself, bent it to his will, and pushed off—his boots lifted from the ash-covered deck.

  Soren launched out from behind the cover, staggering slightly once and almost falling out of the air—but then he recovered.

  As the ramp of the lead ship extended downward with a hydraulic hiss, Soren glared down at them, hovering six feet off the ground, his greatsword held tight in one hand. His hair, eyes, and a thick aura of shimmering air around him glowed an intense, blazing white—a terrifying sentinel of pure, cosmic power.

  The door slid open.

  And as the figures emerged from the ship, it became immediately clear that they were not intimidated. They filed out, staring at him not with fear, but with something that looked disturbingly like reverence. They were armed but held their weapons low.

  And then he realized who they were. Not soldiers or pirates.

  They were Lilithists.

  The zealots Aurania had spoken of. Their faces were etched with a fierce, unwavering faith.

  Soren let the glow fade, his boots touching down softly on the deck as he realized they weren't hostile. The first of the newcomers, a lacravida with scars tracing the lines of her face, dropped to one knee.

  "We have come," she said, her voice filled with awe, "for the Children of the Ash."

  The rest of Soren’s squad came up behind him.

  “Aura,” Veolo radioed. “You might want to get up here ASAP. Friendly’s—or, non-hostile, at least for the moment. Lilithists.”

  Soren stood his ground as the Lilithists filed out, their numbers swelling to nearly fifty. As he looked them over, a single, unifying theme became apparent. He saw it in the faded brand on a human woman's neck, the carefully concealed cybernetic replacement for a lazarco's lower arm, the network of fine, pale scars on the face of a d'moria man. He saw a shorn with thick, puckered tissue where her wrist blades had been forcibly removed. A few CIPHERs stood among them, their synthetic faces set with hard-won resolve. These weren't just zealots.

  They were all survivors.

  Former slaves.

  The only lacravida he saw among them was the one kneeling in front of him. As she rose to standing, she reminded him of a valkyrie from ancient myth, her armor a patchwork of scavenged plates and devotional relics. Her eyes burned with a fierce, unwavering light. She stepped forward, her gaze sweeping past Inelius, Veolo, and Amalia before landing directly on Soren.

  "This place has been cleansed," she said in a tone that seemed to vibrate in his bones. "The Mother's fire is strong in this place... and in you."

  It was just like Serava and Hinakané. Something about this woman resonated with the Aether Dust in him.

  Her burning eyes searched his, not with suspicion, but with a kind of sacred recognition. "Was it you who delivered her judgment?"

  Aurania rushed into the hangar, her greataxe held ready, and Pulse followed close behind. A few moments later, Violet emerged, escorting the first of the liberated slaves. Aurania took in the scene—the assembled zealots, their weapons slung, their eyes fixed on Soren with a disturbing reverence.

  "What's going on?" she demanded as she approached them.

  "They think I did this," Soren said. "Because of my powers. They think I'm some kind of... servant of their goddess."

  "No," Aurania said, stepping forward to address the Lilithist leader directly. "We just arrived. We found this place as it is."

  The Lilithist leader looked Aurania over for a moment, her gaze taking in Aurania’s regal presence. A flicker of something—recognition perhaps—crossed her face. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice laced with suspicion.

  “I am Aurania Enderchild of Nox, War-Chieftess of Berilinsk.”

  “Enderchild,” the leader repeated. “I know that name. From my previous life, long ago.”

  Aurania looked deeply disturbed by this. "Who are you?" she demanded.

  The leader gave a humorless smile. “My name is of no import. I was one of you… before. But I am now a servant of The Holy Mother." She looked back at Soren. “You have done well, acting in her will.”

  "But I—" Soren started to protest.

  Before he could finish, Pulse stepped forward. He didn't lie directly, but he masterfully exploited their assumption. "The Red Consortium has been purged. Their captives are free. Since you are here, perhaps you would be kind enough to pay us the bounty we are owed, per your contract."

  The Lilithist leader’s gaze shifted from Soren to Pulse, then back again. Her eyes lingered for several long moments, then a slow smile spread across her face like reverent, unwavering faith. "The Mother's will has been done. Of course. The bounty will be transferred."

  She turned and gave a single, sharp command, and her followers gently approached the survivors. The Lilithists greeted them not as victims, but as the chosen—the "Children of the Ash." They wrapped them in clean blankets, offered them water, and led them toward their ships with a quiet, sacred purpose.

  Soren stood in the melted, ash-filled hangar, surrounded by his team. As they watched the Lilithist ships depart, he was filled with a hollow feeling. They had ‘succeeded’ in their mission, but discovered a terrifying truth in the process.

  Someone or something else existed with abilities like his—a dark reflection.

  And they were a god to a cult of fanatics.