[First Era – Year 6 of the Divinity War; Deep space, aboard a Severed vessel]

  Moraithe took a deep breath through his snogbreather golem, the creature adjusted the position of a tentacle across his jaw, suckers detaching and quickly reattaching. The bundle of unfinished arrows floated before him, sealed to Saffrael’s revenescent, now awaiting their second entanglement. He had prepared countless weapons over the years, but these were different—these were made to protect life and hide all traces of that fact.

  Only one entanglement could possibly work as the second entanglement on his arrows. Only the fires of the First Star could burn hot enough to cleanse the battlefield of all signs of remains, burning the entire village to ash and glass.

  It had taken him a couple of years to prepare to place a runic key upon the First Star, ever since he had regained a fragment of memory from that place. Nowhere in the universe burned more fiercely. It was difficult to understand how such a fierce all-consuming fire had been born by love. But that is how true stars are born.

  They had started as a community of people seeking to help one another. And that concern for neighbors had grown into a fierce desire to help each other, in time it had refined into a primal force, and begun to shine. Light was born, born from altruistic love, from the desire to help others see truth and from truth grow in power and might.

  When they saw their shining they did not hide that light, they let it shine forth, and so was born the First Star, blazing light across the universe. Those under the star's light began to grow faster than all others. The light fueled their knowledge of truth, their growth. And soon it became a vital force in the universe.

  Other worlds followed their lead and more stars were born, but none as bright as the First Star. Some, like Throm’tor, had even made counterfeits, false stars that would grow old and burn out.

  Moraithe’s journey to the First Star had been short in every sense of the word. For the light of the star would burn out all lies and impurities, and those who based any of their lives or rooted their identities upon such things would be burnt to cinders as they neared that light. Only the pure could approach such a place. And after a couple of years of training, he had finally been able to reach the star.

  It had only taken him so little time to prepare for reaching the First Star because he had once called it home, not so long ago. It mattered not that he had forgotten. He had not spent so long away that he had grown so very impure, nor come to love or believe so many lies.

  There he had placed his runic key before the world could burn him up. He still remembered the intense feeling upon the First Star as his mind retraced the moment …

  Moraithe approached the corona of the First Star, his heart beating wildly as he gazed into the overwhelming brilliance before him. There was no comparison to the sheer intensity of the light that poured from the star, the blinding brilliance so powerful it felt like it could sear the very soul of anyone who dared approach.

  He could not linger. The light was too fierce, the star's radiance too pure for him to remain for long. One wrong step, one miscalculation, and he would be consumed.

  He had trained for this day for years, refining himself—mind, will, and body—honing himself to withstand the overwhelming light. For this was no ordinary journey. The star was not simply a place one could approach with physical fortitude. It required purity—clarity of heart and purpose. Many had failed before him. The star was sacred, the first of its kind, and its radiance was a gift, but also a test.

  He felt the weight of his training, the years of preparation, come to bear upon him. With a deep breath, he focused on the runic key, steadying his mind and drawing upon his reservoir of self-assurance.

  There he inscribed the runic key upon the First Star—carved with the finest precision, the sigils glowing faintly in the blinding light. It was the culmination of years of painstaking work, an anchor he could bind with his entanglements forever, and he drank in the entropy it required. But bathed in that light something strange occurred. Light revealed truth, truth led to order, and such order in his soul obliterated the entropy within moments.

  It had been like nothing else he’d ever experienced.

  The sensations of that place faded from his thoughts as he reached out to that runic key. Now, arrows in hand, he prepared the bindings of the entanglement, taking the entropy but leaving the connection untriggered. Once triggered it would leave nothing but scorched earth in its wake.

  Preparing an untriggered entanglement was delicate, like threading a needle with the finest silk, but Moraithe’s skill had grown, honed over many years. Each arrow held the entanglement, a burning promise of death. Yet, around that entanglement he wrapped others, cocooning it in conditions that must be met before they could trigger the flames of the First Star. The moment the arrow left the bowstring, it would trigger a chain of entanglements, one after the other.

  His mind went over the steps. The first condition was simple—the arrow must be fired. No power could be unleashed unless that basic premise was satisfied. But the second, the more critical one, it must strike, then the revenescent entanglement would be triggered, sucking the living into the revenescent. But the last condition involved far more calculation. The village must be empty of life, gone into the revenescent. Only when the area was clear could the entanglement ignite, turning the arrow into a vessel for the star’s fury.

  Moraithe bottled the entropy up in his mind as he sealed the last knot of the conditional entanglements, a low hum vibrating in his head as the entropy settled into place.

  This kind of conditional entanglement had changed everything, allowing him to shoot arrows without struggling to get the timing exact. An entanglement could be set to trigger at the moment of impact, or even within a certain proximity of the target. This way proper preparation could make up for such intense concentration, always at a premium during battle.

  He examined each arrow for imperfections and quietly nodded in satisfaction. His preparations were complete, all that remained was to loose the arrows and hope the plan went smoothly.

  * * *

  

[Hopron, secret laboratory]

  

[Kapurn, command palaces]

  Saffrael’s heart skipped a beat as she opened her revenescent, and a chill ran down her spine. The air felt heavier, the temperature colder, and an eerie, unnatural presence slithered from the depths of her pocket universe. Then, she felt something dark and ominous brush past her, escaping into the wide universe.

  “What in the name of the stars…?” Saffrael whispered, stepping back instinctively. It was as if something … wrong had come through.

  Before she could fully comprehend what was happening, Moraithe appeared at her side, his brow furrowed in concern. “What is it, Saffrael?” His voice carried a sense of urgency, and she grabbed his arm, pulling him into her revenescent, pervaded with the scent of winterblossoms, toward the source of the disturbance. Together, they hurried into its deeper recesses to check their trap.

  What they found was a mangled wreck. Inside, the prison they had so carefully crafted was in ruins. The walls, once reinforced by layers of entanglements, were shredded. Ripped open as if by some unseen force, the cell meant to hold their captive was now nothing more than a pile of broken scrap and fractured entanglements. The thought was impossible—how could this have happened?

  “No. We were meticulous with this,” Moraithe murmured, kneeling to inspect the destruction. “We installed countermeasures against the entanglement breaker. Nothing should have gotten through this.”

  Saffrael joined him, her eyes scanning the damage. “And yet, something did.”

  A glint of light caught Saffrael’s eye, drawing her attention to something lying on the ground amidst the wreckage. She reached down and picked up an entropy crystal, its facets swirling with chaos. Her breath felt heavy.

  Moraithe took it from her, examining it. “Where did this come from?” he asked, turning it over in his hand.

  “This is one of the experimental crystals from the lab—the ones from before they had begun production. How did it end up here?”

  “Wait,” Moraithe said, his face paling as he rushed from the cell and scoured the revenescent. “Where is he? Where’s our captive? He can’t have escaped your revenescent. He should still be here.”

  Saffrael’s heart raced as she scanned the area again, but her world remained silent, empty. “He’s … gone. But this—” she held up the entropy crystal “—this crystal shouldn’t be here.”

  “Perhaps he used it to break out?” Moraithe suggested, his eyes narrowing. “This and the entanglement breaker, it might have been enough. It must have been.”

  They exchanged a tense glance, realizing the grim implications. The countermeasures in place should have been more than enough to hold anyone. And yet, here they were, standing in the remnants of a failed containment, their prisoner nowhere to be found.

  “But how did he escape your revenescent?”

  Saffrael’s eyes bulged as she came to a realization. “The rev crystals. He could be there, in the warehouse. Hurry, we need to check.”

  As soon as they approached the case of rev crystals, she knew something was wrong. The case was open, its locks broken. And worst of all, one of the crystals was missing.

  Together they took a crystal, opened the doorway into that shared warehouse, and rushed inside. But no one was there. It was entirely silent, devoid of life. And what was more, nothing had been taken. It was all here.

  Yet Saffrael immediately felt something was off. The defenses Karthiim had labored so long to create, they too had been broken. Bits of his traps and constructs lay strewn about in heaps of rubble. Beyond that, the air inside the warehouse felt … darker. Too heavy. Too chaotic. She traced the feeling. The large shelves that once held carefully labeled entropy crystals now seemed oddly cold.

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  And then, with a sense of dread creeping up her spine, she noticed what was different. “The entropy crystals,” she whispered, voice tinged with disbelief. “They're all used up.”

  Moraithe stepped closer, running his fingers over the empty shelves. “What? All of them? There were thousands—tens of thousands of crystals here. What could have possibly—”

  She cut him off, her mind racing. “But how? Who—how many entanglements would it take to use up so much entropy? It would have to be the greatest attack ever performed.”

  “I don’t know. But they left the rest of the stock untouched.”

  Her thoughts turned quickly, piecing together the disturbing puzzle. The expended entropy crystals, this wasn’t just an inconvenience—it was a catastrophe in the making. The entropy crystals had been the key to their latest military advantage, plans relying upon them were already being carried out, and without them …

  Saffrael gripped his arm, her eyes wide with horror. “What if—what if our betrayer used them all at once?” Her voice trembled. “What kind of entanglement could use every single one of them? It would have to be something unimaginable—an entanglement of such magnitude that it—”

  Moraithe’s expression darkened. “He couldn't have. That much energy would tear through space itself. He'd have to be insane to attempt something like that.”

  But they both knew that some of the researchers had never been particularly sane. They had always been unstable, unpredictable, it was a product of their genius. But with this, their betrayer had held a tool capable of unraveling half of the universe.

  Saffrael exchanged a look of disbelief with Moraithe, a sinking feeling settling in her stomach. How could such a disaster have occurred? They'd thought their plan so clever, but she'd put their betrayer in the same place as the rev crystals. There really hadn't been any other option, but it had clearly been a grave error.

  “I don’t know what happened here, but it’s worse than that. One of the crystals is missing. If he escaped with it …” Saffrael turned abruptly and fled the warehouse. “We need to warn Elithir. Now!”

  She took the rev crystal and they exited her revenescent.

  Moraithe pulled out a paper, something only for emergencies. He concentrated on it and triggered the entanglement. A door appeared, and they rushed through it, into Elithir’s stronghold, breathless, carrying one of the remaining rev crystals with them as a gateway.

  Elithir stood in the center of a vast chamber, his face grim as Saffrael and Moraithe entered.

  Saffrael handed him the rev crystal, and Elithir immediately examined it, his brow furrowing.

  “I don't understand what happened,” She said, voice tinged with worry. “The warehouse … it’s been breached. The entropy crystals are expended, and we don’t know who did it or what he has done to use them all up. We need to act fast.”

  Elithir remained silent for a moment, then nodded curtly. “We must clear it out immediately.”

  They entered, rushed down the path to the entropy crystals, and halted. Saffrael stared, confused. “The spent entropy crystals. They’re gone.”

  Elithir turned to them, his eyes curious and calculating. “Why take spent crystals? Strange that nothing else has been taken.”

  In an instant, everything in the warehouse vanished. Elithir turned to them and nodded. “At least now they can’t take anything else.”

  “What?” Saffrael exclaimed. “You cleared it out—just like that?” By this point, she should stop being surprised by anything he did.

  “They have access to this warehouse now, so we can’t take any more chances. I want you to find out which of your researchers is missing. I’d like to put a name to this traitor of ours.”

  “We will. But what do we do about this? What now?”

  Elithir sighed. “I can’t put it off any longer. If we are going to win this war we need every advantage we can get. We need to know the future.”

  Moraithe gasped. “So you’re going to go through with it?”

  “I don’t have much choice.”

  “What is this?” Saffrael asked.

  Elithir fixed her with a gaze like the weight of the universe. “I’m going to entangle myself across eternity. Only then can we know the future. Only then can we see what our enemy is planning. Only then can we win.”

  * * *

  

[Valgane, outside a village near Orsis]

  

[Hopron, secret laboratory]

  Moraithe crouched behind a boulder, watching the village in the distance, the early morning mist creeping across the fields. His heart drummed with a rhythm of anxious anticipation. This mission had been a long time coming. It was the kind of task he’d been dreading. But everything had been prepared meticulously, every detail accounted for. He just had to wait.

  His breath came slow, controlled, as his senses reached out to the bond that tied him to his other body, back to the laboratory where he and Saffrael were stationed. He felt the phantom pressure of her hand on his, galaxies away, comforting him.

  He glanced across at the cache of arrows he’d hidden in a hollow beneath an ancient tree to the south of the village, the spot known only to Norgoth. With any luck, he had found them. If Ranth had done his job correctly, the villagers would have been alerted to the coming danger, their homes packed up, belongings stored in their own revenescents. Nothing could be done for their homes though. But he had plenty of gratitude to pay them back.

  He nocked three arrows at once. Each carried the faint scent of Saffrael’s winterblossoms. It would not matter that they would steal momentum from one another, no, the entanglements would do all the work. From the other side of the village, Norgoth gave the signal, a shrill cry.

  They loosed, as the quiet of the morning was shattered, and so fell the first volley of arrows. With practiced motions, he drew more arrows, three at a time from his quiver, nocked, aimed, loosed, and repeated, blanketing the entire village until the deed was done.

  Moraithe didn’t even need to look. He knew what would happen next. The arrows, each one entangled with a thread leading into Saffrael’s revenescent, would find their targets—would lift the villagers away from this world and into a place where they would be safe. There was no turning back now.

  The air cracked with energy as fiery explosions erupted in the village, illuminating the morning sky in bursts of orange and red. The ground trembled, and the echo of destruction reverberated across the landscape. As the town was reduced to a sea of craters and glass, a sense of grim satisfaction washed over Moraithe.

  Elithir had taught him how to feel an aura, to sense how much self-assurance someone had. By slow incremental progress, he had worked his way to this point. And now he felt himself enter the rank of knight as he passed nine thousand.

  The mission had unfolded exactly as planned. But he had to be sure.

  He leaned back against the bolder and shut his eyes, a faint sense of disorientation prickling the edges of his consciousness, and then he was there—flipping back to his other body, the one stationed with Saffrael.

  “It’s done,” Moraithe’s voice was tight with the weight of what had just transpired. “The village—it's gone.”

  Saffrael’s voice came through clear but with an undercurrent of unease. “The mission was a success. Every villager was transferred into my revenescent. They’re all accounted for. But—there’s something else.”

  Moraithe’s breath hitched. “What?”

  Her tone shifted as if weighing her words, “I did some digging. One of the researchers … Barthum. He’s gone. He’s the only one missing.”

  A cold shiver ran down Moraithe’s spine. Barthum? The same Barthum who had worked to create the entropy crystals? The same one who had seemed so trustworthy? The one they’d assumed was most loyal?

  He clenched his fists, his mind racing. A betrayer. All this time, they'd been so careful, so fastidious. He alone had escaped their suspicion.

  Saffrael's voice broke into his thoughts again. “I don’t know how he did it, but he’s the one who’s been feeding information to the enemy. All this time, he’s been the mole.”

  Moraithe stood, the weight of the failure settling heavily in his chest. “We should have seen it. We should have known. He knows how to make the entropy crystals. Now our greatest secret—it’s been compromised.”

  Saffrael’s tone was steady, but there was a hint of uncertainty underneath. “We still have the others. The villagers are safe in the revenescent. The mission’s not lost, but … Barthum’s betrayal changes everything.”

  A long pause stretched between them. Moraithe ran a hand through his hair, his thoughts racing. “We need to find Barthum. We need to find him before he does any more damage. We can’t fail in this. Not after everything we’ve sacrificed.”

  But as he spoke, a creeping dread washed over him that maybe this was one promise he couldn’t keep.