Chapter 35: Fated Awakening

  Lyra’s hands trembled as she watched. It wasn’t a battle anymore—it was a slaughter.

  Garett and Leona were no longer fighting. They were surviving. Barely.

  Lyrius toyed with them, a predator drawing out the final moments of his prey. Solarion-Lupus Revise was a shadow of its former self—its frame crumbling, its power reserves flickering like a dying candle. Direhound-Command was worse, crippled beyond recovery, barely capable of moving. And still, Lyrius did not end it. He wanted them to break.

  Leona forced her mech to move, dragging itself across the battlefield with only its remaining arm. Her shields were long gone, her body battered inside the cockpit from the sheer force of impact after impact. Still, she threw herself in front of Garett’s broken mech, raising her blade in a defiant stance.

  Lyrius laughed.

  “You don’t know when to quit.”

  Leona’s voice crackled through the comms, raw but unwavering. “And you don’t know when to shut the fuck up.”

  Soldraknirr descended upon her like an executioner’s blade, claws raised, golden energy surging through its limbs. Leona didn’t move. She couldn’t. But she would stand her ground to the end.

  Lyra couldn’t take it anymore.

  She turned to Nyx, her voice desperate. “Please—please, you have to do something! They’ll die!”

  Nyx remained silent, watching the carnage unfold with unreadable eyes.

  Lyra grabbed her. “Nyx!”

  The celestial familiar finally let out a slow sigh. “You know what happens if I do.”

  “I don’t care!” Lyra’s voice cracked. “If you don’t stop this, I will never forgive myself. I will never forgive you.”

  Nyx exhaled, closing her eyes for a long moment. Then, softly—

  “Very well.”

  A pulse of unfathomable power erupted from Lyra’s body.

  The air shuddered. The world stopped.

  Lyra’s clothes shifted, becoming something divine. Her robes shimmered like the fabric of the cosmos, woven with threads of starlight. Her presence became celestial—vast, infinite, incomprehensible. Her hair billowed, no longer just strands, but an ethereal veil that reflected the birth and death of stars.

  Her eyes were not human anymore.

  Nyx had awakened.

  Lyrius halted mid-strike, Soldraknirr jerking back as if repelled by an unseen force. For the first time, his confidence wavered.

  Garett’s breath was ragged, his vision hazy. He forced himself to look up, barely registering what he was seeing. “Lyra…?”

  Nyx—no, something beyond Nyx—turned her gaze toward Lyrius. She raised her hand, her fingers outstretching like a deity passing judgment.

  “Enough.”

  Lyrius snarled. “You think you can stop me? I’ve already won!”

  Soldraknirr opened its maw, energy collapsing inward, burning with the rage of a dying star. It was no longer just fire—it was entropy given form. A maelstrom of superheated plasma churned within its jaws, as if a piece of the cosmos had been ripped open, screaming to be released.

  And then—

  He unleashed it.

  A supernova erupted from Soldraknirr’s mouth, cascading outward in a stream of destruction. It wasn’t just heat. It was the death of a celestial body, the furious final breath of a red giant consuming itself. The blast painted the battlefield in apocalyptic hues, the very air bending as reality struggled to contain the sheer force of the attack.

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  It should have erased them.

  But Nyx simply raised her staff.

  The moment the starfire touched it, the cosmos folded inward.

  The explosion halted. Time recoiled. The light itself bowed before her.

  And then, with the flick of her wrist—

  She erased it.

  The battlefield was silent.

  Lyrius’ breath hitched. His mind refused to process what had just happened. That power—

  That power should not exist.

  Nyx turned her gaze toward Garett, and in the next instant—

  The world around him vanished.

  He was no longer on the battlefield.

  He was somewhere else.

  A crisp breeze whispered through the grass. The scent of damp earth and distant rain filled the air. Garett blinked, the haze in his vision clearing, only to find himself sitting on an old wooden bench atop a hill, a vast cityscape twinkling below him.

  He knew this place.

  Beside him, a man sat in quiet contemplation, his silhouette outlined against the endless sprawl of stars. His father.

  Garett’s chest tightened. The weight of his defeat pressed down on him, an unbearable weight. He had fought, he had struggled—and in the end, what did it matter? He couldn't protect anyone. Not Leona. Not Lyra. Not Vellmont. It was all meaningless.

  His father pointed toward the horizon. "That one’s Vega," he said, his voice calm, steady. "Twenty-five lightyears away. The light you’re seeing left that star when you were just a baby."

  Garett swallowed, his throat dry. "And what does that matter? If it’s already dead, why does it matter?"

  His father chuckled, warm and familiar, but tinged with something heavier. "Because the light’s still here, isn’t it? Even if Vega’s gone, it gave us this moment." He gestured toward the sky. "Maybe the universe isn’t about lasting forever. Maybe it’s about leaving something beautiful behind."

  Garett clenched his fists. "I didn’t leave anything behind. I lost. I failed."

  His father turned toward him, the starlight catching the lines of his face, his eyes filled with a knowing warmth. "That’s not true. You fought for them. You inspired them. You changed the course of their lives. That’s your light."

  Garett’s breath hitched. "How do you know that?"

  His father smiled. "Because I’m always watching. And I’m proud of you. Of what you've done with your second chance."

  A lump formed in Garett’s throat. He forced himself to ask, "Is this real? Or am I just hallucinating?"

  His father exhaled, a slow, thoughtful breath. "Does it matter? Just because something isn’t scientific, does that make it any less worth believing in?"

  Garett tried to answer, but the world around him shuddered.

  The city lights dimmed. The wind stilled. The universe itself seemed to exhale.

  And then, like a ripple through the cosmos, the memory unraveled.

  He was falling—

  —until he landed softly on the surface of something that wasn’t water, yet moved like it.

  The hum of the cosmos returned, low and reverent.

  Cosmos shifted around him, spiraling in patterns his mind could barely comprehend. Reality bent and unraveled at the edges, stretching infinitely and collapsing all at once. The floor beneath him rippled like water, yet it was not water—there was no sensation of wetness, only the illusion of movement, as if he stood atop the surface of an unfathomable depth.

  And in his ears, a hum.

  It was a song without words, ancient yet familiar, dreadful yet majestic. The frequency vibrated through his bones, neither comforting nor threatening, but simply there—an omnipresent whisper of something beyond comprehension.

  A gasp.

  Lyra collapsed to her knees beside him, her chest heaving, sweat trailing down her face. Her divine glow flickered, fracturing, and in the next breath, it left her—unraveling into glimmers of stardust that reformed into Nyx, now standing apart from her.

  Nyx, still radiant, turned to face Garett. Her presence was no longer the wild celestial force that had halted Lyrius, but something quieter. Calculated.

  “I suppose you have questions,” she said simply.

  Garett forced himself to steady his breathing. His mind reeled, struggling to grasp what had just happened, what he had just witnessed. His voice came hoarse, almost reluctant.

  “What… what was that?”

  Nyx tilted her head. “Be more specific.”

  Garett clenched his fists, frustration bubbling beneath the surface. “Everything. The battlefield disappearing. This place. You. Lyra—” he turned to her, still trembling on the floor, “—what the hell did you just do to her?”

  Nyx exhaled softly. “I borrowed her. Briefly.”

  Garett narrowed his eyes. “Borrowed?”

  “She is my Sourceror,” Nyx said, matter-of-fact. “Through her, I manifest. But there are… consequences. The longer I remain, the less of her remains.”

  Lyra swallowed hard, her voice barely above a whisper. “If I stayed like that any longer… I wouldn’t have come back.”

  A cold weight settled in Garett’s stomach. He turned back to Nyx, his voice low. “And you let her do that?”

  Nyx met his gaze without hesitation. “Would you have rather I let you die?”

  Lyra lowered her head, guilt tightening her throat. “I should have told you,” she whispered. “I should have told you everything.”

  Garett barely looked at her, his mind still trying to process it all. “Sourceror? Manifest? What the hell does that even mean?”

  Nyx regarded him with a calm, knowing expression. “It means I am bound to Lyra. She is the conduit through which I take form. Without her, I do not exist as you see me now.”

  Garett ran a hand through his hair, exhaling sharply. “And this place? This… starforge?”

  Nyx smiled faintly. “House Draconis will never find the starforge.”

  Garett’s eyes narrowed. “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because,” Nyx said, tilting her head slightly, “I am the starforge.”

  Garett froze. “…That doesn’t make any goddamn sense.”

  Nyx chuckled, the sound both celestial and strangely amused.

  "True starforges are not physical constructs. They are folded in space—hidden, unreachable through normal means. They do not exist in a single place, but rather in all places at once, waiting to be unfolded."

  Garett frowned. "Then what about the starforges the great houses control? The ones they build their entire power structures around?"

  Nyx hazarded a guess. "They are likely echoes—manifestations of a true starforge’s influence leaking into reality. A shadow of what they were meant to be."

  Garett's mind spun. "And their purpose?"

  Nyx’s expression was unreadable. "To house the God-Husks."

  The weight of her words crashed down on him. His pulse pounded in his ears. This was too much, too fast. The battlefield, the fight, the power that had just annihilated Lyrius' attack—now this?"

  “I understand this is all a bit much. Allow me to explain in the simplest way I can. Sourcerors, like Lyra, are attuned to the fabric of reality, allowing them to serve as intermediaries between mortals and forces beyond comprehension. God-Husks, like the one you are about to inherit, are remnants of those forces, beings that once transcended mortality but were reduced to their mechanical shells.”

  She took a step forward, her presence warping the space around her. “Resonators, like you, are the chosen wielders of these husks. You are not simply a pilot, Garett. You are something much more.”

  Nyx raised a hand, and the cosmos trembled.

  "We can't stay too long in this space, Garett."

  Space unfolded before them, shifting like an origami construct unraveling from an impossible fold. The world around them stretched and realigned, and in an instant, the water-like floor beneath them gave way to something new—a chamber that was not just a chamber, but a place of reverence, of awe.

  It was a hangar, yet it carried the weight of a cathedral. Towering arches of celestial metal stretched into the void above, each one inscribed with unreadable glyphs that pulsed like dying stars. Luminous filaments of energy curled through the structure like veins carrying the lifeblood of the universe itself. The walls did not simply enclose—it was as though they contained the heavens themselves, the very essence of creation and destruction bound within this sanctum.

  At the far end, kneeling upon an altar of black stone and silver filigree, was the God-husk.

  A colossus of ancient craftsmanship, its frame gleamed with the dull sheen of silver, accented by teal highlights that pulsed faintly along its armor and eyes, like the heartbeat of a slumbering titan. Genuflecting, it rested its massive hands upon the pommel of a greatsword, its blade embedded into the floor beneath it as though it were both a knight in prayer and a guardian awaiting its master's call.

  Its design was not just mechanical but regal, as if crafted not by mortal hands, but by celestial forgers who had once sculpted divinity itself. The teal glow from its visor flickered subtly, as though aware of their presence, but not yet fully awakened.

  Nyx turned to face Garett, her gaze unreadable. "Behold, Galatine."