Space is vast. Silent. Unforgiving.

  A cradle. A battleground. A tomb.

  Humanity reaches across the void, yet the isolation lingers—a shadow they cannot outrun. The vacuum of space mirrors the battles waged within their souls.

  As humans drift further from Earth, chasing a place where the emptiness inside them might finally find meaning. Yet, the further they go, the more they face a truth as infinite as the cosmos itself:

  The void they seek to escape is the very thing they carry with them.

  But even stars do not fade without a fight. When the collapse begins, it does not end in darkness—it ignites.

  The last thing Scar remembered was fleeing.

  Star was at his side, the void stretching endlessly before them. Behind them, the Ferrex closed in, their emerald glow carving through the dark.

  Then—space rippled. A spiraling vortex erupted in the nothingness, dragging them toward the unknown.

  Silence screamed in the vacuum. His grip on Star slipped—her terrified gaze the last thing he saw before the rift swallowed them whole.

  What came next was not escape. It was something else entirely.

  Scar lay motionless.

  Half-buried in dust finer than ash, the color of forsaken dreams. The ground beneath him was fractured, a wasteland of jagged scars—like a battlefield long abandoned by time.

  Each breath stirred thin clouds of dust, swirling before vanishing into the still, airless void.

  Above him, the sky was a cosmic paradox. A tapestry of dying stars, their trembling light caught in a chaotic dance.

  Some blazed in youthful defiance, others dimmed—a final breath before collapse. Here and there, newborn stars coiled into existence, their radiance fragile and uncertain.

  The constellations refused order, shifting, twisting—rewriting themselves with every glance.

  A red giant pulsed in the distance, its light bleeding across the abyss. Beyond it, a black hole yawned—an open maw devouring the echoes of the cosmos.

  Time did not flow here. It unraveled. Rewound. Staggered forward in fragments.

  Scar twitched his fingers against the cold, brittle earth. The sensation barely reached him. He felt like a shadow. A remnant of something once solid, now slipping into nothingness.

  Then came the memories—the Citadel.

  A fortress of iron will, its metallic veins pulsing with the lifeblood of Ferrex dominion. An empire of perfect order, its secrets locked in an unbreakable grip.

  Sparks. Steel. Screams.

  The echoes clawed for dominance in his mind, drowning out everything else. Then—silence. Not peace. This silence was charged, heavy with unspoken sorrow—a turmoil louder than war.

  The Citadel had been untouchable. No one had dared. No one had succeeded.

  Until now.

  "We—finally—raided the Citadel," Scar muttered, his voice barely holding together. We planned everything. Set the ambush. Mapped their patrols. Found the weak points. It should have worked.

  But someone—someone they trusted—sabotaged them.

  By the time he realized, it was already too late.

  The Citadel had never been theirs to take.

  But even in failure, the cost remained.

  As pain dulled into a numbing ache, Scar lay broken on a barren wasteland. A faint tremor in his fingers hinted at life, even as the cold seeped into his bones.

  Above him, dying embers waned in the void—beautiful, fleeting, and fading.

  Fitting, he thought, that both stars and men should burn out the same way—collapsing in a final spark before oblivion.

  Each breath tethered him to the frayed edges of existence, a shattered reminder of what it meant to challenge the robotic overlords ruling Saturn's orbit unopposed.

  His lips parted, the words slipping out like a final exhale.

  "At least... she... got away."

  The thought of her—his guiding light—brought a fleeting warmth against the encroaching void.

  If nothing else, let her be safe.

  He clung to that final thread of hope, fragile as it was. The brave souls who fought by his side—their last words drowned in the stench of blood and scorched metal.

  To him, what was saved outweighed the cost.

  Darkness crept in. His body betrayed him, each breath shallower than the last. The silence was neither peaceful nor empty—it waited, charged with something inevitable.

  Then, the dust around him shifted.

  Not by wind.

  By something else.

  The sky darkened—though no clouds stirred. The silence thickened, expectant, as if the universe was holding its breath.

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  And then, it arrived.

  A force unlike anything Scar had ever known loomed over him—vast, incomprehensible. The air itself seemed to bow beneath its presence.

  "Death has not claimed you yet, boy. Not yet. But it lingers just beyond."

  The voice rumbled like the collapse of a dying star, shaking him to his core.

  Pain clawed through his limbs. His body resisted, but his eyes fluttered open. A shiver crawled down his spine as he gasped for air, his vision swimming in the indistinct blur of light and shadow.

  Am I… dreaming? Or is this death?

  "Dream? Death?" The voice coiled around him, thick with veiled amusement.

  "Both, perhaps."

  It was everywhere—above, below, within.

  A presence seeped through the shifting haze of near-consciousness, peeling his thoughts apart and laying them bare.

  "Before you question my knowledge," the voice hummed, almost lazily. "Your thoughts are not your own here, boy. They float freely—easy to grasp.”

  A spectral laugh reverberated through the void, sending ice through Scar's veins.

  Move.

  Just move.

  His fingers scraped against the dust, his body refusing to obey. A wave of helplessness washed over him.

  "Why won't my body listen?" His jaw clenched, breath ragged.

  The voice sighed, sharp as frost. "You are bound, boy. Not by chains, but by the weight of your failure."

  A slow, creeping dread curled through him, sinking him deeper into the dust.

  "Your kind cannot let go," the voice continued. "Tethered to fleeting moments. Obsessed with beginnings and endings."

  Something in him rebelled against those words. Weak, fading—but still smoldering. A defiant ember refusing to die.

  “Then tell me... why?” His voice wavered, hoarse but firm. “Why are you here?”

  “Why does the wind blow? Why do stars burn?” the voice mused, veiled in riddles. “I am here because you called to me, whether you know it or not.”

  The words swept over him like a rising tide, an undeniable truth pulling him deeper.

  “Desperation does strange things to the fabric of existence,” the voice continued. Each word bore down on Scar like solar winds. “And you, little one, stand at the convergence of countless destinies.”

  His breath hitched. Stomach twisted.

  Destinies? I’ve had enough of people expecting things from me.

  It was always someone's plan, always someone's grand design.

  Humanity’s savior. The resistance’s last hope.

  And now this?

  “You’re just like the rest," he spat, anger crackling through his voice. "Always expecting me to play along."

  The presence surged closer.

  "You sought to fight what you could not conquer. Now you face the reckoning of that choice."

  The memories crashed into him—the ambush, the screams, the cost.

  "I didn’t want this!” he shouted, his voice breaking. “I didn’t ask for any of it!”

  "Few ever do," the voice rumbled, its tone shifting—no longer mocking but something else.

  Something almost... mournful.

  "You curse the world for expecting too much of you," the voice mused, closing in like a shadow stretching toward its source. "But tell me, boy... was it truly their expectations?

  Or was it your own failure that you feared most?"

  The air shifted. A ripple in the void.

  Scar sensed it before he saw it—the presence taking form, coiling out of the darkness.

  A towering, serpentine colossus wreathed in flames.

  A cosmic fire crackled along its massive frame, warping the very air in its presence. It rippled with power—chaos and creation entwined, its existence a defiance of all reason.

  And then, it spoke.

  "You trusted them."

  The creature's voice was neither cruel nor kind—only knowing.

  "You fought, bled, and gave everything, believing they stood beside you. And yet, when the blade fell..."

  It paused, letting the truth settle like a dagger between ribs.

  "It was from behind."

  Scar listened, his breath shallow. The words burned because they were true.

  "You were not outmatched," the voice curled around him, slow and deliberate. "Not outgunned. Not even outmaneuvered."

  Each word coiled tighter, squeezing the breath from his lungs.

  You lost because someone chose for you to lose."

  A sharp pain lanced through him—not from his wounds, but from memory. From truth.

  "Tell me, boy—did you truly not see it?"

  A fiery hiss curled through the dark.

  "Of course you did. But you deemed yourself powerless to change fate."

  Silence stretched between them. What had been, what should have been, closing in like an iron vice.

  Then, the creature spoke the words that had already carved themselves into Scar's soul.

  "That, boy, is when you called to me—seeking power."

  What stood before Scar was no mere being. It was something ancient. Eternal.

  The voice rolled through him, flooding his veins with fire. A force unlike anything he had ever known surged within, banishing the cold grip of death with a warmth long dormant.

  Scar shuddered, caught in the violent rebirth of something vast, something burning from within.

  "What… is happening to me?" The words tumbled out, raw with uncertainty.

  The voice struck like a blade, its edge honed by something far older than time.

  "Are you not listening, child?"

  A shockwave ripped through the void.

  Scar was hurled upward, his limbs—lifeless moments ago—burning with searing vitality.

  “Sovereignty seldom bows to sanction. Power rarely seeks permission.”

  The creature's voice simmered like molten rock, slow and inevitable, carving its truth into the marrow of his soul.

  "The choice remains—will you surrender, or will you fight to reclaim the lives of those you love?"

  Scar's pulse pounding, he couldn't help but think. No more riddles.

  "Tell me what you mean!" he demanded.

  The beast's tail lashed, sending a cascade of fiery sparks into the abyss, illuminating the void in dazzling hues.

  "The star—the guiding light you chase—is caught in the storm's eye," the beast rumbled. "Her pain will ripple outward, a harbinger of the breaking dawn. The light destined to summon shadows and unmake worlds."

  Scar froze, his voice momentarily caught in his throat.

  "You're lying!" he shouted. "Star's no harbinger of death—her power—her light protects."

  The creature did not flinch.

  "You can die here, forgotten.

  "Or you can rise. Rise with the fire of the stars in your soul."

  His mind churned, each word stoking the fire within him.

  Was Star truly at risk? Had he failed her without even realizing it?

  A tremor ran through his limbs. Was this really his choice? Or was he being shaped—molded into something beyond his control?

  He had seen what the pursuit of power did to others—it burned, consumed.

  But Star… she was still out there.

  He could not fail her. He would not.

  Even if it meant becoming something he feared.

  There was only one choice.

  "I'll stop the storm," he vowed, his voice steadying. "I'll save Star—no matter the cost.”

  The creature’s laughter rumbled through the void, shaking the ground beneath him.

  “Spoken like one who has much to lose.”

  Its eyes glowed, a timeless recognition flickering in their depths.

  “Very well.”

  Flames swirled around Scar, a living inferno wrapping him in its embrace. The beast's form burned brighter, its fire a force of creation and destruction entwined.

  “But remember, fire is loyal to no one. It consumes, heedless of who wields it.”

  The air quaked, reshaping the world in blinding brilliance, bending and fracturing under the boundless power.

  The void erupted, engulfing everything in the blistering inferno. Heat seared through him, burning away weakness—

  Forging him anew.

  His vision swam—not into the abyss, but into searing light.

  The creature's voice thundered one last time.

  "Rise, Scar! Ignite the very darkness itself. Scorch away the shadows that seek to claim you!"