Han Chen woke up with a pain that wasn't physical. It felt as if someone had dragged his soul through a needle’s eye, then shoved it back into a meat-suit that was several sizes too small.He wasn't in the "Head Office." There was no thousands of versions of himself sitting in a circle. There was only the smell of hot metal, sulfur fumes, and the rhythmic, choking cough of the Leviathan-1’s engines. Everything he had just seen—the meeting with the Directors—had been a Forbidden Vision, a glitch in the Archive-Code triggered by the violent fusion of the Mercury-Steel."Han! For the sake of the Junk-Gods, breathe!"Valerie’s voice sounded miles away, muffled by a thick layer of static in his ears. Han Chen forced his eyes open. The first thing he saw was Dr. Aris’s face, deathly pale, her hands trembling as she clutched a brass-and-glass alchemic defibrillator. Beside her, Tigor stood with his kinetic armor half-shattered, while Liam gripped his glass dagger so hard his knuckles were b

Han Chen didn’t move. His good hand gripping the rusted railing so hard the metal groaned. Ten feet away, the man who looked like his past self—smooth-skinned, unscarred, wearing the pristine white silks of a High Alchemist—flipped a silver coin with a casual, practiced flick of the thumb."You’re staring, Han," the double said. His voice wasn't a "melodic chord." It was just Han’s own voice, before ten thousand years of sulfur and betrayal had turned it into a weapon. "I know. It’s hard to look at what you could have been if you hadn't chosen to be a refugee for a pile of scrap.""Tigor, stand down," Han Chen said without looking back."But Master, he just breached the—""I said stand down." Han Chen stepped off the gantry, his obsidian-gold arm clicking with a mechanical, uneven rhythm. The green fluid from the bio-filter was still weeping near his shoulder, staining his collar. He looked like a man held together by spit and spite. "He isn't a projection. He’s a Physical Redundancy.

Han Chen dragged his body through the shattered glass of the bridge, his breath coming in shallow, ragged bursts. The Leviathan-1 lay like a broken beast across the floor of the Copernicus Crater, its hull twisted and its violet-black glow reduced to a dying ember. Inside his helmet, the only sound was the frantic, rhythmic beep of his oxygen scavenger, failing to keep up with his rising pulse."Valerie? Aris? Tigor?"No answer. Only the groan of cooling metal.He stepped out through a breach in the hull, his boots sinking into the fine, grey lunar dust. Above him, the Earth was a terrifyingly large canopy of blue and fire, so close he could see the swirling vortexes of storms triggered by the lunar proximity. The remaining eleven crystal harpoons were still there, humming like the strings of a cosmic harp, pulling the Moon closer to the Roche Limit.But as Han Chen looked down, he realized they hadn't crashed on mere rock. The impact of the ship had peeled away layers of dust and reg

"REFINANCING? YOU ARE INSANE, HAN CHEN!"The Chairman’s voice was a jagged tear in the fabric of the lunar temple. He tried to pull away, but Han Chen’s Sovereign-Lead arm was no longer just a limb; it was a gravitational anchor. The indigo light had turned into a terrifying, light-devouring black, a void-frequency that didn't just grab—it Annulled."Valerie! Initiate the 'Vacuum-Seal'! Pull the temple’s reactor into the Leviathan's secondary hold!" Han Chen roared, his boots cracking the obsidian floor as the Singularity-Audit from the Deep Void began to shred the Moon's crust."Han, the hull is already screaming!" Valerie’s holographic form was a strobe-light of frantic violet. "If we drag this much mass into the jump-stream, we won't just crash—ita we’ll be smeared across five dimensions!""I’m not dragging it," Han Chen hissed, his eyes reflecting the absolute black of his arm. "I’m Acquiring it! Just do the damn burn!"The Leviathan-1 didn't just fire its engines. It let out a me

The crimson eye did not blink; it evaluated.The pressure was so immense that the glass fleet of the Heresy Sovereigns began to sing a death-throe melody. Across the nebula, ships made of song and light were being "muted," their physical forms crumbling into silent, colorless dust. The joy Han Chen had traded for was being sucked out of the vacuum, replaced by a gravity that felt like the judgment of a father looking at a failed creation.On the bridge of the Leviathan-1, the floor was no longer metal. Under the gaze of the First Sovereign, the ship’s hull was becoming transparent, revealing the raw, ugly gears of its soul."The truce," Han Chen rasped, his knees buckling. His Sovereign-Lead arm was sparking, the indigo light fighting to stay solid against the crimson pressure. "Liquidator... if he harvests the ship, there is no 'Archive' left to purge. We both end here."The Liquidator stood in the center of the bridge, his rags whipping around him like black flames. He still held Va