There is nothing left of the monster that tried to kill me except a puddle of molten iron and screaming wiring."Your armor is phasing out, Ethan, the shadow energy is stabilizing back into your soul-shard!" Evelyn gasps, running across the platform and throwing her arms around my neck the second the heavy protective plates dissolve from my skin."I am fine, Evelyn, I am right here," I breathe, burying my face in her shoulder as my knees nearly buckle from the sheer exhaustion flooding my veins."Do not ever do something that terrifying again, do you hear me?" she cries softly, pulling back just enough to press her palms against my cheeks while tears stream down her face."We do not have time for emotional reunions right now, look at the master console!" Garrick shouts, pointing a shaking finger toward the towering central mainframe.We turn our attention back to the floating pedestal. The main screen has shifted

There is no way out of this tomb, and unless I shatter these jammed steel bay doors with my bare hands right now, we are all going to burn together in the dark."Ethan, look at the scale of that wreckage, a standard breaching charge will not even scratch it!" Evelyn screams, grabbing my arm as the floor trembles violently beneath our boots and another shower of sparks rains down from the fracturing ceiling."We do not have time for standard charges, Evelyn, the station core is going critical right now!" I shout back, my voice cutting through the blaring klaxons with desperate urgency."If you try to blow those doors open from the inside with raw shadow energy, the explosive decompression will tear you and the ship right out into the open void!" Garrick yells from the open boarding ramp of the rocket, his face pale with sudden terror."I am not just going to blow them open, I am going to hold them apart long enough for you all t

My lungs feel like they are filling with broken glass as the temperature gauge on my wrist HUD melts into a useless puddle of red plastic."The atmospheric friction is scorching the exterior of his pod, if we do not get that cargo hatch open right now, he is going to incinerate before our eyes!" Evelyn screams, her voice cracking with pure terror as she wrestles the flight yoke with all her strength."Evelyn, if you open the ventral cargo bay while we are banking through this severe turbulence, the crosswinds are going to rip the bay doors completely off their hinges!" Garrick roars, bracing his hands against the dashboard to keep from flying out of his seat."I do not care about the bay doors, Garrick, open the hatch or I swear I will blow the manual release myself!" Evelyn yells back, her eyes locked on the raging wall of fire outside the cockpit window."Do it, Garrick, help her open the hatch, we cannot let him burn out the

Peace is a hell of a lot harder to bleed for than war, because when the guns finally stop firing, you are left to pick up the pieces of each other with bare hands that still remember how to kill."If the northern district does not receive its power allocation by midnight, the labor unions are going to walk off the construction sites, and I am not blaming them for a single second," Garrick snaps, slamming a heavy data tablet down onto the mahogany conference table with enough force to make the ceramic coffee mugs rattle."Garrick, shouting at the table is not going to magically manufacture three thousand meters of high-grade copper wiring that simply does not exist in the supply depots," Lira fires back, her eyes flashing with exhaustion as she rubs her temples. "We are dividing scraps between five million people, and everyone believes their neighborhood deserves to be first in line.""We are not dealing with military rations anymore, we are

A child holding a piece of a dying god's heart in her tiny palm is a terrifying thing to witness, until you look down and realize she is only searching for something warm to hold in the dark."Is it magic, mister, or is it just a really pretty rock?" the little girl asks, looking up from the glowing golden shard with eyes wide and entirely unafraid."It is just a reminder that the dark days are finally over, little one," Evelyn whispers softly, crouching down beside me on the damp stone floor of the shrine with a gentle, trembling smile on her face."Careful not to squeeze it too tight, sweetheart, or it might turn into a whole bunch of fireworks and wake up the whole capital before bedtime," I add, letting out a shaky breath as I watch the golden light dance across her fingers."My mother told me the bad men in the sky are gone forever, and that we are allowed to play in the streets after dark now," the child says proudly, tuc