Dark Matter Heart

Chapter Six

The silence after the explosion was loud. It wasn't the kind of quiet you get at night; it was the kind that makes your eardrums feel like they’re about to burst.

The orbital academies always taught that dying by dark matter was quick. A flash of violet light, and then—boom—you’re gone. No pain, no body to bury, just total erasure. But as Cassian Vale stood in the middle of the floating junk that used to be a cathedral, he realized the generals were full of crap.

He wasn't dead. But he definitely wasn't human anymore.

Cassian looked down at his chest and felt his stomach flip. His tactical vest—the one designed to stop railgun slugs—was nothing but carbon dust. And where his heart should have been? There was a hollow. Not an empty one, but a swirling vortex of bruised purples and abyssal blacks, like a miniature storm trapped behind his ribs. Every time he drew a breath, it felt like he was swallowing hot needles.

"Cassian?"

The voice felt like a tether pulling him back to reality. He turned his head, and the motion was too smooth, too precise. Maren Sol was huddling near the ruins of the escape pod, clutching her fractured wrist. She looked at him, and he saw it in her eyes. Pure, unfiltered terror.

"You’re... you're glowing, Cass," she whispered, her voice rattling. "Your eyes. They look like the end of the world."

Cassian tried to tell her it was okay, but when he opened his mouth, the sound that came out wasn't his. It was a chord—layered and deep, like tectonic plates grinding together. "I'm... still here, Maren."

Behind him, the wounded god—the thing wearing Maren’s stolen face—was trying to pull itself back together. It was a pathetic sight now, a deity reduced to a glitching program.

YOU… ARE… NOTHING… it rasped.

Cassian felt a surge of heat in his gut. For the first time, he didn't just want to kill the creature; he wanted to unmake it. “You keep saying that,” he said, his voice sounding like a threat from a grave. “But 'Nothing' just ate half your face. Imagine what I’m going to do to the rest of you.”

The creature shrieked—a digital scream that made Cassian’s brain feel like it was being scraped with glass—and lunged. It swung a hand that had expanded into a claw of compressed gravity. It should have flattened him.

Cassian didn't even flinch. When the gravity-claw struck his chest, the purple storm in his ribs flared bright. He didn't feel the impact; he felt the energy. It was a rush of power so intense it made his vision turn white at the edges. He grabbed the creature’s wrist, and his touch hissed against its divine skin.

"My turn," he whispered.

He didn't use a blade. He simply reached into the center of the god’s chest and pulled. He snapped the glowing strands holding it together like they were dry string. The creature didn't just die; it unraveled into golden smoke.

Then, the world decided to break.

The pocket dimension started folding in on itself. One second they were on obsidian glass; the next, they were falling. Truly falling.

The wind hit Cassian like a physical punch. They were miles above the city, plummeting through the freezing clouds of Helios-9. He saw Maren spinning away from him, her red hair a frantic flag against the dark. She was screaming, but the wind swallowed the sound whole.

Not her, Cassian thought, the dark matter in his blood roaring. Not today.

He kicked the air. He didn't have wings, but the violet fire in his legs didn't care. It hit the atmosphere so hard it turned the air into a solid step of black glass. He flew through the sky like a bullet and caught her mid-air.

The impact nearly snapped his remaining human bones. Maren let out a choked gasp as his glowing arms wrapped around her. She was freezing, her skin dusted with frost from the high altitude.

"Hold... onto me," he rasped.

The city was coming up fast. Neon lights, chrome skyscrapers, and metal streets were rushing at them like a giant's fist. They didn't have a parachute. They had a hole in his chest and a prayer.

"Cassian, the ground!" she shrieked.

He flipped them over in mid-air, putting his body beneath hers. He pushed every bit of that violet fire outward, trying to create a cushion of distorted gravity.

They hit the roof of a Mag-Lev train station.

The sound was like a bomb going off. Reinforced glass shattered into a billion diamonds. They tore through two levels of flooring before finally slamming into the stone plaza of the Lower District.

Dust choked the air. Alarms began to blare. Cassian lay in the center of a crater, his body steaming. He felt heavy. The violet light was retreating back into his chest. Maren was on top of him, coughing, but alive.

"You're... still ugly," she wheezed, a tiny, bloody smile touching her lips.

Cassian let out a dry laugh that tasted like dust. "And you're still a brat."

But the peace lasted only a second. From the shadows of the neon-lit alleys, the red eyes of the cartel Enforcers began to glow. They had seen the violet fire. The Choir was gone, but the city was just waking up. And it was hungry.