2025-09-27 15:28:30The Nomad’s training deck was a cavern of steel and light. Holographic panels flickered to life along the walls, projecting shifting terrains: deserts, ruins, asteroid fields. At its center was an open floor plated with alloys designed to withstand starship cannon fire.
Tim stood there, palms sweaty, staring at the endless space around him. His stomach knotted tighter with every second.
“Relax,” Jax said from the control booth above, grinning through the glass. “You’ll be fine. Probably.”
“Probably?” Tim shouted back.
The doors behind him hissed open. Captain Rhys strode in, flanked by Elara and the ship’s engineer, Milo. Rhys’s presence made the deck feel smaller, heavier.
“You carry a weapon the Syndicate would raze worlds for,” Rhys said, his voice like iron. “If you can’t use it, you’ll be dead before we reach the next system. Today, we find out what you’re capable of.”
Tim swallowed hard. “And if I’m not capable of anything?”
Rhys’s gaze didn’t waver. “Then you’re a liability.”
The floor beneath Tim shifted. Holographic pillars rose from the ground, forming jagged ruins. The simulation flickered to life around him—an abandoned city, its skyline broken and burned.
Then the drones appeared. Sleek spheres with glowing red eyes, wings snapping open as they hovered above the ruins. Weapons unfolded like steel fangs.
“Targets are non-lethal,” Elara said into her comm, though her voice carried tension. “But don’t underestimate them. They’re fast.”
The first drone dove. Tim ducked instinctively, the plasma bolt searing past his ear. The smell of scorched metal filled his nose. He stumbled back, heart pounding.
“Do something!” Jax yelled from above.
Tim raised his hands uselessly. Another drone fired, and he threw himself sideways. Pain flared in his ribs as he hit the floor.
The artifact pulsed.
A heat rushed through his veins, electric and alive. His vision sharpened, the drone’s movements slowing as though time itself had bent. His muscles thrummed with alien strength.
When the next drone swooped, Tim’s hand shot up—faster than thought. Blue light exploded from his palm, a beam of energy striking the machine dead center.
The drone shattered in midair, fragments raining down in sparks.
Tim froze, staring at his own hand. The artifact pulsed again, brighter, hungrier.
The remaining drones circled. He didn’t think—he moved. Bolts of alien light surged from his fingertips, precise, devastating. One drone crashed into a pillar. Another disintegrated mid-flight.
The last came in low, blasters blazing. Tim leapt higher than humanly possible, flipping over its body, and with a single strike, drove his glowing fist into its core. The machine collapsed in a heap of molten steel.
Silence.
Tim landed hard, panting, smoke curling from his fingers. His chest burned with every heartbeat, the artifact’s glow visible through his shirt.
Above, Jax’s jaw hung open. “Bloody hell.”
Milo slapped the console. “Did you see that? Kid’s a walking power reactor!”
Elara’s eyes weren’t celebratory. She leaned toward Rhys, whispering urgently, “He shouldn’t be able to channel that much energy without burning out. The artifact… it’s overriding his limits.”
Tim doubled over, coughing. The blue light dimmed, retreating back into his chest. Sweat soaked his skin, and every muscle trembled as though he’d just run for miles.
Rhys’s boots echoed as he crossed the deck to him. The captain’s face betrayed no emotion, but his eyes were sharp, calculating.
“You’ve just proven one thing,” Rhys said. “You are not ordinary. You are not safe. And from this day forward, nothing in the galaxy will stop hunting you.”
Tim tried to speak, but his throat was raw. “I—I didn’t want this.”
“No one cares what you want,” Rhys replied coldly. “Survive long enough, and maybe you’ll get the luxury of choices again.”
Elara rushed to Tim’s side, scanning him with trembling hands. “His vitals are spiking. He needs rest before the artifact pushes his body past the point of recovery.”
Tim met her gaze. Behind her concern was something deeper—fear. Not just of what the Syndicate might do to him.
Fear of what he might become.
The artifact pulsed once more, faint but insistent.
And for the first time, Tim wasn’t sure if it was protecting him—
or claiming him.
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Chapter 25: The Voice Between Worlds
The sound of Korr’s distorted voice still lingered in the air, crackling faintly through the intercom before fading into a silence that felt alive.Elara stood frozen. Her pulse thundered in her ears, her mind racing faster than she could breathe.Then she turned toward Tim.“What did you just say?”Tim didn’t answer immediately. His eyes stayed fixed on the console, the faint blue veins pulsing beneath his skin like lightning trapped under glass.“Tim,” she repeated, sharper this time. “You said that voice was Korr. That can’t be right.”He looked up slowly, his expression unreadable. “It’s him, Elara. I’d know that frequency anywhere.”Jax swore under his breath. “That’s impossible. Korr was on the Omen’s Reach. That ship’s been offline since—”“Since we blew it out of orbit,” Elara finished. Her voice was steady, but her hands trembled. “You told me there was nothing left of him.”“I thought there wasn’t,” Tim said quietly. “But he’s alive. Or something wearing his voice is.”Elara
Chapter 24: After the Light
Silence.Not the clean, peaceful kind that follows sleep, but a thick, humming stillness that pressed against the skin.Elara blinked, vision blurred by the ghost of the light that had swallowed everything. Her ears rang; her body felt weightless, as if gravity itself were reconsidering its duty.The deck beneath her tilted once, then steadied. The faint red of emergency lights flickered back to life, staining the corridors in crimson haze.“Tim?” Her voice cracked.No answer.She pushed herself upright, pain blooming across her shoulder. Every console around the bridge had gone dark; holographic panels hung frozen mid-display. A curl of smoke drifted from a ruptured conduit.Then she saw him.Tim lay a few meters away, motionless, his skin faintly luminous in the dark. The glow wasn’t like before—no longer confined to his veins but radiating through the air around him, a soft aura that bent the light itself.Elara crawled to him, heart hammering. “Tim! Wake up—come on!”Her fingers b
Chapter 23: The convergence
The hum of The Horizon’s Edge had changed.It was subtle — barely noticeable at first — but Elara heard it. She had spent enough years aboard this ship to know every sound it made, every vibration in its bones.Now, the rhythm was wrong.She stood in the control room, surrounded by flickering consoles. Systems glitched in and out, lights dimming, then flaring again in patterns that made no technical sense.“Diagnostics are looping,” Jax muttered, hammering commands into the main terminal. “It’s like the ship’s rewriting its own code.”Elara frowned. “Run a full system lockout. Power down the secondary grid.”“Already did. Twice. It reboots before I can—”A sharp crack split the air as one of the holoscreens overloaded, sending a cascade of sparks across the floor.Jax cursed and ducked back. “That’s new.”Elara stared at the display — symbols were burning across it now, faint glowing sigils that pulsed in perfect sync with the ship’s hum. They weren’t any language she knew.“What the
Chapter 22: The Fracture Within
The hum of The Horizon’s Edge was softer now — almost soothing, like a lullaby sung to a restless child. But beneath that calm, Elara felt something shifting, an unease that clung to the air.Days had passed since the encounter at the Rift. The bruises on the ship had begun to fade, but not the ones it left on her crew.Especially not on Tim.He had stopped sleeping, though he insisted he did. His hands trembled when he thought no one was watching, and the faint blue light beneath his skin had grown brighter, threading up his veins like living circuitry.At first, Elara told herself it was just residual energy. Trauma. Something that would fade with rest. But deep down, she knew better. The Rift had not just touched him — it had rewritten him.---She found him in the cargo bay, shirt half undone, sweat glistening along his shoulders as he struggled to lift a containment crate that should’ve weighed half a ton. The crate hovered, then dropped with a metallic thud that echoed through t
Chapter 21: The Shadow that Watches
The command bridge of The Omen’s Reach was a cathedral of steel and silence.No voices rose above the low hum of power coursing through its walls. No footsteps echoed on the obsidian floor without permission.Here, every breath belonged to Varyn Korr.He stood at the center dais, his uniform immaculate, his face carved in cold precision. Around him, the Rift’s holographic projection spun like a ghostly storm — its luminous core throbbing in slow, steady rhythm.Korr’s gaze was fixed on it. There was reverence in his stillness, but also calculation — the kind of measured obsession only a man who had seen gods die could carry.“The connection remains faint,” said Drav, his tone cautious. “But stable. Whatever link the boy shares with the artifact, it’s… self-sustaining.”Korr tilted his head slightly. “Self-sustaining,” he echoed. “Like a pulse.”Drav hesitated. “A pulse implies something alive, sir.”Korr turned slowly toward him, his eyes pale and unreadable. “Exactly.”He descended f
Chapter 20: Echos of Light
Silence settled across The Horizon’s Edge like dust after a storm.The hum of the ship’s engines was the only constant sound — a low, steady heartbeat in the void.Kael stood by the forward viewport, hands clasped behind his back. Beyond the reinforced glass stretched a blackness so deep it seemed to swallow the stars. He had seen war, mutinies, and the Syndicate’s cruelty — but this, this quiet aftermath, felt far heavier.Elara’s reflection joined his in the glass. She’d changed out of her bloodstained uniform, but exhaustion still clung to her like a shadow. “He’s stable,” she said softly. “Vitals are normalizing. Neural patterns… not so much.”Kael didn’t look at her. “He’s connected to that thing now.”She nodded. “In ways we can’t measure.”For a moment, neither spoke. The hum of distant machinery filled the space where words should have been. Finally, Elara broke the silence. “You think we did the right thing — saving him?”Kael exhaled slowly. “Right stopped mattering the mome
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