The shuttle, its black hull still glimmering with the soot of burned atmospheric layers, glides slowly toward the open maw of the Scythian's docking bay.
Around it—space: a breathless abyss without horizon.
Beneath it—the ship's vast hull, its hangar yawning like a hollowed heart.
On the screen—an abrupt flash.
A signal: clearance to dock.
A pause. Then the reply: granted.
The shuttle eases forward.
Stabilizers tremble in the dark.
And finally—a feather-light touch. Almost without sound.
In the half-light, the guiding beacons flare to life—cold, pale, like streetlamps in a dead city.
"We are here," Ivor says, his voice low. It carries the weight of exhaustion, yet the steel in it remains.
He turns to his companions—Camilla and Nicholas.
"Let's go."
They nod in silence.
The hatch opens.
The hangar greets them with a breath of cold, dry air—mechanical, steeped in old oil and burnt circuitry, like the exhalation of a titan that has slept too long.
Their footsteps ring through the emptiness, each echo like a tap on the ship's buried nerves.
From the half-shadow, familiar faces emerge.
Vicar. Captain Manuel. A handful of officers.
They move like soldiers after a long campaign—shoulders bowed, spines tired.
But in their eyes, there is a spark. A real one. Not the kind ordered into existence.
Someone even smiles—not out of duty, but from something painfully genuine.
"I am glad to see you, my friends," Vicar says, and his voice trembles as if it has been holding back for too long.
He embraces each of them in turn.
"Alive."
"Just barely," Ivor mutters with a dark smile.
"It all hung by a thread. On the last breath."
He glances at Manuel—a look carrying irony, reproach, and something deeper. Regret.
"You know, Captain, maybe you should have sold me that second amulet. Maybe then—"
"Everything would have gone differently," says Maria, stepping out of the shadows. Her voice is soft, but there is a tempered resonance beneath it.
"But who told you that differently means better?"
She meets his gaze—no reproach, no anger.
Only a worn, scorched understanding.
Ivor frowns. Something inside him tightens, splinters.
His eyes sweep the hangar, as if searching for something that should be here.
"Where are Alex and Yulia?" His tone sharpens.
"Why are they not with you?"
The pause is heavy. Silence thickens in the air.
All eyes shift to Vicar.
"They are in custody," he says at last. Clear. Unflinching.
"Arrested."
The atmosphere changes instantly.
The air turns to mercury—dense, resistant to breath.
"What?!" Ivor steps forward as if striking.
"This is madness. You cannot. They saved every one of us. They deserve honor, not a cell! Release them—now!"
"I have already thought of that," Vicar answers, calm but immovable.
"And you are right. The time has come. Let it be as you say."
He gives a single nod.
Manuel needs no further instruction.
"I will bring them," Daniel says quietly. His footsteps are soundless—like a man who has long known this moment was inevitable.
For an instant, the hangar seems to hold its breath. The sound of those steps fades, leaving everything balanced on the edge of a heartbeat.
Maria breaks the silence.
"Latest news: the alien sphere has left Earth's orbit. It is moving toward the fleet of the living. We do not know why."
Camilla turns toward the darkness beyond the hangar doors—where there are no stars, no reflection.
In her face, there is sorrow. And readiness.
"God Kyros is moving to strike," she whispers. "It is time to harvest a new crop of believers."
From deep within the hangar, as if the shadow itself had found a voice, comes:
"And what do we do now?"
Pietro. His eyes are two knots of tension.
"Think," Nicholas says. The word is brief, sharp—half command, half sentence. "That is exactly why we are here."
And in those words lies everything. Not a plan. Not a strategy. Merely the fact:
They are alive—still. They can still think. And so they can still fight.
A figure appears in the doorway. Julia. Behind her—Alex.
Their faces are pale, but unbroken.
Their clothes are rumpled.
Red marks on their wrists linger like the shadows of recent humiliation.
Yet they walk with a straight spine. No words. No complaints. Only dignity.
Ivor steps forward—and Julia is suddenly in his arms.
He holds her hard, almost desperately, as if keeping hold of something that has been slipping away for far too long.
As if this moment is the only reality left to believe in.
"I am glad you are alive," he murmurs into her hair.
And in that murmur is everything: relief, pain, guilt, hope.
All the things too large for language.
"Glad to see everyone," Alex says, shaking hands, clapping Ivor on the shoulder.
But his eyes are restless.
They move over Camilla and Nicholas—and stop.
Like a wound that will not close. A thing to be carried, not healed.
Vikar steps forward.
His posture is precise, almost formal.
But beneath his voice is a hidden tremor, wrapped in the fabric of duty.
"So," he says, "this ship now holds the disciples of two gods: Kyros and Hanaris. Answer me honestly—why have you, followers of Kyros, turned away from your god's will?"
He looks to Ivor, Camilla, Nicholas.
Not like a judge.
Like an android searching for truth—even if it tears him apart from within.
Ivor is silent. For a breath.
"You know we found the Desert of Oblivion," he begins.
His voice is contained, but beneath it something pulses—like fire under skin.
"But you do not know what we saw there."
His eyes drift into the hangar's dark.
As if, once again, the dust rises before him.
As if the air shimmers with heat.
"The desert… it felt torn out of someone else's dream.
At the center—a boy. Sitting. Not blinking. Not breathing.
He meets each of us. He shows the truth."
He pauses.
The silence in the hall is a vacuum.
"The creation story. In it, Kyros kills Gor-Goroth—the progenitor of all gods—again and again.
But Gor-Goroth does not die. He rises. Again. And again.
The endless cycle shattered the Altar.
No one can be reborn now.
Only death. Only fire."
The words fall like stones.
Each one heavy. Irrevocable.
An antithesis of faith.
"Then why go there at all?" Vikar asks.
His voice is dry. Not condemning—
but aching.
"Because only in the Desert are we free," Ivor says softly.
"There, he cannot see us. It is not his ground.
And the boy… he believes he is leading us to salvation.
We cannot resist that.
It is not an oath.
It is… instinct."
"Why have we never heard of this?" Maria asks, startled.
"I had a vision… a being with a sword of fire. It burned everything living…"
"We do not know why some find the Desert and others do not," Camilla says.
Her voice is even—like someone who has stopped hoping, yet keeps walking.
"But recently, there was another. His name is Tonzil. Alien-born.
He came from the first sphere. He stopped.
He heard Gor-Goroth.
He survived.
And he said:
'I will lead my people into the fire no more.'"
"But why does the boy lead them all to their deaths?" Manuel asks, despair in his voice.
"He must know how it ends!"
"'All preserved in Therme shall rise again…'" Nicholas recites.
His voice is the echo of some forgotten crypt, abandoned by the gods.
"The Altar was the place of rebirth. But something broke.
Something that cannot be undone.
The boy only fulfills his part.
He… does not understand.
He is led. Not leading."
A pause.
Each word another nail in the coffin of an old religion.
Then—a step. Pietro.
He comes forward as though placing himself between this hall and death itself.
"Can the Altar be restored?"
All eyes turn to Ivor.
In that moment, he seems to have aged decades.
His eyes are glass, reflecting the void.
"No one knows," he answers.
"Not humans. Not the others. Not even the gods themselves."
And in that silence—
among steel, cold light, and foreign prayers—
each of them feels it:
Ahead lies not merely a battle.
Ahead lies a choice.
Between memory, emptiness, and what was once called hope.