---
Rain on Planet Wenta had its own specific quality.
Not the aggressive rain of a storm — the other kind, the kind that arrived without announcement and stayed without urgency, that fell at the pace of something that had nowhere particular to be and was simply doing what it did. The streets received it with the specific sound of water finding stone, and the gardens received it differently, and the rooftops differently again, so the whole kingdom produced a layered sound that was its own kind of music.
Inside the homes, lights were on.
The warm amber of lights through windows in the rain was one of the specific beautiful things that happened when a kingdom had been built for people to actually live in — not for function or display, but for the specific daily business of lives being lived, which included dinner and children's laughter and the particular quality of a warm room when outside was wet.
The streets were empty.
Almost.
---
Muwa walked through the rain with her umbrella.
She had a black umbrella — practical, no decoration, the umbrella of someone who had chosen it for its function and whose function it performed without additional comment.
Her crimson ponytail moved with each step. Her boots on the wet stone made the specific sound of someone who walked with purpose even when they had no particular destination, who moved through the world with the same quality whether or not anything required it of them.
She looked at the empty streets.
At the rain moving through the lights.
At the kingdom around her — quiet now, inhabited-quiet, the quiet of a place that was full of people who were inside being people rather than empty.
She stopped at a crossroads.
She looked at it for a moment.
Muwa : *"It's been a long time."*
She said it quietly. Not to anyone — just to herself, to the rain, to the specific acknowledgment of something that was true.
*"Since I let myself have any of this."*
She turned off the main road.
The garden was small — one of the ones Astria had designed for the spaces between transit lines, the specific kind of garden that existed for the people passing through rather than for people who came specifically to it. Cherry-blossom-similar trees that Gyumi had planted, pink flowers visible even in the rain because the flowers had been chosen for their visibility in the rain.
Muwa closed her umbrella.
She placed it under the small wooden pavilion that existed for exactly this purpose — the roof of it keeping the sitting area dry, the edges of it channeling the rain down in a steady fall.
She stretched.
Both arms high. The specific full stretch of someone who has been in controlled posture all day and is giving their body permission to stop controlling.
She breathed.
And then she danced.
Not the performance kind — the private kind, which was completely different. No audience, no structure, no form that was for anyone else's understanding. Her body moved with the specific freedom of something that had been trained to precision and was now using that precision for pure expression rather than function.
She spun.
The rain found her hair and the rain found her face and she let it because there was no reason not to. Her eyes closed. Her arms moved in the specific flow of someone who had been dancing since before she became what she was, who had found dancing before combat training and had kept it in the place where combat training couldn't reach.
The rain and her movements found the same rhythm.
Not because she was following the rain — because when you moved truly freely, you moved with the world rather than through it.
Muwa danced in the rain in a small garden between transit lines on a sleeping planet and the only witnesses were the cherry-blossom-similar trees, which had no opinions about it.
She danced until the rain changed quality — going lighter, the specific lightening that preceded its ending.
Then she stopped.
She stood in the garden with her eyes still closed for a moment.
She breathed.
She opened her eyes.
She picked up her umbrella.
She walked home.
---
Morning arrived with the specific quality of mornings that followed rain — the air cleaner than usual, the light landing on wet surfaces and returning it in ways that dry surfaces didn't manage, the specific smell of a world that had been washed and was now drying.
The meeting room in the main office had all of them.
Not a casual gathering — a meeting, the specific difference being that everyone had arrived knowing something was going to be said and was present with that expectation rather than with the general availability of a casual gathering.
Astra sat at the head of the table.
He had slept — not enough, the evidence of not enough visible in the specific quality of his eyes, but he had slept, which was an improvement over some nights.
He had the folder in front of him.
Piko had assembled the folder with the specific thoroughness of someone who had been given a task and had applied all available capacity to it. It was thick. It had tabs.
Around the table: Tenkai, arms folded. Yuko with her fan. Drashin in the corner, which was not technically his assigned seat but which was where Drashin always ended up. Fin with the warm attention he brought to things that were being explained. Astria beside Astra, not close, appropriately close. Kento with the expression of someone who was paying attention and hoping this involved action. Muwa with her notebook, because Muwa always had her notebook. Piko with her full stack of files and the additional files she'd brought because the primary files might be insufficient.
Gyumi with her staff.
Astra opened the folder.
Astra : *"The Planet of Elite Hunters has formally requested an alliance meeting with Dragon Unite."*
He said it simply. The setup for what was going to follow.
Piko adjusted her glasses.
Piko : *"Elite Hunters."*
She said it with the tone of someone recognizing a name they'd researched and had found complicated.
Piko : *"Their reputation is significant. They've been operating as a hunting civilization for centuries — well-organized, well-armed, highly disciplined."*
She paused.
Piko : *"Also extremely strict about their traditions and rules. And by extremely strict I mean — they have enforced rules by destroying planets that didn't comply. Plural."*
She looked at the file.
Piko : *"I don't like how this meeting is likely to go."*
Astra : *"The request is specifically about how we operate. Primarily the mixed-race living situation — the monsters, the onis, the goblins, everyone who lives here alongside humans and dragons."*
Tenkai : *"What about them."*
He said it flatly. The flat of someone who already knew what the answer was likely to be.
Astra : *"I'll explain when we're there. For now — I'm taking Tenkai, Drashin, and Fin."*
He looked at them as he said their names.
Tenkai : *"Understood."*
No further comment. Just the acknowledgment of someone who was ready.
Fin : *"Are we going today? Right now?"*
Astra : *"After this meeting."*
Fin : *"I'm actually curious what their hall looks like."*
Drashin : *"Focus."*
Fin : *"I can be curious and focused simultaneously."*
Drashin looked at him.
Fin : *"...I'll focus."*
Before anyone else spoke, Astria put her hand on Astra's shoulder.
Not firmly — the specific touch of someone who was saying something through contact rather than through words, who was expressing a thing that would have been harder to say directly.
Astria : *"You forgot to include me."*
She said it the way she said things that were observations rather than complaints.
Astra turned to her.
At the specific expression she was wearing — not upset, not demanding, just — the expression of someone who wanted to be there for something and was noting the absence of their name.
Astra : *"I didn't forget you."*
He said it with the specific quality of something that was completely true.
Astra : *"I need you here. The kingdom — while I'm in a meeting that might become something other than a meeting — someone has to be watching it who I trust completely."*
He held her gaze.
Astra : *"That's you. That's only you."*
Astria looked at him.
The expression on her face did several things and arrived at the settled version — the specific settling of someone who has received something that answered the question they had, even if it wasn't the answer they'd been hoping for.
Astria : *"Come back safely."*
She said it simply.
Astra : *"Always."*
Fin stood up.
Fin : *"Alright! Let's go!"*
He said it with the energy of someone who had been containing readiness for the duration of the briefing and was releasing it now.
They went.
---
The Planet of Elite Hunters had a sky that was the specific grey of somewhere that had decided weather was secondary to function. Not unpleasant — intentional. The grey of a civilization that had spent its energy on what it built rather than on the atmosphere it built under.
The Alliance Hall appeared through their teleport arrival point like the first line of an argument.
It was enormous.
Not the quiet enormity of somewhere that had grown into its scale over time — the deliberate enormity of somewhere built to communicate something through its size, which was the specific quality of architecture designed to make visitors feel small before any words had been exchanged.
Pillars the height of small buildings. Carved surfaces everywhere — the carvings depicting hunts, the specific imagery of hunters and their prey, victories in the visual language of people who defined themselves by what they pursued and captured. Every surface communicating the same thing in different visual vocabulary: *we are the ones who do the hunting.*
Soldiers at attention in numbers that suggested the hall had been built expecting to fill.
Astra walked through the entrance with the specific quality of someone who had decided before arriving that the scale of a building was not information that needed to change how he walked through it.
Tenkai beside him.
Fin behind, looking at the carvings with the specific wide-eyed engagement of someone who found them genuinely interesting regardless of what they communicated.
Drashin behind Fin, hands in his pockets.
Astra : *"Their hall is really something."*
He said it quietly.
Tenkai : *"Tch. They spent a lot of money on very tall columns."*
He said it with the flat tone that was not an architectural critique but was a statement about priorities.
Fin : *"But look at the detail on these carvings — those were done by someone who took it seriously. Years of work, minimum."*
He was craning his neck at a pillar.
Drashin : *"Fin."*
Fin : *"Right. Sorry."*
He brought his neck back to standard position.
Fin : *"I was just—"*
Drashin : *"I know."*
The round table at the center. The chairs arranged around it with the specific geometry of a meeting that had been designed to communicate its own power dynamics through the arrangement of seating.
The royal chair for Astra was at the center. It was ornate and large in the way things were ornate and large when the person who had them built had wanted them to communicate something.
Astra sat in it.
He sat in it the way he sat in the small Oni child's chair — with the complete comfort of someone for whom the furniture's significance was irrelevant to his own sense of where he was.
Fin and Drashin took seats at either side.
Tenkai stood.
He chose to stand behind Astra and slightly to his right, which was where he would stand.
Across the table:
Fadilo Zen.
He had the presence of someone who had been in authority for a very long time and who had organized his entire existence around the confirmation of that authority — not insecure about it, not needing to prove it, just completely built for it, the way certain structures were built for certain functions.
Black eyes that moved across Astra's group with the specific assessment of someone calculating the significance of what was in front of them.
Royal blue armor. Black crown.
He rested his chin on his hand — the gesture of someone who was observing rather than immediately engaging, who had the patience that came from certainty.
Zen : *"Welcome to my hall, Astra."*
He said it with the specific weight of someone for whom those words had been said many times and for whom the weight was institutional rather than personal.
Astra : *"King Zen. Thank you for the invitation."*
He said it with the warmth of someone who meant the politeness genuinely without it being the entirety of what he meant.
Zen : *"You brought only three."*
He said it as an observation. His eyes moved across the group.
Astra : *"These three are enough."*
He said it simply.
Zen : *"Most who come to alliance meetings bring delegations. Advisors. Soldiers for appearances."*
Astra : *"I find crowds distracting in conversations. These three are people I trust and whose judgment I value. That's what you bring to a conversation — not numbers."*
Something in Zen's expression shifted — not warmth, but the specific acknowledgment of someone who had encountered an answer that didn't quite fit their categories and was recalibrating.
Zen : *"Then I'll be direct about why I called this meeting."*
Astra : *"Please."*
Zen leaned forward.
His expression had found its serious register.
Zen : *"Your kingdom is in violation of ancient established law."*
He said it with the flat certainty of someone who had prepared this statement and was delivering it as a final conclusion rather than the opening of a discussion.
Fin looked at Drashin.
Drashin looked at the table.
Tenkai looked at Zen.
Astra : *"Tell me the specific violation."*
Zen : *"Your kingdom shelters monsters. Onis, goblins, slimes, orcs, dragons from non-civilized clans. The law established by the Hunter civilization — the law I represent — prohibits exactly this. Monsters are hunted. That is the order of things."*
Tenkai's jaw moved.
A sound that was not quite words escaped him — the sound of someone swallowing a response.
Astra raised his hand slightly.
Not for Zen — for Tenkai.
Astra : *"No."*
He said it quietly and completely.
Astra : *"You've mischaracterized the situation. Nobody in my kingdom is being sheltered. They're living there. They chose to be there. The goblins, the onis, the slimes, every species you've named — they came through our portals and they stayed because they found something worth staying for."*
He held Zen's gaze.
Astra : *"Nobody forced them and nobody is protecting them from something. They're citizens."*
Zen : *"Whatever the language you prefer to use — the result is the same. Monsters living freely in a settled kingdom. This is against the law."*
Astra : *"Whose law."*
Zen : *"Mine."*
He said it with complete ease. The ease of someone who had said this before and had never encountered pushback that survived.
Astra : *"That's the part I want to understand."*
Zen : *"What's to understand? I am the King of Hunters. I established the framework for how this galaxy manages the relationship between civilized races and monsters. You're operating in my galaxy."*
Astra : *"Your galaxy."*
He said it back. Not mockingly — just receiving the information.
Astra : *"When did it become yours specifically."*
Zen : *"When I made the rules that govern it."*
Astra : *"That's circular."*
Zen's eyes narrowed slightly.
Zen : *"It's the way things are."*
Astra : *"That's also not an answer."*
The hall was very quiet.
The soldiers at the perimeter were still.
Zen : *"I'm demanding that you remove every non-civilized species from Dragon Unite immediately. This is not a suggestion or a request. It's the requirement for any cooperation between your kingdom and ours."*
Astra : *"No."*
Zen : *"I haven't finished—"*
Astra : *"I know. I said no to the conclusion. You can finish the setup if you'd like, but the conclusion is no."*
Tenkai had folded his hands in front of him. This was the specific posture he used when he was holding himself at maximum restraint.
Fin was looking at the table.
Drashin : *"Fin."*
Fin, without looking up : *"I'm not doing anything."*
Drashin : *"I know. Just checking."*
Fin : *"Those weapons the soldiers are holding look powerful."*
Drashin : *"Mm."*
Fin : *"A bit of destruction and all of this turns into dust in seconds though."*
Drashin : *"Mm."*
Fin : *"Not that I'm suggesting—"*
Drashin : *"Mm."*
Zen slammed his hand on the table.
Zen : *"I am demanding you sign a formal contract committing to the removal of all non-civilized inhabitants of Dragon Unite!"*
Astra : *"Before we discuss the contract—"*
Zen : *"There's nothing to discuss—"*
Astra : *"I'd like to see the original document. The actual rule. Not a copy — the original."*
Zen : *"Why."*
Astra : *"Because I want to read what I'm supposedly in violation of. In the original language and form it was recorded. Rules stated to someone secondhand have a habit of changing from their source."*
He said it pleasantly.
Zen looked at him.
He clicked his fingers at a soldier behind him.
Zen : *"Bring it."*
The soldier moved.
The wait while the soldier retrieved the document was quiet in the specific way of a room where multiple people are waiting for something while each person is having their own version of that wait. Tenkai used the interval to conduct what appeared to be a structural assessment of the ceiling. Fin used it to observe a carving near the table. Drashin used it to be still, which was what Drashin did in intervals.
The soldier returned with a scroll.
Aged. The scroll of something that had been somewhere that valued its antiquity — the specific quality of a document that had been preserved deliberately, that understood its own significance.
Zen handed it across the table.
Astra took it.
He read it.
He read it with the focused quality he read things — not quickly, not performing speed, but actually reading, the specific engagement of someone taking information in rather than confirming what they expected to see.
He looked up.
He looked at the scroll.
He looked at Zen.
He tore it in half.
Not slowly — one clean motion, the tear moving through the aged material with the specific sound of something old being ended.
He held both halves.
Silver flame crept from his fingers — quiet, controlled, the specific application of someone lighting something rather than burning something. It moved through the halves and they became ash and the ash became the specific nothing of things that no longer existed.
He dusted his hands.
The hall.
Zen's face went through a sequence of stages.
The first stage was confusion — the confusion of someone who has just witnessed something they had not included in any of their prepared responses.
The second stage was understanding — the understanding of what had just been witnessed.
The third stage was arriving now, and it was loud.
Zen : *"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE—"*
Astra : *"The rule is gone."*
He said it with complete calm.
Astra : *"If the rule doesn't exist, I can't be in violation of it. And if I'm not in violation, there's nothing for me to sign."*
Zen : *"That was the original! The foundational document of three hundred years of law! It was passed down through—"*
Astra : *"I understand that. But the thing you pass down matters. If what you're passing down is a rule that says a significant portion of the people in this galaxy don't deserve to live freely — that's not a legacy worth keeping."*
He looked at Zen.
Astra : *"The rule was wrong. It was wrong when it was written, it was wrong for three hundred years, and now it's ash."*
The soldiers at the perimeter of the hall had raised their weapons at some point during this — the automatic response of soldiers who had been given cues to watch for and had received them.
Zen looked at the ash that had been his founding document.
He looked at Astra.
He breathed.
Zen : *"Sign. The. Contract."*
He said it through his teeth.
Astra : *"Alright."*
He said it pleasantly.
He said it the way you said something when you had decided on something and were beginning to execute it.
Tenkai : *"Ares."*
He said only the name. The name that carried the question he wasn't asking.
Astra : *"I'm handling it."*
He held his hand out for the contract.
Zen produced it — a different document, the copy of what had been destroyed, the enforcement mechanism.
He handed it over with the expression of someone who has won and is performing grace about it.
Astra took the pen.
He looked at the signature line.
He thought for approximately three seconds.
He wrote.
He slid the contract back across the table with a polite smile.
Zen looked at the signature line.
He looked at it again.
The signature line read : **[email protected]**
In neat, legible handwriting.
Zen read it a third time.
Zen : *"What is this."*
Astra : *"My signature."*
Zen : *"This is not—"*
Astra : *"I signed it."*
Zen : *"This isn't a signature, this is—"*
Fin : *"That's our toilet cleaner's email address, actually."*
He said it helpfully.
Drashin : *"If you need to reach him, he's usually available on weekday mornings. He's quite good at his work."*
Tenkai : *"His rates are reasonable."*
They said it in sequence with the specific quality of people who had been in enough absurd situations together that they had developed a natural rhythm for it.
Zen looked at all of them.
At the contract with the toilet cleaner's email in the signature line.
At Astra, who was wearing the expression of someone waiting to see if there were further questions.
Zen : *"Don't you know how contracts work!? Don't you know how any of this WORKS!?"*
Astra : *"I prefer to make my own rules about how things work."*
He said it simply.
Astra : *"And honestly, your rule — the one that said the majority of the people living in my kingdom shouldn't be alive and free — I'm not signing anything that acknowledges that as legitimate. With my real name or with the toilet cleaner's email."*
Zen looked at him with something past fury — the specific state past fury where a person has gone further than the word for it and doesn't have access to the next available word.
Zen raised his hand.
Zen : *"Kill them."*
---
Drashin was already moving.
The destruction bullets were precise — not broad, targeted, the specific application of someone who had identified the soldiers most likely to be problems in the next two seconds and was addressing them before those two seconds completed.
He moved like thought, which was faster than movement.
Six soldiers.
Then three more.
Astra looked at the room — at the remaining soldiers, at Zen behind the table.
Astra : *"We'll revisit this conversation when you've had time to consider whether your rules should maybe apply to things that actually make sense."*
He said it pleasantly.
Fin was already rising from his chair.
Fin : *"I'll meet you at home."*
He said it to Astra.
He smiled.
It was the smile he smiled when he was about to do something comprehensive.
Astra, Drashin, and Tenkai teleported.
---
Fin flew upward.
He went up through the Alliance Hall's ceiling, which disagreed with his passage but lost the disagreement quickly. He kept going — through the planet's atmosphere, past the upper cloud layer, into the space above.
He looked at the planet below.
He looked at the sky above it.
He breathed.
Fin : *"This planet was being used for bad purposes anyway."*
He said it to himself.
He was not wrong, but there was a quality to saying it that communicated he was giving himself permission rather than making a simple observation.
He raised his hand.
The golden aura that came from him at full expression was the divine inferno at its deepest accessible layer — not the surface expression, the one that reached down into what Fin was at the foundational level. It gathered around him in a way that changed the quality of the space around him, the way the arrival of something very large changed the feel of the air near it.
The sky turned gold.
Holy chains of light materialized around the aura, moving through it.
Fin : *"Breath of Dragon."*
He said it quietly.
He released it downward.
---
On the planet's surface, Zen had been watching the ceiling that Fin had passed through.
He had been watching the hole.
He had been watching the light coming through the hole change quality.
He understood what was happening approximately three seconds before it arrived, which was time to understand it and not time to do anything about it.
The aura condensed into the dragon as it approached the planet — holy chains and golden divine light taking the shape that the Dragon Clan's deepest technique produced, which was the most honest expression of what a golden divine dragon was.
The impact was not a sound.
It was everything.
Every explosion was its own event and there were thousands of them, each one complete, each one the result of the golden dragon's energy finding the planet's surface and the surface finding the energy.
The planet that had been the home of the Elite Hunters civilization and their three-hundred-year-old rule about monsters became something else.
---
What was left:
Dust.
Debris.
And Zen.
Standing in the middle of it with his daggers and his fury and the specific quality of someone who was still here when they weren't supposed to be, who had survived something by a combination of their own power and the specific luck of position.
His armor was damaged.
His crown was somewhere in the debris.
His black eyes were burning.
Zen : *"I will not—"*
Fin landed.
He landed in front of him.
He looked at Zen with the same expression he wore when he cooked in the goblin restaurant and when he planted the farms and when he was doing something he had committed to completely.
Present. Warm. Absolutely ready.
Fin : *"Show me what you have."*
He said it genuinely.
He wasn't taunting. He was asking.
Zen launched.
The daggers moved through the air in the pattern of someone who had used them against a great many things and understood their geometry. His kicks came in the gaps of the dagger arcs, finding the openings the daggers created.
Fin moved with him.
He moved the way he moved — with the specific fluid grace of something that was genuinely fast and genuinely skilled and was not performing either.
The daggers found angles.
Fin found counter-angles.
Zen jumped — an aggressive downward strike, full force, the commitment of someone who had decided this was the exchange that would change the momentum.
Fin slid under it.
He hit Zen from below.
Fin : *"Bad luck."*
He said it without meanness — just the observation.
He went up.
He raised his hand.
The golden divine light gathered in his palm — not the Breath, something more concentrated.
Fin : *"Dragon Authority."*
Zen's eyes went wide.
The light found him.
He dissolved into the golden divine — not violently, not with the dramatic ending of something fighting it. The specific dissolution of something encountering a power that was beyond what resistance could address, becoming the golden particles that the technique produced.
The particles scattered.
Fin watched them.
He stood in the debris field of a planet that had been operating on a rule that said most of the people in his friend's kingdom shouldn't live freely.
He looked at the sky.
He teleported.
---
An unknown realm.
Small.
The specific smallness of somewhere that existed to serve a function rather than as a place in itself — a lab, the walls of it practical, the equipment of it oriented toward a specific purpose.
The alien boy sat quietly.
Jame.
Big horns. Pink eyes. The specific quality of someone young enough to believe that whatever was happening was the right thing and old enough to understand some of what it meant.
The scientist who was also his father sat beside him.
He had the expression of someone who had been thinking about something for a long time and had arrived at the moment of action without the comfort of certainty.
Scientist : *"Jame."*
Jame looked at him with the brightness of his pink eyes.
Jame : *"Yes, father?"*
The scientist sighed.
Long. The sigh of someone who had been carrying a significant weight.
Scientist : *"You know what today is."*
Jame's head went down slightly.
He was quiet for a moment.
The quiet of someone holding something.
Jame : *"I know."*
He looked at his father.
Jame : *"For the civilization's advancement. That's what matters."*
He looked at his own hands.
Jame : *"I have to do this."*
He said it with the conviction of someone who has decided.
The scientist looked at his son.
At his son's pink eyes.
At his son's certainty.
He looked at the injection in his hand.
He administered it.
The effect was immediate.
Not gradual — the transformation that came from something that had been built to override rather than to coexist. Jame's eyes went from pink to the specific blood-red of something that had found a different frequency and was broadcasting from it.
Claws.
Black fur.
A tail.
His size increased in the way of something that had been given permission to stop occupying the scale it had been in and was finding its actual scale.
The scientist stepped back.
He looked at what his science had produced.
Scientist : *"It worked!"*
He said it with the specific excitement of a result confirming a theory — genuine excitement, genuine relief.
Scientist : *"Son — Jame? We have another warrior for the civilization—"*
He stopped.
Jame was looking at him.
With the blood-red eyes.
With the expression that lived in things that had been taken past a certain point and were now something else on the other side of it.
Scientist : *"Jame—"*
He growled.
Scientist : *"Son—"*
The claw came down.
The scientist was ash.
The lab became fire.
Jame roared — the specific roar of something that had found a size and a power and no context for them, no framework for what they were for, just the raw presence of them.
He stomped.
The ground cracked.
He looked at the sky.
He went through it.
---
Sector Two Hell.
The sector had been finding its way since Diablo.
Not quickly — the way things found their way after losing something central, which was slowly and with specific difficulty in the specific places where the absent thing had been most central.
But finding it.
The demons had been developing a kind of order that was theirs rather than inherited — the order that emerged from a community that had been through something and was collectively deciding what came next.
A random demon in the market district looked at the sky.
At the thing that was in it.
At the size of the thing that was in it.
At the blood-red eyes of the thing that was in it.
The demon made a sound.
Then ran.
Then other demons ran.
Then the thing that Jame had become was in the market district and the market district was something else.
---
The message found Astra.
Not through a device — through the specific channel that had been established between Dragon Unite and the beings in the sectors who had identified them as a resource since Sin.
A voice. Urgent. The specific urgency of someone who had passed the point of managing their urgency.
Voice : *"We need help — Sector Two — there is something here — something large—"*
Astra : *"What happened?"*
Voice : *"A creature — we don't know what — it's destroying everything — nothing we have is stopping it—"*
Astra narrowed his eyes.
Astra : *"We'll come."*
He ended the connection.
He looked at Tenkai, who was already looking at him.
Tenkai : *"Hell?"*
Astra : *"Sector Two."*
He looked at the others in the room — at all of them, at Fin who had just returned and was wiping golden residue from his jacket, at Drashin, at everyone.
Astra : *"Diablo is gone. I killed him during the Dano fight — he was forced into it, he didn't choose it, but I still ended it. And now the sector that he was protecting doesn't have a protector."*
He looked at Tenkai.
Astra : *"We go. Just us. If this is what I think it might be, a large group isn't the answer — two people who can respond quickly is."*
Tenkai : *"I'll open the portal."*
He was already gathering the cosmic energy for it.
Astria : *"Astra."*
She said his name. The underneath voice.
He looked at her.
She looked at him.
Astria : *"Come back."*
Not a question. Not a please. Just the statement of what she needed to be true.
Astra : *"Yes."*
The portal opened — the specific deep spiral of Tenkai's cosmic energy finding its path, the cold of the space between locations visible at its edges.
Astra and Tenkai stepped through.
The portal closed.
The office was quiet.
Astria looked at the space where the portal had been.
She stood there for a moment.
Then she went to the window.
She looked at the kingdom outside — at Wenta's morning, at the streets, at the transit lines, at the people.
She looked at all of it.
She was watching it for him.
Until he came back.
---