The universe was bleeding, and planets like Krieg's Folly were the scabs that formed over the wounds.
It was a small, unassuming rock on the very edge of the newly fractured map, a rusted pit stop run entirely by scavengers, Draft Space pirates, and bandits. The atmosphere tasted of cheap engine coolant and burning trash. There was no law here, no Vanguard presence, and certainly no overarching morality. It was exactly the kind of place a ghost needed to disappear.
Cassian walked through the muddy, neon-lit streets of the outpost, his heavy leather coat pulled tightly around him. The deep hood was drawn up over his head, casting his face in shadow. He kept his head down, his posture slouched just enough to hide the perfect, martial discipline of his stride.
It had only been two years since the fall of Cygnus Prime. To the universe, Grand Inquisitor Cassian had died in the apocalyptic fires of Tartarus. But paranoia was a hard habit to break, and the galaxy was full of scavengers who traded in secrets. He didn't want to be seen. He didn't want to be recognized. He just needed to refuel his stealth shuttle, get a hot meal that didn't taste like synthesized rations, and find a bed for a few hours before resuming his hunt for the Round Table.
He pushed through the rusted swinging doors of a crowded, dimly lit cantina. The air inside was thick with alien smoke and the rowdy shouting of mercenaries drinking away their plunder.
Cassian found a quiet booth in the back corner, keeping his back to the wall. He ordered a plate of roasted, unidentifiable meat and a mug of black caf from a passing droid, paying with a handful of untraceable star-metal scraps.
When the food arrived, he ate slowly, keeping his hood pulled low.
But old instincts die hard.
The All-Seeing Eye
For two years, Cassian had kept his Aetheric signature suppressed to hide Jax from the universe. He hadn't actively used his Tier V [All-Seeing Eye] cores in what felt like a lifetime. But he didn't need to ignite them fully to feel the shift in the room's attention. The liquid-silver Aether in his marrow gave him a passive, flawless perception of his surroundings.
He felt the stares before he saw them.
Cassian didn't lift his head, taking a slow sip of his caf, but his silver eyes darted beneath the shadow of his hood.
Three booths down, a group of four heavily armed, scarred humans were huddled together. They weren't drinking. They were staring directly at him. One of them, a massive man with a cybernetic jaw, was holding a crumpled, heavily worn piece of paper. He looked at the paper, then indiscreetly pointed a thick finger toward Cassian's booth, whispering to his companions.
Cassian took another bite of his meal, chewing methodically. He acted completely oblivious to the scrutiny. His heart rate didn't spike. His breathing remained perfectly even.
A bounty poster, Cassian thought, his tactical mind running the variables. A remnant Vanguard sketch, perhaps. Or a Draft Space syndicate looking to cash in on a myth. He didn't rush. Rushing showed fear, and fear confirmed identity. Cassian sat there for a full thirty minutes, finishing his meal down to the last bite. He wiped his mouth with a coarse napkin, tossed a few extra metal scraps on the table for the droid, and stood up.
He walked out of the cantina with a slow, unremarkable, steady pace. He didn't look back to see if they were following him. He already knew they were.
The Hunters of the Gold
Cassian walked down the muddy main street, turning away from the spaceport and heading toward the cramped, labyrinthine alleys of the lodging sector. The neon signs above flickered, casting long, erratic shadows against the corrugated metal walls of the buildings.
He turned down a narrow, dead-end alley that supposedly led to a subterranean inn.
As soon as he stepped into the gloom, the trap snapped shut.
Two men stepped out from the shadows at the end of the alley, blocking his path. Behind him, the heavy thud of boots confirmed that three more had sealed off the exit. He was completely surrounded by heavily armed, hardened killers.
They weren't just common bandits. Cassian could read the stolen Aether-cores glowing beneath their scavenged armor. These were organized professionals.
They were Inquisitor Hunters.
When the Leviathans tore the Vanguard Empire apart, the absolute authority of the law vanished overnight. For centuries, the golden robes of the Inquisition had been a symbol of ultimate, unchallengeable terror. But without the High Council to back them, that gold became a target. The sheep realized the sheepdogs had lost their teeth.
Some of the most powerful Grand Inquisitors had managed to carve out their own fiefdoms, seizing control of planetary colonies and ruling as localized warlords. But the vast majority of the Inquisition went into deep hiding, knowing that the billions of people they had oppressed would hunt them down.
And they did. The Inquisitor Hunters formed as specialized mercenary bands, tracking down the surviving enforcers of the old world. They didn't just kill them for revenge; they killed them to rip the priceless Tier IV and Tier V Aether-cores directly from their chests. They were ruthless, heavily armed, and fueled by a millennium of grudges.
"Well, well," a voice rasped from the shadows at the head of the alley. The speaker stepped forward, flanked by the men who had been staring at Cassian in the cantina. "Inquisitor Cassian. The Ghost of Tartarus."
Cassian didn't reach for a weapon. He stood perfectly still, letting his hood obscure his face. He shifted his stance, adopting the persona of a weary, confused traveler.
"You have the wrong man," Cassian said, his voice roughened, hiding the sharp aristocratic clip he used to speak with. "I'm just a scavenger. I don't know who this Cassian is."
The leader of the hunters let out a harsh, barking laugh.
"Stop that bullcrap," the man spat, stepping directly under a flickering neon light. "You might have grown your hair out. You might have that ragged cloak over your face. You might have fooled the rest of the galaxy into thinking you burned to ash with the Leviathans... but I know those silver eyes. I'd recognize you anywhere."
Cassian's brow furrowed slightly under the hood. He looked closely at the man.
He was broad-shouldered, his face covered in a jagged network of burn scars. He wore a heavy poly-steel chest plate, and embedded right in the center of it were three distinct, high-tier Aether-cores—trophies stripped from dead Vanguard elites.
"I recognize the man who threw me in chains for overclocking my core," the leader sneered, resting his hand on the hilt of a heavy plasma-cleaver.
Cassian's breath caught. The flawless, perfect memory of his All-Seeing Eye suddenly clicked the jagged puzzle pieces into place.
It was Garrick.
The last time Cassian had seen this man was in the chaotic, bitter aftermath of a major campaign against the Harvest. Garrick had discovered a classified truth: his unit's deployment had merely been a planned distraction mission. While Garrick and his men were used as bait to draw the swarm's attention, Jax had struck a critical blow elsewhere, pushing back a Lieutenant of the Harvest and cementing his status as a hero of the war.
Consumed by bitter resentment over being treated as a disposable pawn, Garrick had confronted Jax at a crowded Vanguard victory party. In front of the gathered elites, Garrick had formally challenged the new hero of the war to a sanctioned duel. Cassian himself had stepped into the ring to act as the official referee.
But Garrick had been hopelessly outmatched. As he rapidly lost ground in the duel, a desperate and enraged Garrick had illegally overclocked his core, his body threatening to go completely nuclear just to make the Vanguard's rising star bleed.
That was when Jax had stopped holding back. Jax had sparked his highest frequencies, transforming into his terrifying Crimson Dragon form. The sheer, mythical pressure of his Aether completely suppressed Garrick, driving the broken soldier into the dirt without Jax even needing to throw a final punch.
With the rules of the duel irreparably broken by the illegal overclocking, Cassian had stepped in. As the Vanguard's supreme enforcer and the official referee, he had formally arrested Garrick, bound him in heavy suppression chains, and left him to rot in a Vanguard containment facility.
"Garrick," Cassian breathed, genuine surprise bleeding into his voice as he slowly lowered his hood.
"It's Warlord Garrick now," the scarred man corrected him, his eyes burning with a deep, vindicated hatred.
When the war happened and the sky shattered, the Vanguard containment facilities lost power. Someone had blown the doors off the prison blocks, freeing thousands of anomalies and criminals into the chaos of the Great Expansion. Garrick hadn't just survived; he had thrived in the anarchy.
Fueled by his hatred for the golden robes who had treated him as a pawn and thrown him in a cage, Garrick had been the one to formally create the Inquisitor Hunters. He had rallied the freed prisoners, leading brutal, coordinated raids on the abandoned capital cities of the Vanguard. They didn't just take weapons; they raided the archives for power and knowledge, learning how to properly extract and graft cores without killing themselves.
The desperate, bitter soldier from the old world had transformed into a monster, building an empire by hunting the very people who had once acted as his judge and jury. Now, he was the undisputed leader of the deadliest anti-Vanguard faction in the outer rim.
Cassian stood in the center of the muddy alley, his hands falling to his sides. The ancient, unshakeable tactician of the Vanguard—the man who had stared down dark-matter gods and plotted against the Round Table—stared at the scarred face of the soldier he had chained away and forgotten.
For the first time in centuries, Cassian had a look of absolute, unadulterated shock on his face.