Ooooh, that is a big revelation. I did not expect her to be a direct heir. Intriguing.
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I have peppered some hints through out the story. I won't outright confirm this, but there certainly is some relation between her and the imperial family. It is going to be the focus for the next few chapters.
This laboratory was a cathedral of science – all hard-light alloys, glass and humming power conduits, bathed in a sterile light. It was built into the inner levels of the Shadow Tower, far above the crumbling cityscape of Nymonax. This was where Doctor Lazarus conducted his most guarded research: psionic containment chambers, robotic constructs hanging like sleeping titans from cranial ports and spinal feeds.
Anastajia stood at the center of it all, her arms crossed, posture taut. She had slept – barely – in the guest suite offered to her; one without surveillance, or so Lazarus claimed. The truth was uncertain. These walls whispered even when silent.
Lazarus, in his tall android form, moved like water over a tile – smooth, unsettling. He never blinked. The synthetic approximation of his voice was conversational, but hollow and distorted by the modulators in his chassis.
“These preliminary scans suggest a significant saturation of psionic residue,” he said, watching a display as coils of energy swirled around a 3D model of her nervous system. “Your entire lobe is adapted to channeling. Even at rest, you are interfacing with a frequency far beyond human tolerance thresholds.”
Anastajia’s response was curt. “I know. The Empress taught me how to suppress it.”
Lazarus paused, studying her, calculating. “That… is not suppression. That is coexistence. The fragment inside you… it breathes. Metaphorically. How fascinating.”
She looked away, jaw tense. He made her feel like an animal on a slab. She had endured debriefings before, medical tests, even invasive neural synchronization in Imperium training. But Lazarus was not looking to help. He was looking to understand. That was worse.
“What do you want from me exactly,” she asked.
“Stability,” Lazarus replied. “I want to understand how to stabilize psionic energy into a permanent, non-sentient form. Your possession of this fragment makes you the most viable blueprint.”
“You’ve yet to hold up your own end of the deal, Doctor.”
“Not quite,” he said simply. “I have provided you with the history of the Human Empire’s fall, the experiments I conducted, even clarified the nature of the techniques taught to you by the Mirati Empress.”
She stepped closer to him, eyes sharp. “You know that is not the knowledge I truly seek.”
“Right now, all I can provide you are suspicions,” Lazarus replied, unflinching. “Your biological markers align with what I observed in the Emperor during the final years of his reign.” He paused. “However, your markers do not align with those of the queen consort. A bastard, perhaps?”
Anastajia’s fists tightened, ready to strike.
“Further confirmation will require more than a blood sample. You must make some choices.”
“Choices?” she asked.
“To tap deeper into the powers granted to you by the fragment.”
Her following days blurred together – long hours of sensory analysis, psionic field manipulation, dangerous feedback loops from misaligned amplification attempts. Once, a construct exploded into a cloud of motel alloy as it tried to manipulate its surroundings with psionic energy. Another time, Lazarus instructed her to focus on a specific instability, and the lights in the entire sector dimmed for hours afterwards.
Sukarno remained silent through most of it, watching from an upper platform or leaning against shadowed walls like a sentry caught between duty and disillusionment.
Each evening, Lazarus reviewed the recordings obsessively, mumbling to himself. Anastajia, meanwhile, returned to her quarters with nerves frayed, visions flickering behind her eyes. The End of the Cycle never slept. It whispered even more frequently now, teasing her with terrible promises.
‘I have told you from the start. You cannot use her teachings cannot control me. All those who you believe dear to you, they lied to you, turned you against me.’
She would sit in the dark, gripping the datapad still useless in her satchel, waiting for the next test. The next question. The next truth.
‘They would all carve you open just to get to me. Do not reject me.’
Beneath her resistance, the End continued to stir, alongside a nagging certainty that for all his unnatural presence and obsessive methods, Lazarus was right about one thing.
She was slowly changing.
She was no longer sure that the Empress’s training would be enough to hold the creature within.
The hum of the machines had dimmed to a whisper. The lab was still. Most of the diagnostic staff had gone, and Lazarus, as he often did, retreated to his private vault to sift through the data only he could decipher.
Anastajia stood alone in the test chamber.
She’d been told to rest, but sleep did not come easily in the Tower – not with the End ever murmuring just at the edge of consciousness. Tonight, it had been louder than usual. It wasn’t speaking – it was pacing, as though waiting for something to unfold.
She approached the psionic array they had been using – a ring of dull metal etched with arcane sigils, inert without activation. She placed her hand on it. Just to feel the texture. Just to remind herself she was still grounded, still real.
Then the world peeled away.
One by one, the walls folded around her, like the inside of a collapsing sphere, space and time funneling inward just like on Thile. The lab around her blinked out, and in its place, a throne room of impossible scale.
Shadows stretched across monolithic columns. Stars hung in place like painted dots, unmoving. At the center of it all, a man. Tall, adorned in ceremonial black and gold, his face shrouded in darkness. His voice was like thunder.
Anastajia realized, with a clarity that struck like lightning: this was the Emperor. Emedev Assen, the last Emperor of the Human Empire.
The End stood opposite him – her, but not her. Just like before, the figure was identical in form, but its eyes held the ruin of a million civilisations.
‘You know the cost,’ the End said, its voice layered with a thousand echoes.
‘I do,’ the Emperor replied.
‘Then give it freely, and in return, you will bring the stars to heel.’
Slowly, the Emperor reached towards her – towards the End. His hand passed through its chest, and light surged from behind them both, blinding and warm, then blinding and cold.
In an instant, the world shattered.
She awoke with a gasp, slumped against the cold floor of the chamber. Every nerve felt scorched, but no alarms blared. No defense mechanism was triggered.
And yet – the room was different.
The walls were warped. The floor was cracked, smoldering with psionic residue. Instruments across the lab either shorted out or rebooted into diagnostic safe mode. The psionic shard constructed by Lazarus pulsed in synchrony with her heartbeat across the room.
The door then slammed open.
Lazarus entered in silence, having clearly run from whatever part of the tower he was hiding in. He scanned the room, stopping at her.
“You did something,” he said.
“No,” Anastajia answered slowly, “it did.”
She wouldn’t tell him what she saw. She didn’t mention the Emperor.
It was the End’s sick game.
Anastajia sat behind the reinforced partition now, meditating – calm, perhaps, or simply distant. Lazarus didn’t trust surface readings anymore, not after what had happened.
He turned back to the data feed. The event played again: the precise moment she touched the inert shard array. No energy. No triggering mechanism. Then a sudden fold – a local collapse of psionic containment, space bending not under force, but under will. It was not drawn from the shard itself, but somehow through it.
Lazarus brought up a hidden overlay; an ancient log flagged for restricted eyes only. The text was corrupted in places, but key fragments remained intact.
Lazarus exhaled – an amalgamation of crackling and static sounds. A reflex carried over from the human he once was.
Years ago, there was speculation. A bastard child; the sole inheritor of the Emperor’s bloodline, born in the shadows, spirited away before anyone could confirm lineage. He remembered academic whispers, the off-the-record speculation in Imperial think thanks. Wild theories, of course – but none of them carried a signature this close to the original Emperor’s psionic footprint.
That is, until now.
All of the data from Anastajia’s reaction to the shard aligned with the archived recordings from the destruction of Kni’thokon. This profile wasn’t just a mere copy. It was too precise to be coincidence, and too imperfect to be duplication.
Lazarus muttered something under his breath, too low for his vocal modulator to produce anything more than static gibberish.
He tapped into his private log.
He hesitated… then added a line.
Outside, Anastajia turned towards the glass – as if she had felt his thoughts.
He shut the feed off, then, opening the channel to Sukarno, he issued a single command.
“Increase surveillance. Initiate soft lockdown. No one speaks to her unless cleared through me.”
There was a moment of silence before the masked voice replied.
“This goes against the agreement you have made with her.”
“Affirmative.”
“Do you think it’s her?”
“Inconclusive. She is certainly more than she knows.”
“And if you’re right?”
Lazarus turned toward the storm-wracked skyline of Nymonax.
“Then the key to accessing the secrets of the Shroud is in my hands.”
Days passed by.
She dreamed of black stars – streaks of psionic energy howling with impossible light. She dreamed of the station, of fire, and screaming. Of hands – unfamiliar hands – lifting her from rubble before it all went dark.
She awoke gasping, her pillow soaked. No one came. The cameras didn’t flinch.
She stared at the far wall, eyes unfocused, then looked to the ceiling – as though it might part and reveal a message, a sign, a reason. But there was nothing.
The Imperium had not sent a word.
‘Where is Idrithrel? Where is the Empress?’
She tried to remember the sound of their voices – her mentor’s gruff discipline, the Empress’s cold but guiding clarity. She tried to piece together her last orders. She was sent to investigate the Shadow Tower, yes. But now that the Republic was tearing itself apart, why had no one come?
Was she abandoned? Disavowed? Or worse – forgotten.
Anastajia pulled her knees to her chest, resting her forehead on them. Her mind, usually so sharp, felt unfocused. Blurred. Like the edges of her thoughts had been sanded away.
A whisper curled at the edge of her perception. Smooth. Familiar.
‘This silence speaks volumes, does it not?’
She did not answer.
‘Perhaps your new masters have no use for you anymore. Perhaps the bastard child of a fallen empire makes for an inconvenience. It would not be the first time the Imperium discarded its tools.’
Anastajia clenched her jaw, nails digging into her palms.
‘Do you believe the Empress could reach out to you psionically here? She was the one who chased away the Whisperer in the Void on Thile.’
Anastajia bit her lower lip so hard it drew blood.
‘When you lost control of your powers on Na-Swe-Shuk, when I obtained momentary control of your body, it was the Empress who wrestled you out of my control.’
As she started to tremble uncontrollably, psionic energy began to materialize around her. She lifted her chin, and it was there. Across from her, the End mirrored her appearance.
‘Much like you, she possesses a fragment of mine. She is linked to you. Have you never wondered why she was so knowledgeable of your own powers? Your strengths… Your weaknesses… yet you’ve never met before.’
It snickered, the endless void in its eyes swallowing her whole.
‘I have always done right by you, Anastajia. I have always fulfilled the end of my deals. I have granted you the knowledge you always sought, the powers you desired.’
She stood sharply, stumbling back from nothing in particular. Her heart was racing.
“Get out of my head,” she snapped.
‘Is this not why you are here, Anastajia? You volunteered for this mission, remember? You wanted to confirm the knowledge I have given you ever since you fought Lorkan.’
The End rose to its feet, spreading its arms wide, turning around in a full circle.
‘I have not lied to you.’ It stopped. ‘Your little human doctor confirmed everything I have told you. I am the only one who did not lie to you.’
Anastajia stepped backwards, clutching her head, shaking from side to side.
‘Your precious masters have both lied to you.’
The voice swelled, and the room seemed to dim.
‘The others used you. I will not. I only wish to realize your full potential. Allow me to guide you… not as an overlord… but as your own constant.’
The lights began to flicker – the psionic energy around her exploded, and in a flash, the image of the End was gone once again.
Sukarno was dreaming, but he did not know it. The air was too still, the silence too complete. He could feel his heartbeat, then nothing at all. The room around him had dissolved, and he was standing once again on the scorched plates of Kni’thokon, where the old Empire died screaming.
He could smell the burning air, the explosions in the distance. Feel the rhythm of gunfire in the soles of his feet. A single flicker, then the sky overhead shattered, and a sea of black stars poured in.
From the smoke walked a single figure – an infant, limp in its arms. It was the Emperor’s bastard. The child he’d only seen for an instant before the explosion took them all. He took a step forward to reach her, to complete the mission he had failed.
‘You let him die.’
The words came from the child. No. From the air. From the thing behind the voice.
The child looked up, and her eyes were not her own. It was an endless pit of darkness.
‘You were there,’ the voice rasped, deep and smooth. ‘You were so close. They called you the Emperor’s blade. His shadow. His most faithful hound.’
Sukarno staggered, finding a rifle in his hands. He was back in the spaceport now – exactly as it was, the moment it all came undone. He heard his own voice, barking commands. He watched the Imperium’s elite tear through his unit. Idrithrel Grezeiros, wreathed in an armor of psychic flame. The Mirati princess Kryszorwyn leading their charge through the human forces.
‘He screamed, Sukarno. Did you know that? Before I took him, he begged. In the end, he was just a man. Meat.’
He fell to one knee, unable to breathe.
‘You were supposed to protect him.’
The battlefield shifted once again, and now the Emperor stood before him – burned, hollowed, a corpse lit from within by psionic fire, sprawled over the remains of the queen consort. When Sukarno looked up, he was kneeling. His armor was broken. Blood soaked the insignia on his chest. The body of the Emperor flickered – then warped – and Lazarus took his place, grinning with mechanical stillness.
‘I will build something better,’ Lazarus said with his human voice. ‘Obedient. Efficient. Disposable. No matter the cost.’
Then it wasn’t Lazarus anymore. It was Anastajia, and her expression was contempt.
‘You’re a ghost, Sukarno, fighting a war that ended a hundred years ago. A loyal dog searching for a dead master.’
A black hand reached from the void, pressing against his chest, and the pressure was unbearable.
‘Time has forgotten you,’ the End whispered. ‘She will not remember your name. And when the fires rise again, what will you protect? What will you fail to save?’
And the scene split wide like a wound. He fell – infinitely – through the screaming stars and laughter that never ended.
And then he awoke.
His body jerked upright, drenched in sweat. He was cold. The taste of blood in his mouth. Every light in the room was off. Not broken – turned off. The rifle by his bedside was dismantled; the trigger resting on his chest. His fingers trembled as he reassembled it in silence.
Hey. Hey you. Yeah you. Go vote in the ACAs for your favorite AARs. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/q2-2025-acas.1832070/
Anastajia stood at the center of it all, her arms crossed, posture taut. She had slept – barely – in the guest suite offered to her; one without surveillance, or so Lazarus claimed. The truth was uncertain. These walls whispered even when silent.
Lazarus, in his tall android form, moved like water over a tile – smooth, unsettling. He never blinked. The synthetic approximation of his voice was conversational, but hollow and distorted by the modulators in his chassis.
“These preliminary scans suggest a significant saturation of psionic residue,” he said, watching a display as coils of energy swirled around a 3D model of her nervous system. “Your entire lobe is adapted to channeling. Even at rest, you are interfacing with a frequency far beyond human tolerance thresholds.”
Anastajia’s response was curt. “I know. The Empress taught me how to suppress it.”
Lazarus paused, studying her, calculating. “That… is not suppression. That is coexistence. The fragment inside you… it breathes. Metaphorically. How fascinating.”
She looked away, jaw tense. He made her feel like an animal on a slab. She had endured debriefings before, medical tests, even invasive neural synchronization in Imperium training. But Lazarus was not looking to help. He was looking to understand. That was worse.
“What do you want from me exactly,” she asked.
“Stability,” Lazarus replied. “I want to understand how to stabilize psionic energy into a permanent, non-sentient form. Your possession of this fragment makes you the most viable blueprint.”
“You’ve yet to hold up your own end of the deal, Doctor.”
“Not quite,” he said simply. “I have provided you with the history of the Human Empire’s fall, the experiments I conducted, even clarified the nature of the techniques taught to you by the Mirati Empress.”
She stepped closer to him, eyes sharp. “You know that is not the knowledge I truly seek.”
“Right now, all I can provide you are suspicions,” Lazarus replied, unflinching. “Your biological markers align with what I observed in the Emperor during the final years of his reign.” He paused. “However, your markers do not align with those of the queen consort. A bastard, perhaps?”
Anastajia’s fists tightened, ready to strike.
“Further confirmation will require more than a blood sample. You must make some choices.”
“Choices?” she asked.
“To tap deeper into the powers granted to you by the fragment.”
Her following days blurred together – long hours of sensory analysis, psionic field manipulation, dangerous feedback loops from misaligned amplification attempts. Once, a construct exploded into a cloud of motel alloy as it tried to manipulate its surroundings with psionic energy. Another time, Lazarus instructed her to focus on a specific instability, and the lights in the entire sector dimmed for hours afterwards.
Sukarno remained silent through most of it, watching from an upper platform or leaning against shadowed walls like a sentry caught between duty and disillusionment.
Each evening, Lazarus reviewed the recordings obsessively, mumbling to himself. Anastajia, meanwhile, returned to her quarters with nerves frayed, visions flickering behind her eyes. The End of the Cycle never slept. It whispered even more frequently now, teasing her with terrible promises.
‘I have told you from the start. You cannot use her teachings cannot control me. All those who you believe dear to you, they lied to you, turned you against me.’
She would sit in the dark, gripping the datapad still useless in her satchel, waiting for the next test. The next question. The next truth.
‘They would all carve you open just to get to me. Do not reject me.’
Beneath her resistance, the End continued to stir, alongside a nagging certainty that for all his unnatural presence and obsessive methods, Lazarus was right about one thing.
She was slowly changing.
She was no longer sure that the Empress’s training would be enough to hold the creature within.
The hum of the machines had dimmed to a whisper. The lab was still. Most of the diagnostic staff had gone, and Lazarus, as he often did, retreated to his private vault to sift through the data only he could decipher.
Anastajia stood alone in the test chamber.
She’d been told to rest, but sleep did not come easily in the Tower – not with the End ever murmuring just at the edge of consciousness. Tonight, it had been louder than usual. It wasn’t speaking – it was pacing, as though waiting for something to unfold.
She approached the psionic array they had been using – a ring of dull metal etched with arcane sigils, inert without activation. She placed her hand on it. Just to feel the texture. Just to remind herself she was still grounded, still real.
Then the world peeled away.
One by one, the walls folded around her, like the inside of a collapsing sphere, space and time funneling inward just like on Thile. The lab around her blinked out, and in its place, a throne room of impossible scale.
Shadows stretched across monolithic columns. Stars hung in place like painted dots, unmoving. At the center of it all, a man. Tall, adorned in ceremonial black and gold, his face shrouded in darkness. His voice was like thunder.
Anastajia realized, with a clarity that struck like lightning: this was the Emperor. Emedev Assen, the last Emperor of the Human Empire.
The End stood opposite him – her, but not her. Just like before, the figure was identical in form, but its eyes held the ruin of a million civilisations.
‘You know the cost,’ the End said, its voice layered with a thousand echoes.
‘I do,’ the Emperor replied.
‘Then give it freely, and in return, you will bring the stars to heel.’
Slowly, the Emperor reached towards her – towards the End. His hand passed through its chest, and light surged from behind them both, blinding and warm, then blinding and cold.
In an instant, the world shattered.
She awoke with a gasp, slumped against the cold floor of the chamber. Every nerve felt scorched, but no alarms blared. No defense mechanism was triggered.
And yet – the room was different.
The walls were warped. The floor was cracked, smoldering with psionic residue. Instruments across the lab either shorted out or rebooted into diagnostic safe mode. The psionic shard constructed by Lazarus pulsed in synchrony with her heartbeat across the room.
The door then slammed open.
Lazarus entered in silence, having clearly run from whatever part of the tower he was hiding in. He scanned the room, stopping at her.
“You did something,” he said.
“No,” Anastajia answered slowly, “it did.”
She wouldn’t tell him what she saw. She didn’t mention the Emperor.
It was the End’s sick game.
Anastajia sat behind the reinforced partition now, meditating – calm, perhaps, or simply distant. Lazarus didn’t trust surface readings anymore, not after what had happened.
He turned back to the data feed. The event played again: the precise moment she touched the inert shard array. No energy. No triggering mechanism. Then a sudden fold – a local collapse of psionic containment, space bending not under force, but under will. It was not drawn from the shard itself, but somehow through it.
Lazarus brought up a hidden overlay; an ancient log flagged for restricted eyes only. The text was corrupted in places, but key fragments remained intact.
Lazarus exhaled – an amalgamation of crackling and static sounds. A reflex carried over from the human he once was.
Years ago, there was speculation. A bastard child; the sole inheritor of the Emperor’s bloodline, born in the shadows, spirited away before anyone could confirm lineage. He remembered academic whispers, the off-the-record speculation in Imperial think thanks. Wild theories, of course – but none of them carried a signature this close to the original Emperor’s psionic footprint.
That is, until now.
All of the data from Anastajia’s reaction to the shard aligned with the archived recordings from the destruction of Kni’thokon. This profile wasn’t just a mere copy. It was too precise to be coincidence, and too imperfect to be duplication.
Lazarus muttered something under his breath, too low for his vocal modulator to produce anything more than static gibberish.
He tapped into his private log.
He hesitated… then added a line.
Outside, Anastajia turned towards the glass – as if she had felt his thoughts.
He shut the feed off, then, opening the channel to Sukarno, he issued a single command.
“Increase surveillance. Initiate soft lockdown. No one speaks to her unless cleared through me.”
There was a moment of silence before the masked voice replied.
“This goes against the agreement you have made with her.”
“Affirmative.”
“Do you think it’s her?”
“Inconclusive. She is certainly more than she knows.”
“And if you’re right?”
Lazarus turned toward the storm-wracked skyline of Nymonax.
“Then the key to accessing the secrets of the Shroud is in my hands.”
Days passed by.
She dreamed of black stars – streaks of psionic energy howling with impossible light. She dreamed of the station, of fire, and screaming. Of hands – unfamiliar hands – lifting her from rubble before it all went dark.
She awoke gasping, her pillow soaked. No one came. The cameras didn’t flinch.
She stared at the far wall, eyes unfocused, then looked to the ceiling – as though it might part and reveal a message, a sign, a reason. But there was nothing.
The Imperium had not sent a word.
‘Where is Idrithrel? Where is the Empress?’
She tried to remember the sound of their voices – her mentor’s gruff discipline, the Empress’s cold but guiding clarity. She tried to piece together her last orders. She was sent to investigate the Shadow Tower, yes. But now that the Republic was tearing itself apart, why had no one come?
Was she abandoned? Disavowed? Or worse – forgotten.
Anastajia pulled her knees to her chest, resting her forehead on them. Her mind, usually so sharp, felt unfocused. Blurred. Like the edges of her thoughts had been sanded away.
A whisper curled at the edge of her perception. Smooth. Familiar.
‘This silence speaks volumes, does it not?’
She did not answer.
‘Perhaps your new masters have no use for you anymore. Perhaps the bastard child of a fallen empire makes for an inconvenience. It would not be the first time the Imperium discarded its tools.’
Anastajia clenched her jaw, nails digging into her palms.
‘Do you believe the Empress could reach out to you psionically here? She was the one who chased away the Whisperer in the Void on Thile.’
Anastajia bit her lower lip so hard it drew blood.
‘When you lost control of your powers on Na-Swe-Shuk, when I obtained momentary control of your body, it was the Empress who wrestled you out of my control.’
As she started to tremble uncontrollably, psionic energy began to materialize around her. She lifted her chin, and it was there. Across from her, the End mirrored her appearance.
‘Much like you, she possesses a fragment of mine. She is linked to you. Have you never wondered why she was so knowledgeable of your own powers? Your strengths… Your weaknesses… yet you’ve never met before.’
It snickered, the endless void in its eyes swallowing her whole.
‘I have always done right by you, Anastajia. I have always fulfilled the end of my deals. I have granted you the knowledge you always sought, the powers you desired.’
She stood sharply, stumbling back from nothing in particular. Her heart was racing.
“Get out of my head,” she snapped.
‘Is this not why you are here, Anastajia? You volunteered for this mission, remember? You wanted to confirm the knowledge I have given you ever since you fought Lorkan.’
The End rose to its feet, spreading its arms wide, turning around in a full circle.
‘I have not lied to you.’ It stopped. ‘Your little human doctor confirmed everything I have told you. I am the only one who did not lie to you.’
Anastajia stepped backwards, clutching her head, shaking from side to side.
‘Your precious masters have both lied to you.’
The voice swelled, and the room seemed to dim.
‘The others used you. I will not. I only wish to realize your full potential. Allow me to guide you… not as an overlord… but as your own constant.’
The lights began to flicker – the psionic energy around her exploded, and in a flash, the image of the End was gone once again.
Sukarno was dreaming, but he did not know it. The air was too still, the silence too complete. He could feel his heartbeat, then nothing at all. The room around him had dissolved, and he was standing once again on the scorched plates of Kni’thokon, where the old Empire died screaming.
He could smell the burning air, the explosions in the distance. Feel the rhythm of gunfire in the soles of his feet. A single flicker, then the sky overhead shattered, and a sea of black stars poured in.
From the smoke walked a single figure – an infant, limp in its arms. It was the Emperor’s bastard. The child he’d only seen for an instant before the explosion took them all. He took a step forward to reach her, to complete the mission he had failed.
‘You let him die.’
The words came from the child. No. From the air. From the thing behind the voice.
The child looked up, and her eyes were not her own. It was an endless pit of darkness.
‘You were there,’ the voice rasped, deep and smooth. ‘You were so close. They called you the Emperor’s blade. His shadow. His most faithful hound.’
Sukarno staggered, finding a rifle in his hands. He was back in the spaceport now – exactly as it was, the moment it all came undone. He heard his own voice, barking commands. He watched the Imperium’s elite tear through his unit. Idrithrel Grezeiros, wreathed in an armor of psychic flame. The Mirati princess Kryszorwyn leading their charge through the human forces.
‘He screamed, Sukarno. Did you know that? Before I took him, he begged. In the end, he was just a man. Meat.’
He fell to one knee, unable to breathe.
‘You were supposed to protect him.’
The battlefield shifted once again, and now the Emperor stood before him – burned, hollowed, a corpse lit from within by psionic fire, sprawled over the remains of the queen consort. When Sukarno looked up, he was kneeling. His armor was broken. Blood soaked the insignia on his chest. The body of the Emperor flickered – then warped – and Lazarus took his place, grinning with mechanical stillness.
‘I will build something better,’ Lazarus said with his human voice. ‘Obedient. Efficient. Disposable. No matter the cost.’
Then it wasn’t Lazarus anymore. It was Anastajia, and her expression was contempt.
‘You’re a ghost, Sukarno, fighting a war that ended a hundred years ago. A loyal dog searching for a dead master.’
A black hand reached from the void, pressing against his chest, and the pressure was unbearable.
‘Time has forgotten you,’ the End whispered. ‘She will not remember your name. And when the fires rise again, what will you protect? What will you fail to save?’
And the scene split wide like a wound. He fell – infinitely – through the screaming stars and laughter that never ended.
And then he awoke.
His body jerked upright, drenched in sweat. He was cold. The taste of blood in his mouth. Every light in the room was off. Not broken – turned off. The rifle by his bedside was dismantled; the trigger resting on his chest. His fingers trembled as he reassembled it in silence.
Hey. Hey you. Yeah you. Go vote in the ACAs for your favorite AARs. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/q2-2025-acas.1832070/
Hey guys. Just wanted to come out and mention that this story is going to end soon. I have many other ideas I will be taking on (within the same universe ), so please keep an eye out for that!
As far as this goes, there are going to be three more chapters (all of them larger than usual). I intend to post the next one on 20 July, and then see from there. Thanks for hanging around.
), so please keep an eye out for that!As far as this goes, there are going to be three more chapters (all of them larger than usual). I intend to post the next one on 20 July, and then see from there. Thanks for hanging around.