Kynara remained scarred, its cities still bearing the wounds of war. The streets of Valeris, once overrun by Syndicate forces, were now lined with Coalition patrols and Ashen Prime operatives. Dollus' towering industrial districts, once a beating heart of the Syndicate's war machine, now stood in eerie silence, waiting to be repurposed. Zentha, the sprawling trade hub, struggled to adapt to the absence of black-market dealings that had once fueled its economy. And in Ettemkase, where the Syndicate's grip had been particularly brutal, survivors were still picking up the pieces, rebuilding their shattered homes and lives.
Despite the end of the war, the battle for stability had only just begun. Coalition forces and Ashen Prime worked tirelessly to maintain order, deploying coordinated patrols, establishing heavily fortified checkpoints, and tracking down any remnants of Syndicate loyalists who might still be lurking in the shadows.
A new force had been born from the ashes of the old order, the Unified Kynaran Defense Force (UKDF). This organization was a fragile but determined coalition of former resistance fighters, reformed planetary security guard, and elite Ashen Prime specialists. Together, they took on the responsibility of policing the planet, ensuring that law and order did not collapse into lawlessness.
Their presence in major cities like Valeris and Ettemkase was met with cautious optimism. The citizens, weary from years of oppression, wanted to believe in this new order. But in the mid-sized settlements and scattered outposts, the response was more complicated. Some saw them as protectors, the ones who had freed Kynara from the Syndicate's grasp. Others viewed them with suspicion, as yet another faction claiming authority over their planet, no different from the ones that had come before.
Kynara's underworld had not been completely eradicated, only fractured. The once-powerful Black Sun Syndicate no longer held dominion, but smugglers, bandits, slavers, and rogue mercenaries still operated in the planet's lawless regions. The Kynaran Desert, with its vast, shifting sands, provided the perfect hiding place for fugitives. The Frozen Wastes of the North, where blizzards could swallow entire outposts, became a sanctuary for war criminals and black-market traders. Even in the depths of Zentha's underground, remnants of the old world still thrived, adapting to the new order rather than fighting it.
Authorities knew that Kynara would not be stabilized in weeks, months, or even years. True peace, if it ever came, was still decades away. But that did not stop them from trying. Every checkpoint established, every fugitive captured, and every smuggling route dismantled was another step toward lasting security.
Ethan had no more patience for politics and governance. His role in rebuilding Kynara's new order had ended as far as he was concerned. He was a hunter, a merc, not a leader. With his ship still undergoing extensive repairs, he refused to let himself fall into complacency. The moment he felt his reflexes dulling, the moment he sensed his edge softening, he began accepting the most dangerous contracts available.
Kynara's criminal remnants had scattered, but they had not disappeared. Some Syndicate fugitives had fled into the wilderness, believing the planet's most extreme environments would shield them from justice. They were wrong.
Tracking fugitives through the Kynaran Desert was a grueling test of endurance and patience. The shifting sands could bury a man alive within hours, and the scorching twin suns turned the endless dunes into a furnace. Even the air itself felt like it was burning his lungs. Water was more valuable than bullets, and the heat played tricks on the mind. Mirages of oases that weren't there, shadows that didn't belong to any living thing.
Syndicate stragglers had holed up in ancient ruins, using underground tunnels to avoid aerial surveillance. Some had turned to scavenging, others to piracy, preying on remote convoys passing through the desert. Their survival depended on their ability to remain hidden. But Ethan was a predator, and they were prey.
Wrapped in lightweight adaptive armor to repel the heat, he moved methodically across the sands, using his visor's thermal imaging to pick up faint traces of life beneath the dunes. He tracked them through half-buried pathways, marking each footprint before the wind erased the evidence. He listened to the wind, the shifting grains beneath his boots, the distant hum of repulsor engines struggling against the heat.
More than once, he found himself walking into ambushes. Snipers hidden within ancient wreckage, bandits disguising themselves as lost travelers, Syndicate veterans desperate enough to fight to the last breath. But desperation bred recklessness. And recklessness led to mistakes.
Ethan outmaneuvered them all. He used the dunes against his enemies, forcing them into choke points, trapping them where the sun would blind them, striking from angles they never saw coming. The fights were quick and brutal, ending with bodies left to the desert's merciless embrace.
Some targets weren't worth killing. The cowards, the informants, the ones too broken to resist. Ethan left them alive, bound and marked for pickup by the authorities. He wasn't here to slaughter aimlessly. He was here to sharpen himself, to ensure that no matter where he ended up in the universe, his skills would remain razor-sharp.
If the desert was fire, the Northern Wastes were death's frozen embrace. A land of relentless blizzards, jagged ice formations, and howling winds that could strip flesh from bone. The cold was just as much an enemy as the criminals hiding within it.
Unlike the Syndicate remnants in the desert, the fugitives here were hardened survivalists, accustomed to the brutality of the ice. Many had been former warlords, raiders who had ruled over remote outposts with iron fists. Their crimes were too numerous to list, mass executions, slavery, pillaging entire villages. But the Syndicate's fall had left them with nowhere to run except into the cold.
The settlements in the tundra had suffered under their rule, left vulnerable and exposed to the elements. The people here welcomed Ethan's arrival, offering whatever supplies they could spare in exchange for protection. He didn't promise anything. He simply asked for information, for trails, for signs of where his targets might be hiding.
Hunting in the Northern Wastes required an entirely different skill set. There were no footprints to follow, only disturbances in the snow, trails left by heat signatures barely visible against the frozen landscape. Ethan learned to anticipate ice storms, to read the subtle shifts in the wind that signaled an avalanche. He adapted to the rhythm of the tundra, moving as if he belonged to it.
His approach was silent, methodical, relentless. He ambushed his targets in the dead of night, striking from the cover of snowbanks and ice caves. He lured them into weak ice patches, forcing them to either surrender or drown in the freezing waters below. Every encounter was a brutal game of survival, and Ethan never lost.
The raiders who had once ruled with impunity soon became ghosts, whispers on the wind, their strongholds abandoned, their bodies left frozen in the ice. The survivors, those who surrendered rather than fight, were taken into custody, dragged back to civilization in chains.
These hunts refined Ethan. His tracking became second nature, his ability to read subtle movements, environmental cues, and human behavior reaching near-superhuman levels. He learned to anticipate his prey's movements before they even made them, to recognize patterns in the way people fled, the places they sought refuge, the mistakes they made under pressure.
And with every contract completed, his already huge reputation grew even more.
The whispers of The Harbinger of Death spread across Kynara once more. A mercenary- nay, a valiant hero who appeared without warning, struck down the most dangerous criminals with lethal precision, and vanished before anyone could react. Some called him a hero, others a specter.
Ethan didn't care.
He wasn't hunting for glory. He was hunting to stay sharp.
But there was something else calling to him. Something deeper, something older than his skills as a hunter.
At night, after returning from his hunts, Ethan would sit in silence, the Astral Slayer resting across his lap. He closed his eyes and focused, slowing his breathing, letting the world around him fade away.
Then, he would listen.
At first, there was nothing. Just the ambient hum of the universe, the distant sound of the hangar's energy generators. But as the days passed, something began to change. A whisper. A presence lurking just beneath the dagger's cold metal.
It was the same voice he'd heard during his final battle with Drakor Krenna. A soft murmur just beyond comprehension, like words spoken from another plane of existence. It wasn't human, nor was it mechanical. It was something else entirely.
The more he focused, the clearer it became. But no matter how hard he tried, he could never fully grasp the words. They slipped through his mind like sand through his fingers.
One night, just as he was on the verge of breaking through, a sudden flash of energy surged from the blade. It wasn't visible to the eye, but Ethan felt it..an echo, a pulse deep within his bones. His grip tightened, and for the briefest moment, he saw something. A figure. A silhouette standing at the edge of his vision.
Then it was gone.
He opened his eyes, exhaling slowly.
The Astral Slayer was far more than a weapon. He had always suspected it, but now he knew.
Whatever it was, it was slowly waking up. And in the future, it would speak to him once more.