Pain had a shape. And Velora had memorized every edge of it.
Velora's consciousness drifted in a haze—her body still wrapped in cracked stasis gel, the ship's medical systems failing. The hallway had filled with acrid smoke and flickering sparks, cables snapping overhead with violent pops as the Darkstar Sentinel groaned from deep structural damage. In the weightless hum of zero-gravity, Tienerra had dragged Velora's limp form through the corridor, her wings folded tight against her back, eyes narrowed against the intermittent bursts of failing lighting. Her clawed boots scraped against bulkhead edges for leverage, and her tail coiled for control as she steered the two of them down into the medbay.
Now, the stasis pod hissed open beneath flickering lights, the gel cracked and leaking. Aether sensors flickered dimly, warning of neural instability. The Khetari Rhyx moved like a blur beside them, voice tense as he adjusted the pod's failing parameters. Tienerra hovered beside Velora, legs anchored into magnetic locks on the deck, her violet eyes never leaving the Kitsurai's pale, unresponsive face.
But Velora wasn't entirely gone. Somewhere beneath the layers of sedation and memory... she was reliving the beginning.
Flashback – Nexus-7 Facility, Age 10
The smell of sterilized metal never left her.
Velora sat curled against a steel wall, knees drawn to her chest, her fur matted with dried saline and faint traces of blood. Around her were children—infants crying from nearby cages, teenagers too still, too quiet. Some looked human, others like her—marked by their species but equal in their suffering. Some had names. Most had numbers.
Her eyes drifted to the boy across from her—thin, bruised, ears twitching erratically. Varek. A Nypherian, barely nine, yet his golden eyes held the stare of someone far older. He didn't speak much, but when he did, it was sharp and full of silent defiance.
They didn't bond over kindness. They bonded over survival.
"You're not bleeding today," Velora whispered, as if that were a good thing.
Varek shrugged. "They used smaller needles."
She nodded, wincing as she shifted. Her spine still ached from the last injection. "Did they tell you what it's for?"
"Power," Varek said. "Control."
They didn't yet grasp the depth of Aetherbind—its science or its savagery. But they understood the rhythm of the place: if the others screamed, pain would soon find them too.
Present
Velora convulsed again on the medical bench. Her veins lit with unstable Aether, flickering between blue and violet. The radiant hue within her violet-purple fur began to dim with every passing second, a slow fade of life force. Her pulse was faint—erratic—and sinking.
Rhyx hovered beside her, fingers dancing across holo-controls. "Systolic pressure's plummeting… 43 over 27. Her core temperature's dropping."
His gaze darted to the deep incision left by the hasty removal of the bomb just hours earlier—torn tissue, exposed cartilage, and a failing attempt at cauterization now hemorrhaging internally.
"She's crashing," he muttered. "The myocardial wall didn't recover from the trauma—she's bleeding out into the pericardium. We don't have time for finesse."
Tienerra didn't hesitate. She activated her gauntlet's micro-scalpel, its energy blade extending with a whir. With precision, she extended the incision along the thoracic cavity, just beneath the fourth rib, slicing into the weakened seam. A hiss of pressurized blood and fluid escaped, splattering the side of the pod.
"Pericardial tamponade," Rhyx said through gritted teeth. "I'm draining it—get ready to enter."
He inserted a drainage port and began suction. Tienerra immediately followed, gloved hand sliding beneath Velora's sternum, finding the heart—a still, soft weight beneath her palm.
"Her fur's barely glowing…" Tienerra's voice trembled. The luminescent streaks in Velora's limbs were fading to a dull violet-gray, the once-shimmering lines like embers starved of air.
"She's in pulseless electrical activity," Rhyx confirmed. "We've got conduction, but no cardiac output."
Tienerra planted a knee beside the pod and leaned over, straddling Velora with one foot braced on either side of her torso. With her hand now inside the thoracic cavity, she began internal cardiac massage—gentle, rhythmic compressions directly against the ventricles.
Blood pulsed weakly under her fingertips.
Her other hand hovered, glowing with restrained Aether energy, stabilizing the exposed tissues and cauterizing leaks as needed. Her wings drooped from fatigue, the edges singed from prior heat bursts.
The medbay lights flickered wildly, and another bulkhead groaned in protest. Tienerra didn't budge.
"I'm attaching stabilization nodes," Rhyx said, attaching a pair of neural contact points to Velora's temples. "Just keep going. We lose perfusion to the brain, she's gone."
Flashback – Nexus-7: Testing Chamber
She was strapped down again, her fur shaved along her arms, new veins visible under glowing surgical lights. Machines hummed and pulsed beside her. The room was filled with masked figures, muttering about "Elemental thresholds" and "tissue degradation rates."
Somewhere in the adjacent chamber, she heard a boy scream—Varek.
Her claws curled into her palms. She tried to focus on that sound, tried to imagine she was somewhere else. But when they began the chemical injection, her body seized. Her tail thrashed against restraints. She blacked out to the feeling of her bones vibrating, as if something inside her was trying to pull apart.
She awoke only partially, pain laced through her chest and stomach. Cold hands dragged her across sterile flooring, then dropped her—hard—into another cell. Metal clanged behind her as the door sealed. Her body convulsed once more before going still.
Something shifted nearby. A grunt, then slow breathing. She blinked open one swollen eye to find Varek slumped against the corner. He looked worse than before—lips cracked, bruising along his ribs, one arm bound in crude mesh tape.
He didn't speak at first. Just stared.
Then slowly, he pulled himself toward her and dropped beside her without ceremony.
"You scream louder than me," he muttered.
She couldn't even laugh—but her tail moved slightly, curling in his direction.
Varek reached into the folds of his jumpsuit and pulled out a stolen ration pellet. He broke it in half, placed one piece in her trembling hand.
"They'll want us strong enough to keep testing," he said. "So we stay strong for each other."
And in that silence, bruised and broken in the dark, they began building the only thing they had left: trust.
Present
A sudden jolt rocked the ship. One of the medbay's lower gravity locks snapped loose with a sharp clang, sending metallic tools tumbling through the weightless chamber. Holo-monitors sparked erratically, and a conduit burst open near the ceiling, spraying flickers of energy and a hiss of coolant into the air. Tienerra's wings flared instinctively, one brushing the medbay wall to keep herself anchored. Her claws dug into a nearby rail, tail coiling for counterbalance.
Velora's vitals spiked—then dipped dangerously low.
The heart monitor let out a continuous, piercing tone.
"Flatline," Rhyx said, horror thick in his voice. His ears flattened, tail lashing as he reached for an adrenaline auto-injector from the emergency tray instead—defibrillation was out of the question with Tienerra's hand still inside the chest cavity.
Tienerra didn't hesitate. Her fingers, still slick with blood, pressed deeper into Velora's thoracic cavity. She angled her wrist toward the heart and summoned her Aetherbind, channeling it through her arm like liquid fury. Arcs of red electricity cracked violently from her elbow down to her fingertips.
"Clear," she said, voice low and commanding.
The first pulse hit.
Velora's body arched slightly. No response.
A second jolt—stronger, fueled by desperation and raw will.
Tienerra's jaw clenched, fangs exposed. Her wings trembled with residual feedback. Then—
A beat.
She stilled. The rhythmic flutter of contraction pulsed softly against her fingers.
Another beat.
She exhaled, the tension in her chest releasing with it.
"She's back," she whispered, her voice fraying.
Rhyx was already on the move. He drifted in expertly despite the unstable gravity, his digitigrade stance adapting easily. "Withdraw slowly. I'm initiating auto-stitch on the myocardium and binding the pericardium with biosynth weave."
Tienerra eased her hand out, crimson trailing behind her wrist. Rhyx immediately began cleansing the cavity, applying micro-injectors and guiding a nanoseal filament across the tissue.
Velora's vitals pulsed green. Her fur—faintly—began to glow again. Not strong, but alive.
Tienerra slumped back, her muscles twitching from the backlash of Aetherbind overload. She drifted in zero-g, her right arm visibly seizing in small spasms—nerve feedback from the direct surge she'd channeled into Velora's chest. Her wings hung limp, scorched along the trailing edges. Blood floated in slow orbs around her before catching in the vents. She made no move to anchor herself again—just floated, eyes unfocused, the glimmer of pain behind her faintly glowing violet gaze tempered only by the weak but steady pulse on the monitor beside her: Velora lived.
Flashback – Nexus-7: The Beginning of the End
Velora was 14. Varek was barely 13.
The screams that day weren't theirs—at first.
Earlier that cycle, a pair had arrived: a tall figure in regal attire flanked by a child close to Velora's age. She'd caught only a glimpse through the narrow slot in her cell door. The girl's eyes glowed faintly, hands cuffed in polished restraints that shimmered with embedded runes. The taller figure, draped in deep navy robes lined with gold, spoke in hushed tones with the lead technician. It was rare to see outsiders here.
They were escorted deeper into the facility.
Moments later, the screaming began—but it wasn't from the children. A scientist sprinted into the corridor where Velora and Varek were held, blood smeared across his chest. He barely made it ten paces before something cut him down—clean and silent.
That was their signal.
Varek, quick as ever, used a splintered edge of conduit he'd hidden to break the manual latch. The cell hissed open. His golden eyes flicked to hers—no words exchanged.
They ran.
The chaos beyond their corridor was unlike anything they had imagined. Doors left open. Smoke curling from vents. The faint flicker of red Aether in the distance.
They climbed, crawled, and tore their way through ventilation shafts and blast-warped hallways. The screams grew distant. By the time they breached the outer gate, all that remained was the dark.
Outside, the world was an ocean of towering city-structures, stacked so high they blotted out the sky. Lights blinked from layers upon layers of bridges and suspended rails. The air reeked of ozone and rust.
Velora paused at the edge of a broken balcony, tail curling tight around her ankle for balance.
Varek landed beside her, panting.
They vanished into the jungle of steel and neon, swallowed by the undercity shadows.
Velora stirred, her tail twitching slightly in the gel. Her breath hitched—just once.
Present
Two days had passed since the emergency surgery. The hum of the Darkstar Sentinel was uneven but present, systems gradually returning to life thanks to Rhyx's tireless patchwork. Tienerra and Rhyx moved like shadows between compartments, replacing power relays, rerouting burned wiring, and manually overriding jammed control nodes. They spoke little—exhaustion ran deep, but purpose kept them upright.
Tienerra's armor still bore the dried remnants of blood and Aether-burns. Her hands, though bandaged, were stained with the deep red-brown smear of half-scrubbed plasma. There hadn't been time—or energy—for showers. Her wings were tattered at the edges, scales scorched and singed in patches from residual surges. She looked more like a wraith than a warrior.
She stood on a scorched platform near engineering when Nyx's voice buzzed through her neural link.
"Alert: Patient Velora has regained consciousness. Vitals stabilizing. Brain activity consistent with wakefulness."
Tienerra didn't wait.
She bolted down the half-lit corridor, her boots clanging off exposed plating. Her wings tucked tight, tail lashing for momentum as she launched herself through the central hatchway into the medbay.
Inside, dim lights glowed pale green around the stasis chamber. Velora sat propped up slightly, her violet-purple fur matted but clean, streaks of dulled bioluminescence flowing along her limbs. Her breathing was shallow but steady.
Her crimson eyes, glassy and hooded, flicked toward the door as Tienerra entered. A moment passed in silence.
Then, with a rasping voice, Velora murmured, "It feels like I went through a lot... and the first thing I see is your ugly face. Talk about a shitty day."
Tienerra froze—then exhaled a half-laugh, half-sob, wings relaxing at her back. "Nice to see your attitude survived."
Velora blinked slowly. "Only part of me that didn't get torn open."
And for the first time in days, the ship didn't feel like it was falling apart.
Flashback – Months Later: Lower Levels of Kaethros Spire
Their new world was made of shadows.
The planet they'd fled to was a city-world—Kaethros Prime. A mountainous skyline of buildings scraping the edge of the stratosphere, layers of civilization stacked upon each other like bones of the forgotten.
Velora and Varek moved like ghosts through the lower levels. They stole. They hid. They survived.
It happened on a crowded transit walkway, between market levels soaked in light and the choking smells of recycled air and sizzling street food. Varek brushed past a tall figure clad in polished black armor—his hand moving quick, subtle.
He didn't realize who he'd just pickpocketed.
Sable.
By the time he returned to Velora, panting with a smirk and flashing a sleek data prism, she already knew something was wrong. Sable was behind them—silent, effortless, walking with the patient certainty of death.
They ran.
They twisted through narrow maintenance alleys, ducked between grime-covered ductways, and dove into a forgotten maintenance structure deep in the undercity. But their size and agility only bought them time.
Sable cornered them in a crumbling substructure, its only exit sealed with collapsed piping. Smoke hung in the air, and the buzzing of nearby power lines filled the silence.
Varek stood between Sable and Velora, claws extended, panting. His tail flicked defensively, fur bristling. "Come on, it was just a few credits," he said, trying to downplay it, flicking the stolen data prism between two fingers. "Not like you're hurting for it."
Sable's head tilted slightly, the lights of Kaethros reflecting off the polished edge of his black helm. "Credits?" he repeated slowly, as if testing the word for absurdity. His voice was like steel sliding across glass—controlled, cutting. "No. That prism holds something far beyond value. Not currency. Not leverage."
He took a step forward, the air tightening around him, weighty and cold. "It contains something far more important than your life ever will be."
The fight was brutal.
Varek moved with a feral grace, launching first—his claws slashing across Sable's side with everything he had. Sparks burst from torn plating as a thin gash opened, leaking dark, viscous blood. The impact staggered Sable—not much, but enough to draw a hiss of silence from the alley itself, as though the world paused in disbelief.
Sable looked down at the wound, then up at Varek. His posture shifted, growing straighter, heavier. With a slow roll of his shoulders, the air around him grew dense—pressurized with intent.
The mask along his cheek cracked as if in protest. "No more restraints," he muttered—voice as cold as the void.
Then came annihilation.
Varek barely saw the strike. A single, backhanded blow drove him into the concrete wall with a concussive crunch. His spine twisted on impact, limbs going limp as he crumpled to the ground.
Velora screamed—raw and terrified—as she saw his body fall.
His golden eyes didn't close, but they didn't move either.
Then everything changed.
Velora's vision tunneled. The world narrowed. Her heartbeat vanished beneath a roar.
The Aether didn't rise from her.
It erupted.
The ground beneath her fractured with a scream of breaking metal and stone. Molten rock burst outward, vaporizing support beams and liquefying ferrocrete. Purple sparks whipped through the blast zone like spectral lightning, scorching anything they touched. Shockwaves rippled upward into the superstructure, shattering glass and sending walkways collapsing in cascading ruin.
Buildings hundreds of meters tall buckled from the base as structural cores overloaded. Explosions lit the sky in rapid succession, a chain reaction of devastation turning the lower city into a smoking hellscape. Dozens—possibly hundreds—were caught in the collateral pulse, their screams vanishing beneath the roar of Aether-born destruction.
What remained was a crater nearly a kilometer wide. Molten slag trickled from its edges, and twisted beams curled like dying fingers toward the smoke-choked sky. Emergency sirens began to echo in the distance—too late.
At the epicenter stood Velora—knees buckled, claws sunk into bubbling stone. Smoke curled from her violet fur, her eyes glowing with raw, untamed power. Her chest rose and fell, but her expression was blank, shell-shocked.
And at the edge of the devastation, where the ground still shimmered with residual heat, knelt Sable.
His armor was scorched, one gauntlet slagged to exposed synth-muscle. His helm was cracked, revealing a sliver of his face—wide eyes, stunned but burning.
He stared not with fear… but with revelation.
Horror.
And opportunity.