The five surviving ships left Antia and finally made their way home to Terria. Their mission had failed, but they were not returning empty-handed: with Youri captured and Altopereh back under their control, General Mikhail Rozasar still had something to show for it. Even so, the battle with the Tartarusios and Altopereh had been an utter disaster. They had lost two God Units and more than ninety-five percent of the fleet. Altopereh's rampage had been as unexpected as it was brutally decisive — an event that exposed how little the Empire truly understood about the God Orbitons. The Battle of Hell was the first time the Empire had ever witnessed a God Orbiton's full awakening. The ancient scriptures spoke of the Orbitons' power, but they had never once mentioned their true forms. That silence left every soldier who survived the battle shaken, confused and haunted.
Aboard the Millia, Leonora's flagship, doctors and nurses crowded the operating room as they worked on Youri. He lay on the table with a mask feeding him oxygen, and the state of his body was almost unbearable to look at. Some of his cuts ran so deep that bone and vein were clearly visible. Nearly all his ribs were broken. There were fractures in his skull and both of his arms and his left leg, and the room pulsed with the rhythmic beeping of the machines keeping him alive.
After six long hours, the operation was over, and Leonora was told at once. She ran to the medbay. As the doors slid open and the light from the corridor spilled across the dim room, she saw him floating inside a tall cylindrical pod full of green liquid, with cables attached all over his body and a tube-mask covering his mouth. He hung there motionless with his eyes closed, his brown hair drifting weightlessly while bubbles rose around him.
Leonora pressed her hand against the glass, and sadness filled her eyes as she looked at her husband. "You idiot," she whispered. "I don't know what's going to happen to you now. Leaving me with all this mess." A single tear rolled down her cheek. "You should have taken me with you."
A few bubbles rose from the pod. Leonora pulled a chair up beside it and sat down. She did not leave. The medical officers came and went through the night, checking readings and adjusting the flow of the green liquid. Each time one of them suggested gently that she should rest, she only shook her head without taking her eyes off him. Somewhere around the third hour, she rested her forehead against the cool glass and closed her eyes. For the first time in five years, the man she was keeping watch over was close enough to touch.
Deep inside his unconscious mind, Youri found himself floating again in the strange water he always drifted through after he separated from Altopereh — a dark, almost holy place where the light barely reached. As he drifted, a faint glow began to form in front of him, growing brighter and brighter until it swallowed him completely. The light carried him to a place he had long forgotten, a place that no longer existed anywhere: his first home.
It was an orphanage on the outskirts of a planet called Volar. Its front gate was wrought in delicate loops and curls and twisting vines, and above it hung an old sign that he had read a thousand times as a boy:
Whenever a shadow is cast, don't forget that light was present too.
A small smile touched his lips, and he stepped through. Forgotten memories flooded back as he walked the familiar path toward the house, with its tall columns framing the front porch and its broad steps leading up to a heavy wooden door. When he opened it, sunlight was spilling through the far windows in warm pools across patterned rugs and well-loved furniture — the old sofa draped in red and floral fabric, the sturdy table with its neat stack of books — and twin staircases swept upward with their carved railings.
As he stepped inside, a small shadow darted behind him. Youri turned, but there was nothing there, and then the shadow skittered up the stairs. "Who are you?" he called out. No answer came, and after a moment he followed it up. Every step creaked exactly the way it had when he was young. Still the same, he thought. At the top, a narrow hallway lit by a dim amber chandelier led past silent doors to a curtained doorway at the far end, and the curtain was swaying softly, as though something had just brushed past it. He pulled it aside and stepped into a long room with two neat rows of beds under smooth blue covers, each one holding its own fragment of a childhood world — a folded blanket, a tucked-away book, a toy resting by a pillow. He walked slowly down the aisle with the wooden boards creaking beneath him, past the tall cabinets full of little shoes, hanging uniforms, framed photos and trinkets collected over the years.
Then the shadow crawled out from beneath one of the beds and stood behind him. "Why are you here?" it asked.
Youri spun around, and he saw a child. Not just any child. It was himself.
The boy spoke again, in a voice small but steady. "This is my home. Are you here to take me away?"
Youri sat down on the wooden floor in front of him. "Don't worry, buddy. No one is taking you anywhere."
"But I want to go," the boy said. "I'm all alone. Everyone else already left."
Youri laid a gentle hand on the boy's head. "I know, bud. But you have to be brave. The day will come when you'll leave too. Just remember this — don't let a single moment slip by you. Enjoy every one of them. Life is long, and this little time you have now… it'll be some of the best you'll ever get." A tear slid down his face as he said it.
The young Youri reached up and laid his small hand against the older one's cheek. "You too," he whispered softly. "Your memories are always here for you."