Youri had moved away from the counter and settled at one of the tables near where Marvin had been sitting, the bottle of gin Marella had given him resting loosely in his grip. The Rusted Halo breathed with noise around him like some wounded mechanical beast refusing to die — laughter mixing with arguments, cards slapping against tabletops, and old speakers buried somewhere in the frigate's walls struggling to push distorted music through layers of static. Lanterns hung from exposed wiring overhead and swayed gently whenever Antia's harsh winds battered the outer hull, their dim amber glow painting the salvaged interior in shifting shadows across rusted steel and welded plating that had been patched so many times the bar no longer resembled the ship it had once been. And yet, for all the noise, the warmth and the chaos around him, Youri felt cut off from it, like a ghost watching life from behind glass.
He poured another glass and drank slowly. The gin burned going down — rough and bitter, nothing refined about it, brewed for miners, scavengers and drifters who cared more about forgetting than flavor. Somehow he appreciated that. There was honesty in harsh things. He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling, where pipes and bundles of cable crossed overhead like veins through metal flesh. Talion came back to him, and with Talion came Thirty-six. The memory settled over him heavily. He set the glass down harder than he meant to, the sound carrying across nearby seats, and a few patrons glanced at him before turning back to their own conversations.
Oh, Six, he thought bitterly. I don't know what to do. The faintest smile touched his face. I thought I had a clue. Thought maybe I finally understood where I was headed. But it seems that was wishful thinking. He stared upward. How I wish you were here, sitting with me. Not for answers, and not for guidance — just for company. The thought lingered painfully. He had crossed worlds, survived Tartarus, and fought beside monsters and gods wearing the shapes of calamities. Still this simple silence hurt more than all of it combined. Leonora's words stayed buried somewhere inside him like rusted blades. She pitied you. She doesn't love you. The memory should have made him angry. Instead it had hollowed him out.
Then the doors of the Rusted Halo burst open with a violent hiss of hydraulics and a slam of metal. The room fell silent almost at once. Youri didn't move. Heavy boots struck the floor. Marvin had come back, and this time he had brought company — six men spreading through the doorway with the forced confidence of scavengers who mistook numbers for courage, in patched coats and scavenged armor bolted crudely over cloth and leather, pistols on their hips, one with a steel pipe wrapped in wiring and another resting his hand near a shock baton. Marvin himself looked worse than before; his face was still swollen from Youri's punch, and rage twisted his features. He stepped forward and shouted across the bar. "Where the fuck is that guy?"
The Rusted Halo went quiet. Conversations stopped. Cards hung in players' hands. Nearly every eye in the room drifted toward Youri, who was still sitting there looking at the ceiling. Marvin followed their gaze. "There you are."
The sound of a shotgun being pumped cut sharply through the tension. Marella stood behind the counter with her mechanical eye glowing faintly red and the shotgun held firmly in her hands. "You motherfucker," she barked. "Didn't you learn your lesson?"
Marvin swung his pistol toward her. "Shut up, bitch! I'm not here for you this time. My business is with that motherfucker!"
Youri let out a quiet breath, leaned forward, and stood, his chair scraping across the floor while the whole room watched. He rolled his shoulders once and cracked his neck. "What do you want?"
Marvin looked almost offended. "Are you fucking with me?"
Youri met his eyes, and there was no challenge in his voice — only exhaustion. "Speak your wish. If you want to shoot me, shoot me. If you want to beat me, beat me." He raised his arms slowly. "I give you my word." His expression never changed. "I won't even flinch."
Something uneasy moved through the room. The words sounded wrong — not brave, not arrogant, only empty.
Marvin lowered his pistol and stepped closer, studying him with narrowed eyes. "You think you're funny?" Youri said nothing, and for a long moment Marvin stood there staring at him, waiting for fear, waiting for some reaction that would justify his anger. Then he punched him. The blow landed hard enough to snap Youri's head sideways. But the rest of his body never moved. Marvin blinked, and the lack of any reaction irritated him at once. "You freak!" His boot slammed into Youri's chest. That finally sent him backward over the table as bottles and glasses crashed across the floor. Before he had even settled against the ground Marvin was on top of him, swinging. Punch after punch crashed into Youri's face, his fists hammering wildly, blood spraying across the floor while the nearby patrons backed away and Marvin shouted with every strike, years of frustration and wounded pride pouring out with each blow.
But Youri didn't resist. He simply lay there. His lip split, blood ran from his nose, one eye began to swell shut — and he never raised a hand, never blocked, never cursed, never struck back. And that frightened Marvin, because violence was supposed to create something — fear, begging, pain — and the man beneath him gave him nothing. Only silence, and those distant eyes staring somewhere far beyond the Rusted Halo.
Youri barely registered the pain. He felt the blows, certainly, but his mind had wandered elsewhere — to Leonora, to Atlantis, to the deck of Tartarusios and her silver hair beneath the crimson sky. Maybe Marvin was right to hit him. Maybe all of it was deserved. Maybe he had spent his whole life waiting for things to change without realizing that he carried ruin with him wherever he went.
Marvin's punches slowed. His breathing grew ragged and sweat rolled down his face. The exhaustion reached him before any satisfaction could. At last he climbed off and staggered back. Youri stayed on the floor with blood covering his face. Still he looked strangely calm. Marvin stared at him, breathing heavily, and for the first time real unease came into his eyes. "Fucking freak," he muttered, and stepped away. His men followed at once. He looked once toward Marella, then stormed out with the others, and the doors hissed shut behind them.
Silence lingered. Then Marella came around the counter at a run, but by the time she reached him, Youri was already sitting up, and she stopped short, shocked. He stood slowly with blood dripping from his chin and bent to pick up the fallen bottle of gin.
"Hey, man," Marella said. "Are you sure you're okay?"
Youri looked at her and smiled. In spite of the blood covering his face, the smile was plain to see — tired, broken, but genuine. "Thanks for the drink." He turned toward the exit.
Marella stared. "That's it?"
He shrugged. "That's it." And without another word, he walked outside.
Yet through all that chaos, one man had stayed silent. In a booth in the far corner, a lone figure had watched from the shadows the whole time, from the moment Youri walked into the Rusted Halo, and unlike everyone else, he had never looked surprised. He only chuckled, and stood. His coat hung long and weathered, a scar lined one side of his forehead. His calm eyes followed the closing doors. He went to the counter and tossed a pouch of Zells to Marella. She caught it and frowned. "Don't tell me you're going after him."
The man smirked. "I've got other things to do."
Marella folded her arms. "I'm telling you, Oscar, that guy is way out of your league. You'd be asking for a lot of trouble if you crossed paths with him."
Oscar glanced once toward the exit, the faint smirk never leaving his face. Then he waved and headed for the door, and the Rusted Halo hissed shut behind him.
Two years after the Battle of Hell, in a distant corner of the galaxy, there was a single planet that orbited no star and received no light from any sun — nothing more than a frozen giant known as Khalil. It served no purpose to anyone but one faction: the Terrian Empire. Deep beneath its endless fields of ice stood the one place no being in existence ever wished to see. Khalil Prison — the only prison in the known universe from which there was no escape. Unless you were serving a fixed sentence, once you passed through its gates, you never left again.
Far below the prison's countless levels, buried in its deepest sector, stood a single colossal door, and behind it lay the cell of none other than Duke Youri Kaelthorn — or at least of what remained of him. For at that time, Youri was not a prisoner in the ordinary sense. He lay suspended in a containment tube, trapped in a deep coma and kept under constant watch. Day and night countless sensors monitored every aspect of his condition to make sure that the man once feared across the galaxy stayed exactly where he was — silent, motionless, and forgotten.