The vacuum is soundless, but the Trevarian fleet sings a silent song of power. Daggers of dark-gray metal, with the aggressive triangular geometry of their nation, hang against the infinite tapestry of space. Inside them, the light is cold, functional, and the air vibrates with the low-frequency hum of warming antimatter engines, a contained thunder that reverberates in the core of every soldier aboard. On the command bridges, in the steel corridors, one name is a whisper, a memory, a curse: Corruptor. And the man tasked with hunting this ghost stands on the flagship's bridge, the King's Shadow, watching the stars distort in the observation visor.
General Trois Cesarino. His father's name is a stain on his honor, but his own deeds have forged him into something different. He stands tall, his cobalt-blue armor absorbing the ambient light, and his blonde dreadlocks a cascade of gold contrasting with the darkness of his features. Beside him, smaller in stature but not in presence, is General Indire Fritz. His head is shaved in complex patterns that gleam under the light, and his fair beard is a severe frame for a mouth that rarely smiles.
— It's been a while since I've seen your father, Trois. — Indire's voice is like gravel, dry and practical. — How do you reckon that old bastard is doing? Probably counting someone else's money.
Trois does not turn around. A melancholic smile, so fleeting it almost didn't exist, touches his lips.
— It has been a long time, indeed. — he traces the outline of a distant nebula with his gloved finger on the reinforced glass. — My father was always a man of dubious character. A shark who mistook a mud puddle for the ocean. But still... he is my father. And I love him. — the confession comes out heavy, a paradox he carries as part of his armor. — And Corruptor... Corruptor was my brother, Indire. Not by blood. By choice.
While loyalty and duty wage war light-years away, the object of their hunt is wallowing in hell. Achtaria, far from the sickly opulence of Ceasar's castle, is a maze of foul alleys and tight lanes. Corruptor runs. The sound of his own ragged breath is a drum in his ears, each intake a gulp of stale air that burns his lungs. The smell is a physical aggression: rotten garbage, stagnant water, and the acrid stench of fear and poverty. The rough stone walls scratch his hands as he leans on them, trembling with exhaustion.
— I need to get off this planet soon... before they find me. — the whisper is a wisp of sound, swallowed by the darkness. His mind is a whirlwind. The image of Ceasar's body falling, the sound of the shot, the glare of the broken glass. It all repeats in a nauseating loop.
He stumbles and almost falls, his body finally rebelling. He stops, bending over, hands braced on his knees, head hanging. Sweat runs from his hair, dripping onto the filthy ground. His heart hammers against his ribs like a prisoner trying to escape. It is in this moment of desperate silence, broken only by his uneven breathing, that it comes.
It is not a sound. It is a pressure. A presence that seeps into the corners of his mind, cold and ancient.
Corruptor lifts his head abruptly, wide eyes scanning the shadows. There is no one.
— You again… — he gasps, the words tearing at his throat. — What do you want now?
The voice does not echo. It is simply there, filling the spaces between his thoughts, calm and absolute.
— I want you to go to Earth.
The order is so bizarre, so out of context, that for a moment Corruptor's exhaustion turns into a stifled, hysterical laugh. Earth. But the pressure in his mind increases, demanding, insisting. The panic of being captured, the adrenaline of the escape, the crushing fatigue… it all combines. Fighting this voice feels harder than simply obeying. Submission is a relief.
— Damn it… — he groans, his whole body trembling. — Y-yes… I-I'll do it…
Hours later, the King's Shadow tears through Achtaria's yellowish atmosphere. The ship, a masterpiece of Trevarian engineering, descends with terrifying grace, its engines roaring like caged beasts before silencing with a diminishing whistle. The landing ramp lowers, revealing the dusty sunlight and the planet's hot, dry air.
Trois and Indire walk down the ramp, followed by a legion of elite soldiers in black armor. The contrast between their impeccable technology and the desolate landscape is stark. They do not stop to admire the view. Their steps are synchronized, determined, eating up the terrain toward the distant silhouette of the castle.
— We will corner him and arrest him. No fatalities, if possible. — his voice is firm, a general's order, but there is an undertone of plea in it. — I don't want to see my friend lose himself this way. Not completely.
Indire nods, his gaze fixed on the castle growing on the horizon.
— You are right. — he agrees. — He grew up with us. We played war in those gardens in Illuvaria. Now... the war is real. I wonder what made him like this. What the hell can break a man that way.
The air at the entrance of Ceasar's castle is thick and still. The dusty sun beats down on the worn stone, and the heat radiating from the ground seems to suck the strength from their legs. The silence is the first thing that strikes them. There is none of the normal noise of a fortress, the distant clang of the smith, the shouts of the drill sergeants, the laughter of off-duty soldiers. There is only a tense silence, broken by the hot wind whistling through the battlements. The guards posted at the main gate are statues of sweat and panic. Their wide, haunted eyes follow the approach of Trois and Indire, but their bodies do not move. Their discipline has been broken by something worse than any enemy they have ever faced.
Before they can cross the shadowy threshold of the gate, a stooped figure in livery emerges from the darkness. It is an old butler, his face as wrinkled as a forgotten parchment, but his movements still carry the essence of a lifetime of service. He stops before them, his trembling hands clasped in front of his body.
— Prince Trois, direct heir to the throne of Achtaria… — the butler's voice is a dry whisper, like dead leaves rustling on stone. His eyes shift sideways. — And Indire, "The General of Sound." — He bows, a stiff, painful movement that is more a spasm of duty than a gesture of reverence.
Trois and Indire exchange a quick glance. Indire's title, earned in battles where his sonic tactics shattered enemy formations, sounds strange and hollow in this silence. They return the courtesy with a nod.
— Prince… — the butler straightens, but cannot meet Trois's eyes. He stares at a spot on the cobalt-blue breastplate of the armor. — I have terrible news for you.
A knot of ice forms in Trois's stomach. He already knew something was wrong. Terribly wrong. But the old man's words make it real.
— What do you have to tell me, Elian? — Trois's voice is harsher than he intended. Apprehension is a metallic taste in his mouth.
— It is true that King Ceasar… — Elian swallows hard, his throat clicking. — He had a secret alliance with the traitor, Corruptor. He stole from other systems, from unprotected worlds, and in return, my lord… the king… provided him with a safe refuge. A sanctuary. However…
The butler's hesitation is torture. Every second of silence stretches the tension to a breaking point.
— Please, continue! — Trois's voice is now a plea, the general's authority dissolving, revealing the frightened son underneath. Indire places a heavy hand on Trois's shoulder, a silent anchor in the brewing storm.
— Yesterday… — Elian continues, his eyes welling up with tears. — The soldiers of the royal guard were on field training. An order… an unusual order from the king himself. The throne room was empty. Unprotected. With the exception of the king.
Indire squeezes Trois's shoulder. Both know what this means. A trap. A created opportunity.
— When the soldiers returned to their vigil, they heard… a sound. A familiar gunshot to any warrior. The sound of a hand cannon.
— Come on, keep going!! Elian, just say it! — Trois's shout echoes in the silent courtyard, making the petrified guards flinch. The fear in his voice is now a sharp knife.
— When they reached the room... when they broke down the doors... — The butler hesitates once more, contorting his face in a mask of pure pain, preparing to deliver the final blow.
— What did they find?! — Trois is nearly breathless, the world narrowing to a tunnel focused on the old man's face.
The words leave the butler like a poison, a final exhale.
— The king... King Ceasar I, of the kingdom of Achtaria... your father, my Prince... had been murdered.
The world stops. The sound of the wind, the heat of the sun, the weight of the armor, everything vanishes. Only the void that the butler's words created remains. A black hole opens in Trois's chest, cold and infinite. The tears come first, hot and sudden, blurring his vision.
— My father... — his voice is a wisp, broken, the question of a lost child. — He was killed?
Elian, the butler, only confirms with a nod, tears now streaming freely down his wrinkled face. It is enough. The control shatters. The general's discipline evaporates. Despair takes him, a physical force that propels him forward. He runs. He rushes past the butler, past the guards, plunging into the darkness of the castle, the sound of his metal boots hammering on the floor like the beat of his broken heart.
He bursts into the throne room. The scene hits him like a punch to the gut. The air smells of old blood and cleaning chemicals. In the center of the room, where a throne should be, there is only a chalk outline on the floor and an ugly, dark stain that no scrubbing will ever completely erase. His father's body has been moved to the side, covered by a white sheet, but not before the examiners began their work. One of them, a man in a gray lab coat, stands nearby, making notes on a data clipboard.
Trois's heart breaks. That stain on the floor was his father's life. That mound under the sheet was the man who taught him to fight, who held him, who loved him, despite all his flaws.
Elian enters the room behind him, breathless.
— Prince… there is one more thing.
Trois does not turn around. He cannot take his eyes off the white sheet.
— Ceasar was killed by a shot. A high-energy projectile, from a weapon not cataloged in our arsenal. A weapon that did not belong to the soldiers, nor to anyone in this castle.
— And what does that mean? — Trois's voice is hollow, dead. — Who killed him?
The butler hesitates, and the silence that follows is the sentence itself. The words, when they come, are only the confirmation of what Trois's soul already knew.
— Among everyone who has been in this castle recently, Prince… Only Corruptor did not possess a conventional weapon.
That is it. The last piece. The last nail in the coffin.
Trois's legs give way. He doesn't fall to his knees; he collapses. The sound of his armor hitting the marble is violent, final. The pain, the shock, the grief, everything merges into a single emotion, white and incandescent: rage. Pure, primal, absolute. His gloved fists smash against the stone floor, again and again, the physical pain a welcome relief from the agony in his soul. Tears and sweat stream down his face, mixing with the dust on the floor. A sound emerges from his throat, a moan that turns into a scream, a roar of a wounded animal that echoes through the throne room, through the corridors, through the entire cursed castle.
— DAMN HIM! DAMN YOU, CORRUPTOR! I WILL HUNT YOU! I SWEAR BY MY FATHER'S BLOOD, I WILL HUNT YOU UNTIL THE END OF MY DAYS AND DRAG YOUR SOUL BACK TO HELL!
Indire approaches, and the sound of his heavy boots is a somber counterpoint to the sound of Trois's fists smashing against the stone. He stops beside his kneeling friend, his shadow covering Trois's trembling form. He does not touch him. Grief, he knows, is a wild animal that must not be forcefully restrained.
— Trois… — Indire's voice is low, a baritone trying to cut through the red haze of anger. — Don't let yourself be overcome by rage. Think. We don't have concrete proof that it was him. Only the word of a servant and an unidentified weapon. It could be a setup. Ceasar had a thousand enemies.
Before Trois can answer, the trembling voice of the butler, Elian, interjects. He approaches, stooped as if the weight of the castle were on his shoulders.
— Sir Indire… in fact… — Elian clears his throat, his eyes fixed on the stained floor. — Corruptor is no longer here. He disappeared. We have not found him in his quarters, nor anywhere else in the castle, since the incident yesterday. Soldiers are scouring the city at this very moment, but it is as if he has dissolved into smoke.
The information falls like oil on the fire of Trois's fury. Proof. It was the only proof he needed. The escape was the confession.
Far away, under the same yellowish moon that now seems to mock Trois's grief, Corruptor is gasping for breath in a graveyard of giants. An ancient space travel terminal, abandoned for decades. Corroded metal structures rise like skeletons against the sky, and the wind whistles through broken windows, singing a mournful lament. Achtaria's nature has already begun to reclaim the place. Thick, leathery-leaved vines suffocate the walls, and a family of small, bristly-haired, lizard-like creatures flees into the shadows as Corruptor approaches his discovery.
It is a ship. Small, old, a light cargo model whose paint has long peeled off, revealing the gray metal beneath. A relic. But the lines of its hull are still solid, and the boarding ramp, though jammed, seems intact.
— It will do. — he murmurs, his voice hoarse from running. He kicks one of the landing gear legs. The metal resonates with a solid thud. — I hope the damn fuel hasn't evaporated.
He forces the ramp, the muscles in his shoulders straining under his torn shirt. With a groan of protest, the metal yields. The interior smells of dust, mold, and the musk of the creatures that have made it their home. He ignores it. The control panel flickers faintly when he diverts auxiliary power. Most systems are dead, but navigation and the main engines still have a thread of life. He types the coordinates, not from memory, but from an impulse, a whisper implanted in his mind. Planet Earth. The navigation screen blinks, accepting the unknown destination. With the ship rumbling in reluctant protest, Corruptor departs, tearing through Achtaria's sky, unaware of the small red light blinking under the hull, an old but functional tracker, screaming his location to whomever was listening.
Back at the castle, a soldier from the communication unit runs into the throne room, his armor resounding on the floor. He stops, panting, before Trois and Indire.
— Sir! General! — he straightens up, trying to regain composure. — A ship has just breached the airspace quarantine. A light freighter, old model. It departed toward… Sector 7G. The programmed destination is a planet called… Earth.
Indire turns to Trois, concern etched on his face.
— Are you going there too? Will you chase him to that end of the world?
Trois stands up. The trembling is gone. The tears have dried, leaving streaks of salt on his dirty skin. The pain is still there, a black hole in his chest, but now it is contained, focused, transformed into something cold and hard as diamond. It is the terrifying calm that comes after the storm has passed and left only destruction.
— Yes. — the answer is a single word, but it carries the weight of a blood oath. — But not immediately. First, I will inform King Trevor that I am going after his son. That the time for bringing him back by force is over. Now it is a hunt.
He turns to Indire, and his eyes are no longer those of a grieving friend. They are the eyes of a king and a hunter.
— Understood. — Indire understands. The line has been crossed.
— Come on, Indire. — Trois begins to walk out of the room. — I will spend the night here to hold my father's funeral. It is the least I can do. Then, I must organize my coronation. I cannot hunt a traitor as a prince. I need to hunt him as the King of Achtaria.
Indire nods and follows him, leaving the throne room and its stain of memory behind. As the two generals disappear into the corridor, a figure who had been observing everything from an upper gallery retreats into the shadows. Hidden beneath a ragged brown cloak, his face completely obscured by a deep hood, the mysterious man watches their departure. After a brief moment, he turns, not towards a door, but towards the stone wall. He phases away from it and, like smoke, vanishes, leaving behind only the silence and the secret of his presence.
Time in the vacuum is a tasteless piece of gum that stretches for an eternity between one point and another. The stars, when viewed from a slow, old ship like this one, are not a moving spectacle. They are pinpricks of cold, static light on a blanket of infinite darkness. The only sound is the low, sickly hum of the overloaded engines and the occasional groan of metal protesting against its own existence. Traffic on this forgotten route is non-existent, which is both a blessing and a curse. No one to help you, no one to hunt you. The solitude is absolute.
Corruptor is slumped in the pilot's seat, which smells of mold and decades of sweat from other anonymous fugitives. The faint light from the control panel illuminates his face, highlighting the feverish sheen in his eyes and the dark shadows beneath them. He has not slept for days. Sleep brings images: Ceasar's shocked face, the sound of the shot, the glass shattering. And something else. A fleeting, almost subliminal image that his mind insists on reliving.
— Why was he there? — the murmur is a rough sound in the pressurized silence of the cabin. — That cloak...
He closes his eyes, forcing the memory. In the throne room, just after Ceasar's death, as chaos began to erupt in the corridors, he looked back for a fraction of a second before jumping. And he saw. In an upper gallery, shrouded in shadows, a figure. A brown cloak, the hood completely covering the face. It was not a guard. It was not a servant. It was something... else. The presence of that figure was not one of shock or panic. It was one of observation. Calm. Intentional. A cold sweat breaks out on his forehead, despite the chilly air of the cabin. The idea that his fury, his act of liberation, was merely a scene in a play directed by someone else, disgusts and terrifies him.
He shakes his head, trying to clear the thought. He opens an emergency ration pack: a tasteless, grayish nutrient paste, and squeezes it directly into his mouth. With his other hand, he holds a loose plate on the control panel, which vibrates dangerously with every jolt of the ancient ship. The metal is hot to the touch.
— I'm almost there... — he whispers, more like a prayer than an affirmation. Earth. The call in his mind pushed him there, an irrational compulsion he was too weak to fight. Perhaps there he would find answers. Or perhaps just a place to hide where no one would think to look.
As if in answer to his prayer, a green light flashes on the navigation panel, accompanied by a soft electronic beep. Alien letters form on the screen, which he translates by instinct.
— Entering orbit of planet Earth.
Corruptor leans forward, his exhaustion momentarily forgotten. He looks through the scratched viewport. And there it is. A blue and white jewel, slowly spinning in the darkness. A marble of life in an ocean of death. It is more beautiful and vibrant than any hologram or data file ever showed. The white clouds are an artist's brushstrokes, the oceans a blue so deep it seems to hold all the secrets of the universe.
— Finally. — a sigh of relief escapes his lips. He doesn't know what awaits him on that sphere of deceptive beauty. He doesn't know if it is a refuge or a trap. But, for now, it is a destination. It is the end of one run, and perhaps, the beginning of another.