Between the walls of the long corridor, the sound of the footsteps behind him could be heard—clear as the tick-tock of a clock in a silent prison, the kind that holds an inmate with an imminent death sentence who will be dead in minutes.
Even while iron screamed, the world shook, and the moon—wrapped in a golden mantle—was on the verge of splitting into pieces, Gilgamesh couldn't stop hearing, more clearly than any other sound, the steady walk of his soulmate friend—now his sworn enemy—closing in on him.
Deliberately, Rey prepared to whistle with his mouth, a very distinctive note. He needed time to cleanse his chakras and invoke without risking being left cursed or dealing with side effects.
With his legs partially recovered, Gilgamesh stopped dragging himself and forced his body into a hurried limp, doing everything he could to pick up speed, because the sound of his pursuer's steps grew louder with every second.
Louder than all the noise around him. Yet the corridor—one he remembered having built as an easy way out of the coliseum—was, for some reason, longer than he remembered. So long it could be called endless. Something had to be interfering with his sense of distance after what felt like at least an hour of running.
The sound—the footsteps—stopped sporadically.
"There's nowhere outside you can step into and stay alive… your moon and your empire are ending beyond this corridor, Gilgamesh…" A voice sounded—calm, strong, sure of itself—so unbreakable it seemed to scare the tremors away and soothe the twisting metals.
Trying to access a door to his left—one he would've sworn he'd already passed ten times—Gilgamesh ignored the words and kept working the mechanisms that demanded an access code.
When he turned his face over his shoulder, the humans' sovereign saw the glow of white eyes and the figure of the young man pursuing him. Rey stood twenty paces away, staring with sharpened eyes that lodged like blades in Gilgamesh's heart. Serious-faced, death at his back. Looking at his prey—weak, dying, desperate, clinging to the scraps of life he had left—Rey chose to speak.
"You're going to die by my hands, Gilgamesh. Oh, don't take the pleasure from me of finishing you—after everything I went through."
At last, the door blocking the path opened slowly—just enough for the strong, broad-bodied man, limping hard, to slip inside.
"It doesn't have to be like this, in my fall, Rey," Gilgamesh said, breath ragged. "You remember when I was falling, don't you? In that moment, you could've killed me if you'd said something. I felt it in every fiber of my—" He swallowed, forcing the words past the fear. "And yet you didn't, because you want something. I know you feel the need to kill me now, but what I did was necessary. Separating you from the weak is the shortest road to greatness. Don't expose yourself by placing your future and happiness in broken beings—it's too much weight. You risk losing your happiness at any moment, and you only delay the inevitable: feeling lost and wanting to run. Rey, my friend… your existence is destined to rule far more than this moon. That's why, no matter what the death of everyone in my empire means, from the beginning I was willing to leave everything behind—for you. With no one to stop you, you and I—and maybe Román—can conquer the entire galaxy."
Rey shoved his hand into the narrowing gap of the door before it could close, stopping it with sheer force and refusing to let Gilgamesh seal himself inside.
"Don't you see?" Gilgamesh insisted, voice breaking with urgency. "I sacrificed hundreds of millions of people for you, so we could be together. I freed you from the burden you dragged behind you. Love is never true—never stronger than friendship. And you… you freed me from this kingdom. I tried to kill you, it's true, but give me the chance to fix my mistake. I refuse to believe I'm not your destined friend—your companion—the one willing to guard you more than anyone, to love you even if I lose my heart, to see you even if they take my eyes, to hear you even if they burn my ears, to feel you even if I'm left without skin. Don't let me die. Stay with me. Román doesn't have to be part of it. Let's escape, just us—let's be happy and raise a thousand suns… What do you say?"
"What are you suggesting I do?" Rey asked, pretending to be intrigued.
From Gilgamesh's point of view, what did the life of a broken woman—someone who'd survived a human death sentence for being a vampire—really mean? To him they were only a handful of useless people, part of an oppositional group that did nothing but create problems. But to Rey, it meant the death of innocent people living on the planet. Did it make him feel less guilty because he didn't witness those deaths as they happened, because he had no connection to the ones dying? Children. Entire families who went to bed expecting to see the next day—living, thinking beings who would never wake again.
"Prove your feelings," Gilgamesh said, desperate. "Give me back the blessings you took. Save me from dying and face the humans coming to invade us while I recover—then we'll face any other danger together. I want strength to be our law… to annihilate gods and build an empire larger and more magnificent than anything ever seen or imagined. Stay at my side, I'm begging you—let me watch your back."
"Would that make you happy?" Rey asked.
Gilgamesh didn't know how to answer the question his beloved, precious friend had put to him.
Rey said, "You know something curious? From what I've been able to interpret, you have a blessing that isn't complete. Enki, goddess who controls water, blessed you with her intelligence so you could think and analyze. Marduk, king of the Mesopotamians, gave you his prowess—muscle, skin, and bone—so you could move with agility on the battlefield. Shamash, who sees all, gave you his armor and instruments of war in case your body and fists were weak. An, the supreme—once the controller of the universe's laws—granted you his barrier as extra protection."
With each name the white-eyed young man spoke, one of the entities—familiar to the humans' sovereign—appeared behind Rey, something Gilgamesh couldn't believe.
Four dead gods rose there, wearing the garments and features by which they were remembered in their reign. Arms crossed, they looked down at the one on the floor with disappointment, as if unable to understand what they were seeing. Gilgamesh prayed with everything he had left that Rey didn't know the three names still missing—because that would mean his last three blessings would be ripped away.
"Enlil, the great mountain, gave you his endurance, which makes you immortal… De-Enlil…"
The fifth god named tore free from Gilgamesh's body and took his place beside the other four. With that act, the sovereign lost the sumerian sheen of his skin.
"Ishtar, once queen of the universe, blessed you with her faith… De-Ishtar."
A sixth entity vanished from within the humans' sovereign's chakras and joined the line behind Rey.
"Nanna, goddess of the moon, blessed you with luck… De-Nanna…"
With the seventh name spoken, the dream Gilgamesh remembered having finally became reality—and it forced him to understand that, after all, he had interpreted it wrong. Because the seven ancient gods, fallen long ago, gave the situation one last look and then turned their backs on it, a clear sign they had abandoned him—not that they coveted conquering space.
"Don't take from me the only thing I have—the thing that makes me me, the thing that lets me protect you!" Gilgamesh begged.
"The incomplete blessing was meant to grant eternal happiness," Rey continued. "After decoding its inscriptions, I can see it failed—and there are traces of a sorcerer who suffered the consequences. That individual died cursed in the process of granting the eighth blessing because, as a living being, you are condemned not to be happy—corrupted by ambition and dissatisfaction." Rey's voice stayed calm, mercilessly precise. "That sorcerer was your father, wasn't he? He truly loved you—enough to sacrifice everything for you. The goddess Ninsun, who promised you happiness, is your mother, and she still lives within you. I understand that no matter how much you had, you were never going to be happy—even if you were blessed to be."
Gilgamesh clutched his head in both hands and arched backward. Still kneeling on the floor, the humans' sovereign sobbed uncontrollably as the painful, buried memories returned. After all, he hadn't been reborn as a person and rebuilt his empire again until he'd managed to bury them in the past. That was the price he'd paid for the immortality he'd wanted so badly—after failing to stay awake for seven days.
"Friend—strong and daring warrior," Rey said. "It's time you stop suffering and finally know eternal happiness. In exchange for the sacrifice of your empire… with the loyalty the seven gods who want to keep living have given me, along with your feelings… I will grant you a place beside your mother, who has been waiting with open arms for so long."
Gilgamesh stopped crying out in pain. He looked up at the young man in front of him—hand extended. He'd heard the word friend so many times from the mouth of someone he'd considered killing and being killed by, but he didn't believe any of it until he saw Rey's face, that hand offered in expectation of a proper clasp.
"Oh, my great friend of the soul," Gilgamesh said, voice trembling, feelings colliding inside him. "You don't accept my offer—you want to walk a path completely separate, to fulfill my happiness at the cost of your sacrifice."
Rey stayed silent.
"I accept," Gilgamesh said, swallowing hard, "and I hope you can never forget me. I want you to remember the path to greatness—how to live like a true king when I'm no longer at your side to advise you. Never stop pursuing your own happiness, even if it means others suffer, because the ones who suffer are the weak."
After speaking his final words and closing his eyes, Gilgamesh heard Rey break the silence with an incantation—while his hand received a firm squeeze from the vampire's grip.
"Fallen and with no place to be found, leave your fragmented blessing at my side. Ninsun De-Mesopotamia, hear this sorcerer's call and serve as the protection of your son, Gilgamesh De-Uruk, with the happiness he has eternally desired."
As the words concluded, Gilgamesh's body released one last breath into the air and fell lifeless, his eyes empty, a smile on his face.
Rey watched that man's soul drop into another world—to the feet of his mother, seated on the ground beneath the breeze of a magnificent tree, amid green meadows and tall grass. With a happiness like a child returned to himself, Gilgamesh closed his eyes as his mother stroked his face.
Rey used "Nanna" on himself—the blessing that granted luck—and without further delay he turned, intending to go back the way he'd come, though before that he invoked one last thing.
"Missionary of a thousand souls."
Daniela, Román, Marín, and the whole gathered group in the middle of the coliseum were left confused by the sudden shift in Dante and Jhades's attitude.
The two brothers were the only ones able to feel it clearly at first; they were already familiar with a presence like that. Even so, little by little the others began to sense the same unsettling entity.
"What is the condemned entity at the mouth of the abyss doing here, beneath the heavens I come from?" Daniela said out loud, because back when she lived in the Heavens, she'd heard the story of a woman condemned to hunt the souls of a thousand humans—vengeance and punishment intertwined.
"What caliber is this sorcerer?!" Román bellowed, his pores prickling. "Not even the guilty spirits—the wandering souls that drift through this place—will be saved. Much less now, when they're condemned to suffer before the missionary of a thousand souls."
The moment Rey came out of the corridor he'd entered to chase Gilgamesh, he found a hole suspended in the air—opening like a wound. A hand shot out, stretching through the space at terrifying speed, and stopped right in front of him. Rey crossed his forearm blades into an X to block the strike.
Ching, ching!Shuing, shuiing!Trink, trink! Chains shifted and rang in the place where silence, terror, and the spectators' fear reigned.
"Aaah—without even being the Great Mage of the Sages… you dare summon me to this place to work."
"I offer you, as an offering, each and every soul of those who exist outside the coliseum and set foot on this moon. The humans' sovereign made me the owner of them, and I have no use for those destined to die. You, on the other hand, will be able to rest for at least a thousand years, won't you?"
With each word Rey spoke, the entity eased the aggression with which it pressed its elongated, decaying hand forward, then fell silent to listen. It was also true that the last time it had been summoned anywhere, it had only collected a couple dozen individuals—nowhere near enough to satisfy its quota, which had stopped being an act of vengeance and become an eternal burden instead.
As soon as the sharp nails of the missionary of a thousand souls stopped grinding against the edges of the blades protruding from Rey's forearms, the young man continued the negotiation:
"In return, I want you to take the souls of those who get in your way as well," Rey went on.
"Aww!" the creature said. "I'm tortured by exhaustion. Deal… but the next time you call me, you might not have the same luck you had today—having an entire world to offer me. Then, I'll be satisfied with your soul."
Those in the stadium held their breath—except for Román and the brothers, who watched as the hand outside braced against the ground to help the creature haul the rest of its gigantic body through, exposing burned, rotting breasts, belly, and crotch.
In an instant, the souls of countless fallen appeared, wandering—only to watch the point of a broken spear, decorated with jewels, drive into them. The spear moved through the air as if it had a will of its own. Like needle and thread sewing two pieces of cloth together, in a matter of seconds the hovering souls were trapped in the thick chain that began at the back of the broken spear and ended tied around the creature's waist.
Before the missionary of a thousand souls, even the living began the journey meant only for the dead. There was no salvation from an entity with an intangible constitution—one that couldn't be stopped by fire, bullets, or any defense meant to halt it.
After swelling in size and reach, the creature chose to ignore those inside the coliseum. It drifted away and, like a giant, wandered in massive strides across Belldewar's surface.
From space, the aligned OEM troops—tasked with neutralizing and eliminating ships that tried to flee Gilgamesh's empire—could see the moon already split into four, its golden core on the verge of exploding, glowing with a static brilliance, while a terrifying entity harvested souls as if they were wheat.
After detecting the movement patterns of the intangible entity they had on record, the humans understood it was a summoned being; therefore, the category-three hybrid was still alive, while Gilgamesh had perished. That could also explain why the moon they called a sun hadn't finished exploding into a thousand pieces. The power of the one formerly known as Hell's reformer might be preventing the event. With another plan set in motion, the human fleet firing a beam of power into the moon's core gave the order to send several suicide squadrons toward the coliseum.
The first ship—the largest of those dispatched—chose to crash into the coliseum, where the greatest threat supposedly was. But the soul missionary turned its tangible spear and shattered the ship into a thousand pieces before it could slam into the arena.
The vessel, as immense as a black cloud capable of blotting out half the sky with its presence, became a rain of blazing metal, fire, and smoke. In that murky sky of torn fuselage, both humans and machines opened their parachutes and, the moment they cleared the missionary of souls, opened fire toward the coliseum with the weapons they carried.
Inside the coliseum, the spectators said goodbye to their lives. Surviving the impact of a meteor—so massive it could make them stop seeing the sky despite being so far away—was literally impossible.
Facing the catastrophic rain of meteors, ship fragments, armed humans, fire, and smoke, Rey stamped the ground with force and announced:
"Great Fortress."
Within seconds, powerful walls rose around the coliseum in a near-infinite number. The gigantic columns surged inward, aiming to form a pyramid so quickly they even covered the incoming bullets, leaving the spectators staring at a colossal ball of metal and fire hurtling closer and closer.
As the seconds passed, the sound of an explosion nearly burst everyone's eardrums. Those who could see in the dark as if it were daylight witnessed the perfectly smooth, triangular interior of the great invoked fortress shudder, buckle, and compress—almost reaching the ground, despite having been larger than the coliseum.
The impact from the largest fragment of the ship—one that had initially meant to smash into the moon—was so brutal it shifted the lunar fragment's orbit, lifting people off the ground even if they'd been braced against it. The survivors, twisting with pain from their ringing ears, staggered up and then slammed down onto their backs. Even Rey ended up suspended in the air for a few seconds before dropping back onto the crystals that had once been sand, in a place lit only by traces of lava and dying fire.
Falling to the ground isn't an option… legs, listen to me. Don't you dare disobey my will, Rey told himself. Even at his limit, he kept his balance and landed on his feet—though they trembled and seemed to give out for a heartbeat. It's not just my feet anymore. Little by little, this disgusting sensation is infecting my body and eating at my core of power. Keeping one of Gilgamesh's blessings on me permanently is exhausting—so much that my core might crack even more than it already has, and as a sorcerer I'll be unable to keep using my power. I have to admit that even with all the luck I have, I'm at my limit, and my next spell might be the last.
Jhades seemed to speak for everyone when he walked toward his brother and asked, "Rey… how are we getting out of this?"
Projecting his presence, Rey felt tempted to use the blessing that granted intelligence—but it would be pointless. He considered himself intelligent enough not to rely on an unnecessary blessing. Instead, he fixed his eyes on the older man in their group—the one who wouldn't stop laughing and seemed eager to hear his voice.
"Román. How much longer are we going to wait for you to decide?"
At the hybrid's words, everyone looked at the man, who pulled what looked like a small wristwatch from his pocket and tossed it to Rey.
"Isn't that what you took off Paul's body?" Heliúk said, still unable to get up from the ground, hiding the things that identified him as a subjugator because he could feel too many eyes on him.
Confirming it with a tilt of his face, Román went on. "You truly have luck on your side, unwanted son."
"Technological blueprints for a machine," Rey said, one eyebrow lifting as he studied the artifact and decoded it in his mind.
"At one time, the precious metals that make up this moon belonged to a spacecraft called 'Gilgamesh's Ark,' built by hundreds of human sorcerers who followed plans from an object like that," Román explained. "The man in charge of the subjugators was descended from those sorcerers, which made him the bearer of a key to activate a conjuration that uses alchemical means to create a space machine—maybe not as large as the Ark I mentioned, but big enough to escape. That trinket is nothing more than a relic to humans, who never managed to decipher the conjuration to start the transmutation process. But if you were able to decode Gilgamesh's blessings, this will be child's play."
"What is bread?" Dante asked.
"Not wrong," Rey said, "but alchemy is a creation process that takes time, consumes a lot of energy, and needs the exchange of physical materials to exist." He squeezed his hands together, crushed the watch Román had given him, and made a shining circle float in the air. "Still. It'll be easy."
Hundreds of thousands of metals around them began to crumple like paper under the alchemical call of transmutation unfolding. The crystal became far purer and more condensed. Fire flared. Different metals claimed different roles: the hardest formed the hull, while softer ones shaped the mechanisms. Outside, the remains of a ship that still belched smoke and flame melted into the process too, generating engines and fuel. Meanwhile, everything that didn't serve the act of creation was gathered and piled, meant to be discarded.
Even though the transmutation process unfolded in his perception, Rey felt that at any moment he would lose consciousness—not because of the sorcery he was using, but because of the poison of radiation consuming him, blackening part of the skin on his face. At the worst possible moment, just as everything came together, the gravity at their feet quadrupled and the ground lurched again—more violently with each passing second.
"They finally did it," Román said. "Originally, this should've happened at the start of the invasion. But well—things aren't always perfect. Now, in about ten seconds, the moon's core will reverse its gravitational course in order to explode into hundreds of thousands of pieces."
Confused faces turned toward the old man speaking so casually about the moon's explosion.
"What are you talking about?" Jhades asked.
"Someone's life was holding back the fusion reaction, along with the gravitational reversal that prevented the chaotic expansion of this floating satellite. But now the irreversible detonation process has been triggered." Román smiled, amused by the spectacle. "All that's left is to trust the 'fallen from the sky.'"
Because most of those present had gone partially deaf and were still dazed from the earlier impact, panic didn't spread through the crowd at the news. Instead, Jhades and Dante turned their widened eyes toward their brother Rey. The one who had freed a Gengér, fought Gilgamesh, summoned a creature only the Great Mage of Sages had ever made appear, raised a steel fortress, and now transmuted an entire ship of unknown technology—he couldn't possibly be in good shape, even if he was still standing.
Trust? Rey wondered under his brothers' stare as the metals continued to transmute.
In the distance, they could still hear the "missionary of a thousand souls" finishing its work and slipping into another fissure, proud to have taken the hundreds of millions of souls it had been offered. At the same time, the humans' spacecraft vanished from the firmament like falling meteors pulling away to gain distance.
Rey tried to keep thinking, but he couldn't do it clearly anymore. Without realizing it, he was staring with half-lidded eyes at some place that wasn't the present—not the world he was in. As if he'd fallen asleep, the blackness on his skin kept spreading by the second, and the sounds began to fade.
"REY!" Jhades and Dante both shouted as they grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. "Wake up, Rey—come on!"
The words, demands, and cries from his brothers weren't enough to reach the place his mind had slipped into. I'm hesitating. I want to give up and stop fighting. What are these feelings—against my will?
In the damp shadows that held him, Rey heard the pounding of a heart. Maybe it wasn't his, but it was his beloved's.
"Rey, go forward and become unstoppable," White said—and at the end of her words a magnificent roar tore from her throat, a sound that made even the bones of those without life or souls tremble.
"Two, one, zero—and boom!" Román said, taking it upon himself to count down the exact moment the moon he called a sun would reach its end.
Dante held his breath as if he were about to dive underwater, while Jhades clicked his tongue—yet nothing happened. Everything stayed the same.
"No—there are still another five seconds. I was messing with you…" Román said, far too pleased with himself. "Also, this ship is all we've got, and from what I can see it's coming together nicely. Faith is a powerful force—have faith in him. It's the only thing you can do right now, and what greater faith is there than the kind that appears when you're about to die? Wanting certainty and proof you won't die—desperately—that's what can make a miracle work!"
Dante had lost his patience so completely he wanted to shift into a beast and strangle the old man. If Marín hadn't wrapped him in a hard, steadying hug, he would've done it.
Jhades, who leaned more on logic, saw something else: not even half the ship looked properly assembled or finished. The transmuted craft wasn't fit for space travel—much less for withstanding an explosion powerful enough to turn metals and iron into boiling liquid at the moon's core.
Still, both Jhades and Dante stepped aside for their brother and fell silent, waiting for something good to happen. The same went for Heliúk, Daniela, Marín, and the others who could still hear.
Under the crushing weight of everyone's expectations, Rey opened his eyes and snapped back into the present. His face was twisted with fury, and at the very start of the explosion he announced:
"An!"
The hybrid's shout hit the others like the roar of the beast Rey carried inside him.
At the exact instant the moon's core burst into millions of pieces, a supreme being rose from the ground—once the controller of the universe's laws. It extended a clawed hand and spread a golden protective barrier over everything within reach. The area where the ship's transmutation was taking place—built from dark metals—was sealed inside it.
Despite its hardness and perfection, the protective barrier fractured and crazed into a thousand pieces. Rey forced his sorcerer's core into being, then created a second barrier made of black, contaminated energy. It expanded until it filled the golden shield from within, giving it extra support.
"Enlil!" Rey shouted again. By then all the skin on his face had blackened. He dropped to his knees, right hand pressed to his chest, wrapped in the lightning, crackle, and flare that marked the transmutation.
The great mountain manifested, placing its hand beneath An. Everyone present was covered by the effect of immortality at the precise moment a wave of kinetic energy punched through both barriers—slipping between the cracks and fissures.
"Shamash!" Rey rasped, the word coming out in guttural sounds—just before he collapsed flat on the ground, his vision gone black.
…
On a metal table crowded with holograms inside a spacecraft, a uniformed man tapped the tip of his boot against the floor, impatience rattling through him. At least a dozen others worked nearby at their own stations, watching the same feed while their hands never stopped moving.
Where a cockpit's glass should have been, a massive screen displayed multiple angles of an explosion unfolding.
"Captain, it was a necessary sacrifice," said an officer beside the man with the restless foot. "They bought time to compensate for the gap in our calculations. If that's what concerns you, they'll be remembered as heroes."
"Lieutenant, my soldiers' calculations don't fail," the captain replied. "They're perfect—meticulously studied by generations and generations of scientists. One ship's sacrifice wasn't enough. Because if even a single vessel escapes that moon, everything we've done so far—the lives lost, the time spent—will mean nothing. Review the footage again and analyze every stone that burst out of that moon. I want the laser cannons firing at maximum power until every rock and every bit of matter from that explosion becomes space dust!"
At the captain's orders, the crew kept working, fingers flying across gleaming holographic keys. The artillery systems were well-oiled; on the screen, they could be seen tracking and firing at any piece of moon large enough to be detected by the cameras.
Each soldier looked like the product of humanity's best talent and training. They did their jobs without mistakes or fatigue, long-sleeved uniforms crisp, boots shining. If they had to stop blinking to avoid missing a detail—no matter how small—they would.
The captain was no different. He read the incoming reports from other ships with obsessive care as they streamed into his personal displays.
[Bravo Ship; multiple asteroids neutralized, no signs of life detected. Charlie Ship… Romeo Ship, Victor Ship] —all with the same report. Weapons firing at one hundred percent capacity, asteroids neutralized, no life detected.
He read as if he were cursing the results, eyes flat and dissatisfied with reports that were too positive to be real. The situation felt too clean—too confident—enough to give him that false sense of security that was always the first step toward a mistake. Watching it all for the tenth time, the explosion on the screen grew larger, but there were still no traces of living beings or monsters that had survived the cold of space or the heat of a blast like that.
The lieutenant, peering over the captain's shoulder, wore the same intrigued look as his superior devoured the real-time reports like a madman—again and again and again, compulsively.
"One hundred and eight ships—twenty-seven primary, three subordinates for each primary, not counting the supply and maintenance fleet—all of that so you can tell me the only thing you can see are fragments of a moon that held an entire empire of hundreds of millions of individuals, possibly infected and already transformed into atrocities by the hybrid demon!"
With every report he read, the ship's captain seemed to hear his superiors accusing him of failing his duties—while an execution order waited for him the moment he got complacent and declared successful what wasn't.
"Why the hell are there no photos or reports of dead bodies?" he shouted as he surged to his feet. "Gilgamesh, Román, the lycanthrope, the vampire, the hybrid—or any of their infected—could survive an explosion like that perfectly well. That's why their bodies still haven't been identified! Are we not close enough?!"
"But sir, the ships are at a safe distance so their systems won't be damaged by the constantly emitted magnetic waves."
"I don't give a damn!" the man snapped, losing his composure as he slammed the table. "Then get closer! If they break, we'll pick them up and tow them through space if we have to!"
The order was given, and forty-eight ships orbiting the moon began to advance, aiming to capture higher-quality images—even if they had to fight against a glare far more intense than any sun.
"Ten ships have lost functionality," one of the operators reported. "But we can still transmit images and receive them."
"Perfect. Identify at least organic matter."
Now the crew had even more work, forced to intensify the search, but no one complained under the agitated captain's demands.
On the large screen, a result finally appeared—someone they could even recognize: Mikk Biblio De-Deimidio. Last known location: inside Gilgamesh's coliseum. Killed by the 'hybrid calamity.' The man's head floated through space, barely holding shape—flesh and bone torn, but not charred. Not frozen either, and certainly not contaminated like a monster. His eyes were still recognizable, open but dead, invaded by cold as he drifted away from the heat of the blast.
The image wasn't disturbing to anyone present, but the implications hit the captain differently. He'd seen countless drifting corpses in space after explosions—ones that killed humans and non-humans alike. A body floating there, not yet fully frozen, could mean exactly what he feared. That individual had been inside an installation where a ship crashed—and then the planet exploded—yet he was still recognizable.
"That head," the captain said softly. "The dead speak louder than the living. Flesh doesn't lie. If that's what we're seeing, then the rest of the bodies in the coliseum should be in the same condition." His eyes narrowed. "It's not that any human should look like that, but remember—we're fighting a sorcerer… someone who can make the impossible possible."
A red alarm lit up, jolting everyone.
"Captain! The calculations were wrong. Even here, we'll be hit by a mild electromagnetic wave," one of them warned as he initiated an alarm protocol. "Prepare for impact."
Calculations wrong again and again, the captain thought, then forced himself to accept what he didn't want to believe. "While the ship's system reprograms the reboot sequence, turn off the screen and let me see the explosion with my own eyes. I need to make sure everything goes as planned."
His words—and his obsessive insistence—made the crew tense all over again.
"But captain, that violates protocol," the lieutenant protested, worried about the health damage that could come from staring directly into the brightness of a lunar explosion.
"It's an order!" the captain barked, as if he had no time left.
At the command, everyone bowed over their desks to shield their eyes. The mechanisms that opened the black-glass window behind the display were engaged. As the bright, unfinished light of the explosion flooded the cabin, the captain braced his hands on the table and kept his eyes clamped shut as he demanded, "When are the cameras going to go down?!"
The heat pouring into the cockpit became unbearable. The crew's clothes began to smoke, and the air-conditioning system was forced to drop the temperature to twenty below zero just to counter the blaze.
"As soon as the reboot alarm sounds—but captain, it'll only be for half a second! This isn't necessary, sir. We're burning alive."
The alarms blared. Ignoring his subordinates, the captain opened his eyes and screamed as pain and searing heat tore through him—staring straight into the light of nearly ten suns.
Fast as lightning, behind the cockpit glass, he caught it: a ship appeared, armored and plated in gold, fitted with two immense white wings—and carrying an entire sphere that still held a circular shape, even though it had been shattered to pieces. It was absurd—an aircraft with bird wings flying through space—yet it vanished mid-flight at a speed measured in light-years.
"Systems and cameras back to full functionality. No anomalies. Protective glass returning to position. Temperatures returning to normal. Screen online. Allied ships back to operational status at optimal capacity," one of the subordinates announced.
The lieutenant, who had shielded his face with his forearm, tore off his uniform before it could catch from the heat. Tossing the smoking fabric aside, he rushed to help his superior, who still stood there with his eyes open, unmoving, clothes steaming. But the sight stopped him cold: the captain's eyeballs were completely blood-red, tears spilling nonstop, and his pupils no longer reacted to changes in light.
"Captain—Captain! Doctor!"
"Leave it," the captain muttered through his teeth, lifting a hand to stop the lieutenant. Then he threw himself backward into his chair and grabbed his head in both hands. "Mission failed. The target is still alive. The galactic ship was sighted and departed—location and destination unknown."
No one dared speak, much less question the words of a man who had been willing to sacrifice his eyes just to keep the mission in sight.
"Lieutenant, I'm assigning the rest of the ships to finish the cleanup. Have the servers calculate optimal light-year flight routes in the direction opposite our coordinates. Also leave my replacement a copy of the habitable planets within a galactic radius along that vector. If possible, breach the insurgent ship's computer and prepare to use the 'sun-destroyer' weapon. From this point on, I relinquish my command and my post—as an apology for the human sacrifices under my orders."