Midnight on Tofah.
No moon. Just stars and a soft wash of purple and pink where a nebula spread itself thin across the dark. The settlement was asleep. On a small balcony at the edge of the house two people sat under all of it.
An old man and a boy.
Akada sat in the old chair with a cup he kept forgetting to drink from. He was not young anymore. The years had found their way into his face and his hands and the way he sat — like someone who had carried heavy things for a long time and had made peace with the weight. Xammy sat on the floor in his pajamas with his legs crossed and his back straight. His grandfather had been talking for a long time. Xammy had not moved once.
"There is a place between galaxies," Akada said. "Not a planet. An asteroid. Egg shaped. People built whole lives there in the middle of nothing." He looked at the sky. "Beautiful place. The kind that should not exist but does anyway."
"You went there?"
"I lived there. Twenty years." He smiled at something Xammy could not see. "I built my ship there. The Sensen II. Every part with my own hands."
Xammy looked at him. "You built a whole ship?"
"Every bolt. Every panel. People thought I had lost my mind." He shifted in the chair. "But it flew."
"Where did you go after?"
Akada was quiet for a moment. "Many places. I went to Neptune. Saw what was left of it. I met people in the void that I will never forget. I flew through silence so long and so complete that it stopped feeling like silence and started feeling like something else entirely."
"Like what?"
"Like the universe breathing." He looked at Xammy. "You get used to the stars from down here. You forget they are not decoration. When you are out there among them you remember. They are just the light from things that have been burning longer than anything we can imagine."
Xammy looked up at the purple and pink of the nebula fading into dark.
He never asked questions during stories. Not because he had nothing to ask. Because questions interrupted the shape of things. You asked after. When what had been said had already settled inside you.
Akada went quiet.
Not the quiet of someone finished. The quiet of someone arriving somewhere.
He set the cup down.
"There is something else," he said.
Xammy waited.
"There is a place." Akada looked at the sky. "Beyond every map. Beyond every route any crew has ever found. Every species has heard of it. Every civilization has a legend about it." He paused. "The legends do not agree on what it looks like. They agree on one thing."
"What thing?"
"That it is real." He looked at Xammy directly. "And that somewhere inside it there is a Crown. Ancient. Unclaimed since the beginning of time. The first being to reach it and claim it rules everything that exists. Every world. Every species. All of it."
The balcony was completely still.
Xammy looked at the sky. Something moved through him that had no name yet. Not excitement. Not fear. Something older and quieter than both. Like recognizing something you have never seen before.
"What is it called?"
Akada said it quietly.
"FIWE."
Xammy sat with that word. It felt different from other words. Like it had weight. Like it had been waiting somewhere inside him his whole life and just needed someone else to say it first.
"Is it real?"
"Yes."
"How do you know?"
"Because I have spent my whole life looking for it." Akada looked at him steadily. "And the things we spend our whole lives looking for are never nothing."
"Do people believe you?"
"Most people think it is an old story. Something to make the universe feel larger than it is." He shook his head slowly. "But I have seen the old writings. Spoken to people who know. FIWE is not a story Xammy. It is a place. And someone is going to find it."
"You?"
Akada was quiet. Long enough to mean something.
"Maybe," he said. "Or maybe someone who comes after me."
Something settled inside Xammy then. Quiet and certain and permanent. Not a loud decision. Just a shift that changed the direction of everything without announcing itself.
He was going to find FIWE. He was going to claim the Crown. Not because anyone told him to. Because it was the most true thing he had ever felt.
The door opened.
Borg stepped onto the balcony. He moved the way he always moved. Quiet and deliberate. A presence that did not need to announce itself. He looked at his father first. Then at his son.
"Akada." His voice was controlled. Respectful. With something underneath it that was not quite tension but lived close to it. "Your crew is ready. The ship is waiting."
Akada looked at the nebula one last time.
"Please." Xammy said it before he decided to. Small and honest. "Stay. Even just for tonight."
Akada looked at him. Something moved across his face. Warm and heavy and gone before it could be held.
"I cannot." Not hard. Just true. "The universe is waiting for its voyagers."
Xammy lifted his chin. "Then I am coming."
Akada reached out and placed one large hand on his shoulder. Steady and warm.
"Not yet." He held the boy's eyes. "But I will come back for you. When you are old enough."
He held that look one moment longer than he needed to.
Then he stood. Straightened his coat. Walked past Borg and through the door.
He did not look back.
Borg stood in the doorway. He looked at his youngest son standing on the balcony with his chin up and his eyes on the door where the old man had gone. Something moved in his face that he did not let become anything.
"Time for bed. Training starts at dawn."
Xammy said nothing.
He turned back to the sky.
A few minutes later the lights of Akada's ship rose above the rooftops of the settlement. Climbed slowly. Grew small against the stars and the fading nebula. Then gone.
Xammy watched until there was nothing left to watch.
Then he sniffed once. Quietly. And stayed a little longer anyway.
His grandfather had made a promise.
He was going to hold onto it.