Inhale. Hold.

  Brolgar and Brana in the cargo hold, the bitter smoke of long pipes curling around them as they rumbled in quiet conversation.

  Exhale. Let it stretch.

  Veolo. Amalia. Aurania. Sparring together across the room from the d’moria, every blow and parry vibrating faintly against the hull like drumbeats of living thunder.

  Inhale. Hold.

  Inelius. Planted in the co-pilot’s chair beside Raine. Both of them silent, both sharpened to a single purpose as they guided the ship along its careful course—gliding under concealment of their cloak, close enough to see Solaceum out the viewport.

  Exhale. Let it stretch.

  Soren reached for stillness, not just in the body, but in the weight behind his thoughts.

  He sat cross-legged in the large empty room on Deck 4, the ship’s low hum vibrating softly through the deck beneath him. He kept his eyes closed, breathing slow, steady, and deep, tuning himself into the flow that had been coming easier since he began leaning into meditation. The fringes of Solaceum’s security border shimmered far outside the hull, but in here, he let his awareness sink inward first—then out.

  He could feel them. All of them.

  Each sensation brushed across Soren’s mind in distinct textures—flashes of presence as tangible as heat on his skin. He didn’t need to see them to know what they were doing. His power carried their outlines straight into him, weaving the ship’s pulse with theirs.

  A shift brushed the edge of his awareness, a presence moving closer. Hooves on metal walking with a swaggering gait. He knew Violet was approaching before she ever opened the door.

  As soon as it slid open, she muttered, “Holy shit.”

  He could feel the way her eyes went wide, even with his back to her.

  Soren opened his eyes and glanced over his shoulder. Only then did he see what she was surprised by.

  The entire room was bathed in a soft white glow, Aether Dust energy bleeding from his meditation like a steady tide. It wasn’t violent or abrasive, not the crushing weight he sometimes exuded in battle. This was calm, ambient, serene. The light didn’t push her back—it welcomed her.

  She moved through it without resistance, like wading into warm water.

  “Violet,” he said, turning more fully toward her. “How can I help?”

  She was still scanning the glow that clung to the air, watching as it slowly dissipated back into nothing. “What were you doing?”

  “Meditating,” he answered simply.

  One side of her mouth shifted into a smirk. “I’ve seen you meditate. You have a tendency to snore.”

  “I do not,” Soren shot back defensively.

  The smirk deepened, unbothered by his protest.

  He faced forward again, hesitated, then admitted, “I was practicing my perception ability again.”

  “Hey yeah,” Violet said, her tone softening. “What’s been going on with that? You used it that once on Radiant Horizon, but I haven’t heard you mention it much since…” Her voice trailed off.

  Soren didn’t look at her when he spoke. “Since Mol’eyne.”

  The air stretched taut between them, heavy with the weight of the name neither of them said.

  Amaryn.

  Violet crossed the room slowly, the last of the glow thinning like smoke around her. She sank down onto the deck directly in front of him, folding her legs to mirror his posture, her hooves clinking faintly against the metal before settling. Her eyes locked on his, steady and insistent.

  “Tell me.”

  Soren hesitated, jaw tightening. He let the silence hang for a few breaths, then exhaled through his nose.

  “The ability, I have to kind of… tune it up? If that makes sense. Like winding a toy with a spring. Once I get it going, it can last for a little while in the back of my mind. Almost like when you know someone’s standing behind you without seeing them.”

  His eyes flicked down briefly. “I can just kind of feel people around me.”

  Violet tilted her head, expression softer now. “That sounds very useful.”

  “Yeah…” he admitted. His voice dropped, a rough edge in it. “But it fades after a while. And…” He trailed off, swallowing against the knot in his throat. “I mean, you were there. I sensed Venlin. We went up to talk, and it just… faded away. At the perfect moment.”

  He rubbed his palms against his knees. “You all were talking, and I noticed it was gone. So I focused again—” His voice caught. “But she wasn’t there anymore.”

  Violet reached forward without hesitation and closed one of her hands around his. Her grip was firm, steadying. “You’ve been afraid to use it since then?”

  Soren’s gaze dropped. He gave a small nod, the movement barely there.

  “But you used it to find Amalia when she snuck out to fuck Venlin,” Violet pressed, her tone dry but edged with a kind of wry fondness.

  That finally pulled a chuckle from him, low in his chest. “Yes. You needed to know she was safe.”

  “And on Radiant Horizon?”

  “I didn’t actually think about it that time,” Soren admitted. “It was like… my body reacted on instinct because we were all about to be ambushed.”

  Violet’s thumb brushed once over his knuckles, anchoring him. “You’re a protector, Soren.”

  He didn’t answer this time. The words sat heavy in the air, sinking into him deeper than he wanted to admit. Silence stretched, filled only by the faint hum of the ship around them.

  Violet studied him for a long moment, her expression shifting from steady resolve to something gentler, touched with concern. “What is it you’re afraid of?”

  Soren’s gaze sank to his hands, fingers curling against his knees. The words dragged out of him, heavy, reluctant. “Violet… I’m not sure—it hasn’t been long enough for me to be able to say for certain, but… I don’t think I’m aging. Same way I don’t get injured. I’m scared I might be immortal.”

  Her brows drew together, the sharp edge of her usual wit softening into something more human.

  He exhaled hard through his nose, shaking his head. “Everyone I knew from before… they’re all gone. I’m scared to look, because…” His voice thinned, raw. “Because I don’t want to feel someone else not be there. I don’t want to outlive you all.”

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  Violet’s hand squeezed his, grounding him. Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “Hey…”

  The word tugged his eyes up to meet hers.

  She reached across and caught his other hand too, clasping them both in her grip. Then, without hesitation, she said, “Close your eyes,” as she shut her own.

  For a moment he just stared at her, the request strange, almost childlike in its simplicity. But the look on her face left no room for argument.

  Slowly, reluctantly, he obeyed.

  When he finally did, Violet’s voice came soft but steady. “Find Tamiyo.”

  His brow furrowed, eyes still shut. “She’s way down on the planet. I’ve never stretched my perceptions that far before.”

  She immediately let go of one of his hands, and an instant later, he felt the sharp sting of a slap across his cheek. His eyes flew open.

  Violet hadn’t moved from her place in front of him. She grabbed his hand again, holding both with her eyes still closed. Her posture was calm, as was her tone when she spoke. “There’s another one waiting for you if you give me such a piss-weak excuse again.”

  Soren stared at her, stunned. “But—”

  Her grip on his hand tightened, grounding and unyielding. “Soren. You can probably bench-press a planet if you really wanted to. Figure it the fuck out, shut up, and find our girl. You’re going to sit here until you get it right.”

  The command cut sharp, but left a warm feeling in his chest. He felt a smile tug at his mouth, and he closed his eyes again.

  He forced his breath to steady, pushing past the already fading sting in his cheek. The hum of the ship filled his ears, then dimmed as he reached inward again, feeling for that coil of energy—the spring waiting to be wound. He turned it slowly, carefully, each breath tightening the thread until his chest tingled and his skin prickled with awareness.

  Shapes pressed against the edges of his mind, faint at first, like ripples against stretched fabric. Then stronger. Clearer. The room around him filled with quiet outlines—warm, pulsing presences like stars against a dark sky. He could feel them breathing, moving, existing.

  Violet drew a sharp breath through her nose. “Woah—shit.”

  His brow tightened, eyes still closed. “What?”

  Their hands remained locked, her grip strong and steady, but her voice trembled with awe. “I can see them too.”

  Soren’s eyes stayed shut, but his head tilted slightly. “Really?”

  “Yeah,” she whispered, the word half-disbelieving. “This is… this is really trippy.”

  At first, the shapes closest to him sharpened. Warm, steady presences—Brolgar and Brana laughing, making their way back up the stairs, pipes extinguished. Veolo, Amalia, Aurania—taking a breather and smiling, the sweat beaded along their skin as they drank water. Inelius and Raine at the helm, steady and sharp as blades, perfectly aligned in purpose.

  Violet let out a low sound, half laugh, half breathless awe. “They’re so clear, it’s like I could reach out and touch them.”

  Soren felt the corner of his mouth twitch, but he didn’t break his focus. He pushed further.

  The awareness stretched like a net across black water, threads tightening, straining—until new sparks appeared at the edges. Cold, clipped presences moving in ordered rhythms. Conservatory crews on the nearby military vessels.

  He caught glimpses—one officer pacing a corridor with the rigid tension of a caged wolf, boots striking sharp patterns into steel. Another sat in silence, eyes hollow, thoughts heavy with something that tasted like regret.

  Then—something different. Warmer. Intimate. Two presences tangled together in a bunk somewhere aboard a patrol frigate. Their pulses overlapped, breaths tangled in each other’s rhythm, bodies locked close. Soren didn’t see them fully—but the impression hit clear and raw. They weren’t just touching; they were bound up in each other in a way that felt whole—one of them inside the other.

  His chest tightened, aching for what he feared he may never have with Aurania.

  Violet’s voice cut across the current. “You’ll figure it out.”

  He felt pressure under his eyes. “Thanks.”

  Violet’s voice steadied, firm but patient. “Focus. You’re just pushing out in all directions. Your perception is like a light bulb right now, shining out into the whole void at once. But we don’t care about all of it—we only care about one direction.”

  Soren’s brow furrowed, his breathing deepening as he held his focus.

  “An unfocused light shines everywhere, pushing nothing,” she said. “A focused beam of light can cut through steel. Ignore all the irrelevant space and focus on where we need to look.”

  He tried. The net of awareness wavered, jittering at the edges, ripples scattering against the pull of his will. His jaw tightened. The ship creaked faintly under his shifting pulse, vibrations crawling through the deck as if it resisted him.

  “Too wide,” Violet murmured. “Focus, Soren. You’re gravity—gravity bends light.”

  He inhaled slow, pulling back the sprawl of his awareness. The threads retracted, trembling, until he began to shape them forward. Not everywhere. One way. Like sight, but deeper. He pictured it cutting through the void like a spear—straight down.

  The blur began to clear.

  His perception plunged, peeling past the patrol ships, through the clean lines of Solaceum’s orbital nets, down into the atmosphere. The drag of it hit him hard—like pushing into a tide that wanted to shove him back out—but he pressed harder, forcing himself through.

  And then it hit.

  An avalanche of presence.

  Millions. Tens of millions.

  They both cried out in pain as each spark flared into their minds at once, a tidal wave of humanity that crashed against their focus, deafening in its sheer volume. He clenched his jaw, breath hitching as his chest threatened to cave under the flood. It was too much.

  Faces without names. Lives without number. But each one distinct, pressed into him like stars flooding a night sky. A man hunched over a desk, burning through a late shift. A child tugging at her mother’s sleeve, begging for something sweet from a corner vendor. A woman in bed, whispering prayers to a god she wasn’t sure existed. An old man staring blankly out a window, dreaming of a life he’d never had.

  They weren’t soldiers. Not monsters. Just people. Families. Believers. Strugglers. All trapped in the gleaming grid of the Conservatory’s order, their choices narrowed so tightly that most had never even considered there might be anything else.

  Violet sucked in a sharp breath in front of him, her nails digging into his hands hard enough to make anyone else bleed. “Oh my god—Soren. There are so many.”

  He gritted his teeth, steadying his breath. “Yeah.” Sweat beaded on his forehead. His voice was taut, straining. “Too many.”

  “You can’t hold them all,” Violet urged, her voice shaky but steadying. “Filter. Narrow it. Don’t drown yourself in all of them. You’re looking for her—Tamiyo. Find her. Blonde and pink hair. White antennae.”

  He forced air through his lungs, pulling back. The flood of millions receded like an ocean tide, blurring into a muted backdrop.

  “The girl who pulled you from the void,” Violet pressed. “The one who healed her trauma into your shield—tempered the storm long enough for you to adjust.”

  His focus began to strain down into something finer, threads tightening as he searched. Thousands. Then hundreds.

  The Cradle of Gravity groaned around them in response to his power.

  “Gentleness,” Violet said. “Wrapped around resolve.” Her voice grew more firm. She was beginning to shake, feeling the intensity of it with him.

  He glimpsed details even here in the narrowing—civilians clustered in a church-like hall, listening to an official drone through ritualized doctrine. A young couple kissing goodbye before a tram departure, the ache of their fear hidden under the hope of seeing each other again. A lone man sketching on a tablet in a cramped apartment, pouring his soul into lines no one else would ever see. Each presence was clear, undeniable. So close, Soren could almost hear their breaths. But none of them were her.

  “She’s your little sister, Soren. Find her!”

  He grit his teeth. The tide shifted. Threads parted.

  The haze cleared.

  A pulse, quick and uneven, like a bird startled mid-flight. Familiar.

  He could feel her focus darting, restless, the same chaotic tempo that filled the ship when her whimsical subroutine told her to misbehave—held restrained as she pretended to be property for the sake of the mission.

  Tamiyo.

  Soren smiled, shaking. “I can see her.”

  And in his mind, Tamiyo suddenly looked up. A sharp movement, as if someone had called her name. She looked around in the air as if trying to figure out where a noise came from.

  “Did she just notice us?” Violet gasped. “What are they—”

  The door hissed open behind him.

  Soren’s concentration fractured, threads snapping all at once. He opened his eyes, breath coming out rougher than he realized, and glanced over his shoulder. Aurania stood framed in the doorway, one brow arched.

  “You alright?” she asked. She tapped her temple twice with one finger. “I sensed the strain you were under. But I swear I could almost see the light you’re putting out through the fucking deck plates.”

  Soren scrubbed a hand down his face, blinking, and forced a small laugh as his breath slowly grew steadier. “Oh. Hey. Sorry. Violet was helping me meditate on my perceptions.” He met Aurania’s gaze again, steady this time. “We found Tamiyo.”

  Aurania straightened a little. “Really? What was she doing?”

  Violet leaned around Soren to see Aurania, still holding one of his hands. With a slight tone of confusion, she said:

  “It looked like they were clothes shopping.”