The once powerful Glassik lay in two piles upon the glittering sands of the Bloody Eye’s dunes. Her body cut so perfectly that the blood flowed in two different directions. The blade remained, reflecting the stars in its titanic length, the immutability of its edge slicing at the wind, at Morn’s eyes as he gazed at the remains of his fellow cohort member.

She had not deserved such a fate. Surely not for merely speaking her heart, but then, who deserved the fate that found them?

Licking his lips, Morn gazed up. Beyond the spreading pools, he saw stars. So many stars. Every night was the same night, and how the twinkling lights haunted him.

“How did you… why…”

Mountains forgotten, crumbling beneath the serene gaze of the expanding heaven.

[I present you all a choice]

The voice resounded through the thin atmosphere and soaked into the crystalline planetoid. Morn’s head fell as he realized Rue was speaking to the entire Bloody Eye. His pupil was now an all-seeing god. Had Morn lost the honor of direct address? When did the young blade outshine him so? He remembered when Rue had been a young slave barely tall enough to look him in the eye. The fires in those eyes, the raging determination, broken only by the man himself.

Morn sighed to himself and leaned on his staff. The withered stalk leaned against the long-dead stick. Older than the dust blowing about his ankles, he sighed: he always promised himself he wouldn’t become one of those old men shaking their fists at the shifting world.

But promises made to the self can be the weakest of them all.

Rue’s voice spoke on, and it was nothing but strength,

[You bright souls have slaved away to bring the Crimson Armada the benefits of your sacrifice. It has given you nothing but a yoke and a weight to drag. Know this, I was the greatest of all of you, and the only harvest I received was humiliation and the inglorious invitation to the death of all I love. I refused such an invitation, and I met the insult with one of my own. The Gambler fell as all cheats must fall, and now I ask of you, who else must fall? Will you be the meat for their grinder or the wrench in their gears? I ask you now, kneel beside me in honor of another pursuit. A true pursuit. Love will conquer war, and war will conquer love. I have opened a path and through it, the conviction of your heart shall give you strength unbound. Join me, and we shall eradicate the hateful Crimson Armada]

Morn felt the crew aboard the Bloody Eye calling out — in agony, in rapture — there wasn’t a soul on board who didn’t sign up for Rue. They would have followed him anywhere, even against the System.

[And what of you, old friend?]

The voice whispered into Morn’s ear. He spun.

Rue sat in the sand as though it were a throne. His silver skin shone like flint in starlight. His eyes were cruel chips. Morn gazed upon a system made flesh and his eyes bled. His withered heart stopped — started — stopped and emotions rippled out of his childhood — how could he have forgotten his lover’s name? The way the solstice sunlight lit up the city of her birth --

[I asked you a question]

Morn blinked, savoring the taste already fading from his lips.

“You killed Glassik.”

The accusation felt as empty as the space between the stars.

[I killed countless in the system's name. That name so branded upon your soul. Can’t you feel the scar tissue? Feel the pus leaking as your morality withers?]

“You are just another system. Do you think the Crimson Armada was any less noble when it started?”

[I have stared into the heart of the Gambler. I know the dreams of that mad clown. Do not speak of nobility]

“Do not ignore the question.”

Morn’s boldness shocked them both. Perhaps his mind refused to truly accept the gulf of power that now stood between student and master. Rue’s smile slanted like a descending sword stroke.

[I do not claim nobility, only finality. I will tear down the pyramids that the Crimson Armada stacked so high. I will avenge the slaves whose blood mortars the brick]

“You are another god who wishes to destroy all before them. Another system consuming space, time, and souls. You are not the first to challenge the Trinity. You are not the last. Your victory against the weakest, the most imbalanced, has made you arrogant.”

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The wind whipped and poised a dozen blades against Morn’s throat, tracing his scar, before they faded.

[Trust me when I say I am different. I want to bring them down, but I will not rule. The cycle must end. If it cannot end, it must be shortened. Already the world below seethes with champions that wish me dead]

“The champions were a game!” Morn shouted. “We indulged you!”

Rue’s eyes flashed — a hint of gold? — of a coin in the silver?

[The line between game and reality ever blurs. When one ends, what of the other?]

Morn blinked. This was not the Rue he knew. This was not his student. This was not a man. He gazed at the metaphor, and fear grasped his shriveled heart.

“You think I trust you after what you did to Glassik?”

Morn gestured at the bisected corpse. Her blood leaked out. He kept praying it was an illusion, some kind of glamor, but Glassik had never fooled him before. He hoped she had this time, but he knew she had not.

Rue shifted on the dune, his eyes gazing elsewhere. Morn knew he was bored. This conversation would end soon.

[You are old, and you are wise, and you have made many mistakes. Will you make another now?]

Morn felt a ripple on the edge of his senses. The air shattered apart as Unren burst out from nowhere. He swung a hammer that flashed with the gold of a thousand suns. The air screamed as it rushed away from the blow.

Sand exploded into strands of glass as the hammer struck.

Rue appeared behind Unren. Was it even a chore for Rue to move his body like that? What were the limits of his power now he had ascended? If Morn was going to make a move, it would be now, but he stood still. Unren earned his fate at the Gambler’s table.

[You did not have to come to me]

Unren swung the hammer, and Rue took it from him.

[I was always going to find you]

Rue took Unren’s eyes. His hands. His feet.

[Your cowardice took everything from me]

He reached into Unren’s chest.

[Scream as I take your heart]

Unren bit down on his pain, but Rue tensed his grip, and the engineer screamed. A mad, sick wail as Rue pulled out Unren’s heart and threw it beyond the gravity of the Bloody Eye. Unren slumped down as his blood flowed onto the ever-thirsty ruby sands.

With one hand still dripping gore, Rue faced Morn.

[You defended neither of your peers, yet your eyes burn with recrimination]

Morn let his fists relax with a sigh.

“You are what we made you,” he said. “The day I met you, I knew this would come.”

Rue smiled.

“You know nothing of what will come.”

Morn laughed.

“That’s true, but I have a few surprises for you.”

[Oh?]

Morn stood up straight. He stared Rue in the eye. The wind moaned around him, and the ruby dust shifted.

“By all the power I have stolen, I —”

He blinked. Frowned. He couldn’t speak. Rue stood before him, his elbow connected to his forehead. No… He tasted blood. Coughed, but no sound came out. A fist filled his mouth.

Rue was unconstrained by the Crimson Armada. He did not obey the laws of ascension. Too late, Morn realized. His last ditch effort was too late…

[I wish I was sorry, but I am what you made me]

Blades filled Morn, and he fell. The withered pieces of the ancient warrior gazed at the stars above, and the nothing in between. Rue vanished, and the souls on the Bloody Eye left with him. Soon, the colossal crystal would drift away from its orbit. It would crash somewhere, but that was not Morn’s concern anymore.

Nothing was.

For though he cheated death countless times, it had found him, and it traced a warm and welcoming finger along the scar down his throat.

###

The underground stank of burning cobwebs. Invisible maggots squirmed in the air and they licked Zoe’s skin, festering at the corners of her eyes where tears welled and flowed. Not-Cassy dragged Zoe through the tunnel for hours and chattered the whole way. Words slipping out of meaning like schools of fish, birds over a withered field, murmurations of words, and how Zoe wished to write it off as the rantings of a madwoman.

But Not-Cassy was neither mad nor a woman.

She was a thing, hunched, her shadow cast by her illuminated skin as she dragged Zoe through the underground. The dank earth, frozen, roots sticking out like trapped limbs, until the sky opened up above, a hole punched into the ceiling of rocky earth. Snow flaked down through the holes and piled on the earth. It took Zoe a moment to realize they were graves. Empty graves viewed from below. The ground bumped beneath her, and out of the corner of her paralyzed eyes, she saw rotted limbs and organs piled and pressed against the walls.

Cassy pointed up like a proud artist.

“Where once the flesh of my sisters, my brothers, lay trapped and thrashing, now the sky can stare into the only truth,” and she gestured about the tunnel where her children scampered on the walls with attentive black eyes. “Emptiness. You sad things of souls and systems, how I wish you could know the bliss of nothing.”

Zoe wanted to scream. To fight. To run.

She could do nothing for the toxin coursed through her flesh like ice and left her as immobile as the rocks and snow Not-Cassy dragged her through.

With desperation, she beseeched at the Black Star but received only the same response.

ding!

I like her.

She paralysed me! She wants to kill me!

She hasn't killed you yet. I think we should give her a chance.

The long heavy chains slunk up through the beams of hallucinogenic light that flowed through the empty graves. Link after link of heavy metal draped over Not-Cassy’s ghoulish, rotting shoulders and caressed her luminescent skin.

ding!

Tell me more!

And Not-Cassy laughed.

“I will tell you everything about nothing for as long or as little as you wish, but come, we are close, and I must show you my nest.”

Deep horror shuddered through Zoe. Trapped in her skin with no way to fight like a patient waking in the middle of surgery. Her heart pounded icy fear through her sluggish veins. The Black Star’s rising anticipation matched her tempo of dread.

Not-Cassy pointed ahead to where the tunnel widened out into an open hole. The swirling pink lights of the sky lit the snow like neon dessert.

“Come,” said the monster. “It is time for us worms to emerge.”