{Gait}

White light suffused the last living Aegis—And stalled.

No threads to follow. No figures to call.

When the light receded into Three Two Four’s bones, Gait’s violet skies surrounded him. Conduits peppered it like buckshot. He stood on glass. Below, a ball of fire blazed in his Emporium. The Lyriks hissed and snarled within the flames, unable to reach their target.

Pehton.

Triss informed him of the Siren’s Gale, but witnessing the zenith of Lyriki glory exhilarated Razor. His little Peh Peh grew up so much in the last month. He blamed the amber encased woman across from him.

Sagan’s wings spanned wide against that early sun. Short blond hair moved in a nonexistent breeze. The solid purple of her eyes—

Yellow. The same color as his blood washed through her eyes. Until black swallowed them and left her slitted pupil mauve.

The Emporium shook beneath him—

No.

All of Gait trembled.

Surrounding buildings collapsed, and space-scrapers toppled in the distance. Loud. Explosions, shockwaves, debris. People screamed and escaped through conduits to other worlds.

Razor only knew one other force strong enough to destabilize a planet. One other alive and not confined to a box, anyway. “Sagan, don’t do this. You can’t know the consequences.”

“You tried to call Inanis and kill me in the Seam. You tortured your own brother for three million years. The people of this planet. Me. I wanted to hear you out. To listen to your defense. But now all I want to hear is your heart stop. And this is one way.”

Fuck him! For all his Aegis gifts, Razor couldn’t fly. And Sagan hovered just out of reach, as if she knew.

The tectonic tremors intensified. Chaos reigned. He admitted the part of him not paying for this enjoyed it intimately. But Triss was in danger below. And the Seamswalker wasn’t yet finished.

Sagan screamed. Shrieked. The armored suit wasn’t meant to protect her from him. Zero knew Razor would never stoop so low. No. The armor held her body together as the cost of freeing the Aegis court exacted from her broken bones, busted vessels, and ruptured organs.

“That’s right. Did you believe it would be easy? Painless?” Razor shouted at her. Reasoned with her. “Stop now. And I promise I’ll leave you and Korac alone until Eternity takes you both.”

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The yellow, purple, and black marbled her eyes until her skin pulsed with it. Sagan wasn’t heeding him, and Gait responded with a deafening roar.

Razor’s palm vibrated. Not a good time for a call. But he knew what Remorse wanted. The Tritan would have to wait. The Pain Curator was out of assurances.

Beyond Sagan, the dust gathering around the capitol vanished. Blasted away into the atmosphere, which thinned significantly. The shockwave from the massive conduit she opened was coming fast from Gait’s core. And Triss wasn’t secure against planetary destruction below.

With gravity lessened, Razor took a light step toward the hole Tameka left in the ceiling.

Sagan looked at him. Despite the near-death experience, she glared.

“Triss is pregnant, Seamswalker. Spare her.” Such weakness, but Razor couldn’t withstand losing Triss this way. It wasn’t her time, and she wanted that baby so immensely that she would give her life for it—

No. He would try for her. He wet his lips and addressed the most powerful being on this planet. “Please, Sagan. She won’t survive the labor. She’s already weakening. Make the baby one less life you took this day.”

Yellow blood spilled from her eyes, nose, and mouth while she gazed below.

By now, Pehton and the other Lyriks stared through the busted ceiling. So much glass fell out with the quakes. Triss gaped from the mezzanine, too weak to fly. Others watched from even further below. Ross and Iuo. They were freeing the Numbered.

This was not how Razor expected his empire to fall.

He clenched his fists and ground out, “Forgive me, Triss.”

The Overseers, unaffected by the tectonic activity, drew to him. He called the Lyrik’s volition and made them sing. Before Pehton could react, he pressed his palm and triggered the failsafe in her old port site. She sang. Below, Triss gazed at him with more than a little terror in her yellow eyes. At his nod, she joined the Chorus.

The Overseers amplified their voices until screams harmonized the sound. All across the planet, people writhed with their nacres on the brink of bursting. Including the Lyriks. Only the prisoners so far underground might survive it.

Razor stared at Sagan, unresponsive to the torment around her. Waiting for her answer.

“The court wanted you alive. I told them you were too dangerous.”

He spread his arms wide, ready to detonate the weapon. “All around the galaxy, I hold the lives of your people in my hands, Seamswalker.”

“Set them free.”

“You’ll have to execute me, first.”

“Yes. I will.”

Razor’s world split in two. Shifted. That purple horizon cracked. The left side of Sagan separated from the right and kept going.

Yellow blood sprayed from him as she proclaimed, “Not everyone is worth saving.”

With the Pain Curator’s world divided, a hand reached out to Sagan from inside him. Between the two halves of him. It was a male hand. Impossibly pale and perfectly manicured.

So this was it. Defeated by the Seamswalker and the Atheneum.

Trembling still from holding the conduit inside Razor open, Sagan graced him with an angelic smile meant for her lover. There were worse sights for the end. The world shifted upward as the Pain Curator hit his knees.

Beyond Sagan, in a sea of dust, figures formed. Shadows. Tall. Glass. They watched in silence. They judged his existence.

She divided Gait and freed the Aegis court from the nacre core.

No. No more.

Triss waited for him. Remorse depended on him. Razor wanted to witness Celindria fall.

No. He’d refuse the cycling.

Three Two Four would never return to a people that rejected him. Not a living soul could change his mind.