Somewhere deep in the Academy's lower spire, within a narrow, light-starved chamber carved into the bones of Meridi Axis, Chancellor Yvith Korr waited.
The walls here were ancient—older than the Academy itself. Dark alloy lined the chamber, unmarred by time, its seams lost beneath overlapping panels of ceremonial glyphwork. Some of it had meaning. Most of it had been forgotten. Yvith liked it that way. The room wasn't made for comfort. It was made for weight.
She stood beneath the arched ceiling, still and silent, wings folded close behind her. No movement. No breath wasted. Her long coat of ceremonial rank hung undisturbed around her, shadows flowing across its fabric as the only source of light—a single pale-blue vertical strip embedded behind her—cast its cold illumination into the void.
She hadn't activated the other lights. She didn't need them.
This wasn't a meeting of equals.
It was a contest of pressure.
And in contests like these, clarity was more dangerous than flame.
She heard it then—the low thump of boots beyond the door. Heavy. Measured. The kind of footfalls that came from someone used to walking through barricades. Her eyes didn't move, but her thoughts tightened.
He came in person. Good.
The hiss of the sealed door broke the silence like a blade through sand.
General Drudru of the Grounx entered with all the quiet of a collapsing wall. His frame nearly filled the entrance as he stepped forward, the heavy chromatic plating of his uniform catching the vertical light. Polished steel interlocked across his chest, reinforced at the shoulders, ribbed with deep lines of crimson rank insignias—each earned in blood. Each a warning.
He didn't speak at first. Just scanned the chamber. Judging the silence. Gauging the temperature. Pretending he wasn't pleased to find her alone.
She didn't move.
His kind always waited for the other to speak first. It was a test.
But this room didn't belong to him.
He inclined his head. Slightly. Just enough.
"Councillor Yvith," he said, his voice like gravel dragged across metal. "You summoned."
Her gaze held his.
"General," she said, her voice cool, precise. "I was expecting you."
He stepped inside, the door sliding shut behind him with a soft hiss that sounded almost like breath being held. The temperature in the room seemed to drop. His presence brought pressure with it—dense, invisible, shaped like pride.
Drudru didn't rush. Each footfall landed deliberately, as if each step was a claim staked on foreign ground. His size alone made the chamber seem smaller. Too small for what he thought he was.
"I'll speak plainly," he said.
Yvith offered no reaction.
"You will revoke your decision regarding Cadet Porl."
Still, she said nothing. She allowed silence to stretch long enough for discomfort to take root. But Drudru wasn't here to be discomforted. He was here to dominate.
"He acted as any Grounx should when faced with dishonor," he continued, with less restraint now. "He did not fail—he responded."
Yvith tilted her head slightly—not in disagreement. In patience.
The room absorbed every word, like it had been built for this moment. No echo. Just the raw impact of tone and timing.
Drudru's shoulders shifted. His voice dropped, becoming colder, heavier.
"Porl's lineage is not just relevant—it is foundational. His family lines intersect with command structures across no fewer than seven active fleet formations. His removal from this institution—your institution—sends a signal far louder than you intend."
He stepped closer, casting a long shadow toward her feet.
"If he is expelled, certain hierarchies will fracture. Loyalties will become... unpredictable."
He paused.
"And without cohesion," he added, "the Grounx will not be responsible for maintaining patrol over Ascendancy border systems."
The statement hung in the air like a suspended blade.
He tilted his head, a mock gesture of regret.
"No protection. No fleets. Just space. And whatever claims it next."
Yvith's wings shifted—just once. A subtle motion. But her face remained composed, unreadable.
"You're threatening to withdraw your defense fleets," she said, her tone flat.
"Not threatening," Drudru corrected. "Explaining reality. This is how strength redistributes when protocol fails."
A silence passed between them, longer than before. The light behind her flared slightly as the room adjusted its ambient cooling to account for rising temperature. Not from machines.
From politics.
Yvith took a single step to the left. Not away. Just enough for the light to catch a different angle of her face, sharpening the curve of her jaw, the edges of her wings.
"You mistake my judgment for emotion," she said.
A flicker passed across Drudru's expression. "Do I?"
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"Porl violated internal sanctuary protocol. That's not a matter of Grounx tradition. That's institutional law. He struck first. In a controlled zone. Against a cadet under Council protection."
She let that settle. Let the implications bloom.
Then added, with lowered voice:
"You speak of consequences, General. So will I. If we begin abandoning order for the sake of preserving bloodline pride, then your fleets—what's left of them—won't be defending the Ascendancy. They'll be defending chaos."
His jaw tensed. Just slightly. But it was there.
She saw it.
He exhaled once through his nose.
Then said, "Porl isn't the only one who breached protocol."
Yvith said nothing.
"You did as well."
She held his gaze.
"You," Drudru continued, voice dropping, "backed a refugee student. One with no confirmed history. No planetary affiliation. Even her biometric profile is suspect. And still... you shield her."
He stepped forward again, the light catching the edges of his pauldrons.
"Even if she wears a name of your choosing, that does not make her valid. Rumors spread. Fast. Among cadets. Among sponsors. Among Council aides."
He leaned in ever so slightly.
"Her story is convenient. Your protection of her—selective."
Another pause. He let the silence press in.
"You're not neutral anymore, Yvith. And we both know how that looks."
Yvith didn't blink.
"You're not here for justice," she said. "You're here for control."
He said nothing.
"The Academy is not your arena to redraw the rules," he said finally. "It belongs to the Ascendancy. And the moment your loyalty bends too far—"
He stopped just long enough for the air to still.
"—you'll find yourself standing alone. Even among your Council."
The chamber didn't feel smaller now—it felt tighter. Like the air had stopped moving. Like the room itself was watching.
Chancellor Yvith Korr stood unmoving, but her presence thickened.
She allowed the silence to expand just enough to remind him who truly held it.
Then she spoke.
"What exactly do you expect me to do, General? Retract my decision?"
She stepped forward, her voice rising not in volume, but in finality.
"Not only that—you've just issued a veiled threat to the Council. That places your entire species in violation of the Nine Council Treaty."
She didn't raise her tone. She didn't need to. The words struck harder in ice.
Drudru's expression didn't break—but a faint twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed how much he wanted to interrupt. She didn't allow it.
"And yes, I expected political pressure. I expected this display."
Her wings shifted ever so slightly.
"But if your fleets vacate the treaty-bound patrol zones your species committed to—if they abandon posts sworn under Council directive—then the Council will respond."
She let the statement hang. Then sharpened it.
"Economically. Publicly. And completely."
She took one step closer, closing the gap not just in space, but in authority.
"Every Grounx-affiliated trade agreement will be suspended. Every cargo route monitored. Every shared resource pipeline rerouted."
Drudru's jaw flexed.
"Your fleets, for all their strength, are not self-sufficient. You are warriors, General. You do not produce. You do not cultivate. You do not mine your own deep-core fuel. The Grounx have always depended on the Council's grid to sustain their military spread."
Another pause.
Then a deeper cut.
"Without our supply networks, your fleets will run cold in five weeks. Your carriers will float dry. Your warships—silent."
Drudru exhaled slowly. "You speak like someone ready to declare war."
Yvith raised her chin.
"No, General. I speak like someone ready to let you."
Her words landed like stone dropped into deep water—quiet, but irreversible.
The silence that followed was thicker than any argument.
Drudru's stance shifted, subtly.
He wasn't retreating. But he was reassessing.
Yvith continued, more softly now—more precise.
"Let me make this clear, in language even the most rigid military codes understand."
She gestured slightly to the side, and a panel on the wall blinked open in response. A small display flared to life, revealing fleet deployment lines, live data nodes from Ascendancy-controlled systems, and Grounx defensive corridors.
"If you think the Ascendancy will collapse without your ships, you've forgotten what empire means. We still have fleets, General. Even without yours."
She turned her gaze to him again.
"We have more resources. Larger shipyards. Deeper mines. Broader logistical routes. And, perhaps most relevant—we have patience."
Drudru crossed his arms but said nothing.
"You may strike first. But you will not hold. The tide always turns."
Her voice was nearly a whisper now.
"And when it does—there will be no one left to resupply you."
The general's mouth tightened. He didn't move, but his silence betrayed the weight of calculation now flooding his thoughts. The plan he walked in with had changed. He was rebalancing it in real time.
Yvith could see it.
And she wasn't finished.
She stepped closer again, her voice now even lower.
"Your fleets may make noise. But the Council moves slowly. And when it does move—it crushes."
A pause.
"Are you prepared to lose access to every Ascendancy hub within three cycles?"
No answer.
She tilted her head slightly.
"Are you prepared to explain to your war families why their supply lines vanished? Why Porl's bloodline collapsed due to a single, reckless assault?"
Drudru's hands clenched behind his back. She could hear the tension in his breathing. See the muscle twitches in his neck.
But he said nothing.
It was the first time she'd seen him off-balance.
And it mattered.
---
Yvith turned from him without warning.
Her wings swept out slightly as she moved toward the center console, her back now to the general—a deliberate sign of dismissal. The console blinked to life at her gesture. Without looking at him, she spoke again.
"You may raise your grievance to the Council. That is your right."
She turned just enough to speak over her shoulder.
"But until a formal decision is rendered—"
She turned back to face him fully.
"You will obey standing orders."
The light in the room dimmed slightly as the console shifted displays—now showing a mission docket with fleet movement tags.
"You will escort the five cadet vessels to the designated excavation zone."
Drudru's brow creased.
She cut him off before he could speak.
"That order was issued prior to this incident. And unless you intend to breach Council command chains in front of me—"
A pause.
"You will complete your assignment."
Her gaze held his, unwavering.
"Deviation will be recorded. And sent."
The words were simple. But the implication was absolute.
The chamber settled into an icy quiet once more.
---
Drudru's growl was low—low enough to vibrate through the walls.
Yvith stood still as stone.
He turned without a word.
Each step toward the exit felt like a retreat carved into protocol.
The door hissed open.
He didn't look back.
Didn't speak.
He left the way he came—heavy, deliberate.
The door sealed with a hiss.
True silence. The kind that seeped into the walls and clung to the air after something heavy had left the room.
Chancellor Yvith Korr remained in place, her wings still partially flared, her breathing steady. But with Drudru gone, the weight in the room shiftt
She move.
Only when the system confirmed that the general's biometric signature had fully exited the lower spire did she allow the stiffness to ease from her frame. Her wings folded slowly behind her, the outer edges brushing against the long folds of her coat. Her four eyes—two narrow, two slit-like—refocused on the shadowed alloy walls.
She blinked once.
Then turned.
With a precise flick of her fingers, the central console responded. The pale blue light faded, replaced by a warmer amber hue. The chamber's atmosphere recalibrated, recognizing the change in intent.
The political theater was over.
The real work had just begun.
She approached the desk with renewed purpose, the echo of Drudru's exit still fading in her mind. Her posture remained poised, but her thoughts were already running—cold, calculated, and fast. Connections. Implications. Patterns.
Drudru's visit had been expected. His pressure, inevitable.
But the timing…
That troubled her.
It was too aligned.
The same day she received the encrypted xenoarchaeology alert, Drudru came demanding protection for a cadet he knew was guilty. A cadet from a bloodline critical to Grounx fleet command. A cadet who struck unprovoked. Who made a show of dominance.
It wasn't a coincidence. It was coordination.
One power play to bury another.
She entered her override credentials manually—no voice ID, no scans, no assistant clearance. Just legacy code. Root access. The kind reserved for Councillor-level intel.
The hologram stabilized.
A new image materialized in the center of the room.
Yvith exhaled—quietly. Not surprise. Recognition.
The scan showed the surface of a remote world, its visual feed distorted slightly by gravitational interference. The planet was covered in dense, wind-warped forests—thick canopies stitched between jagged ridgelines and cratered stone.
But what caught the eye wasn't the forest.
It was what lay beneath it.
Ruins.
Enormous.
Cold.
Uncompromising in design.
Structures jutted from the earth like the broken ribs of a long-dead colossus—angular and curved at once, impossible geometry rendered with precision no modern species could replicate. Carvings spiraled along stone surfaces without visible tool marks. Even from orbit, the shadows formed glyphs that refused to translate.
Below the scan, a red line of system text scrolled:
> ARCHIVE ID: UNKNOWN — LANGUAGE: NULL — CULTURAL PARALLEL: UNMATCHED
The Council's xenoarchaeological core had nothing.
Not even a near match.
Not even a warning.
Not even the ancient empires buried so deep in secrecy that only four species still remembered them.
Yvith's gaze followed the slow rotation of the structure in the projection. A flicker interrupted the feed—one of the surface drones had failed on descent. Gravity on the planet was recorded at 1.1g. Extreme. Lethal for most species unassisted. The winds, too, were constant. Rhythmic. Almost designed.
This ruin wasn't just old.
It was protected.
She narrowed her eyes.
Energy signatures surrounding the site pulsed faintly in the scan—disruptive, non-reactive to standard probing. Layered shielding? Obsolete tech? No. Something else.
No power trace matched it.
No known xenolinguistic program recognized even a single glyph.
The site had been discovered only by accident—when a drifting long-range survey ship passed close and flagged a planetary anomaly: gravitational fluctuation paired with artificial geometry.
Is this… Gateborn?"
The word wasn't uttered aloud in most chambers. Not without consequence. Not with the Council watching.
But this room was hers.
And there was only one individual in the entire Academy—perhaps the entire system—who might recognize what the Council refused to admit had ever lived.
Niri.
Yvith's jaw tightened.
She closed the hologram and activated her personal watchpad. This command required full biometric seal. Retinal match. Genetic pulse code. Voice lock.
No logs.
No aides.
When the system chimed in silent confirmation, she spoke clearly:
"Summon Professor Lu'Ka and Niri Velas to my private chamber. Immediately."
The message transmitted, encrypted and untraceable.
Yvith didn't move.
She stared at the now-dark console for a long moment..