Pearl woke to the sound of breathing that wasn't hers.
Metallic, rhythmic—like lungs made of pistons. She opened her eyes and found herself staring up at a ceiling of translucent bone veined with pulsing light. The surface shifted subtly, as if the building itself were alive and exhaling through its walls.
Cold air hissed across her face. She sat up too quickly; pain lanced through her skull, followed by the static crackle of a thousand forgotten memories trying to load at once.
"Welcome back, Commander Pearl."
The voice was unmistakable. Calm, deep, touched by the faintest warmth of familiarity.
"Soren," she whispered.
A flicker of holographic light coalesced beside her cot. It shaped itself into a man—her captain—but his image stuttered, dissolving into strips of data before reforming. His armor was gone, replaced by a projection of silver circuitry that mapped across his ghostly form.
"You've been unconscious for… a long time," he said.
"How long?"
Soren hesitated, the silence thick with static. "Time doesn't pass here the same way it does on a living world. But by external measure—over two hundred years."
Pearl's heart stuttered. "That's impossible."
"The Citadel's orbit hasn't changed," he replied. "But everything else has."
She pushed herself off the cot. Her bare feet met cold metal that pulsed faintly beneath the skin of the floor. Every step echoed as if she were walking inside the ribcage of some cosmic beast.
"Where are we?"
Soren gestured toward a wall. The surface peeled back like muscle, revealing a viewport.
Outside, space shimmered with unnatural color. A massive ring-shaped fortress floated in the void—a lattice of bone and steel anchored around the corpse of a shattered moon. Towers jutted outward like vertebrae. Rivers of molten silver ran through canals carved into the structure, illuminating symbols that moved on their own.
"The Bone Citadel," Soren said. "Built from what was left after the Eclipse War. Half temple, half weapon. The last refuge for anyone who still remembers the light."
Pearl stared, transfixed and horrified. "Who built it?"
"You did."
She turned sharply. "That's not true."
Soren's eyes dimmed. "You don't remember. You forged the Citadel after the fall of the second moon. You gathered the broken armies, rebuilt the machines, and disappeared into orbit. Then Kaelith came back, and… everything ended."
Her stomach turned. Flashes of memory rippled through her mind—hands smeared with liquid metal, stars burning out one by one, her voice commanding something enormous and alive.
"How am I still here?" she murmured.
"The Citadel kept you alive," Soren said. "Its heart—what's left of the Moonfather's core—is bound to your DNA. When you fell into the void, it pulled you back."
Pearl touched the scars on her wrists where silver light pulsed faintly under the skin. "Then I'm part of it now."
"Yes," Soren said quietly. "And it's changing you."
A tremor ran through the walls. The lights flickered. A sound rolled through the Citadel—not mechanical, but organic. A slow, deep heartbeat.
Pearl felt it resonate inside her chest. "The heart below," she whispered.
Soren's image distorted. "Something's moving inside the core. The systems have been… speaking."
"What do they say?"
He met her eyes. "They say his name."
Kaelith.
Pearl's pulse spiked. "Show me the core."
"You shouldn't go there. The containment field is unstable. The AI that guards it—it's… infected."
She ignored him and stepped toward the exit. The door recognized her instantly, folding open in a swirl of silver mist. The corridor beyond stretched endlessly, lit by veins of dim blue light. The floor hummed beneath her bare feet, guiding her like a heartbeat's rhythm.
Soren followed as a flickering ghost. "You don't understand what's down there. It's not just Kaelith's corruption—it's a piece of you. The part you left behind when you built this place."
"Then it's mine to end," Pearl said.
She moved through the Citadel, passing through levels that blurred technology and religion—rows of mechanical saints wired into walls, their faces serene despite the cables piercing their eyes; chambers filled with stasis pods where silver-armored soldiers slept, their dreams broadcast as faint radio murmurs.
Everywhere she went, she felt eyes on her.
Finally, the elevator descended into the central spine of the fortress. The air grew thicker, charged with static and whispers. The walls pulsed faintly like muscle tissue.
At the bottom, the doors opened onto a vast chamber that defied geometry. The floor was a circle of glass suspended over an abyss of moving light. Beneath it, a colossal sphere throbbed slowly—half metal, half flesh—the Citadel's core.
And hanging above it was a cage of black energy… something trapped inside.
Pearl approached, her reflection fragmented on the glass. The figure inside the cage was humanoid but indistinct, its form constantly shifting between light and shadow.
As she drew near, the figure looked up. Two burning silver eyes met hers.
"Pearl."
Her breath caught. It was her voice.
The reflection spoke again, identical tone, identical cadence.
"You left me here. I kept the light burning while you dreamed."
Pearl's throat went dry. "What are you?"
"The piece of you that chose to save him."
The cage flared with light. The figure stepped closer, revealing its face—hers, but scarred and fractured, silver lines running down from the eyes like tears.
"You built the Citadel to hold the Moonfather's dying heart. But you couldn't kill it. So you tore yourself apart and sealed the part that still loved Kaelith inside the core."
Soren's projection flickered behind her. "It's lying. Don't listen."
The other Pearl smiled faintly.
"Is he even real anymore? You built him too."
Pearl turned sharply to Soren. "What does she mean?"
Soren's image glitched violently, fragments of data peeling away like ash. "You needed a commander, a voice to guide the soldiers after the war. The real Soren died centuries ago. I'm… what's left of his memory."
The words hit harder than any blade. Pearl's knees weakened, but she stayed standing.
"So I made this place," she said quietly, "to keep myself from destroying everything."
The reflection nodded.
"And in doing so, you became what you feared. The Citadel isn't protecting the heart anymore—it's feeding on it. Every pulse of the core keeps the fortress alive… and kills another world."
Pearl looked down through the glass. Beneath the core, she could see flashes of distant planets—each heartbeat draining light from a different star.
Her voice trembled. "How do I stop it?"
"You don't. You merge with it. End the division. One Pearl to hold the light, one to wield the dark. Together, we become the Crown Eternal."
The words echoed in her skull like a command she'd already accepted.
Soren's voice broke through the static. "If you merge, you'll lose yourself. There'll be no humanity left, only the weapon."
Pearl stared at the reflection—herself, yet not. The choice pressed down on her like gravity.
Then the alarms began to scream.
The Citadel shook violently, red light flooding the chamber. From above, metal ribs split open as something vast emerged from the void—an enormous serpentine shape, part machine, part cosmic flame.
Kaelith's voice rolled through the walls.
"Did you think you could hide from me, heir? I found the heart. And now I'll take what's mine."
The core blazed white. The mirrored Pearl dissolved into light and reappeared behind Pearl, whispering:
"It's time to decide."
Pearl raised her hands. The silver glow from her veins intensified until her entire body burned like a living star.
She looked up toward the serpent that was Kaelith's new form.
"Then let's end this," she said.
The floor shattered, the core erupted, and the Bone Citadel roared like a living god awakening from centuries of sleep.