I don't remember falling asleep.
Maybe I didn't.
Maybe the silence simply grew too large to contain me.
But when my eyes opened again, everything was darker. Not the natural dark of night — but the artificial kind. Controlled. Purposed. The kind of darkness that knows you're awake before you do.
The Rift was gone — sealed, or sleeping. The fractured light had vanished. In its place was a new ceiling: smooth, grey, curved inward like a bowl. I lay on another table, or maybe the same one, but rebuilt.
I blinked. Slowly.
My arms… were free.
So were my legs.
But my body ached like I'd been reassembled out of broken parts. Every joint hummed with the echo of pain, like I was borrowing bones from a man who died screaming.
I sat up.
Not far — just enough to see the room. Just enough to see them.
Six figures stood beyond a curved glass wall. Faceless under helmets, wrapped in robes that glowed at the seams. I couldn't see their mouths. But I knew they were talking about me.
I didn't need to hear them to feel it.
The way their heads tilted. The way they stared.
As if I were a beast they'd carved from myth and expected to misbehave.
I touched my chest.
Bare.
Skin still pulsing with faint golden lines — no, not lines… runes. Residual symbols from whatever that Rift was. They faded when I pressed my hand over them, but I could still feel them. As if they had sunk below skin, whispering from the bone.
A voice crackled overhead.
"Subject Aeon-V-13 has regained post-surge coherence."
It wasn't a human voice. It was clinical. Dehydrated. Stripped of empathy.
Subject.
They called me Subject.
"Initiate vocal calibration."
A soft chime sounded, and then —
Pain.
Sudden. Hot. Deep.
My throat spasmed. I gagged. My hands clawed toward my neck—
Something was inside me.
Buried.
A collar? No — not physical. Something worse. A command woven into the breath itself.
"State your designation," the voice ordered.
I gasped.
My jaw tightened.
"State your designation," it repeated, harder.
I tried to speak.
Nothing came.
Only static in my ears, the sound of white noise pushing against my mind.
But then — something moved beneath that static. Something ancient. A whisper from beneath the surface of consciousness.
A name.
Not theirs.
Mine.
"State your designation."
I looked up.
Right at the glass.
At them.
And I said it.
"Aetherion."
Silence.
The kind that follows explosions.
None of the observers moved. They just stood there, as if I'd triggered a countdown they weren't ready for.
"Repeat," the voice said, but softer this time. Hesitant.
I stood.
Bones cracking. Muscles remembering.
And I said it again.
"My name is Aetherion Vale."
The lights flickered.
Not a glitch. A reaction.
Runes along the ceiling flared — gold, then blue, then violet, as if the word Vale reached into their circuitry and rearranged the rules.
The voice came back — not synthetic now. Human.
"Shut it down. Shut it down now."
Screams.
Metal grinding.
The room trembled — something breaking above me, something falling apart at the seams.
And then — without warning — the floor dropped.
I didn't fall. The floor did.
It spiraled open beneath me like a mouth. The table split, then vanished.
And I plunged through pure dark.
No air.
No wind.
No sound.
Just descent.
Down, down, through layers of shadow and memory — flashes around me like lightning caught between dreams.
A battlefield.
A voice saying: "You were my only light."
A blade. A betrayal. A broken world with my statue in ruins.
Then — impact.
Hard. Bone-jarring.
I landed in a chamber that looked like the inside of a machine dreaming of a cathedral — walls lined with glowing scripture, platforms hovering in midair, pillars shaped like runes frozen in prayer.
And in the center… a woman.
No. Not a woman.
A construct. A projection. But she wore a face like memory.
Pale eyes. Silver hair. Cloak of stardust.
She stood before a suspended orb, turning it slowly in her hand like a glass planet.
When she spoke, her voice didn't echo. It bent space to reach me.
"They tried to erase you."
I stared.
"They called you Subject. But you were Sovereign."
My mouth opened.
No sound came out.
"Do you remember your name?"
I nodded, slowly. "Aetherion Vale."
She smiled.
Then shattered.
No scream. No sound.
Her form broke into motes of starlight, each one drifting toward me — piercing my chest, my limbs, my spine.
And I felt it again.
Reclamation.
The first piece of me.
The first shard of the power they stole.
The runes on my skin flared again — but now I could see them clearly: a constellation map etched in golden script.
Aetherion.
Subject no longer.
Sovereign reborn.
A platform rose beneath my feet, lifting me upward — back toward the surface, the cells, the watchers.
They would see me again.
But this time… I'd be the one watching.
As I rose, the platform whispered a single phrase across my skin:
"Welcome back, dead star."