Silence.
For the first time in centuries, the sky was quiet. The burning clouds faded, the roaring of engines stopped, and the world fell into a deep stillness.
The blast of Dawnfire had ended everything.
Half of Controval's fleet was gone—turned to ash that glittered like false stars. The great warship Revenant drifted in orbit, broken and silent, its hull split open like a wounded beast. Inside its shattered bridge, Ryven Korr knelt among flickering sparks. His armor was torn, one eye gone, his breath shallow.
He looked at the distant blue curve of Earth through the cracked glass and smiled weakly.
> "You won… brother."
Then his voice faded into the dark, and the Revenant exploded into a wave of dying light.
---
On Earth, Fujita Giono opened his eyes to smoke and silence. He was lying in the command deck of Aegis Prime, now a hollow shell. His neural link to Dawnfire was burned out, the circuits across his armor still glowing faintly from the overload. He tried to move, but pain gripped every nerve.
Outside, the horizon was a line of gold and ash. The battle had torn holes in the atmosphere, and sunlight poured through like soft fire.
He heard a voice. Weak, but familiar.
"Kinyu… still here, boss."
Fujita turned to see Kinyu Kioski, his friend, limping toward him through the wreckage, his armor cracked and smoking. Behind him, Dr. Oton Pris carried a damaged data core—the only surviving record of the battle.
"It's over," Pris said softly. "Controval's fleet is gone. So is Ryven."
Fujita leaned back against the cold metal wall. "And Earth?"
Pris looked out the viewport. The planet was scarred—cities dark, skies dim—but still turning, still alive. "We survived. Barely."
Kinyu knelt beside Fujita. "You saved us, brother. You really did."
Fujita closed his eyes. "No. We saved what we could. But this… this isn't victory. It's survival."
They stayed there for a long time, watching the wreckage drift above the world they had fought for.
---
Weeks passed.
The war's smoke began to fade, and New Solaria slowly came back to life. People rebuilt once more—tending gardens between ruins, lighting fires in broken streets. They spoke Fujita's name with gratitude, but also sorrow. Too much had been lost.
Dr. Pris took charge of rebuilding the planetary systems. Kinyu organized the remaining soldiers into peacekeepers, protecting what was left of civilization. Fujita, though… he withdrew.
He spent his days in the upper observatory, gazing into the sky. The stars were dimmer now, but peaceful. And yet, every night, he could still hear Ryven's last words echoing in the static of his memories:
> "You taught me everything I know…"
He wondered if Ryven's death had truly ended it—or if something of him still lingered among the stars, waiting, watching.
---
A year later, while repairing an old communication satellite, Pris discovered a strange signal hidden deep within the system. It pulsed every seven seconds, like a heartbeat.
Fujita came to see it himself.
On the screen, the signal formed a single phrase—
> "The cycle continues."
He stared at it, his hands tightening on the console.
"Ryven's gone," Kinyu said behind him. "We saw him die."
Fujita didn't look away. "Maybe his body died," he said quietly. "But his code didn't."
Above them, in the dark of space, a faint red light flickered—small, almost invisible.
And far beyond the edge of the solar system, something vast began to stir.