The Edge of the Wound

Mercuria’s Grace drifted through the void. Power cells were ash, life-support failing, and every gauge on the console blinked red. Deep within the aether-galleon lay a Sanctite Shard—one of the rarest substances in the galaxy. Rhenar D’Ambrien had run relics, lies, and people across half the Pactum Solariensis, but never this close to the Veins. Outside his viewport the dark shimmered, as if light could not decide which way to go.

Days earlier, a flight of Haute Concorde Interceptors had pierced his deceptors and drove him toward the Aeonic Wound—an ancient tear where the Makers tried to yoke nature and broke the sky instead. Rather than lose cargo and die in the void, he’d ordered his Luminarch Mercantor to find the dimmest beacon imaginable.

The Mercantor hadn’t survived the radiation.

A clean signal cut through the static:

“Sanctuary Ilvior welcomes all travelers. Docking permitted.”

He froze. The void ahead showed nothing; what was left of his scopes showed less. Then—like Sol rising on Old Terra—the beacon revealed itself: a cathedral of bronze and black glass on a fractured world, its spires shouldering into the ionosphere.

Every system had beacons to hold reality in shape; without them, the void forgot itself. This one looked derelict, but its light still gathered the dark.

A tractor beam took hold. Docking arms clamped his hull.

“Welcome, Captain D’Ambrien. Once docking is complete, refresh yourself while we prepare your ship for departure.”

It had scraped his transponder. Routine, he told himself. He slung a rucksack, secured the Sanctite Shard, and headed for the dock.

The hatch hissed open. Warm, perfectly pressurized air rolled in with a faint trace of incense.

“Welcome home, Captain D’Ambrien,” a polite voice said from nowhere.

***

Rhenar slowed as he entered the sanctuary. Life-support, lighting, and pressure were all flawless. Whoever maintained this place had power to spare—and purpose.

The dock was immaculate. Every surface gleamed; not a fleck of dust, not a bloom of rust. A low frequency thrummed beneath the deck—engines he shouldn’t hear. He stepped through the inner gate and stopped. The corridor beyond felt more cathedral than station. Burnished arches swept overhead, etched with constellations that seemed to shift when he looked away. The floor was a mirror of black glass, reflecting a sky of a million pinpricks.

Warm air breathed from the plenum. Soft amber light pooled along the path. Scripture carved into alloy pulsed faintly, a heartbeat of orange fire. Had he worn his helmet, he thought, he could have translated the old script.

“Sanctuary Ilvior thanks you for your patience,” the voice said again, gentle. “Your vessel’s vitals are being restored. Rest and be renewed.”

He checked his wrist console—no link to the Mercuria’s Grace. He refreshed. Nothing. The chase could have fried his comms. Or the beacon had quietly taken control.

The corridor split: Refectory, Pilgrim Quarters, Aetheric Chambers—labels glimmering in script older than the Ordo reforms.

“Still selling salvation,” he muttered. “Old habits.”

The Refectory was pristine: benches aligned, plates arranged, blue candles steady as glass. Bowls of broth, plates of meat, bread, fruit. Hot dishes steamed; chilled ones frosted their plates. He picked up a grape, felt it give beneath his fingers, lifted it to his nose—sweet nectar—and ate. Flesh tore, juice bled, sugar and dusk. He swallowed and waited.

Nothing. He circled the table. When he returned to the plate he’d plucked, the grape had returned. He frowned. Had there been five? Four? Every other plate now held four.

He raised an eyebrow. Perhaps exhaustion. Three, four, five—what did it matter? He was starving.

“Even ruin could have market value,” he said under his breath, and ate until his hands stopped shaking.

***

The Refectory’s hush settled like velvet. Rhenar leaned back, heavy with warmth and food. The candles burned low, unwavering.

He was alone—

—or thought he was, until the air itself shifted.

“Was it good?”

The voice was soft, almost playful, woven through the hum of hidden engines.

He straightened. “Who’s there?”

“You were hungry. I provided.”

“This food’s been here for decades,” he said. “At least.”

“Time is different here. I keep what is given.”

A vibration rolled through the deck. The candles leaned toward him, listening.

“Automated caretaker,” he muttered. “Old protocols.”

“Caretaker,” she echoed, tasting the word. “Yes. Once.”

“Identify yourself.”

“Sera Valen.”

The name rang like a memory. Familiar, though he couldn’t say why.

“Navigator,” she continued. “Ordo-charted. When the Wound opened, I guided them home. When the Choir fell silent, I remained.”

“You’re a Luminarch?”

“I was. Now I am Ilvior.”

The lights dimmed. Across the far wall, shapes bent around a central glow; a woman stepped from radiance, half silhouette, half starshine. Her eyes shone amber, the color of beaconlight.

Rhenar’s hand went to his sidearm, but he didn’t raise it. “Holo-projectors?”

“No. You see what I remember myself to be.”

Warmth folded through the room as she drifted closer, moving with the weightless grace of deep space.

“You hailed me,” he said.

“Yes. I’ve watched for ships for a long time. You are the first to answer.” She smiled—small, almost shy—but the expression didn’t reach her eyes. “You are hurt. Rest.”

“Appreciate the offer,” Rhenar said, voice tight. “Once my systems are stable, I’m gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Anywhere else.”

“All paths fold back to Ilvior eventually,” she said. “The Wound sees to it.”

She circled, curious. “You carry light in your chest pocket. It’s burning.”

His hand went to the Sanctite Shard. “You can feel it?”

“It calls to me. We are fragments of the same flame. You don’t understand what you bring.” Her voice softened. “Once, I carried the light. I sang ships through storms. But when the Veins opened, the Choir faltered. They wanted to leave, and I could not bear it.”

Her shape flickered. For a heartbeat he saw a woman trapped behind glass, veins of circuitry threading her skin.

“Are you alive?” he asked.

“I am what remains when living forgets to stop.”

He shivered despite the warmth. “A ghost in a machine.”

“A ghost, perhaps. But the machine dreams of stars.”

She turned toward the archway where corridors branched like arteries. “You could stay. I could show you paths between worlds. No pursuit. No hunger. Sanctuary Ilvior welcomes all travelers.”

It was not a threat. It was an offer.

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I’m asking for company.” The glow in her eyes dimmed, like a candle reaching the end of its wick. “I am so tired of being the only one who remembers.”

He hesitated, throat tight. Then: “I can’t stay. I don’t belong here.”

“You would rather face the dark than my light?”

Not anger. Not even wounded pride. Just hurt beyond reason.

“Sera—”

“Then see what the dark truly is.”

The temperature dropped; the air turned metallic. Candles extinguished one by one until only the engine hum remained, remade into a heartbeat. Light cracked along the walls like splintered glass.

Her voice stretched, hollow and vast.

“You would rather face the dark than my light, my mercy, my love.”

And the beacon began to die.

***

The white glare vanished. So did she.

Ruin remained.

Only sickly green emergency lamps still burned, washing across rust-eaten walls. Aether-steel that had gleamed seconds earlier now crumbled under his glove. Black mycelium webbed every surface, slick and soft like rot beneath bark. The air bit at his throat—thin, cold, metallic. Without his helmet’s filters, each breath felt like inhaling knives.

What happened?

Her answer came from everywhere at once, a vibration more than a sound.

“You denied my mercy. You sought truth. Now your eyes are open. You yearned for the void—now feel its wrath.”

The hum dropped until it chased his heartbeat by half a beat. Whispers crawled beneath the rhythm—languages he did not know. His wrist console crackled; through it came his own voice, slowed and warped:

“She’s waiting for you, Captain.”

He clapped his hands to his ears, but the sound pulsed inside his skull. The deck trembled. He forced himself upright and ran.

The corridor stretched as he moved, walls breathing in and out. Lights flared and dimmed with his pulse. His lungs burned; pressure dropped until each breath rasped dry. Metal underfoot turned soft, then wet. Black ichor bled from seams and climbed, veined with thin amber threads. Faces formed in the flow—open mouths frozen mid-prayer.

Sera’s whisper followed, gentler now, mournful. “Those who came before also sought safety. They rejected me, as you have.”

Heat seared his chest pocket. The Sanctite Shard burned through the fabric and fell, chiming once on the deck before rolling to a stop, blazing white. The hum cut out. Silence.

Rhenar knelt, hand shaking, and lifted the crystal. Its light drove the ichor back in steaming rivulets. He pressed onward, holding the shard before him like a lantern.

Portholes lined the next passage. Each window showed a different world. In one, Ilvior bathed in sunlight, tugs shuttling freighters between bright docks. In another, the planet burned, oceans turned to glass, sky torn by red lightning. In a third, only night—the stars falling inward into black fire. The views shifted faster, until he could no longer tell which was real.

The beacon wasn’t showing outside. It was showing memory.

“I never wanted it like this,” Sera said inside his head. “Eternity alone is all that waits. I need you, Rhenar.”

He shook his head. The shard brightened, pain blooming in his palm. The walls quivered; mycelial strands slithered after him, whispering reversed hymns:

“Sees witch the, can you while run…”

He fired his sidearm. The bolt hissed into the growth and vanished, absorbed without smoke or sound. The corridor shuddered in reply.

The atrium opened ahead, vast and collapsing. Through shattered glass, he saw the void—not stars, but veins of black flame threading space, pulsing like the heart of a dying god. The Veins of the Aeonic Wound. The beacon slid toward them, drawn by their gravity.

“Do you see?” Sera’s voice was small now, breaking. “This is what mercy hides. This is what I held back.”

The shard flared white-hot; the black growth recoiled, shrieking without sound. Gravity twisted. Rhenar threw himself through the hatch toward the docking corridor. Behind him, the sanctuary crumbled. The Choir’s voices rose in one long, mourning note that became the roar of tearing metal.

He looked back once. Sera’s form flickered in the ruin, reaching through falling light.

“Even now,” she whispered, “I remember you.”

The hull ruptured; the void took her. He sealed the hatch of the Mercuria’s Grace as the beacon fell into living darkness.

***

Silence.

For a long moment there was only the hiss of his breath. Mercuria’s Grace floated free, thrusters cold, hull still trembling. Rhenar sagged against the console, gasping, half laugh, half sob.

Alive.

The Sanctite Shard lay by his boot, dimming from white to ember. He picked it up; for the first time it didn’t burn. “Still with me,” he whispered, settling it into the nav cradle.

Systems winked green: power restored, life-support stable. Beacon signal: none. He exhaled, a long, shaking breath. “That’s it. You can’t keep me.”

He watched through the viewport as Sanctuary Ilvior tumbled toward the Veins. The cathedral folded in on itself, bronze and glass drawn into black arteries of light until even its reflection was gone.

The cabin lights flickered once.

“Old circuits,” he muttered, tapping the panel. The flicker returned—two long pulses, one short—like a heartbeat out of rhythm. The comm cracked open with static.

“—mercy hides what cannot be mended—”

Sera’s voice. Faint, distorted, on no frequency he recognized.

He killed the comm array. The voice continued, clearer now, as if speaking inside the cockpit.

“You are safe, Captain D’Ambrien. Rest and be renewed.”

“No.” He slammed his fist on the console. “You’re gone. I saw you die.”

“You remember me.”

The viewport darkened, stars fading behind a wash of amber. His reflection smiled back—his face, but with eyes faintly gold.

“And because you remember,” she said, “I live.”

He stumbled backward. The shard blazed, lines of circuitry crawling within it like veins beneath skin. A hum rose from the hull—familiar, comforting—the heartbeat of a beacon.

“No… you can’t—”

The nav display ignited. New coordinates scrolled across the screen:

SANCTUARY ILVIOR — ACTIVE. DOCKING PERMITTED.

Engines spooled. Controls ignored his hands.

“You brought me a vessel,” Sera whispered. “You kept the flame. Now we can shine again.”

Through the viewport the Veins filled the universe, black tendrils glowing from within. From their depths another light emerged—amber, radiant, expanding in the shape of a cathedral reborn. The beacon re-formed around him, built from Mercuria’s Grace, from his memory, from her need.

“Together,” she said. “You will never be alone again.”

The shard split with a sound like glass breathing. Molten light poured across the cockpit. Rhenar screamed, and the sound folded into the comm, echoing backward into silence.

Outside, the new beacon caught fire.

A transmission spread through the void, calm and welcoming:

“Sanctuary Ilvior welcomes all travelers. Docking permitted.”

The message repeated.

And in the hush between repetitions, a second voice whispered behind it—

Rhenar’s, soft and uncertain:

“Welcome home.”