"The Regent," Mali repeated, the name tasting like ash in his mouth. "He's listening."
He grabbed Anya's hand, pulling her away from the balcony, away from the open air, pulling her into the center of the room. He looked around the opulent, crystal-walled suite. It had felt like a palace moments ago. Now, it felt like a panopticon. Every sensor, every drone, every flickering light on the console seemed to be an eye.
"Mali," Anya whispered, her voice low and urgent. "You're scaring me. Your heart rate is 160. Your pupils are dilated. Who is the Regent?"
"My father," Mali gasped, tapping his temple. "He left a message. A 'Bloodline Memory.' He said the Void-Lords are just symptoms. He said the System... the Legacy System... it's compromised."
Anya went still. Her face, usually a mask of calculated grace, went dead white. "Compromised? That's impossible. The Legacy System is the cosmic interface. It's the fundamental code of the High Houses. It's... it's physics, Mali. You can't compromise gravity."
"He called it 'The Omega Sanction'," Mali hissed. "He said there's a backdoor. A protocol buried in the code. He said... he said the Regent sits on the Throne of Nothing and is eating the stars."
He looked at her, his eyes pleading. "He told me not to trust the Council. Not to trust the Fleet. He said... only the Weaver."
Anya stared at him. She didn't dismiss him. She didn't call a medic. She was a Strategist. She took the new data, no matter how horrifying, and she processed it.
She closed her eyes. The silver light of her Tapestry flared behind her eyelids.
"If the System is compromised," she murmured, her voice taking on that distant, hollow tone of deep calculation, "then it explains... the blind spots."
"Blind spots?"
She opened her eyes. "The Tapestry. For years, my family has noted... irregularities. Karmic deficits in sectors that should be thriving. Fleets vanishing into statistical impossibilities. We thought it was the Void. But the math... the math never quite balanced. It looked less like chaos, and more like... embezzlement."
She grabbed his shoulders. "Mali. If the System is listening, we cannot speak freely. Not about this. Not here."
"How do we stop it?" Mali asked, glancing at the STATUS window hovering in his peripheral vision. It looked benign. Just numbers. But now, he saw the [HIDDEN PROTOCOL] line pulsing faintly.
[HIDDEN PROTOCOL: THE OMEGA SANCTION] [STATUS: ACTIVE - MONITORING...]
"We can't turn it off," Anya said grimly. "It's tied to our souls. If we sever the connection, we become... vegetables. Or worse, we die."
She began to pace, her silk dress rustling softly. "We need a blind spot. A place where the System's coverage is weak. Or..." She stopped. A dangerous, brilliant light entered her eyes. "Or we need to speak a language it doesn't understand."
"What language?"
"Physicality," she said. "Touch. The System reads Intent and Keywords. It monitors Data. But it struggles with raw, unquantifiable emotion. That's why our Binary Star link works. It's a fusion of souls, not just code."
She walked back to him and placed her hands on his cheeks. "We have to act normal. We have to be the Prince and Princess. If we panic, the 'Regent'—whoever or whatever it is—will know we know."
Mali forced himself to take a breath. Fake it till you make it.
"Okay," he whispered. "Act normal. What do we do?"
"My father said to find something," Mali said, lowering his voice. "The 'Primordial Anvil.' He said it's the only place to rewrite the code."
Anya's brows knit together. "The Primordial Anvil? That's a myth. An Old Spacer legend. It's supposed to be the forge where the first stars were made. It's located in the abyssal sector of the Sagittarius Arm. That is... deep in the Corrupted Void, Mali. It's a dead zone."
"That's why we have to go," Mali said. "If it's a dead zone, maybe the Regent can't see us there."
"Going there is suicide," Anya countered instinctively. Then she paused. She looked at him—the Unmaker. The man who had dissolved a Void-Lord. "Or... it was suicide. Until now."
A chime at the door shattered the moment.
Mali jumped, his Alkahest Lance instinctively priming in his hand.
"Enter," Anya called out, her voice perfectly steady.
The doors slid open. It was General Kaelen.
The old soldier walked in, his helmet under his arm. He looked exhausted but triumphant. "Your Majesties. The fleet is holding position. The celebrations on Sanctum have begun. The Council is requesting your presence for the Victory Feast."
Mali looked at Kaelen. He looked at the scars on the man's face, the genuine pride in his eyes. 'I served your father for thirty years,' Kaelen had said.
Do not trust the Council. Do not trust the Fleet.
The words rang in Mali's head. Was Kaelen a traitor? Or was he just a pawn? If the System itself was the enemy, Kaelen—whose entire life was dictated by duty and orders—might be the most dangerous man in the universe. If the System ordered Kaelen to kill him... would Kaelen do it?
Mali felt a wave of nausea. He couldn't look at the General.
Anya stepped in front of him, shielding him. "General," she said, her smile polite but firm. "The Prince is... unwell. The synchronization took a toll. We will not be attending the feast."
Kaelen frowned, concern etching his features. "Is it the soul-strain? Should I summon the medics?"
"No," Anya said quickly. "He needs rest. And... silence."
She walked over to Kaelen, placing a hand on his armored pauldron. "General. We trust you. You know that, right?"
Kaelen blinked, surprised by the sudden intimacy. He slammed his fist to his chest. "With my life, Empress."
"Good," Anya said. "Then we have a classified request. The Prince and I... we need to leave Sanctum."
Kaelen stiffened. "Leave? But you just arrived! The people—"
"The people have their victory," Anya interrupted smoothly. "But the Prince has had a vision. A... Bloodline Memory."
She was improvising. Mali watched, amazed, as she wove a lie wrapped in truth.
"The victory over Malakor was incomplete," she lied. "There is a... spiritual residue. To fully assume the Throne, Mali must undergo a purification. A pilgrimage."
"A pilgrimage?" Kaelen asked, skeptical.
"To the edge of the sector," Anya said. "Alone. Just the two of us. No fleet. No guards. It is an ancient Alkahest tradition. The 'Walk of the Solitary Star.'"
Mali blinked. She just made that up.
Kaelen looked at Mali. "Your Highness? Is this true?"
Mali forced his mask into place. He summoned the dregs of his Sovereign's Mantle. He looked Kaelen in the eye.
"It is, General. My father did it before he took the crown. I must do the same."
Kaelen hesitated. His duty warred with his loyalty. Finally, he sighed. "If it is tradition... I cannot stop you. But to go alone? With the Void stirring?"
"We killed a Void-Lord today, General," Mali said quietly. "I think we can handle a patrol."
Kaelen let out a bark of laughter. "Fair point. Very well. I will prepare the Stiletto. It is fast, stealthy, and automated. When do you leave?"
"Now," Mali said.
[ONE HOUR LATER - HANGAR BAY 4]
The Stiletto sat on the deck, a sleek shadow against the bright lights of the hangar.
Mali and Anya boarded quickly, carrying only a few satchels of supplies. They hadn't told Vorlag. They hadn't told the Council. Just Kaelen.
As the ramp closed, sealing them inside the small, silent ship, Mali finally exhaled.
"That was... close," he said, slumping into the pilot's seat.
Anya took the co-pilot's chair, her fingers flying across the console. "It wasn't close. It was desperate. Kaelen bought it because he wants to believe in the Alkahest mystique. But Vorlag? Vorlag is going to check the logs. We have maybe six hours before they realize there is no such thing as the 'Walk of the Solitary Star'."
"Six hours," Mali said. "Can we make it to the Sagittarius Arm in six hours?"
"Not even close," Anya said grimly. "It's a week's travel at maximum warp. And we can't use the main tithe-lanes. If the 'Regent' is watching the System, he'll track our vector."
She punched in a sequence of commands. The ship's nav-computer whirred.
"I'm setting a course for the 'Syrna' Nebula," she said. "It's a dense, chaotic gas cloud on the edge of the Imperium. It interferes with long-range sensors. We can hide there, mask our trail, and then jump to the Sagittarius Arm."
"Syrna," Mali repeated. "Like the continent on Toten."
"Exactly," Anya said. "The colonists on your world named it after the nebula. It was a place of mystery. A place where the rules didn't apply."
The engines hummed to life. The Stiletto lifted off the deck, hovering for a moment before shooting out of the atmospheric shield and into the black.
They were running away. The Emperor and Empress, fleeing their own kingdom on the day of their coronation.
Mali watched Sanctum shrink in the rear-view monitor. The golden rings, the artificial sun... it was beautiful. And it was a lie.
"Anya," he said quietly. "If we do this... if we find this Anvil... what then? How do we rewrite the universe?"
"I don't know," she admitted. She turned to look at him, her eyes reflecting the stars. "But you're the Unmaker, Mali. Maybe... maybe you don't have to rewrite it."
She paused.
"Maybe you just have to break the lock."
The ship engaged its warp drive. The stars stretched into lines of infinite light.
And in the silence of the slipstream, Mali's System chimed.
It wasn't a quest. It wasn't a level up.
It was a direct message.
[SENDER: UNKNOWN]
[MESSAGE: I SEE YOU RUNNING, LITTLE PRINCE.]
Mali froze. "Anya..."
[MESSAGE: YOU CANNOT HIDE FROM YOUR OWN BLOOD. COME TO THE ANVIL. I WILL BE WAITING.]
[SIGNED: THE REGENT]
Mali stared at the screen, his blood turning to ice.
He wasn't sneaking out. He wasn't escaping.
He was being invited.
"He knows," Mali whispered. "He knows where we're going."
Anya looked at the message, her face hard. "Of course he knows. He probably planted the memory in your father's message."
"What?"
"Think about it, Mali," she said, her voice cold and sharp. "Your father died twenty years ago. If he knew about the Regent then, why didn't he stop it? Why leave a message that only unlocks now?"
She looked at the swirling blue light of warp space.
"It's a trap," she said. "The Primordial Anvil isn't a sanctuary. It's a slaughterhouse."
Mali looked at his hands. The hands that had unmade a cannon. The hands that had killed a Void-Lord.
"Then let's go," he said, a new, dark resolve settling over him. "If he wants the Unmaker... let's give him one."
He reached out and engaged the Binary Star link. He felt Anya's fear, but also her steel.
"We're not running anymore," he said. "We're hunting."
[QUEST UPDATED: THE THRONE OF NOTHING]
[OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE THE TRAP]
[OBJECTIVE: CONFRONT THE REGENT]
[LOCATION: THE PRIMORDIAL ANVIL]
The Stiletto vanished into the dark, a single needle aimed at the heart of a cosmic conspiracy. And on the Throne of Nothing, something smiled.