The sun had already begun to tilt westward when Soren made his way to the central terrace. Dozens of lacravida were gathered in slow-forming clusters across the square, dressed in pale garments streaked with threads of violet and green. Some wore coils of woven cloth around their wrists, others held memory strands between their fingers like prayer beads. Soren didn’t know the meaning of it all, but he felt it. There was a hush between voices and a low, droning harmonic that had begun to rise from a group seated near the fire pits; wordless, warm, and ancient.

  He stood near the edge of the courtyard, careful not to draw attention. His presence was tolerated, but he hadn’t forgotten why they were all here. Why there were bodies to mourn. He made sure he had learned their names.

  Thamdir, the first to fall, and his older brother Thorsul. Their father, Brolgar, would apparently be joining the mission aboard The Resolute Wind.

  Kasey and Klix, the last to fall.

  And Jory, the human man whose fiancé, Miraen, had shown him more grace than he deserved. Soren had killed before. In war. Nearly 8,000 years ago. But something inside him knew he would remember the names of these five for the rest of his life.

  Miraen stood near him now. She had sought him out, asked him what had happened, and listened to every hard detail. He was honest with her, about his perceptions leading up to it, about the actions and reactions. About everything. At first, he left out how afraid he had been. He hadn’t wanted it to sound like an excuse. But then she had asked.

  Were you afraid?

  And he could not lie to her.

  Afterward, they sat quietly together, he couldn’t say for how long. And she told him that she could not forgive him, not yet. But she was not angry with him. And she had been quietly kind since then. She seemed to know that others in the village still met him with suspicion. And perhaps because of that, she stayed nearby, setting an example.

  A low rumbling noise at the edge of his perception caught his attention. He looked upwards and spotted it, far up in the sky. Tamiyo’s ship, the one he had awoken on. Last time he saw it, he was walking away from it into the jungle.

  He watched it drop lower, emerging from the clouds as a dot growing bigger. As she steadily lost altitude, several others in the area took notice, but many continued about their duties, focused on the ceremony.

  It touched down near the eastern fields, just beyond the building where Soren had been held captive. He didn’t feel the need to go meet Tamiyo as she landed, they would spend plenty of time together soon enough. He wanted to keep his focus here. Pay them the respect they deserved.

  The square continued to gather itself around him, filling in with the slow gravity of ritual. Groups trickled in from the outer lanes of Berilinsk, moving slowly but with purpose. Some carried woven bowls of fragrant herbs or folded strips of cloth. Others bore nothing but solemn expressions, heads bowed slightly as if letting the day settle upon them.

  Elias appeared from one of the side paths, joining him and Miraen without a word. The man’s presence was grounding, solid in a way Soren couldn’t define, like a stone at the center of a slow river. Elias stood just close enough to be reassuring, but didn’t speak. Soren appreciated that more than he could say.

  Shortly after, Miraen stirred beside him and stepped forward. She gave Soren a single glance, not reassurance, but acknowledgment, then stepped away without a word, vanishing into the edge of the gathering crowd.

  He watched her go, a quiet weight settling in his chest.

  Further off, he spotted Amalia slipping into the gathering crowd, her usual swagger dimmed but not absent. She wore ceremonial tones in her own improvised way, a sash draped diagonally across her torso. Violet wasn’t far behind, her eyes red-rimmed but resolute, sticking close to Riza. Even the sniper had chosen colors of mourning for the ceremony instead of her usual black. She stood with her arms crossed and wore a cold expression that told Soren she'd probably buried more people than were currently in attendance. They didn’t appear to be part of the ceremony itself, watching instead from the general masses.

  Not long after, movement appeared along the main path that wound in from the western lanes. A procession was approaching, distinct from the slow trickle of earlier arrivals. This group moved together, careful and solemn. It was led by two d’moria, a man and a woman. Soren recognized Brolgar, but not the red-haired woman beside him with a braid over each shoulder.

  Behind them was Miraen. She walked with her hands clasped lightly in front of her and looked like she was keeping her composure from fracturing by sheer willpower.

  They were followed by a platform that held five ornate caskets, one for each of the fallen. The craftsmanship was undeniable: each casket was adorned in etched symbols, woven threads, and layered motifs that looked hand-pressed into the wood. Tiny offerings had already been affixed to them. He saw charms, feathers, carved shapes, smooth river stones, and many others.

  The platform was held aloft, carried through the air on the shoulders of powerful matriarchs, one at each corner. Veolo held one of the front corners, joined on the other side by a lacravida Soren didn’t know. She was broad-shouldered and beautiful like the rest, but after a moment Soren recognized the resemblance of her face. She was undoubtedly the mother of Thorsul and Thamdir. At the rear corners, Soren spotted the golden curls of Chieftess Samara on one side and Aurania on the other. The sisters were tall, even amongst their people, so they held their portions of the platform on flexed arms instead of shoulders. Matron Serava followed behind.

  Soren could feel the entire atmosphere of the courtyard shift.

  Those who had already gathered began to clear a space at the heart of the terrace near the central fire and raised platforms. A circle of low, flat stones had been arranged in a spiral around a single large pyre, each arc ready to receive one of the five resting places.

  He didn’t breathe as the caskets were brought in, set down with great care, and draped once more in cloth. But this time, the cloth shimmered faintly in the firelight, filaments of metallic thread catching each movement of the flame.

  A beat later, Soren caught movement in the distance and turned to see a small group approaching from the direction of the fields. Tamiyo led them, Raine and Inelius just behind her traveling side by side. They had arrived just in time and settled near the edge of the ceremony to observe quietly.

  Then the music slowly shifted. The harmonics deepened. A bell chime echoed across the square. The ceremony had begun.

  Fire bowls lined the stone paths, lit in flickering spirals that marked the procession route. Small flares of colored smoke rose from each, drifting upward in shades of lavender, blue, and soft gold. Children, young acolytes maybe, walked ahead of the mourners carrying shallow clay dishes filled with damp petals and ash.

  Soren watched as people stepped forward one by one to place offerings into the central fire: tokens, folded paper, memory stones. When the wind shifted, he could smell the oils and crushed herbs burning. Citrus, sweet bark, something like pine.

  After some time, a voice rose. Matron Serava stepped gracefully into the circle dressed sparsely in silks the color of flowing water. She moved like she was floating, arms unfurling as she swept into the first motion of a sacred dance. Not performative or dramatic, but deeply and viscerally precise. Every step carried weight. Every gesture drew invisible lines in the air.

  As if called by the emotions of the crowd, warm raindrops began to lightly fall. It was surely another episode of the planet’s unstable weather, but it installed itself into the ceremony as if it was planned all along. He saw steam rise up where the rain hit the flames but the fires burned undeterred. The entire atmosphere of the ceremony reminded him of something distant. A fractured memory of a mourning practice on Earth, maybe. Or something he’d only seen once in war during a ceasefire.

  He blinked, and for just a second, he saw something else. Someone crying. A building in flames. The scent of metal and blood and—

  Soren shook the thought off, he could remember the past later. He returned his focus to Serava.

  Each movement rippled outward like concentric waves on still water. Her hooves moved just above the ground, forming gentle spirals across the stone. Her hands fluttered and stilled, curved and extended, like she was shaping air, coaxing invisible threads into alignment. At times she turned slowly, arms out, palms lifted toward the sky. At others, she dropped to one knee, head bowed, fingers pressed to the stone before her.

  Voices from the crowd chanted in rhythm as she moved, some deep, some high, all of it hauntingly beautiful.

  She danced in circles, smaller, tighter, then opened into wider arcs, as if drawing the path from the body to the beyond. As beautiful as she was, as graceful the dance, the tone was unmistakably one of sorrow. But it was a grief draped in healing.

  Soren didn’t breathe.

  The smoke from the fire bowls twisted around her legs like phantom mist. In one moment, she traced a symbol mid-air with her forefinger, holding it there with her gaze, and in the next, she stepped straight through it, dissolving it into motion.

  Serava moved into the final arc of the dance, skin glistening from the rain. Her arms swept outward, and she pivoted with both hands raised. For a heartbeat, it felt like the air bent around her, like the very light shifted direction. Then she dropped her hands slowly, turned her face skyward, and exhaled.

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  It was done.

  She stood there for a few moments, unmoving. Soren could feel something about her, something ethereal. It was indescribable, but the Aether Dust he could feel fused to his very cells, something about Serava was resonating with it.

  A few scattered murmurs rustled at the edge of the crowd, but mostly there was only stillness.

  Serava finally moved, looking down from the sky and opening her eyes. She briefly glanced directly at him and he felt the full weight of her gaze for that instant, as if the Aether Dust within him pulsed faintly. He looked at Aurania and she too was looking at him. But an instant later, her eyes moved away. No one else seemed to notice how they had looked at him, and it left him feeling like he had imagined it all.

  The Matron began to speak, it sounded like a type of epitaph or eulogy, but Soren was having difficulty understanding the words. He didn’t want to spend the entire time staring at the translator, so he focused instead on trying to catch words he had started to learn, not relying on the mental link.

  “...guide them by flame…”

  “...ashes to…”

  “...what we carry with us…”

  “...begin to heal…”

  “...do not forget…”

  It wasn’t a sermon. It was a farewell, spoken like a vow.

  Soren didn’t recognize who stepped forward next, maybe a spiritual leader, or maybe just someone chosen by the families. The speaker’s tone rose and fell like a tide, interspersed with soft chimes and brief responses from the crowd. At one point, the gathered mourners hummed together, low and harmonic, until the entire square vibrated faintly with sound.

  Then came the lighting.

  One mourner for each of the fallen stepped up. Aurania stood before Klix. Miraen stood before Jory. Veolo stood before Kasey. And Brolgar stood with the mother of his children as they stepped before them. Each held a blazing torch straight in front of their faces.

  They lit them in unison.

  It was beautiful. Peaceful.

  The fires caught fast, clean-burning and bright. Spirals of color licked through the timber: blue at first, then soft gold, and finally violet. The smoke carried upward like a ribbon, twining toward the darkening sky.

  No one wailed. No one sobbed. But there were quiet tears caught in the flicker of light. Grief here wasn’t loud. It was sacred.

  Soren stood still, watching the flames roar high into the sky. He wasn’t sure what the future held for him, but he was sure what lay ahead for these people if they couldn’t find help.

  He lowered his gaze and waited for silence.

  The fires had burned down to only embers, but Soren could still feel them on his face. The roar of them. The weight they carried.

  He sat atop a wide boulder at the northern edge of Berilinsk overlooking the village. From here, he could see the faint outlines of the town bathed in starlight, the last wisps of smoke from the funeral drifting upward into the night. Below, the movement had slowed. The work was done. Crates and gear packs had already been staged inside Tamiyo’s freighter, parked just beyond the eastern fields.

  The ship where he had awoken, thousands of years out of time, now rested like a quiet sentinel.

  He’d offered to help, but they declined. The villagers helped their people move the gear they would take with them, a way of saying farewell in action.

  So now he sat alone in the quiet, watching the sky above alive with stars. The sun had set several hours ago, and the whole village below was holding its breath.

  They were waiting. All of them.

  Soren heard hooves behind him step onto the boulder. He didn’t turn to look at her, he already knew who it was. He had felt her draw close, of course.

  Aurania approached and stood next to him, eyes on the horizon.

  They didn’t speak at first.

  Eventually, he asked, “How are your headaches?”

  He heard her exhale. “Fine. Please don’t feign concern for me.”

  Now he looked at her. “You know it’s genuine.” He let that linger a moment. “You feel the connection, same as I do.” He looked back to the sky.

  She was quiet for several moments. “My head hurts less,” her tone had lost its edge. “Thank you for asking. How is your language comprehension?”

  He smiled faintly. “Growing better. With you, I don’t even need the tablet anymore. With others, it’s maybe 50/50.”

  She didn’t respond.

  After several moments, he said, “What made you come up here? Why not say goodbye to your people?”

  “I’ve already said my goodbyes. When The Resolute Wind arrives, we won’t be dawdling and giving final hugs. We’ll move with urgency.” She sounded so militant when she said it.

  “Good thing they’re not here yet,” he said, looking off into the sky. It wasn’t his intention, but he could feel a twang of emotion come through their mental link. His words had landed harder with her than she would admit.

  She finally sat down next to him, and they stayed like that for a while.

  Eventually she spoke up again. “Can I… ask you something?” She sounded almost nervous.

  He was tempted for an instant to be sarcastic, to make a comment about her asking permission instead of just asking. Instead, he just said, “Yes.”

  “Who is the woman in the dreams? In your memories?”

  He felt a pit deep in his chest. Aurania wasn’t being malicious, but it was a painful memory nonetheless.

  “She was a friend,” he said eventually.

  “I can feel how hard it is for you to talk about her.”

  Yes…” Soren responded quietly. Then, “She was… the best person I knew. Extremely smart and immensely talented, I wouldn’t know half of what I know now without her help. She introduced me to The Professor, she was the only reason he agreed to teach me anything.”

  A soft breeze blew past them from the village carrying the scent of ash and rain.

  “I know now… why The Professor kept her around.”

  “Because of her affinity for Aether Dust bonding,” Aurania answered for him. He wasn’t surprised. He knew the memory she had witnessed.

  “Yes,” he said. It came out more hoarse than he intended. “I think… I wonder if he even would have accepted me in if he wasn’t trying to keep her happy.”

  “He sounds like a narcissistic asshole,” Aurania said with her usual fire.

  That earned a small laugh from him. “No, I don't think so. Narcissism implies he thought highly of himself, or had some inflated ego. But it was like… like he was driven to create, or invent, or achieve things. Breed scientific discovery, at the expense of all else. I didn’t see what was right in front of my face until it was too late…”

  They fell quiet again, sitting in each others’ presence for several minutes and saying nothing.

  Then the sky changed. It began as a shimmer, green first, then violet, rippling like silk torn loose from the heavens. The aurora slid in long arcs, mirrored faintly in the glassy wet stone below.

  “That’s not normal,” Aurania said quietly.

  “No.”

  The beauty of the celestial curtains bathed the village in color. They sat beneath it in awe.

  “It’s funny you bring her up,” he said eventually.

  “Why is that?”

  He couldn’t hold back a smile as he recalled the memory. “The day we met, right before I woke up, I had a dream.”

  Aurania looked over at him, one eyebrow raised.

  “I thought it was a dream of Lulu. I couldn’t exactly tell, the details were hard to make out, but…” he caught her eyes. “I think it was you.”

  She rolled her eyes and looked away. “Little Boy, do not even think of trying to flirt with me.”

  “I’m not!” he said quickly. “I’m being honest. The more I think back on it, the more I think it was you.” He looked off to the aurora again. “You both carry yourselves with such strength. Both have this fire inside you. And you’re both…” he trailed off.

  Out of the corner of his vision, he saw her close her eyes and faintly shake her head. “I can feel it, I can feel the fucking word there in your brain.”

  He felt himself blush. “I won’t say it…”

  The space felt slightly more natural now.

  His thoughts lingered on how dumbfounded he had been when he first saw Aurania. He had grown slightly more used to them, but at the time he felt like he had met something mythical that had come to life. She looked like a—

  “Really?!” she said, her tone mildly irritated. “A fertility goddess?”

  Fuck. “Wait, I didn’t say that!”

  “You thought it, you idiot,” she rolled her eyes and stood up.

  He scrambled up to his feet as well and desperately said, “Wait!”

  She stopped and looked back at him.

  “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to upset you, I just…” he sighed and hung his head slightly, then looked back at her. “I didn’t ask for this mental link, however it happened. I can’t even have my own personal thoughts.” He suddenly felt himself growing irritated at her constant hostility. “I read about your culture Aura, isn’t bodily autonomy sacred to lacravida?”

  She made a face of irritation and flared her nostrils slightly. “You… do not get to call me that,” she said in a low voice. Then, slightly calmer, “but you are correct. And I am… sorry. I did not mean to invade your private thoughts. I did not ask for this either.”

  The lights in the sky shifted again. They lost all of their green hues, and the violets shifted deeper until a burning gold emerged, accompanied by reds of both rust and crimson.

  Soren and Aurania looked back at the sky together.

  “I won’t call you Aura again,” he said flatly.

  “Thank you.”

  After several moments, he said, “You’re just like your planet.”

  Looking at him, she asked, “In what way?”

  “Gorgeous,” he responded, then looked her in the eyes. “And unstable.”

  Her face shifted, equal parts eye-roll and snarl. Before she could say anything, their attention was drawn by the aurora beginning to dim. It seemed like the colors were fading from the sky, then he realized it was something else entirely.

  There was a sound at first that could have been mistaken for the wind. He realized he had already been hearing it for a minute or two. A hum under the ground grew, accompanied by a pressure. A presence.

  From the heart of the stormlight above, a silhouette formed, sleek, silver-black, and vast. It broke through the curtain of color with an eerie, slow speed. No rumble or fire, just displacement, steadily descending into the atmosphere with a gravity of its own.

  The Liberty Union vessel was over three miles long, it dwarfed the landscape. Unlike Tamiyo’s ship, it looked like it had been forged rather than built. A monolith of engineered purpose.

  Down below them, Soren saw the people of Berilinsk gazing up at it, pointing fingers and murmuring to each other. Even from a distance, Soren felt the collective shiver that ran through the crowd.

  “They’re here,” Aurania said and turned to walk away.

  Soren stayed there for several moments more. He kept his eyes on the vessel, that cold titan in the sky. He thought of the dead, the fire, the way Serava’s voice had carried like mourning woven into prayer.

  He remembered Earth, like flashing glimpses of someone’s ancient memories. He remembered the faces of people he would never see again.

  Soren turned to walk after Aurania.

  And he remembered war.

  ??

  "Rebirth"

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  Looking ahead: Book 2 picks up the pace and has been an absolute blast to write. We will experience laughter, pain, tears, and love.

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