Hours soon passed in hollow silence after Vel disappeared. The once-lively corridors of the skyship now felt sunken in—heavy, almost suffocating. The warmth from the magical lanterns that floated lazily above had dimmed to a faint, flickering amber, casting long, wavering shadows against the curved wooden walls.
The metal that lined the corners of the hallway was cold and damp to the touch, faint condensation collecting in the grooves. Every distant footstep echoed like a ghost trapped in the belly of the ship. The laughter and music from earlier had long since faded, leaving behind a hushed atmosphere that felt wrong, as though the ship itself mourned something lost.
Rad moved slowly through the corridor, his boots dragging against the wooden floor. The air was thick and unmoving, like walking through fog that clung to his shoulders.
His arms hung at his sides, lifeless. His head bowed, his brown bangs hanging low, casting shadows over his eyes. Every step felt heavier than the last.
His chest tightened with each memory that played like broken reels in his mind—Vel’s crooked smile, her laughter, the way her wings shimmered when she was excited, and the way her voice broke when he said no. And then, the final image—her face crumpling in despair, hands covering her eyes as she wept in the dark void.
It repeated over and over. Her pain. Her heartbreak. Her silence.
Rad blinked slowly, his throat dry, his face blank. But inside, everything churned. Regret, fear, sorrow—twisting and gnawing at each other.
Did I do the right thing? he asked himself again, for the hundredth time. But the ache in his gut already knew the answer. He just wasn’t ready to say it out loud.
Beside him, Ray floated silently—cold and ominous. His sleek, dual-toned body hovered inches above the floor, casting a faint violet and green glow that painted warped reflections on the walls.
His eyes, especially the violet one, flickered with distant energy as he stared ahead—not at the hallway, but at Rad. His mind was silent, but not still. It buzzed like a hive—dark, cold, and mechanical. Every passing second, he ran through a hundred outcomes, a thousand strategies.
How many ways could he kill Rad? How quickly will he strike? How efficiently could he make it look like an accident?
His presence was like a shadow with weight—unspoken, oppressive, suffocating. And yet, Rad paid him no mind.
Not just because he trusted him. Nor because he didn’t notice. But because his own sorrow drowned out everything else.
He barely felt the vibration of the engines beneath his feet. Barely heard the distant churn of steam pipes or the occasional murmur of unseen crew members. The world had faded behind the veil of what could have been. What should have been.
Rad’s voice didn’t speak his guilt aloud. But his body did. The slump of his shoulders. The droop of his eyelids. The quiet tremble of a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.
He had made his choice. And deep down, beneath all the excuses, beneath all the fear—he knew the truth.
He had broken what little hope Vel had left. And there was no telling if she would ever come back.
The hallway stretched on in quiet, hollow stillness, the muted glow of the ship’s lanterns casting dim reflections along the brass fixtures and aged wood. Every creak of the skyship’s hull echoed faintly through the walls like groaning bones. The air smelled faintly of polished iron and sea mist.
Rad and Ray came to a stop in front of a dark oak door, its surface marked with swirling engravings that glimmered faintly with protective runes. A subtle humming sound resonated from it, barely perceptible, like an ancient breath asleep behind the wood.
Ray floated upward without a word, rising smoothly until he hovered just above eye level with the lock. In his hand, he held a small silver key, the teeth etched with microscopic glyphs. The metal shimmered slightly in the low light, pulsing in sync with Ray’s own bi-colored glow.
Without a word, he inserted the key into the lock and twisted. A soft click echoed through the corridor, and the door creaked open.
They stepped inside. The room was quiet and dimly lit by a single hanging lantern in the corner, its flame flickering behind a glass globe that shifted between warm amber and pale blue.
The walls were curved, matching the contour of the ship’s hull, and crafted from dark, timeworn wood. A round porthole window on the far side of the room showed only clouds outside—gray, swirling, and endless.
The bed was simple but large, pressed against the wall beneath the window. The sheets were a muted gray-blue, and the pillows looked barely used. A small wooden desk sat to the side, scattered with old maps and books, while a dusty wardrobe stood near the corner like a quiet sentinel.
Rad trudged to the bed without a word, his boots dragging across the creaky floorboards. He sat down slowly, his posture slumped, arms resting in his lap as his head bowed forward. His bangs curtained his eyes again, shadowing the weariness written across his face.
Ray, meanwhile, hovered to a tall cabinet across the room and settled atop it like a statue, his black-and-white body lit from below by the lantern’s flickering glow. His arms folded tightly over his chest. His glowing cybernetic eyes—one violet, one green—remained fixed on Rad without blinking.
Silence stretched like an iron thread between them. Finally, after what felt like hours, Rad’s voice broke the stillness.
“Where’d Kite go?” he asked quietly, not lifting his head.
Ray didn’t shift. His voice was cold and flat. “He was assigned a separate room elsewhere in the ship.”
Rad nodded absently, missing the undercurrent of coldness in Ray’s tone. He leaned back onto the bed, his body sinking into the mattress as he let out a long, exhausted breath. His eyes traced the wooden ceiling above, his mind still caught in distant thoughts.
Ray remained motionless, watching with a mechanical stillness. After another long pause, Rad turned his head slightly toward him.
“Do you…” he hesitated. “Do you know anything about the Fairy Prince prophecy?”
Ray’s fingers twitched. A faint pulse of cosmic energy flared around his frame, his aura momentarily brightening with hues of violet before dying back down. His gaze narrowed slightly, his voice calm—too calm.
“It’s a myth,” he said coolly. “Nothing more.”
Rad furrowed his brow. “Whoever told me about it didn’t seem to think so.”
Ray’s head tilted slowly, his glowing eyes never leaving Rad. His response was sharp, quick. “Then the fairy lied to you.”
Rad paused for a moment before sitting up slightly, squinting at Ray. “How do you know it was a fairy?”
A long pause. The two locked eyes—Ray’s glowing and unblinking, Rad’s tired and searching. Then, Ray replied, his tone smoother now. “It was merely an assumption.”
Rad stared at him for another moment, clearly unsure. Something about Ray’s unusual expression—the way he never looked away—left a pit in his stomach. But he said nothing. Eventually, he leaned back down, his head pressing into the pillow.
“Sorry…” he muttered. “Didn’t mean to sound suspicious.” He yawned, his voice growing sleepier by the second. “It’s just… been a long day.”
Ray didn’t reply. He sat in silence, still and unmoving, as Rad’s breathing began to slow. As the boy drifted into sleep, curled slightly on the bed, the dim lantern glow danced across his tired face.
Ray’s cybernetic eyes remained fixed on him—piercing, emotionless, watching. Not a single word passed between them.
Only the steady hum of the ship. And the faint, ever-present tension of something far darker lurking just beneath the surface.
Ray watched as Rad shifted slightly on the bed, his breathing soft and steady now. A long sigh escaped Ray’s lips—quiet, mechanical, and strained—as his glowing cybernetic eyes dimmed and slowly closed. But sleep never came. Instead, memory did.
The air had once smelled of oil and fire. Smoke writhed upward from the crumbling towers of Horizon Heights, the once-proud futuristic city now shattered by war. Its gleaming chrome spires—designed to touch the sky—lay in broken heaps, collapsed into the neon-lit streets.
The sky itself had become a canvas of carnage: a blood-orange inferno, streaked with black smoke and trembling with distant explosions. Hovercars lay overturned in pools of oil and ash. Crystalline sky-bridges flickered erratically, on the verge of collapse.
The digital signs that once advertised concerts and synthetic dreams now flashed WARNING and EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY in a loop. Shards of light danced through the haze—not from sunlight, but from spells, wards, and the endless clash of power upon power.
Below, among the smoking ruins, sorcerers of all races and origins fought with every breath they had. Elven mages cloaked in radiant crystal armor hurled spheres of solar flame into the enemy’s ranks, while cybernetic warlocks, their spines embedded with pulsating tech, fired runic pulse beams from glyph-cannons mounted to their wrists.
Ethereal spirits, bound to soldiers’ bodies, howled with arcane fury as they launched ghost-fire in all directions. Elemental warriors of stone, water, and lightning clashed in brutal, raw combat. All of them branded with the same insignia—Solhawk.
But the symbol meant little now. Once, it was a beacon of hope. A mark of heroism. Of unity.
Now, it was nothing but a banner drenched in ash and blood. A relic of the legacy Henry Cooper left behind.
And far above it all, watching from a jagged cliff at the edge of the city, stood Ray. His body was encased in a jet-black exosuit, sleek and alien, stitched back together by threads of starlight and wrath. The violet glow of his cybernetic eye flickered beneath his cracked black visor, while his tattered cloak whipped violently in the wind like a banner of mourning.
He didn''t look at the battlefield. He didn’t look at his sorcerers below. He only looked at her.
Nova.
She stood just feet away, trembling. Her star-speckled eyes glimmered with heartbreak, her yellow jacket torn and splattered with her own blood. Her afro whipped in the wind, haloed by the fading white aura of dying starlight. Her knees buckled slightly, and the soft sound of her breath choked on pain and disbelief.
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And there, buried into her chest, was Ray’s armored fist. Crimson stained her black tank top, dripping from the hole that pierced clean through her heart. The energy of the wound still crackled with cosmic static.
Her lips moved, trembling, trying—needing—to say something. To reach him. A single word escaped as a gasp, barely audible over the roar of war. “…Ray…”
Her hand, shaking like a leaf in a storm, rose toward his cheek. Fingers trembling, desperately reaching—not to strike, but to touch. To feel the boy she loved. To bring him back.
But he didn’t move. He didn’t speak. Only the subtle, strained quiver in his voice betrayed him.
“Goodbye, Nova,” Ray muttered, voice hollow—a lie wrapped in steel. He ripped his hand from her chest.
She gasped, blood spilling from her mouth. She stumbled forward, as if trying to close the growing distance between them. But Ray… he turned away. His footsteps were slow, steady—retreating into the void he’d chosen.
Nova reached out again with a shaky step, her bloodied hand trembling midair, her vision dimming as tears streaked down her cheeks. “Wait…”
But she never said it. Her weak legs gave out. She tripped—on nothing—and fell.
Time seemed to slow. Her body twisted, limp and slack, her jacket and jeans fluttering as her aura flickered from red, to orange, to yellow, to a desperate blue-white.
Images flashed through her fading mind—Lucio’s laughter. Rad’s stupid jokes. Elara’s teasing grin. Connor’s smug smirk. And Ray’s once vibrant, innocent smile that once brought hope to so many people.
Every light in her soul surged, desperate to remain. Then—impact. Her head hit the ground with a soft, final thud.
The world exploded in an instant. A shockwave of pure, star-born light erupted outward from her fallen body—a brilliant burst of energy so dense and raw it shattered buildings, vaporized steel, and turned countless lives to dust.
Twenty kilometers of Horizon Heights were obliterated in seconds. The blast was silent at first, like a moment of divine silence. Then came the sound—like the heavens breaking apart.
And somewhere amidst the rubble, high on another rooftop, Connor felt it. His blade—formed from crimson, cursed crystal—shivered in his hand as his opponent froze. Her spear clattered to the floor.
Connor’s face twisted in confusion As his curly brown hair billowed in the wind. A moment later he turned. And then he saw it.
The light. A column of pure blue energy, shooting high into the blood-stained sky like a final scream of defiance—Nova’s scream. It punched through the clouds, scattering them like ash, casting Horizon Heights in divine brilliance.
Connor’s eyes filled with horror. His lips trembled. His voice cracked. “Nova!”
A white aura ignited around him as he launched into the air, the force of his takeoff splintering the rooftop. He left his stunned opponent behind, who stood in shocked silence, her knees trembling, her lips mouthing a single, shattered truth. “She’s gone.”
While in the sky, beneath the swirling ash and dying wind, Ray hovered in the air alone—his black visor reflecting the radiant pillar of light that shot into the sky. He didn’t blink. He didn’t breathe.
But a faint crack traced across the surface of his visor—spiderweb thin—and glowing softly from within… was blue. Ray’s mechanical frame trembled ever so slightly in the present as he leaned forward atop the cold wooden cabinet, his plated arms crossed tightly across his chest.
The dim room was still, save for the soft flicker of the ceiling lantern and the slow, deep rhythm of Rad’s breathing as it grew heavier, louder—pulling him deeper into exhausted sleep. Ray exhaled through his nose, a long, shuddering breath that felt almost human in its weight.
He tilted his head back to the ceiling, his glowing cybernetic eyes dimming as memory surged like a flood. Every choice, every name, every scream he’d buried deep beneath circuits and steel—rising like a tide against the hull of his mind.
His life played behind his eyes not like a film, but a storm—broken, chaotic, and bright with regret. And among those storm-tossed memories…
Was the abandoned tower of Ray’s old nemesis, Apollo, once a fortress of ambition and dread, now lay in ruin. Its reinforced walls, riddled with ancient scars and tech-welded reinforcements, shook under the weight of combat.
The chamber within its highest level flashed with bursts of emerald fury as Lucio Kekoa unleashed streaks of green lightning in every direction. His bolts crashed into the reinforced walls, searing deep cracks into the stone, sending sparks and rubble cascading like meteors. Each strike was desperate—fueled not by rage, but grief.
And still, Ray stood tall amidst it all. His black exosuit, worn and torn, bore the toll of his recent battles: dented plating along his shoulders and legs, cracks spiderwebbing across his armor, his once-pristine frame dulled by soot and grime. Dust clung to him like ash. But none of it mattered more than the crack across his visor—a thin, glowing blue line, etched forever across the glass.
The last remnant of Nova. Her death marked him. Not just in memory. But physically—an echo of the explosion that claimed countless lives, burned into the one thing he could never again take off. That single crack glowed faintly now, even as Ray moved—cold, efficient, emotionless.
His onyx chains slithered and snapped from his wrists like hungry shadows, striking out toward Lucio in savage arcs. The air hissed and rippled as the accursed metal lashed forward, intent on binding, on breaking.
But Lucio was wind. Lucio was light.
He moved like a current, his suit pulsing with vibrant green as he blurred through the chamber. Each step was like lightning kissing the ground—gone before it landed. His armored suit—a marvel of craftsmanship and culture—clung to him like the ocean clings to the shore, shifting with him, responding to every twitch, every breath.
Down his arms, ancient tribal patterns shimmered with luminous energy, glowing with every motion. A streak of green cut through the gloom each time he dodged a chain or threw a bolt, his form becoming a silhouette of stormy lights.
Ray barely tracked him, but Lucio was not attacking to win. He was attacking to reach him.
“She believed in you!” Lucio’s voice had cracked with pain that night, nearly drowned out by the roar of the thunderstorm raging beyond the tower windows. “We all did!”
But Ray never flinched. Never spoke. His cold visor—cracked and glowing—reflected Lucio’s anguish like a mirror refusing to break.
Lucio’s speed capsules pulsed at his side, their faint green glow a heartbeat of their own. He tapped one with his thumb, and a jolt of raw energy surged into his veins. His stabilizer fin flared to life along his back, arcing with lightning to balance him mid-sprint as he launched Into another blur.
To the world, Lucio had always been a symbol—a protector. Someone who never lost hope, even when hope had left. His smile was a shield, his lightning a promise.
To the people of Horizon Heights, he was a streak of safety through the chaos. But in that chamber—he was just a boy grieving the loss of a friend he never got to say goodbye to.
And Ray? Ray was the reason.
He had been the storm that shattered the skyline. The reaper in a black suit of pure despair.
And now, sitting in that quiet skyship cabin, far away from the ruins of Horizon Heights, far from Lucio’s fists and Nova’s touch, Ray was alone with that truth. He stared blankly at the ceiling, his voice silent, his hands still.
But the tremble in his limbs had nothing to do with combat. And the green hue of his eye—just faintly glowing in the faint golden light of the cabin—remained, glowing gently like a wound that refused to heal. A mocking reminder of a tragic past he could never fully run from.
Ray’s breath hitched, sharp and hollow, as he stared down at his hands—two machines of war, one black as void and the other pale with a faint emerald glow. Hands destined to destroy, forged in grief, and sharpened by guilt. Slowly, he clenched them into trembling fists, the metal groaning under the pressure of his own doubt.
Was it all for nothing…? The thought pierced him like a whisper in a cathedral—soft, but all-consuming. His shoulders shook faintly, his posture slumping atop the cabinet like a puppet with its strings frayed.
“Were any of the choices I made truly mine?” he whispered aloud, his voice barely more than a breath.
He turned his gaze upward toward the ceiling, but he didn’t see wood or lanternlight. He saw the ghosts of who he used to be. He saw Nova’s radiant smile. Connor’s half-hearted glares. Lucio’s light. He saw the boy who once thought he could save the world—and the shadow that had taken his place.
His vision blurred, shimmering as though water had welled up behind his cybernetic eyes. But no tears fell. They couldn’t. Not anymore.
“Have I really just been a puppet all along?” The words tore into him with slow, merciless precision. His thoughts coiled inward, looping around themselves in tangled agony. His cosmic aura pulsed, growing unstable—bright one second, flickering the next, like the dying light of a star long past saving.
His breath grew uneven. His fingers twitched. His body trembled. And then—crack.
His cybernetic fingers dug into the edge of the wooden cabinet with violent force, and from beneath them, faint glowing fractures branched out, radiant cracks of cosmic energy splitting the grain. They pulsed in rhythm with his aura—erratic, unstable, alive with danger.
His thoughts screamed Inside him, rising into a crescendo of grief and guilt. Everything he had done. Every life he had taken. Every desperate plea he had silenced.
And just as the storm threatened to overtake him—Snrrk. Rad snored.
It was soft, comical even—completely out of place in the suffocating weight of the moment. But to Ray, it was a lightning strike through the fog.
His head jolted upward. He stared at the sleeping boy, his expression unreadable. Rad, curled loosely on the bed, arms tucked beneath his head, the faint rise and fall of his chest steady and undisturbed.
He looked so small like that. So fragile. Completely unaware of the storm that hovered just above him, poised like a blade.
Ray’s breathing slowed. The fury dimmed—but only slightly. His grip loosened on the cabinet, the glowing cracks fading like dying stars, leaving only faint, blackened scars scorched into the wood. He hovered slowly Into the air, his mechanical body weightless, quiet, cold.
I’ve killed so many people… His black cybernetic hand flexed faintly, a dim violet light glowing within the joints. Tore apart entire families…
He drifted closer to the boy, the shadow of his form casting a long, cold stretch across the room. His cybernetic fingers curled, trembling as he reached out.
Nova. Her voice, her blood, her warmth. Gone.
Lucio. Eyes wide in disbelief and grief, lightning cracking behind clenched fists.
Rad. His corpse—burnt, broken, dead. His Roars of anguish replaced by the cold silence of death.
Elara. Still. Pale. Lifeless in the grass, both her envy and fury silenced as she bled out with the last beat of her heart.
Mary. The betrayal in her eyes. The touch that still lingered, hauntingly warm.
“Even when they begged… even when they pleaded for their lives…” Ray’s whisper cracked as it left him, brittle like ice under weight.
He hovered now directly above Rad, his black hand outstretched, fingers curled like talons as his palm emitted an ominous hue of violet light—mere inches from the boy’s face. Ray’s whole body trembled, not from weakness, but from something far more terrifying for him—confliction.
“So why…” he muttered, his voice breaking, barely audible beneath the heavy air, Why can’t I kill some kid?! The thought rang through his head like the toll of a bell, over and over, echoing through every shattered corner of his soul.
His hand shook violently, a sob catching in his throat—a jagged, broken sound that made his frame quake. The boy slept peacefully beneath him, unaware. Unafraid.
And Ray—the destroyer, the rogue, the cold-blooded killer—could only weep in silence, his sobs muffled by distant machinery that couldn’t understand the weight of a soul. Ray hovered there for what felt like an eternity, suspended in that cold, suffocating silence—his shoulders shaking with each shallow sob that left his chest like static through cracked circuitry.
The violet glow pulsing within his outstretched hand flickered, spasming like a dying star, until—at last—it dimmed completely, vanishing into the darkness. His arm dropped, slow and heavy, until it hung limply at his side.
His head followed, bowing low in bitter resignation. His mechanical frame creaked faintly with the movement, joints locking under the weight of everything he had done… and everything he could no longer undo.
Ray’s breath hitched as a broken whimper slipped through his lips. His face twisted with anguish—his expression contorted, teeth clenched, eyes squeezed shut. The metallic lines of his jaw trembled as if his robotic form couldn’t contain the raw emotion surging inside.
He sniffled weakly, barely holding himself together. His artificial body had been built to handle emotions, but not this. Not grief. Not guilt.
Then, with a long, defeated breath, he tilted his head skyward. His fists curled into trembling knots. And for a brief second—just one—he looked like a child again. A fragile boy begging a silent universe for mercy, for meaning.
Behind him, the air shimmered. A soft pulse rippled outward, warping the fabric of space like a curtain being drawn open. From the very seams of reality, a cosmic portal unfurled—its edges traced in ancient, luminous sigils.
Starlight spiraled within it, quiet and mournful, like the calm eye of a storm long past. The portal cast a faint, otherworldly glow over the room, painting the walls with shifting colors of galaxies unseen.
Ray’s eyes fluttered open, no longer glowing, but wide—and empty. What remained in them was not peace, but a tired, bitter calm. The kind only found in surrender. He had nothing left.
Without a word, without a sound, a wisp of glowing green light lifted from his chest—the last vestige of his tainted soul. It hovered for a moment, shimmering softly, then drifted backward into the waiting portal.
The light soon vanished. And so did the portal—closing in on itself with a whisper, like the final breath of a dying star.
Ray’s body, now just a hollow vessel of alloy and code, hovered for another heartbeat. Then—clunk.
The sound was sickening in its finality. His lifeless form collapsed beside Rad’s bed, arms limp, legs crumpled beneath him. The once-bright eyes in his faceplate had gone dark, reduced to vacant glass that reflected nothing. No spark. No purpose. Just silence.
The room remained still. Rad stirred slightly in his sleep, mumbling something inaudible—oblivious to the fallen machine at his side. And beside the bed, Ray’s broken shell lay motionless, a discarded monument to a soul that had wandered too far into the stars… and chosen, at last, to let go.