The departure from Earth was a solemn affair, marked not by fanfare, but by the quiet hum of machinery rebuilding a broken world. The Aurelian Eclipse, now the flagship of a fleet that spanned two civilizations, hovered in the upper atmosphere one last time.
Alistair stood in the hangar bay, the wind from the open force-field ruffling his hair. Opposite him stood Sarah Chen. She was no longer wearing ragged fatigues; she was dressed in a pristine, grey uniform with the crest of the Thorne-Earth Directorate on her shoulder.
"You're sure about this?" Sarah asked, her cybernetic eye whirring as she scanned the supply crates being offloaded. "Leaving half your fleet behind to guard a graveyard?"
"Earth isn't a graveyard anymore, Sarah. It's a fortress," Alistair corrected, his voice firm. "The Ark-Core is active. The Aegis is stable. I'm leaving you ten destroyers and enough mana-batteries to power the city for a century. Your job is simple: Rebuild the population.
Train them. Because when the Emperor falls, I will need a sanctuary that is completely off the Imperial grid."
Sarah saluted—a sharp, crisp motion she had learned from old history vids. "We'll be ready. When you come back, Alistair, you won't find survivors. You'll find an army."
Alistair nodded. He turned to walk up the ramp, but stopped. "And Sarah? If Malakor returns... don't fight him. Just activate the 'Omega Protocol' I uploaded to the Core. Blow the gate."
Sarah's face hardened. "Understood. Safe travels, Commander."
The Void Between
The journey back to the Aurelian Empire was different this time. They weren't sneaking through smuggling routes. They were marching.
The Ivory Saint and the Aurelian Eclipse led a formation of sixty warships through the sub-space tunnel. Inside the dreadnought, the atmosphere was thick with the tension of impending treason.
Alistair sat in his private strategy room—a circular chamber dominated by a massive holographic star-map. He wasn't alone.
To his right sat Seraphina, radiating the elegant, composed power of a High Noble. She was reviewing logistics reports on a datapad.
To his left stood Elowen, sharpening her daggers with a rhythmic shh-shh-shh sound that set everyone's teeth on edge. She was staring at Seraphina's neck.
"We will arrive at the Thorne Sector in three hours," Alistair broke the silence. "0-RA predicts a 98% chance of an Imperial Blockade. Admiral Krell has likely been stationed there since the Inquisition fled."
"Krell is a butcher," Seraphina said, not looking up. "He bombarded the moons of Kaelos just to quell a worker's strike. He won't hesitate to fire on civilian transports if he thinks they are supplying you."
"Let him fire," Elowen murmured, testing the edge of her blade against her thumb. A drop of blood welled up, which she licked away slowly. "Every shot he takes is a justification for me to peel the skin from his bones."
Seraphina finally looked up. Her violet eyes met Elowen's savage green ones. "We are fighting a war for the throne, Elf. Not a back-alley brawl. We need Krell's fleet to surrender, not to be massacred. If we slaughter the Imperial Navy, who will defend the borders when we take power?"
"Surrender is for cowards," Elowen spat. "Alistair needs subjects who fear him, not soldiers who bargain with him."
"Enough," Alistair said. He didn't raise his voice, but the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.
He stood up and walked between them. "We will do both. We will break Krell so thoroughly that his fleet will have no choice but to kneel. Seraphina, I want you to prepare a sector-wide broadcast. We're going to control the narrative. Elowen, I want you to lead the Vanguard's stealth wing. Disable their flagship's shields, but do not kill the Admiral until I give the order."
Elowen pouted, a disturbingly childish expression on a woman who could kill a room full of knights in seconds. "Fine. But if he insults you, I'm taking his tongue."
"Accepted," Alistair said.
The Return to Thorne-Valia
The transition back into real-space was violent. The fleet burst out of the sub-space tunnel directly above the Thorne Homeworld.
The situation was worse than Alistair had predicted.
The planet was surrounded. A massive Imperial Armada—easily two hundred ships—formed a steel net around the world. At the center sat the Executor, a Super-Dreadnought five times the size of Alistair's ship.
"Hail them," Alistair ordered from the bridge.
The main screen flickered to life. Admiral Krell appeared. He was a man who looked like he had been carved from granite, with a scar running diagonally across his face and a chest full of medals.
"Alistair Thorne," Krell's voice boomed. "You are accused of High Treason, Heresy against the Church of Mana, and consorting with Xenos entities. Power down your vessels and prepare to be boarded. If you resist, I have orders to initiate Base Delta Zero on your homeworld."
Base Delta Zero. Total planetary bombardment. The complete sterilization of all life.
Alistair sat in his command chair, looking bored. He steepled his fingers. "Admiral Krell. You're blocking my driveway."
Krell blinked, his face turning red. "You insolent whelp! Did you hear me? I hold the lives of ten million Thorne subjects in my hands!"
"No, Admiral," Alistair said, leaning forward, his silver eyes glowing. "You hold a winning lottery ticket, and you're about to set it on fire. I am giving you one chance. Deactivate your weapons, swear fealty to the Sovereign Coalition, and I will let you keep your rank. Refuse, and you will become an example."
Krell laughed. It was a harsh, barking sound. "All ships! Target the rebel flagship! Fire at w—"
The Admiral's voice cut off as the Aurelian Eclipse vanished.
The Phantom Maneuver
"Phase-Shift active
!" Thrain yelled. "We're in the Void-Layer!"
The Thorne Dreadnought didn't just cloak; it stepped sideways into a parallel dimension. On the Imperial sensors, the rebel fleet simply disappeared.
"Where are they?!" Krell screamed on the bridge of the Executor. "Scan the sector! They can't have jumped away that fast!"
"We didn't jump away, Admiral," Alistair's voice came over the Executor's internal comms, bypassing their encryption thanks to 0-RA. "We're right behind you."
The Aurelian Eclipse re-materialized less than a kilometer from the Executor's rear engines.
"Fire the EMP-Cannons!" Alistair commanded.
The Vanguard didn't use lethal force initially. They fired massive pulses of ionized mana.
The blue waves washed over the Imperial Super-Dreadnought. The lights on the massive ship flickered and died. The shields collapsed. The engines groaned and shut down.
"Elowen, go!"
From the hangar of the Aurelian Eclipse, a swarm of black stealth-fighters launched.
They didn't attack the hull; they latched onto it like ticks.
Elowen led the boarding party. She cut through the airlock of the Executor using a plasma-torch. As the atmosphere vented, she moved into the ship, her Vanguard Knights behind her.
"Remember the Master's orders!" she shouted, her voice amplified by her helmet.
"Disable only! Unless they resist... then make it messy!"
The Battle for the Bridge
Inside the Executor, chaos reigned. The Imperial stormtroopers, reliant on their heavy power-armor, found themselves sluggish as the EMP had fried their servos.
Elowen danced through them. She used blunt-force mana arrows to shatter kneecaps and helmets, leaving a trail of moaning, incapacitated soldiers in her wake. She reached the bridge in under five minutes.
She kicked the blast doors open.
Admiral Krell stood by his command chair, a laser pistol in hand. He fired blindly.
Elowen didn't dodge. She caught the laser bolt on her vambrace, the enchanted metal absorbing the heat. She crossed the room in a blur and kicked the pistol out of his hand.
Before he could draw his sword, she had him pinned against the console, her dagger pressing against his jugular.
"My Master offers you mercy," she hissed, her face inches from his. "I suggest you take it. My hand is very... twitchy today."
The Declaration of the Sovereign
Back on the Aurelian Eclipse, Alistair watched the tactical map turn from red to green as ship after ship in the Imperial fleet was disabled by the Coalition's precise strikes. Seraphina's fleet, the Ivory Saint, had moved to intercept the Imperial support vessels, using House Valois capture-codes to lock their navigation systems.
"Admiral Krell has been secured," Elowen reported over the comms.
"Good," Alistair said. "Put him on the main screen. And broadcast this to the entire Empire."
The image on the viewscreen split. On one side was Alistair, sitting on his throne-like command chair. On the other was the defeated Admiral Krell, bleeding and humiliated.
The broadcast went out to every planet, every station, and every datapad in the Aurelian Empire. Billions of people stopped to watch.
"Citizens of the Empire," Alistair began, his voice calm, projected with the charisma of a born ruler. "For too long, you have been ruled by fear. You have been told that the Void is an unstoppable monster and that only the Emperor can protect you. You have been lied to."
He gestured to the image of Krell.
"This man was sent to destroy a planet simply because its heir dared to improve the lives of his people. The Emperor would burn his own garden to kill a single weed. I offer you a different path."
Alistair stood up.
"I am Alistair Thorne. I have returned from the Lost World of Earth. I have purged the Void from its core. I possess the technology of the Ancients. Today, I declare the Thorne Sector to be a Sovereign Territory. Any ship that enters our space with hostile intent will be dismantled. Any ship that comes in peace will find protection, prosperity, and a future."
He leaned into the camera.
"The Civil War has not begun. The Revolution has."
The Aftermath: A House Divided
The blockade was broken. Half of Krell's fleet, seeing their Admiral defeated and their systems locked, surrendered immediately.
The other half fled back to the Core Worlds.
Alistair landed on Thorne-Valia. The reunion with his family was not the tearful embrace of a child returning home. It was a war council.
Duke Valerius met him in the Great Hall. The Duke looked at the massive fleet orbiting his planet—a fleet his son commanded.
"You've done it," Valerius whispered, looking at the broadcast replays. "You've actually declared war on the Throne. There is no going back now, Alistair. They will send the Grand Marshals. They will send the Arch-Mages of the White Tower."
"I'm counting on it," Alistair said, unbuckling his sword belt and handing it to a servant. "We need their mana-cores to fuel the new ships."
Later that night, Alistair retreated to his private chambers. He was exhausted. The physical toll of the Earth campaign and the mental strain of the warp-jump were catching up to him.
He collapsed onto his bed, staring at the ceiling fresco of the constellations.
The door creaked open.
He expected Elowen. Or perhaps Seraphina.
Instead, both of them walked in.
The air in the room instantly became heavy. Seraphina wore a nightgown of white silk, looking every bit the angel. Elowen wore a sheer black robe, looking like a succubus of the shadows.
"We need to talk," Seraphina said, closing the door and locking it with a mana-seal.
Alistair sat up, rubbing his temples. "Can this wait until morning? I've just overthrown an Admiral."
"No," Elowen said, gliding to the foot of the bed. Her eyes were dangerous. "On the ship, there were too many eyes. Too many ears.
But here? It is just us. And the question remains, Alistair."
"What question?"
"Who is the Queen?" Seraphina asked, stepping forward. Her voice was steady, but her hands were trembling. "I am your betrothed, Alistair. By law and by love. I have brought you the support of the High Nobility. I command the Ivory Saint. I am the face of your legitimacy."
"And I," Elowen interrupted, crawling onto the bed like a predatory cat, "am your shadow. I am the one who kills for you. I am the one who saved you when the Leviathan screamed. I don't care about legitimacy. I care about possession."
She reached out, grabbing Alistair's shirt and pulling him close. "Legally, she may be your wife. But your soul? Your life? That belongs to me. You promised me, Alistair."
Alistair looked between them. This was the Hidden Objective. The Harem's War. If he chose one, he lost the other. If he lost Seraphina, the Coalition would fracture. If he lost Elowen, he would lose his most lethal weapon and likely be assassinated by her in a fit of madness.
"I am a Sovereign," Alistair said slowly, looking them both in the eye. "And a Sovereign does not choose between his right hand and his left."
He reached out, taking Seraphina's hand and pulling her down to sit beside him. He kept his other arm around Elowen's waist.
"The Empire allows for polygamy among the High Lords," Alistair stated, his voice taking on a tone of absolute authority. "If we are to rewrite the laws of the galaxy, we start here. I will not cast either of you aside."
Seraphina blushed deep crimson. "Alistair... that's... scandalous. Even for a Duke."
"I'm not a Duke anymore, Sera. I'm a King in all but name."
Elowen narrowed her eyes, looking at Seraphina. She hissed softly, but she didn't pull away. She rested her head on Alistair's chest, right over his heart.
"Fine," Elowen whispered. "She can have the daylight. She can wear the crowns and wave to the crowds. But the night is mine. And if she ever... ever tries to take my time with you..."
"I understand," Seraphina said, surprisingly firm. "I can share the King. But I will not share the husband. When we are in public, he is mine."
Alistair exhaled. It was a fragile truce, held together by their mutual obsession with him and the sheer force of his will. But it held.
"Good," Alistair said, lying back down, pulling both of them with him. "Now sleep. Tomorrow, we start building the economy. I have a plan to franchise the 'Thorne-Cafés' across the newly liberated sectors. War is expensive, and I intend to make the rebellion profitable."
The Distant Threat
Billions of miles away, in the deepest reaches of the Void, the ship Entropy drifted.
Malakor sat in the darkness. He wasn't alone.
A massive, formless entity floated outside the viewport. It was the Void-Mother.
"He has returned," Malakor whispered to the darkness. "He has the Earth. He has the Core."
"Then he is ripe," a voice echoed in Malakor's mind—a voice that sounded like a thousand dying stars. "Go to him, my Herald. Do not fight him with ships. Do not fight him with swords. Break his heart. Corrupt his shadows.
Turn his Queens against him."
Malakor smiled, his teeth black with corruption. "As you wish, Mother."