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Chapter 1 — The One Who Didn't Leave
> I did not begin as a hero. I did not even begin as someone worth following.
When people speak my name now, they imagine battles, distances folded like paper, beasts kneeling, planets burning quietly in my wake. They are wrong.
This story begins much earlier—before the ships learned my route, before the monsters learned my scent, before anyone chose to follow me.
It begins when I made the only promise I have never broken.
If you are reading this, then I failed to protect someone. Or I succeeded, and paid for it.
Either way, you should know this before anything else:
I never abandoned them.
The emergency lights of Transit Habitat Delta-9 flickered across the rust-streaked walls. Low hums of failing machinery reverberated in the narrow corridors, bouncing off the peeling metal panels. The evacuation alarms screamed in harsh bursts, and in the chaos, everyone moved as though survival was instinct alone.
Kevin Virex crouched behind a jagged bulkhead, hands wrapped around a fractured stabilization module. His body trembled—not from fear, but from the aftereffects of repeated micro-teleports across unstable environments. Every fiber in him was tense, a muscle perpetually aware of collapse. He could feel the pulse of the habitat through the metal beneath his palms, detect the minuscule variations in pressure that others overlooked.
Most people ignored the failing structures. They ran. Screamed. Left things behind. Kevin did not move yet—not out of bravery, but because something else caught his attention. A faint, irregular pulse, almost imperceptible, emanated from the debris-strewn floor ahead.
Astra lay there, small and trembling, a juvenile scavenger beast half-buried under collapsed supports. One limb bent unnaturally, energy readings chaotic, nearly gone. No one else noticed. No one else would stop. But Kevin's instincts didn't allow him to leave.
He stayed.
For a long moment, neither moved. The evacuation tide surged around them—humans and machines alike—but Kevin's gaze remained fixed on the creature. He ripped panels free, rigged an improvised stabilizer, and directed his own faltering energy to support it. Each second bled from him like a drop of acid. Pain seared through his limbs. Tremors overtook him. But he stayed.
The habitat convulsed around them. Alarms cracked into every crevice. Sparks danced across the walls as power cores failed. Kevin knew he could make a run for the nearest teleport bay and be gone before the hull collapsed entirely. No one would blame him. Everyone else was gone.
He stayed.
Astra's eyes flickered open, weak but aware. There was no gratitude in them yet—just recognition. She followed when Kevin finally moved, not by command, but by choice. She chose him.
That was the first silent affirmation of something Kevin would never fully articulate: the promise that would shape the rest of his life. He did not name it yet. He did not think of it as a rule. But the decision burned itself into his bones.
By the time the partial evacuation shuttles cleared the bay, Kevin and Astra were still on Delta-9. Half the habitat's decks had collapsed. Fires licked through corridors. Debris floated in zero-g as the outer airlock ruptured, sucking everything lighter than metal into the void.
Kevin pressed his forehead against the stabilizer he had rigged. Astra curled beside him, sensing his pain, almost a shadow of comfort. He could leave now. The ship that would have carried him to safety was gone. The backup would arrive too late.
He stayed.
For the first time, Kevin Virex realized that staying—refusing to abandon—was not survival, not strategy. It was responsibility. And responsibility would follow him far longer than the habitat ever could.
As the metal groaned and the fires consumed what remained of Delta-9, Kevin rose. Not as a hero. Not as a savior. Only as someone who had refused to leave, because the one who chose him waited.
And he would never abandon them.