The Resistance Council met in what had once been the station master's office—a room with reinforced walls and a single, narrow window that looked out onto the main platform. Seven chairs arranged in a semicircle. Seven faces lit by a gravity lantern that cast shadows like accusations.
Cael stood before them, and for all his power—eight orbits and the sealed thirteenth humming beneath his sternum—he felt like a child called to account.
"Thirteen orbits," said the woman at the center. Commander Reth—angular, gray-haired, with six orbits that moved with the weariness of someone who'd been fighting since before Cael was born. Her eyes were the color of old steel, and they cut with comparable efficiency. "The Hermit trained you. The Inquisitor defected for you. And now you walk into my station and expect us to trust you."
"I don't expect anything," Cael said.
"Good. Because here's what I see: a weapon. The most dangerous orbital configuration in recorded history, walking around in a teenager's body with six months of training and a dead mentor." Reth leaned forward. "What happens when the Void whispers again? What happens when the thing behind the door offers you paradise, and you're tired, and you're bleeding, and everyone you love is dying?"
The question landed like a stone in water. Cael felt its weight—not just the words but the fear behind them. Through Sight, he saw it: Reth's emotional density was fear layered over duty layered over love for every person in this station. She wasn't cruel. She was terrified. And her terror wore the mask of pragmatism because that was the only way she could carry it.
"I don't know," Cael said honestly. "I don't know what I'll do when everything falls apart. I've never been tested like that. But I know what I won't do. I won't open the door. Not for paradise. Not for my parents. Not for anyone."
"Pretty words—"
"He won't." Lyra's voice cut through the room like a blade. She stepped forward, small and fierce, her single orbit flickering with intensity. "I've seen him resist the Void's promises. I've watched him train until his bones cracked, not for power but for control. I've held his hand while he cried for parents he'll never see again, and not once—not once—did he reach for the thirteenth orbit. He is not a weapon. He's the best person I've ever met, and if you can't see that, then your six orbits are blind."
Silence. Reth stared at Lyra for a long moment, then looked at Dorn.
"And you? The deserter. What do you see?"
Dorn spoke carefully, each word placed like a stone in a foundation. "I see a boy who carries weight that would crush a Planetary Orbiter. I see someone who could level this station with a thought but chooses to kneel for a five-year-old's drawing. I've absorbed a lot of pain in my life, Commander. His pain is the heaviest I've ever felt. And he carries it standing."
Reth sat back. The other council members shifted, murmuring. A man to her left—scarred, missing three fingers, his remaining orbits crackling with nervous energy—spoke up: "The OA will find this station eventually. With or without the Key. At least with him, we have a chance."
"A chance at what?" Reth asked. "Victory? Survival? Or a faster apocalypse?"
"A chance at meaning," Cael said quietly. "The Hermit—my teacher—he died believing the Void could be stopped. Not sealed. Stopped. He believed the host could be found and the First Core expelled. If we do nothing, the Core grows stronger. It feeds. It spreads. It takes more hosts. More bodies. More faces." He paused. "Your children's faces."
The room went very still.
Reth looked at the drawing in Cael's hand—the one the girl had given him. Thirteen circles around a stick figure. Crayon on folded paper. The most powerful being in recorded history, carrying a child's art like a talisman.
"Temporary authorization," she said finally. "You train our people. You share what you know. And the moment—the moment—the thirteenth orbit shows signs of instability, I put you down myself."
Cael nodded. "Fair."
"Nothing about this is fair," Reth said. "That's why we're underground."