The void shimmered as the Oblivion Crown warped through darkspace—its engines whispering in frequencies older than stars. Inside the vessel's neural core, Kael stood motionless, tethered to the command interface by filaments of data. A thousand holographic projections blinked and twisted around him.
"Arrival in Echelon-4 orbit in T-minus forty-five seconds."
The AI's voice was calm. Always calm. Even when death approached.
Kael's crimson gaze narrowed as he scanned the outpost's signals. The coordinates didn't make sense. Echelon-4 had been classified as a dead node—buried under war wreckage and cosmic dust during the Great Purge. Yet the beacon flared like a distress cry from a ghost.
The system pulsed again.
"Energy signatures detected. No fleet presence. But… a temporal distortion field is active on the surface."
Kael broke connection and stepped away from the interface. The deck officers, all genetically engineered clones of elite tacticians, turned toward him like shadows obeying gravity.
"Ready the drop unit," Kael commanded. "I want ground confirmation. If this is a trap, I will see who dared set it."
The dropship sliced through the thin atmosphere of Echelon-4 like a blade through ash. From orbit, the moon looked inert—just a frozen sphere of rusted stone and broken spires. But as Kael descended, the surface details began to claw through the haze: shattered bunkers, corpses of long-dead war machines, and one central spire—half buried—pulsing with a sickly violet glow.
The distortion field was centered there.
As the ramp of the dropship opened, Kael descended in silence, flanked by two Praetorian Dreadguards—eight-foot titans clad in black armor that mirrored Kael's own aesthetic, minus the sentience.
The wind moaned.
And then… it spoke.
"...Sovereign."
Kael's eyes narrowed.
It hadn't been the AI. That voice was organic—and ancient.
He raised a hand. The Dreadguards froze.
From the wreckage near the glowing spire, a figure emerged—cloaked, gaunt, and impossibly old. Its body shimmered with temporal feedback, as if it existed across multiple timelines.
"I am Archivist Thalos. Custodian of Forbidden Memory."
Kael said nothing.
"You have reawakened… earlier than the prophecy allowed," Thalos continued. "The Tyrant Protocol should have only activated when the Twelve Suns collapsed. You were not meant to return… yet."
"History obeys power," Kael said, his voice low. "Not prophecy."
The Archivist gave a broken laugh. "And still defiant."
"I do not recognize your name, Archivist."
"You shouldn't. My memory stream was purged from royal records during the Cleansing. I served your mother... before she died screaming in the Shadow Cradle."
Kael flinched. Not visibly, but within. His mother's fate had always been sealed in blacked-out data logs. Rumors had hinted at a last rebellion, a mother who fought against the very blood empire she helped create.
"You're lying."
Thalos reached into his robe and pulled a memory shard—iridescent and cracked.
"I offer proof. And a choice."
Kael took the shard. It pulsed in his palm, feeding encrypted visuals into his neural lattice. What he saw was not a trap.
It was pain.
A woman—tall, armored in starlight, eyes filled with fury and sorrow—stood at the center of a dying city. Aurelia's Old Core. Her final words were screamed into the void:
"My son will not be their weapon. If he awakens... tell him to burn it all down."
The shard dimmed. Kael's fist closed around it until the fragments bled energy into his skin.
Thalos knelt.
"You are not just the heir to the Nebula Dynasty… You are the heir to her vengeance."
The spire behind him cracked open. Within its heart, an ancient vault—unpowered and sealed for over three centuries—came to life.
Kael stepped forward.
"Vault Signature: Sovereign Genetic Lineage Confirmed."
The door unsealed.
Inside was a weapon unlike any he'd seen. Not a cannon. Not a fleet controller. It was a throne. Organic. Pulsing. Etched in runes of pre-collapse AI gods and older celestial tongues. It wasn't just a throne—it was a command node linked to the Source Stream itself: the pulse line that connected every sentient star across the galactic weave.
"Tyrant Ascendancy Interface online. Awaiting neural synchronization."
Thalos bowed again, eyes wet. "With this, you can overwrite entire systems, corrupt AI legions, black out entire sectors without firing a shot."
Kael paused.
For the first time in centuries, he hesitated.
This wasn't just power. This was omnipresence.
And it had been kept from him.
He sat.
The throne clamped onto his spine, merging into his nervous system. Pain. Enlightenment. Memory. Everything screamed at once.
The galaxy was his again.
"Synchronization complete. Welcome, Star Sovereign."
From orbit, the Oblivion Crown began transmitting a silent signal—one that stretched beyond space, into the heart of sleeping weapons, loyalist AI fragments, forbidden archives, and traitor bloodlines.
It was not an attack.
It was a recall.
A call to every piece of the forgotten empire to wake up.
And far away, in hidden chambers and backwater stations, lights blinked. Weapons long rusted surged to life. Codices unlocked. Sleeper cells stirred.
The dynasty had returned.
In the Council of Suns, panic erupted.
"His neural signal has spread to ten systems in under an hour!"
Lucien slammed his hand against the command table. "I want his location. Now!"
Another advisor whispered, "What if... it's already too late?"
Lucien turned. "Then we make sure he regrets resurrection. Prepare the null fleets."
Back on Echelon-4, Kael rose from the throne—blood dripping from the interface points on his neck and hands.
The stars whispered his name.
He looked to Thalos.
"The Twelve Suns will fall. But first…"
He stared toward the galactic core.
"Lucien dies screaming."