Silence, thick and heavy as a shroud, had fallen over the Chronos Garrison’s command center. It was not the sterile quiet of efficiency, but the stunned hush that follows a cataclysm. The air reeked of ionized metal, vented coolant, and the faint, sweet odor of psychic burnout. Around them, the Garrison was a corpse, its spine severed. Consoles spat sparks, and the few crew members who had resisted assimilation now moved like ghosts through the ruin, their eyes hollow with the memory of the golden light that had nearly swallowed them whole.
In the center of the devastation, the three of them formed a tense, unstable geometry.
Roewi Verdent leaned against the central tactical table, his body a map of exhaustion. The silver filigree beneath his skin was a dull grey, its light nearly exting
