"Haaaa"

The breath tore out of him like something had been sitting on his chest.

Enzo’s eyes snapped open.

The world crashed back in pieces. The low hum of an engine beneath his feet. The faint vibration of metal pressing up through his boots. The muffled groan of a hull cutting through atmosphere at a controlled descent.

He was inside a ship.

A big one.

And it was slowly descending into orbit around a planet that was very clearly at war.

He could see it through the windshield even from here. The surface below was fractured by conflict — dark plumes rising from cities, flashes of light where weapons discharged across open terrain, entire regions blotted out by smoke. Whatever was happening down there had been happening for a long time.

He pulled his gaze away from the glass and looked sideways.

Several individuals were seated in the cockpit. Focused. Disciplined. None of them were paying attention to him.

He didn’t recognize any of them.

Safe for one.

’Victoria’

His gaze locked and didn’t move.

Red hair. Unmistakable even from behind.

She was seated toward the front of the craft, eyes tracking something beyond the windshield with the kind of stillness that came from someone completely in control of their surroundings. Her posture didn’t shift. Her attention didn’t waver.

Enzo said nothing. Just watched.

"Yuno, slow down the craft and enter stealth mode."

Her voice cut across the cockpit without effort. Calm. Direct. The kind of tone that assumed compliance before it even finished the sentence.

Enzo frowned.

’Yuno Al’K was here?’

He looked around again. Scanned the seats. Scanned the faces.

Nothing.

He couldn’t find him anywhere — that was until his gaze drifted sideways and landed on a mirror mounted to the interior wall of the cockpit.

He stopped.

Stared.

’....I’m inside of Yuno?’

The face reflected back at him was not his own. The jaw was sharper. The eyes a different shape. The frame of the shoulders, the angle of the neck — all of it belonged to someone else entirely.

To Yuno Al’K.

Enzo had done this before. Slipped into strangers and navigated the world from behind unfamiliar eyes. But this was different. Every other time, the body had been unknown to him — a vessel without a name, without a history he could attach to it.

This was the first time he was embodying someone he actually knew.

It sat strangely in the back of his mind.

He was still processing that when something changed in the cockpit.

Victoria’s gaze snapped back.

Fast. Too fast to be coincidence.

Her eyes landed directly on the face she was looking at — on Yuno’s face — and something lit up in them immediately. Not alarm. Something more precise than that. The quiet recognition of a person who had noticed a wrongness they couldn’t immediately name.

A glint.

Gone just as quickly as it came.

Her gaze moved on. Swept across the cockpit. Settled on three individuals near the front who, to the untrained eye, looked completely ordinary. But Victoria’s eye was not untrained.

She stood.

"Someone else take over steering." Her voice hadn’t changed — same controlled tone. "Maintain course to the castle."

Someone moved to comply without a word.

She turned toward the three.

"Come with me."

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

She didn’t wait to see if they followed.

Enzo moved swiftly, keeping pace as she walked up the short stairs at the rear of the cockpit and pushed through into the back of the ship. The hall was narrow. Quieter back here, the engine noise dropping to a low, steady hum that sat beneath everything else.

She led them into a secluded room and stopped.

Turned.

Her eyes found Enzo’s face — Yuno’s face — and stayed there. A complicated look moved across her expression. Something difficult to fully read. Not quite relief. Not quite surprise. Something in between that hadn’t settled yet.

"Enzo?"

It came out quieter than her usual register. Almost like she was confirming something she already knew.

"Yes."

He nodded once.

The exhale from the other two was immediate.

The woman to his side had the pale face of a vampire — composed, still, the kind of stillness that had been practiced over a very long time. A robotic hand rested at her side. Whatever tension had been sitting in her frame released itself quietly now.

The man beside her nodded. He had already pieced it together — the name alone had been enough.

"We are in the same voyage," the vampire woman said.

The man folded his arms slightly. "I’ve heard of this before." He said it with the tone of someone who had filed the knowledge away once and was now pulling it back out.

It wasn’t unheard of.

After being infected by stardust, a person could accommodate a star seed within them and enter a voyage — a traversal of another timeline or world entirely — to push their strength beyond its current ceiling. One seed, one person. That was the standard rule. That was how it had always worked.

But ancient records told a different story.

At a certain grade, the seed could hold more.

More than one consciousness. More than one traveler riding the same vessel at the same time.

Victoria listened to none of this out loud. She already knew it.

Her gaze had already drifted sideways — landing on the vampire woman with just a beat more attention than she gave the man.

"These are your friends?" she asked. A small smile formed at the corner of her mouth. Genuine. Unforced.

"Yes," Enzo nodded, the faint pull of a smirk at the edge of his expression.

Victoria held the moment for exactly as long as it needed to exist. Then she pulled herself back.

"I didn’t think it would bring you right into this hellish landscape," she said. Her eyes settled on Enzo fully now. "But this will work."

She paused for just a breath.

"Yuno is currently a God. So are the rest of the people on this ship. Let me give you a quick brief before we head back."

.

.

The mission on Varo King World was not operating in silence.

Every major race across the universe was watching from the dark. Outwardly — opposition. Hostility. No one wanted to be seen touching this conflict, endorsing it, standing anywhere near it publicly.

But Victoria knew what the silence actually meant.

Several factions wanted in.

Getting involved here wasn’t just a tactical decision. It was a statement. It was the same as finally pushing back — finally planting feet and refusing to give more ground to the corruption that had been grinding forward for longer than most were willing to admit.

Right now the myriad of human forces were still trying to run. Still trying to escape the encroachment, buy time, survive another day.

No one was willing to die here.

Not yet.

[We have reached the dark forest. Should we hail the castle?]

The voice came through the comms flat and clean.

Victoria turned without hurrying.

She nodded.

[Dark castle — the Red God Ark is requesting to dock. Seeking permission...]

The broadcast went out.

Silence stretched behind it.

Then —

[Docking permission granted. Follow the lights.]

—click

Outside, the dark forest below them shifted. Lights blinked on one by one through the density of black trees, carving a runway through the canopy. As the ship followed the path down, the trees themselves responded — trunks moving, branches withdrawing, the forest making room where there had been none.

The ship descended through the gap.

At the landing zone, a formation stood waiting.

Side by side. Fully armored in dark plate. Long spears held upright and absolutely still. The kind of discipline that didn’t waver. The kind that had been forged somewhere difficult.

And among them.

One man.

Black and gold.

The air around him carried something that had nothing to do with the armor or the posture. It was older than that. Heavier. Royalty in the bone. Divinity woven into the way he simply stood and let the world arrange itself around him.

Enzo looked at him through Yuno’s eyes and said nothing.

This was the dark emperor Cassius.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​