Frolandii.

  Chen had once told Yan Qing that in Teleopean, Frolandii meant “the one bound by an oath.” Even in a civilization as dazzling and advanced as Teleopea, some ancient rites endured. Sullanta was one of them—a ritual as binding as any wedding on Earth, but with a gravity all its own. In Teleopean law, once Sullanta was performed, it could never be undone.

  Yan Qing’s eyes widened, shock and something raw flickering across his face as he stared at the pendant in Chen’s outstretched hand. The gold disk, the living red at its heart, seemed to pulse with the weight of a thousand unspoken promises.

  “I…” The word caught in his throat, thin and uncertain.

  You don’t want to.

  The thought pressed into the silence between them, heavy and cold. Chen’s hand faltered, the light in his eyes dimming as he slowly withdrew the pendant.

  “Don’t like me…” Yan Qing’s voice was barely a whisper, his vision blurring as he forced his eyes shut, fighting back tears. “Never… don’t ever—”

  Why? Because I’m a Continuation?

  “No.” Yan Qing’s denial was immediate, but his voice trembled.

  Then why?

  “Because—” His voice broke. He covered his face with one hand, shoulders shaking. Because if you do, you’ll leave me forever.

  But in the end, he said nothing at all.

  Chen took the silence as rejection. A flash of hurt crossed his golden eyes, then his lashes fell, shuttering everything behind a mask of composure.

  It’s just me. You don’t have to do anything.

  Yan Qing shook his head, voice hoarse. “I’m not worth it, Chen.” In his eyes, the starlight was brighter than the sky itself.

  Chen only smiled—a new expression, one he’d learned for Yan Qing’s sake. Yan Qing had once said he liked seeing him smile, so Chen kept smiling, even now.

  They spent the rest of the night in silence, side by side beneath the alien sky, watching as the stars wheeled overhead. Only when the first pale blue-white light crept over the horizon did Chen gather Yan Qing in his arms and carry him back to the ship.

  Inside, Yan Qing curled into a corner of the cabin, listless and drained, while Chen, his face shadowed, retreated wordlessly to the far side of the room.

  He needed to calm down.

  When Yan Qing had turned away, something wild and sharp had surged inside Chen—an emotion so fierce it nearly broke him, nearly made him do something he would regret forever. But he didn’t want that. He couldn’t destroy the only thing in his world that felt beautiful, the only thing he’d ever truly looked forward to.

  He stepped out of the ship and stood beneath the dawn sky. Here, deep in the canyon, the lethal radiation couldn’t reach them directly, but even so, the light that spilled over the rim was harsh, merciless. The last stars faded, swallowed by the sun’s rising glare.

  Chen tore his gaze from the sky, every sense sharpening.

  Someone was here.

  His telepathy swept outward, registering at least a dozen presences hidden among the rocks—maybe more, just beyond his range. He blinked, golden hair stirring in the breeze, his face unreadable as he watched the intruders close in.

  They were armored head to toe, their snake-like lower bodies plated in segmented metal. The weapons in their hands glinted with a cold, inorganic light.

  “Don’t move! Or we will open fire!” the leader barked in Interstellar Common.

  Chen tilted his head, meeting the man’s gaze with a calm, steady stare.

  “We’re a Fenreiga Imperial special operations team. We detected abnormal energy output here.”

  They had come to this planet on orders—sent to track down the source of an anomalous energy reading, to secure the object at any cost. None of them had expected to find a Teleopean here.“I thought they were neutral—” One of the Fenreigan muttered under his helmet.

  But if a Teleopean had appeared here, did that mean their vaunted neutrality was a lie?

  Chen read their intent in the way their formation shifted, in the way their weapons angled just slightly more toward him. His hands tightened at his sides, silent and still.

  “We don’t want to be your enemy,” the leader called out, voice muffled by the helmet’s comm, but not enough to hide the tremor beneath the command. “Just hand over that thing, and we won’t hurt you.”

  Chen didn’t answer. He didn’t even blink.

  He took a single step forward.

  To the soldiers, that small motion was as good as a declaration of war. Their grips tightened on their guns, knuckles whitening. “Don’t come closer! Did you hear me?!” someone shouted, panic cracking through the discipline.

  A cold light flickered in Chen’s eyes.

  The leader’s body jerked—no warning, no time for a scream. One moment he stood at the front of the squad, the next he was yanked by an invisible force, ripped cleanly in half. Blood sprayed across the moss and armor, and the silence that followed was absolute—a silence filled with the knowledge that, in the presence of a Teleopean, the rules of survival had just changed.

  “Telekinesis! Royal bloodline!” someone screamed, panic cracking through the comms.

  Weapons snapped up in a single, desperate motion. A dozen beams of lethal light tore through the air, converging on Chen in a blinding volley.

  But Chen was already moving.

  He sprang upward, a blur against the starlit sky, twisting through the death-lines with impossible speed. In the next instant, he shot forward—faster than thought, faster than fear.

  He seized the nearest soldier by the head. There was a sickening twist—bone and armor yielding in his grip—and the body dropped, lifeless, to the mossy ground.

  Numbers still mattered. The others fired again, forcing Chen back several meters in a hail of burning light.

  But his reflexes were unreal. He dodged, and dodged again—each movement precise, each counterattack brutal. Three more fell in rapid succession, cut down with the same cold efficiency.

  Then, out of the corner of his eye, Chen caught a flicker of movement—one enemy, breaking from the chaos, making for the ship.

  He pivoted, no wasted motion, and grabbed the intruder’s arm. His wings snapped open, slicing the air with a thunderous beat.

  “Ah—!” The soldier barely had time to scream as Chen launched straight upward, dragging him into the sky. Laser fire skimmed past, missing by inches.

  At the apex, Chen flung the soldier higher—straight into the planet’s lethal sunlight.

  In an instant, flesh became fire. The body ignited, burning bright and brief before vanishing into ash. The scream echoed, then was gone.

  Chen landed on one knee, steady as stone, and lifted his head.

  The remaining soldiers were in chaos, stumbling back, weapons shaking. His face was still blank—emotionless, unreadable—but in their eyes, he was worse than death.

  The Fenreigans confronting Chen were no ordinary soldiers. They were elite, armed with the best technology their empire could muster. But luck had turned against them: they were facing Teleopean royal bloodline—one of the galaxy’s strongest bioweapons.

  Chen’s pupils, usually narrow and slitted, widened until his golden eyes seemed almost black. In that instant, the air itself seemed to tighten.

  Without warning, the remaining soldiers’ guns exploded in their hands. At such close range, each weapon became a death sentence. Purple blood splattered the rocks, the scent sharp and metallic in the cold air.

  Their true target had never been Chen. It was Yan Qing, the human inside the ship. From his predecessor’s memories, Chen knew: Yan Qing was the only lifeform in recorded history to fuse with the Ultimate Weapon. How could he let any threat survive?

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  When the last echo of violence faded, Chen scanned the clearing for more enemies, senses stretched to the limit. Only when he was certain did he turn and step into the ship.

  Yan Qing was already at the doorway, drawn by the chaos outside. He’d watched through the glass, helpless, as the world threatened to tear itself apart.

  “Are you okay?” Yan Qing’s voice was soft, but his hands moved over Chen, searching for wounds, for reassurance. Black eyes scanned him from head to toe, worry etched into every line of his face.

  The sight sent a rush of warmth through Chen, a current that left him unsteady. Without thinking, he pulled Yan Qing into his arms, holding him close.

  They are going to come back. Very soon.

  The words brushed cold against Yan Qing’s mind.

  “Then, just let them take me…” Yan Qing let himself be held, but the images of battle still burned behind his eyes—fear for Chen’s safety tangled with a deep, crushing helplessness.

  No.

  That was the reply.

  Yan Qing looked up at Chen’s face, bleakness clouding his gaze. Chen looked back, warmth in his eyes—waiting, unmoving, as if he could melt the distance between them by will alone.

  “We can't run; we can't even hide. Please, Chen?” Yan Qing whispered, and as he spoke, Chen caught his lips in a kiss—clumsy, unfamiliar, almost desperate. It was gentle enough to break Yan Qing apart inside, to make him want to cry.

  He’d escaped into the past, hoping for a different ending. But he knew how it ended, and still he stayed beside this younger Chen, greedy and selfish, soaking up every moment.

  What was he doing? He couldn’t keep doing this.

  With a sudden, wrenching motion, Yan Qing shoved Chen away. “I’m sorry, Chen. I can’t.”

  The loss of contact stung like a wound splitting open. Chen could feel Yan Qing’s feelings mirrored in his own chest—but he didn’t understand why the human kept refusing him. Was it because he was a Continuation? Or did Yan Qing truly love only that long-dead predecessor, the one who’d saved him as a child?

  Jealousy surged, hot and wild, enough to make Chen want to tear his predecessor apart if he was still alive. But the dead couldn’t be punished. That person was gone. Not even ash remained.

  The silence between them thickened, heavy and suffocating.

  Suddenly, Chen grabbed Yan Qing’s arm and yanked him back into his chest.

  “Chen, what are you—” Yan Qing gasped, startled, eyes wide.

  A cold touch landed at his throat. Instinctively, his hand flew up. It was the gold necklace. Chen’s eyes—metallic, unblinking—bored into him, as if branding a vow into his soul.

  “This is my choice.” Chen’s voice was solemn, deep. “Stay in the ship. Don’t come out.”

  Yan Qing opened his mouth, but no sound came. Chen turned away, his tall back vanishing behind the closing automatic door.

  “No—” Yan Qing ran to the door, pressing himself against the metal, pounding, hitting the control panel. Nothing. The door didn’t move. Chen had locked it from the outside.

  Through the glass, Yan Qing saw Chen alone, facing an alien gunboat hovering barely five meters off the ground. Of course the attackers wouldn’t come without backup. How could flesh fight high-tech killing machines?

  Yan Qing hammered the door until his fists bled, nails cutting into his palms, pain lost in the storm of panic. “Chen, stop!! Please—stop!! Let them take me!” He knew what they wanted: the strange energy source inside him. Chen, with his predecessor’s memories, knew it too. And Chen knew that as a human, Yan Qing couldn’t survive daylight outside the ship’s protection. One step out, and the star’s radiation would kill him within an hour.

  They couldn’t run. So Chen chose only one option: fight.

  Had Yan Qing come back just to watch the person he loved die in front of him again?

  He kept pounding the door, but he had no divine strength to break steel. What now?

  You can. Your will is your power. Let it fulfill your will.

  The voice that had been absent for so long suddenly echoed inside Yan Qing’s mind. He froze.

  “…My will?” His lips moved, uncertain.

  What do you want most right now?

  The quantum-computer AI guided him patiently, the childlike voice both distant and razor-clear, right beside his ear.

  “What I want…” Yan Qing stared through the ship’s glass at the figure outside. Golden hair whipped in the wind, a black robe snapping in the chaos, the shape hauntingly familiar—like that night Chen played the Kiharro and rode the wind as if it obeyed him. But now there was something sharper, like a blade’s edge. Even facing missile barrels bigger than his body, Chen didn’t flinch. One side: overwhelming technology. The other: a body and its own power.

  “I want Chen to live,” Yan Qing whispered. “I don’t want him to hurt himself for me again.”

  A tear—filled with blue energy—ran down his cheek and gathered on his jaw. His eyes, lit with the same blue glow, watched everything outside. His face was grief-stricken—but he was smiling.

  “…I don’t want to trouble him anymore.”

  Outside, the enemy attacked.

  With no weapons, Chen used telepathy as his only counterforce. High-energy rounds bent midair under invisible pressure, arcing back toward the mothership. The Fenreigans threw up a plasma shield to neutralize their own redirected fire. It looked like they couldn’t touch Chen—yet they kept attacking.

  Both sides knew the truth: against Teleopean telepathy, the winning strategy was endurance. The assault changed its cadence, shots no longer chasing the kill.

  It was attrition.

  Chen stood rigid, but the stillness betrayed him. A tremor rippled through his frame, fine at first, then deeper, setting his shoulders quivering as if something inside him were slipping its restraints. His jaw clenched. The line of his mouth pulled tight, just enough to break the illusion of calm.

  Gold welled at his ears and spilled free, warm and bright, streaking along the sharp plane of his jaw before falling in slow drops.

  He twisted, arm snapping up—another missile veered away at the last instant, its wake tearing past him with a shriek.

  Heat thundered behind his eyes. The world narrowed, ringing and distorted, every heartbeat a hammer striking from within. Thought smeared into noise. His vision shuddered, light smearing into afterimages—but he couldn’t stop.

  He couldn’t let them take Yan Qing.

  He couldn’t.

  Chen drew a sharp breath and forced his scattered focus to converge—this time, not on the barrage, but on the gunship itself.

  The vessel’s hull began to deform under invisible stress. Plates twisted against one another, seams tearing as structural integrity failed. One by one, the primary laser cannons collapsed, their mounts shearing apart. A moment later, the engines followed, rupturing from within.

  The ship detonated midair.

  The blast sent a pressure wave racing through the canyon, hurling sand and stone outward in a violent surge. The crippled craft lost what little lift it had left and crashed down, carving a scar into the earth as it struck.

  Chen let out a broken sound and staggered. His hands flew to his head as he dropped to his knees, vision swimming. The pain was overwhelming—too dense to form into anything coherent. He curled inward on instinct, breath coming in shallow, uneven pulls, as though he could fold himself small enough to escape it.

  A hatch tore open along the wreck’s side.

  Three Fenreigan soldiers emerged from the smoke, crawling free of the debris. They rose unsteadily, weapons already raised, their sights locking onto the kneeling Teleopean.

  Chen lifted his head with effort. Each breath scraped through his chest, thick and uncooperative, tasting faintly of metal. His vision swam—light bending, edges dissolving—and the sky above felt impossibly distant, as if already slipping away from him. Somewhere, dimly, he accepted that this might be the last thing he ever saw.

  Then warmth closed around his neck.

  Solid, familiar arms wrapped around him from behind, steady and protective, as though holding him together were the only thing that mattered.

  Chen froze. His gold eyes tightened, focus snapping painfully sharp as he looked up.

  “Yan?Qing…?”

  Black hair surged upward around them, lifted by no wind, each strand whipping as if caught in an unseen current. Along Yan?Qing’s right cheek, blue markings spread and shifted, alive—fine lines branching and reconnecting like circuitry pulsing with power. The same blue glimmered within his black eyes, turning them deep and radiant, like light trapped under dark water.

  The battlefield stalled.

  The soldiers stared, weapons forgotten in their hands. The air felt heavy, humming faintly, pressure building until even sound seemed reluctant to move.

  Yan?Qing looked down at Chen.

  Chen’s face was drained of color, streaked with blood, his body barely upright. Yan?Qing’s expression twisted at the sight—pain flickering across his features, sharp and raw.

  Then he smiled.

  It was sudden.

  And unbearably sad.

  “Enough, Chen,” he said softly. His voice carried no force, yet it cut through everything. “Don’t protect me anymore. Don’t love me anymore.”

  The words landed wrong. Chen stared at him, struggling to understand. Anymore? The word echoed, hollow and unfinished.

  Then Yan?Qing spoke again.

  Clear tears slid free from his altered eyes, warm and bright, tracing slow paths down his pale cheeks. His skin seemed to thin as Chen watched, light bleeding through him, his form growing faint—as if he were already halfway gone.

  “Forget everything about me.”

  Chen’s breath caught.

  The world shattered.

  Blinding light flooded his vision, absolute and merciless. Heat roared through him, drowning thought, erasing color, erasing sound. His mind went white—empty, overwhelmed. Somewhere far away, a scream tore through the brilliance, thin and broken—

  Then darkness closed in.

  Above the canyon, half the sky split apart.

  A pillar of white light surged upward, brighter than the planet’s sun, so intense it cast no shadow. Space itself bent around it, rippling and warping as though reality were being pulled apart at the seams.

  And then—

  as abruptly as it had appeared—

  the light vanished.

  Hours passed. The planet’s timeline resumed as if nothing had happened. Day and night rotated—like they always had for millions of years. Only this time, night fell early for reasons no one could explain. Cold and hot air collided, feeding a restless wind in the canyon.

  “Mm…”

  In the darkness, a golden figure pushed himself upright and sat up, exhaling hard, one hand pressed to his forehead.

  Chen woke with a skull-splitting headache. He looked around, baffled at why he was lying on the ground. More baffling—he couldn’t remember what had happened before he blacked out. It felt like he’d forgotten something unbelievably important. Important. Important. And no matter how he tried, he couldn’t grasp it.

  He sighed, frustrated, and grimaced through the pain.

  Then his body went still. He rose in one smooth motion, alert, scanning the dark. His eyes locked onto a point in the night.

  There—six pairs of golden eyes glowed. By starlight and sharp vision, Chen could make out faces similar to his own. Three of them had long gold hair that gleamed metallic under the stars.

  One stepped forward and spoke:

  “My name is Xiao. Tian. Xiao and I have come to escort Your Grace back to Teleopea.”

  Earth, 2050AD

  L.A. City Hospital

  The sterile calm of the hospital corridor shattered as the emergency team burst through, moving swiftly and purposefully. Urgency vibrated in every command and gesture.

  “Move! Move!!” someone shouted, clearing the way as they wheeled in a patient.

  Inside the trauma bay, the team sprang into action. Monitors beeped frantically. “Blood pressure dropping!” a nurse called out, her voice edged with anxiety.

  Another nurse rushed to start an intravenous line, quickly preparing a saline drip. “Start an IV saline, add epinephrine!”

  The rhythm alarm blared. “Atrial fibrillation! I need the defibrillator!”

  With practised efficiency, a nurse handed over the defibrillator paddles.

  “One, two, three—Clear!!”

  The electric current jolted through his body, hoping to reset his failing heart. The team watched the monitor, tense. “No response! Second shock!” The paddles were charged again. “One, two, three—Clear!!” Another jolt. Still no change.

  “No response!” came the frustrated update.

  “Third shock!” The paddles pressed down once more. “Thud!!”

  Beneath the oxygen mask, the young man’s lips moved, barely perceptible. “Chen…” he whispered faintly, his voice almost lost amid the chaos.