Lil’lah watched another world die, though not with her physical eyes. The vision unfolded somewhere deeper, beneath thought, beneath sensation, where One Mind pulled her consciousness into a space that belonged neither to dreams nor memory. She never knew when these visions would come or which world would appear, only that each one arrived with the same overwhelming vividness that made her question the nature of time itself. Sometimes she wondered if they were glimpses of the past or futures waiting to collapse, or simply possibilities folding in on one another, but she no longer tried to unravel their origin.
The world before her shimmered in impossible clarity, suspended in a delicate calm that always came before the ruin. Oceans caught the light like panes of sapphire glass, while cloud systems curled upward in slow spirals that reminded her of living breath rather than weather. Mountain chains stretched across the land in gentle arcs, their shadows soft and undisturbed, as though the entire planet had been sculpted with a serene hand. For a moment she let herself absorb the beauty, not because it comforted her, but because she knew exactly how swiftly it would be taken away.
The fracture began slowly, a tremor she felt more than saw, building like pressure behind her sternum. Clouds jerked into jagged shapes, light bled across the horizon in unnatural streaks, and entire landmasses began to groan under the strain of their own unraveling. Water heaved upward, forming waves that twisted into impossible contortions before collapsing inward as if pulled by an unseen force. Even from this invisible vantage, Lil’lah felt the world straining against whatever power was tearing it apart.
She did not flinch when the planet broke. She had lost that instinct ages ago, after witnessing so many worlds collapse under the weight of their own histories, accidents, or cosmic inevitabilities. Fire bloomed across continents like a rash of dying stars; forests folded into ash; structures dissolved before sound could even form. The atmosphere peeled away in luminous sheets until the world was reduced to fragments drifting like embers across a blackened void.
She did not grieve the loss, because grief had burned itself out years ago. Instead, she simply absorbed the collapse, allowing the sensation to flow through her like a cold current. Even numbness took effort now, but she had mastered the stillness required to remain untouched by the visions’ emotional weight. Determination was all that remained, a steely thread running through her as she watched another ember fade into nothingness.
Then another world rose to replace it, almost instantly, as though the universe refused to let the void linger. This one appeared more softly, its contours blurred at the edges like a partially remembered dream. She did not recognize it, yet something in its rhythm resonated with her in a way that felt uncomfortably intimate. A faint pressure tightened across her chest, signaling a future she could not name but could feel pressing toward her like an oncoming storm.
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One Mind’s influence pulled deeper into her consciousness. It did not speak; One Mind never used language. Its intent reached her through emotion, sensation, and the strange magnetic pull that guided her through these visions. She felt urgency coil behind her ribs, a demand for attention, recognition, and action. Whatever this place was, whatever it might become, the consequences of its fate settled around her like cold hands gripping her spine.
Storms gathered across the surface, forming too quickly, moving in choreographed spirals that defied natural law. Lights flickered across the night hemisphere in frantic stutters, and thin distortions shimmered along the planetary shell as if reality itself were struggling to hold shape. Lil’lah reached for clarity, but the vision refused to sharpen, pulsing instead with a growing sense of danger that gnawed at the edges of her composure.
Possibilities surged through her mind: flashes of destruction, fragments of suffering, glimpses of collapse layered over one another until she could no longer distinguish past from future. They did not form a coherent narrative, only an overwhelming impression of threat, a certainty pressed directly into her bones. If she remained still, if she ignored this warning, if she made the wrong choice in the days ahead, this world, whatever it was, would be devoured by the same fate she had just witnessed.
She tried to pull away, but the force holding her refused to release her until the message had settled fully into her mind. The sensation grew heavier, spreading through her chest and throat until she felt as though she were drowning in implications she could not yet articulate. One Mind did not reveal answers, only the terrible weight of what awaited if she strayed from the path she had not yet discovered. It was left to her to decipher the meaning before the vision became reality.
The world fractured in her mind’s eye, shattering into a thousand flickering shards that blinked out one by one. Soundless silence flooded the space where the vision had been, a crushing stillness that seemed intent on anchoring itself in her thoughts. Then that silence broke apart as well, replaced by the familiar roar of everything she carried: countless futures, the burden of command, and the relentless noise she could never escape. Her mind remained a battlefield of possibilities, never entirely under her control.
When her awareness snapped back into her body, she drew a sharp breath as if resurfacing from deep water. She sat in the dim confines of the briefing room where her officers would soon gather, hands folded on the obsidian tabletop, the hum of ship systems faint beneath her palms. Her heartbeat still carried the echo of the vision’s urgency, a lingering sensation she could not shake. She exhaled slowly, letting the weight of what she had seen settle into a steady thrum in her chest.
She did not know the world she had just watched fall, nor the one threatened in the vision that followed. She did not know whether they were real, hypothetical, or branching strands of what might come to pass. What she did know was that One Mind had shown her something that demanded action, and that the next steps she took could determine the course of far more than her mission. Silence did not come to her, not yet, but she steadied her breath and prepared herself.
A broken past. A chance at the stars. But no one said breaking in was the hard part.
Piotr Argassa has spent his life fixing other people’s wreckage—hovercars, gadgets, and occasionally his own shattered dreams. Then a chance encounter with a military hangar’s mysterious technology offers a glimpse of something greater, and Piotr will risk everything for it.
Loading a chip and an unfinished AI into his own system, Piotr finds himself nose to nose with Major Ashley Kuba, an officer who sees potential where others see trouble. With Razor’s Military Academy on the horizon, Piotr is thrown headfirst into a world of relentless challenges: Zero-G training, experimental technology, and a team that doubts he belongs.
With an AI to perfect, and a ship to save, his own future hangs by a thread. Piotr must prove he’s more than just a mechanic. He’s a builder of dreams—and this time, it’s his own.
