The stars seemed too quiet.
After the destruction of Vaerindale's vault, the Echohound had been running cold—no beacon, no external lights, no signal emissions. Even the hum of the engines had been dampened to a whisper.
Kael sat in the cockpit, staring into the black. His hands were still, but inside him, the new Shard thrummed like a second heart, a second mind.
He could feel the Cadence now—like a great slumbering beast, restless and stirring.
"They know," he muttered.
Behind him, Lira tightened her gloves. "Then we have to stay ahead."
Rax leaned against the wall, arms crossed, his axe sharpened and ready. "Or hit 'em so hard they can't catch up."
Kael didn't answer immediately. His mind was elsewhere—half in this moment, half submerged in the river of forbidden histories the Shard had unlocked.
There were other vaults out there. Other hearts of rebellion.
And others like Vaelen who would kill to protect the old order.
Suddenly, Vakya's voice echoed in his mind:
> Warning: High-level narrative enforcers detected.
Designation: Chronohounds.
Distance: 1.7 light-minutes and closing.
Kael's pulse spiked.
Chronohounds.
Cadence's elite hunters—creatures sculpted from failed timelines, shaped into wolves that fed on potential futures.
He stood up, fast.
"Battle stations. We're not running from this."
Minutes later, the ship's tactical room flickered with holographic maps.
Lira gestured to a projection: three pulsing red blips moving with impossible precision.
"They'll be on us in less than fifteen minutes. Faster than anything natural."
Rax grinned. "Good. I was getting bored."
Kael traced the blips with his finger.
"No straight fight. They're stronger, faster... they can edit cause and effect around themselves."
He glanced at Vakya's flickering avatar.
"Can we trap them?"
Vakya's eye pulsed thoughtfully.
> Suggestion: Temporal anchors combined with quantum disruption mines.
Estimated success rate: 12%.
Kael smirked grimly.
"I like those odds."
The Echohound dropped into a dense asteroid belt, weaving between tumbling stones of frozen iron and shattered moons. It was a deathtrap maze—and it was perfect.
Nira phased through the walls, planting disruption mines laced with temporal anchors along narrow choke points.
Rax manned the rear cannons, his finger twitching over the triggers.
Lira sat beside Kael in the cockpit, manually overriding the ship's autopilot to make minute, jittery course adjustments.
"Here they come," she whispered.
Through the cracked viewport, Kael saw them:
Three Chronohounds—sleek, metallic wolves with bodies stitched from fractured timelines. Their eyes blazed like dying stars. Reality warped around them with every stride, asteroids dissolving into dust as they passed through.
No engines. No propulsion.
They ran on causality itself.
And they were gaining.
The first mine exploded as the lead Chronohound passed, but it simply blinked, rewinding itself a second before impact and continuing unharmed.
Kael swore under his breath.
"They're rewriting their paths—"
Before he could finish, the second hound leapt forward, jaws wide, aiming for the rear thrusters.
Rax unleashed a barrage of null-rounds. The bullets struck the hound midair, forcing it to phase through different timelines—but not fast enough. One round grazed it, causing a ripple in its form.
The beast let out a soundless howl, a scream only Kael could hear inside his mind.
They remember...
"They're made of broken futures," Kael realized aloud. "Every one of them is a world that never was."
Lira grimaced. "Creepy. Let's still blow them up."
They led the hounds deeper into the asteroid field, weaving a deadly dance.
Kael pushed the ship to its limits, skimming so close to asteroid surfaces that fragments scraped their hull.
At the next minefield, Kael triggered a manual override—forcing the mines to detonate all at once.
This time, the hounds tried to phase.
But Kael had learned.
He used Vakya's power to lock a microsecond of reality around the mines. For that instant, they were unchangeable, immutable.
The explosion caught two hounds mid-leap, shredding their forms into streams of broken storycode.
Only the largest hound survived, limping slightly, its body patching itself from ghostly afterimages.
It roared—an impossible, layered sound that rattled every atom in the Echohound.
Kael stood from the cockpit, grabbing his sword.
"I'll finish it," he said.
Rax opened his mouth to argue, but saw the look in Kael's eyes—and nodded grimly.
"Don't die, Captain."
Kael smiled thinly. "I'll try."
Outside, in the frozen void, Kael faced the Chronohound.
His suit flickered with narrative shielding, powered by the twin Shards within him.
The hound circled, claws gouging burning marks into the fabric of reality itself.
Kael steadied his breathing.
He remembered the Vault murals—the forgotten rebellions. How none of them had succeeded by playing by the enemy's rules.
He had to rewrite the battlefield.
As the hound lunged, Kael flared Vakya's power.
The world around them rippled—turning into a half-remembered battlefield, with shattered flags and broken weapons littering the ground.
The Chronohound stumbled for half a second, confused by the sudden change.
It was enough.
Kael moved.
Faster than thought, faster than regret.
He plunged his blade into the beast's core.
The hound shrieked as its form unraveled—stories and memories spilling into the void.
Kael held on, feeling a storm of unrealized worlds tear at his mind.
Pain. Hope. Loss. Infinite possibilities.
And then... silence.
The Chronohound was gone.
Back aboard the ship, Kael collapsed into his chair, gasping.
The crew gathered around him, relieved.
"You're insane," Lira said with a weak laugh.
"Works for me," Rax added.
Vakya's voice flickered again in Kael's mind:
> Second Cadence Hunter force neutralized.
Warning: Greater threats anticipated.
Prepare for escalation.
Kael looked out into the dark once more.
The Cadence wouldn't stop. Not now.
And somewhere ahead, the next Shard—and the next rebellion—awaited.
He tightened his grip on his blade.
"Let them come."
Because now, he wasn't just fighting for survival.
He was fighting to rewrite fate itself.