The Obsidian Wraith hummed softly around him, its interior lights low, systems calm. The sounds of chaos were gone, replaced by the familiar ambient thrum of his ship's power core and the rhythmic pulse of ventilation ducts cycling recycled air.
Docked in the lower hangar rings of Proteus, beneath miles of orbital scaffolding and forgotten cargo bays, the Wraith sat like a spider in its web.
Ethan finally breathed.
Not shallow. Not sharp.
A full breath, steady, grounded.
He stepped through the narrow main corridor of the Wraith, boots echoing faintly on the dark alloy floor. The containment vault in his arms pulsed faintly, the Gryllex shard inside still stable, though its energy signature was detectable now that his own adrenaline had faded.
He didn't head for the weapons locker.
Or the cockpit.
He went straight to his sleeping quarters, slid open the magnetic security panel in the floor beneath his sleeping bed, and lowered the containment case into the stasis lockbox.
"Iris. Confirm lock."
"Stasis field active. Power routing stable. No external emissions."
"Seal it. Triple-code it under Black Echo protocol. I don't want even you accessing it without my say-so."
"Confirmed. Vault sealed under Black Echo. No one will access without direct command."
He sat back on the edge of the bed, exhaling again.
Then checked his left arm.
The wound had stopped bleeding, but the burn from the enforcer's plasma baton still throbbed, red and ugly, skin blistered in crescent arcs around bone-deep bruising. His ribs ached. His entire right shoulder was one wrong move away from seizing up.
"Time to stop pretending I'm still made of steel," he muttered.
He made his way to the medbay, a compact room just off the central corridor, dimly lit but clinically clean. The medical pod slid open with a soft hydraulic hiss. Ethan stripped off the ruined cloak and shirt, tossed them aside, and climbed inside.
Cold mist washed over his body.
He let it.
For the next few minutes, there was only silence.
And memory.
The fight in the maintenance gantry, quick, brutal, efficient. The veiled group had underestimated him, but their leader hadn't flinched when his team dropped. That precision. That control.
Ethan had fought professionals before on Kynara. Rogue Mercenaries. Syndicate soldiers. But there had been something unspoken behind that leader's eyes besides his psionic power. Not revenge. Not anger.
Mission.
Cold, focused mission.
Then there was the Zelsari, her poise like a frozen storm, standing amid death while her Vennari guardian cut down the intruder squads like paper. She hadn't moved unless necessary. She hadn't panicked. And when her enemies closed in, her gaze turned to fire.
He remembered her watching the intruders burn.
Not with rage.
With calculation.
That wasn't just protection.
That was ownership.
The broken sword… the molecular relic… it was more than a purchase. It was power.
And then came the void, Xanthe's Dream erupting in fire, pirate ships peeling away in formation while security vessels screamed orders through encrypted comms. Elite guard ships cutting through attackers with elegant fury.
War, compacted into minutes.
"Iris."
"Yes."
"What's the status on Xanthe's Dream?"
"Current public reports list the event as a failed auction heist. No confirmed death counts. Silica Arc has not issued any official statements. The Federation central network has flagged the incident as under 'Tier-One Review.'"
Meaning a blackout.
Whatever had happened, whoever had died, it was being buried behind bureaucracy and redacted dossiers.
"Any chatter on the veiled group?"
"Minimal. Several rumor threads across dark comms imply a cell from the Outer Fringe is responsible. One flagged mention links them to an entity known as Specter Coil. Not confirmed. Unclear if connected to the larger event."
Specter Coil. Ethan filed the name.
"Track anything else that connects to that name. Quietly."
"Understood."
He climbed out of the pod, skin tingling, wounds sealed and nerves numbed. He pulled on a fresh synthweave shirt, shrugged his shoulders slowly, testing for stiffness.
Still sore.
Still alive.
He made his way to the cockpit, steps slow but purposeful, the soft metallic echo of his boots a familiar rhythm in the quiet ship. The hatch slid open with a hiss, revealing the Wraith's dark panels, recessed lighting, and controls built for speed and silence.
Ethan stepped up to the forward console, resting both hands on the edge, his eyes lifting toward the reinforced viewport. Beyond the angled transparency, the starfield yawned open like an ancient canvas. Proteus loomed beneath them, colossal, complex, and eerily alive.
And within all that motion…
Eyes. Ears. Patterns. Questions.
Ethan exhaled through his nose. A long, slow breath.
Too many eyes.
Too many ears.
His fingers tightened against the console as he watched engine heat drift from the lower foundry rings, coiling into atmospheric haze. Below the surface, factories churned. Research bunkers flickered with blue power. And surveillance systems watched everything.
"I can't stay here," he said aloud, more to himself than to Iris.
The words came flat, unshaken. Like a blade being sheathed, decision final.
"I can't let anyone know I have that shard. Not with the way things played out."
He paced once, slowly, before turning back toward the nav-screen.
"Who knows if that veiled group was part of something bigger? A lone hit squad? Doubtful. They were too clean. Too trained. Could've been Specter Coil's forward cell. Maybe they were the distraction that planted the bombs while the others else got in afterwards."
His voice dropped lower.
"Maybe it was all the same op."
He could still see their leader in his mind's eye, the posture, the tactics, the refusal to escalate. They hadn't come for revenge. They'd come for a purpose. And Ethan had disrupted that purpose when he won the Shard, hence the ambush.
Which meant they'd come again if they got hold of his real ID.
He clenched one fist on the console.
"If word gets out that I walked away with that shard… it won't just be thieves looking."
He pictured it now.
Buyers with untraceable credits. Assassins with military implants. Pirates. Corporate ghosts. Collectors who traded in extinction-grade tech. Even quiet agents of the Federation itself, those who liked secrets buried deeper than memory.
Ethan was becoming increasingly paranoid, but that came with the job.
"Recommendation?" Iris asked, her voice smooth, neutral.
He didn't hesitate.
"Leave Enover Sector. Soon. Quietly. No trails. No broadcasts."
He crossed the bridge, flicking open the local nav projection. A pale blue grid rippled outward, Proteus, its moons, nearby routes.
He tapped the sector trajectory arc already plotted toward their final destination.
"Our final stop is the Caryth Sector, still two relays out. I don't want to deviate too far, but we need a pit stop."
He rotated the map again, zooming into the next leg of their journey.
"Find somewhere in the Haltris Sector. Off-chart. No central oversight. No commercial orbitals. Somewhere we can refit the Wraith's stealth core."
Iris responded instantly. "One candidate match: System TH-9. Class-3 gas giant. Known for industrial decay. Unregulated salvage ring present. Local moon outposts accessible. High probability of black-market shipwrights."
"That'll do."
He leaned back, eyes returning to the starscape.
The weight of silence settled over his shoulders.
He'd made it out. Alive. With the shard. With no tail… yet.
But everything was sharper now. The blade's edge thinner. The margin smaller.
He sighed, just once.
"I don't want to delay our travels and my promotion to C-Rank more than necessary," he said softly, "but improving the Wraith's stealth core… that's not optional anymore."