I pulled my consciousness back from the charred ruins of the clone in the Blind Sector, anchoring myself in the amber glow of Vorr-Epsilon 5B2. The phantom sensation of Valen’s death lingered like the taste of burnt plastic on my tongue, but the relief of success was sweeter.

  My physical body was sitting on a mossy ridge, safe and breathing the rich, sweet air of the moon.

  “What’s next?” Nyx asked, her eyes sharp, monitoring the perimeter. She was perched on a massive tree root, blending perfectly with the bark, her daggers mere glints in the dappled light.

  “A couple of things. For one, we can do more preparations for sabotage right here,” I said, stretching my limbs, shaking off the lag. “The Iron Vector is gone. House Lyras has taken credit for the theft of the Ancestor’s Compass. And our preliminary intelligence shows the Kyorians in the sector are already mobilizing for a counter-strike against their own rivals.”

  “Sabotaging their supply lines when they are planning for another conflict to add even more to the chaos,” Nyx allowed herself a small, cold smile. “Civil war is a messy business. It will keep their eyes off us.”

  “It buys us breathing room,” I agreed. “But a distraction is only useful if we use the time well. While they fight ghosts, we have a lot of work to do.”

  The moon was a target-rich environment. While my clone had handled the chaotic distraction, Nyx and I had mapped the supply lines of House Vorr’s agricultural heart. Now, it was time for the harvest.

  The following days were a masterclass in grand celestial larceny. We were no longer saboteurs in a mine. We were ghosts in a pantry.

  “Target confirmed,” Nyx whispered, pointing to a sprawling glass structure suspended on a stream of liquid mana that flowed uphill. “The local Greenhouse. That building. It houses the High-Yield Spirit herbs and grain. Designated for Rations for the elite and ritual consumption only.”

  “Bag it,” I ordered from my position near the irrigation controls.

  Using a series of targeted Glimpses, I simulated various theft scenarios to find the perfect crime.

  In the first vision, I triggered a mana overload in the irrigation grid. The resulting flood distracted the guards, but the water damage ruined half the crop. In the second, I used brute force, employing [Apex Mana Authority] to crush the automated sentries. It was efficient, but it triggered a silent alarm that brought an Ascendant response team within three minutes.

  I settled on the third strategy: The Vacuum Seal.

  I used the Glimpse to map the patrol drone schedules down to the microsecond. I learned the rhythm of their scans. Then, in reality, I moved.

  I didn’t break the locks. I didn’t touch the crates.

  I used [The Void-Star’s Hunger].

  I projected the Hunger into the storage silos. I didn’t eat the mana of the crates; I created localized vacuum pockets inside them. The grain — tons of golden, glowing kernels that hummed with vitality — was sucked into my sub-space inventory instantly. The crates remained, hollow but sealed, weighted with simple gravity charms I slapped on them to fool a cursory lift-check.

  “Leoric is going to be ecstatic,” I noted, watching the last ton of grain vanish. “This wheat metabolizes ambient mana. One loaf can feed a person for a week and refills their core faster than a potion.”

  “In a few years, our farmland could rival this moon,” Nyx noted, carefully packing a climate-controlled canister with cuttings from a tree that dripped liquid starlight.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, looking at the distant spires of the city of Aurelia, “A few more years and we will surpass it. But for now, we copy and steal their recipes.”

  We didn’t stop at grain.

  We raided the Apothecary Guild’s library. Not for potions, but for seeds. Seeds of Spirit-Ginseng, Star-Lotuses, and a strange, pulsating vine called ‘The Emperor’s Vein’ that produced raw, refined Mana-Sap.

  But physical resources were just the start. The real treasure was knowledge.

  I constantly infiltrated the Administrative Hub of Aurelia. Never physically, always through visions as their security always seemed to eventually catch on.

  In a Glimpse, I walked into the Hub with Nyx disguised as a Logistics Inspector from the Vorr core worlds — a common occurrence ever since their attempts at improving security after the breach from House Lyras. She walked past the checkpoints with a haughty sneer, demanding to see the Manifests.

  I accessed the main, secured network. I didn’t read the files; I devoured them.

  I obtained information on the planetary logistics network. Shipping lanes. Hidden supply depots. Emergency evacuation protocols. The exact shield frequency of their orbital platforms. I learned that the Vorr supply chain was efficient but fragile. They relied heavily on automated relay stations. If those stations went dark… the flow of resources stopped.

  “Jeeves,” I projected through the Spire-Link, utilizing Arthur’s boosted signal from the relay. “We have the blueprints. The Core Worlds rely on these tethers.”

  “Analysis indicates a vulnerability in the Geothermal tap stations,” Jeeves responded instantly. “They are unprotected against internal harmonic disruption.”

  “What if we injected Essence siphoning constructs, using my Void abilities, into the planetary cores of their main resource worlds?” I suggested, watching a schematic rotate in my mind’s eye. “Set on a dormant timer… essentially sleeping ticks?”

  “We could drain their logistical support structure remotely,” Jeeves completed the thought, his excitement palpable. “Initiate a systemic resource starvation event right before we engage them militarily. They would launch a fleet with empty tanks.”

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  “Leoric,” I continued. “Design a Deep-Core injector. Something that can withstand the core of a planet and eats the geothermic mana. I want to plant seeds of our own.”

  “I will name it the ‘Parasite’!” Leoric chirped happily. “Or maybe the ‘Planet-Tick’. It will need ablative shielding to survive the magma…”

  While Nyx gathered intelligence on the ground, sneaking into the homes of low-level bureaucrats to steal correspondence and encryption keys, I spent time with my new toy.

  The Ancestor’s Compass.

  I sat on the roof of a floating gazebo in a public park, shielded by my Veil, overlooking the endless golden clouds. The view was still ever mesmerizing. The gas giant taking up half the sky, a swirling masterpiece of storms.

  I held the galaxy-sphere in my hand.

  It was cold. Alien. It felt heavy with Fate. When I pushed a sliver of mana into it, the stars inside swirled, forming patterns that hurt my eyes if I looked too long.

  I tried to attune to it. I pushed my mana into the device, seeking a connection.

  It resisted. It felt like trying to push two magnets together at the wrong polarity. It buzzed against my fingers, rejecting the Void nature of my mana.

  It was pure Order trying to reject Chaos.

  “Kasian,” I asked, projecting the visual data to the Sanctum. “What do you see?”

  “A chaotic navigational algorithm,” the Chronicle mused via the link. “It doesn’t chart space. It charts Outcome. It seems to operate on Probability logic.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning if you ask it ‘How do I win this fight?’, it shows you the timeline with the highest success rate. It’s a tactical oracle. A cheat sheet for destiny.”

  “Like Millimos’ pendant?”

  “Similar function, different scale,” Kasian analyzed. “His pendant was a Warning system. An alarm. This… this is a Guide. It is active, not passive. But Master, the archives are thin. This artifact predates the Kyorian Empire. It feels… related to the Architects. Or at least, made by someone capable of copying their methods.”

  I tried it. I focused on the concept of Find the Kyorian weakness.

  The stars inside the sphere swirled violently. They turned red. They formed a jagged, broken line that pointed… inward?

  “It’s fuzzy,” I frowned. “Like a corrupted file.”

  “Because you are interfering,” Kasian deduced. “Your Void nature is chaotic. It blinds the Probability engine. Fate and Void do not mix well. One is the script; the other is the shredder. Also, be careful. Millimos’ artifact triggered a localized retreat to avoid death. This device… it might lock your fate if you use it improperly. If you follow a path it shows you, you might lose the ability to choose another.”

  “A deterministic trap,” I muttered. “Great.”

  And then, I felt it. The heat on my wrist.

  I looked at the bracelet. The black band was pulsing with a rhythmic, agitated heat. It wasn’t friendly. It felt… irritated.

  “I feel some tension,” I noted. “The Void-Star doesn’t like sharing the stage with a Destiny engine. Entropy versus Fate.”

  “The bracelet eats consequences,” Kasian reminded me. “The compass predicts them. They are opposing forces. One says ‘This is written,’ the other says ‘I can erase the writing.’ Be careful, Master. If you force them together… the backlash might be… destructive.”

  I sighed, pocketing the Compass deep in my Storage, far away from the bracelet. “I’ll figure you out later. Don’t want a domestic dispute on my arm.”

  Our final day on the moon was spent gathering something intangible: technique.

  I used a Glimpse to infiltrate a Meditation Chamber reserved for the Elites in Aurelia. In the vision, shrouded in my Veil, I accessed their cultivation manuals. They were mostly unfit for me due to my Hybrid path, but they could prove useful for my people back on earth, providing them with a structure to follow. However, one of them did prove helpful. It had an instructor — an Ascendant with skin like polished jade — teaching a technique called the Refined Cycle of the Star-Core.

  “Expand the Gate,” the instructor intoned. “Do not pull the mana. Invite it. Let gravity do the work.”

  It was a mana-breathing method designed to harden the Soul Gate against psionic intrusion.

  The manuals weren’t like an instruction video or hologram. It was more of a virtual download directly to the brain. It let me strip the understanding from the air, metabolizing the years of practice required to master it.

  In reality, I stood up from my perch on the gazebo roof, breathing in a new rhythm. My Soul Gate tightened, the walls becoming polished diamond.

  “Stolen power tastes sweeter,” I admitted, testing the flow. “We have their food. Their maps. Their secrets. Their training. We’ve hollowed them out without firing a shot. I just hope we did not miss anything.”

  “Time to go,” Nyx said, materializing beside me. Her eyes were bright. “The Coronation approaches.”

  “One last look,” I said.

  I looked at the beautiful, floating city of Aurelia.

  It was peaceful. It was prosperous.

  I previously ran a simulation in my mind. The Void-Star spinning. I could eat the gravity anchors holding the city up. I could send the whole metropolis crashing into the golden clouds below. It would be a blow that would cripple House Vorr’s food supply for a while. It wouldn’t be a bad time to do it right now, with their upcoming internal conflict.

  But I didn’t.

  Not yet. I did not want them knowing how infiltrated they truly were.

  “Sleep well,” I whispered to the unsuspecting Kyorians. “Eat your spirit-wheat. Fatten up. The harvest is coming.”

  We returned to the portal site deep in the amber forest.

  Arthur had already prepped the coordinates for the return jump. The Spire on Kyris-9 hummed across the distance, a faithful servant ready to bridge the gap between stars.

  I stepped into the violet swirl.

  The sensation of folding space washed over me. After a few more jumps, the sweet smell of the moon vanished, replaced by the ozone and old stone of Earth’s deep crust.

  We emerged in the Veiled Path.

  The lights were warm. The hum of home was distinct.

  Lucas was waiting with Anna, already informed by Jeeves of our upcoming arrival.

  “You’re back,” Anna said, relief washing over her face. “You cut it close. Two days to the event.”

  “Traffic was murder,” I grinned, tossing her a bag of stolen spirit-apples. “Brought snacks. And the recipe for a new agriculture sector.”

  “How was it?” Lucas asked, his eyes scanning me for injuries.

  “House Vorr is about to have a very bad fiscal quarter,” I said, walking towards the tactical map. “We started a proxy war in the Blind Sector. We stole their roadmap to victory. And we know exactly where to hit them when the real war starts. I have the schematics for their Core Worlds. I have the weaknesses of their structure.”

  I looked at the date on the display. Two days until the Tower Event. Two days until the Coronation began.

  “We’re ready,” I said, the density of my stats feeling like armor under my skin. “The Kyorians are gone. The vacuum is open. And we are going to fill it.”

  I clenched my fist, the Void Bracelet humming in anticipation. It was quiet now, sated by the journey, but waiting for the next escalation.

  “It’s time to claim the crown.”