CHAPTER 1
The mist curled against the hull of theNhaelorlike drifting fingers, brushing over the metal as though scenting what approached. Vyranth’s outer fog always moved this way: alive with memory, restless at the edges of the world.
The ship was flying slowly over a vast expanse of ocean, patrolling and scanning for the usual intruders.
Poachers. Slavers. Profiteers who exploited the flesh in return for credits.
Kyrax Sagarnis, Vykan of the Saelori, Vhar’ek of the Inner Veil, stood at the center of the command chamber, still and immense, encased head to toe in armor the color of burnished ore. The plates overlapped like forged scales, each segment carved with the markings of the Vykan. His thick gauntlets were ridged with age and battle use. His helm—always sealed, always on—glowed with two narrow red slits where his gaze burned outward.
His presence filled the room.
Even without a sound, everyone felt him.
“Movement on the outer flank,” the ship’s captain, Nuar, murmured.
The young Saelori male did not raise his eyes. His skin carried the natural luminescence of their kind—a soft blue sheen that shifted subtly with each breath. His hair fell white and fine past his shoulders, light-catching without any earthly parallel. His eyes, white-sclera’d with black irises, reflected the shifting sensor displays.
Kyrax felt the disturbance before the sensors mapped it. It was a pulse in the mist, a foreign vibration, barely detectible.
An image appeared on the holo display.
A Majarin vessel.
Kyrax’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.
Majarin?
Surely, the Marak’s people wouldn’t be so foolish.
But it was far too deep into Saelori territory to be accidental.
“They are testing the mists,” Nuar whispered.
“No,” Kyrax said. The helm deepened the resonance of his voice into a metallic growl. “They are hunting.”
The room stilled.
The Saelori did not fear him—he had never turned his venom against his own people—but they respected what he was. A Vykan did not patrol lightly. He was the blade drawn only when a threat needed to be answered.
A proximity flare rippled across the viewing screen. Heat signatures sharpened into shapes.
“Majarin crew. Three confirmed,” an attendant reported.
Fools.
Kyrax kept a respectful distance from the dominant Marak, Karian, but if his people were behind this…
They would pay.
Kyrax lifted one massive gauntlet. The ship obeyed immediately, sliding through the fog in a perfect arc, drifting like a predator cloaked in silence.
The Majarin vessel jerked in panic, thrusters flaring erratically.
“They know they’ve been seen,” Kyrax said.
The mist thickened at his approach, clinging to the outer hull of the intruder, slowing its desperate movements.
“They will not leave,” Kyrax said.
