VOID ERA
Cycle 14,037 Post Rupture (P.R.)
Period of Draconium, 14th Rotation
Trial Grounds, Hadean — Valeryon Domain, Orcus Galaxy
(14/03/14037)
The Trial Grounds jutted from Hadean's equatorial wasteland like a blade driven through a skull. Its serrated summit pierced the roiling storm belt above, where thunderheads churned without cease, and lightning coiled and snapped through the clouds like captive serpents.
On the rare occasions a transmission escaped Hadean's choking atmosphere, the structure appeared from orbit as a solitary monolith: an obsidian obelisk, faintly iridescent, impossibly stark against the endless desolation of storm-scoured desert surrounding it.
The Trial Grounds were no natural formation, but rather magic made manifest, wrought by the will of the Valeryon clan's founder, King Valeryon the First. He had conceived the complex as both crucible and covenant, a place not merely to test his descendants, but to measure whether the Valeryon bloodline itself deserved to endure from one generation to the next.
Far beneath Hadean's scorched crust, beyond the reach of the planet's catastrophic lightning storms, lay the Death Challenge Atrium: a colossal radial chamber from which immense corridors stretched outward like the spokes of a wheel. At the end of each corridor stood a Hall, and within every Hall existed a world unto itself, a self-contained pocket dimension consecrated to one of the Founder's eight elemental Trials: Air, Water, Earth, Fire, Sound, Lightning, Light, and Darkness.
Eight elements. Eight ordeals. Eight letters that together formed the name Valeryon.
The first clause of the Valeryon Founding Law was absolute:
"No heir of Valeryon shall bear a name until the Death Challenges have tested them, and life itself has been reclaimed by their own Will."
For every Hall conquered, an heir earned a single letter of the name. Only those who endured all eight could claim the name in full and be acknowledged as true Survivors.
To name the Founder's gauntlet of Trials "Death Challenges" was no exaggeration. Each Hall was an instrument of annihilation, meticulously engineered to cast the living against the Gates of Terminus: the final threshold where existence unravelled into oblivion.
Every Trial was designed to kill, not through mindless savagery, but with merciless precision. Any illusion of safety was stripped away. Weaknesses were exposed, pried open, and carved into ruin. Whatever survived emerged reduced to its purest essence. Strength was not bestowed within the Halls; it was excavated through agony.
Among the denizens of the Orcus Galaxy, death was not an absolute end, but a condition to be contested. Their Primordial Birthright, the Will to Live, granted them dominion over mortality itself. So long as the desire to endure remained unbroken, they could drag themselves back from the Gates, bind spirit to flesh once more, and rise again from death's grasp.
However, survival alone was meaningless. To truly conquer a Death Challenge, a challenger had to evolve, to adapt so completely that the Hall's chosen methods of execution could no longer claim them. Only then was death deemed to have relinquished its hold. Only then was a letter of the Valeryon name bestowed upon the heir.
"I. Am. Valeryon."
The declaration clawed its way up her ravaged throat like barbed wire.
What emerged was not speech, but abrasion: a splintered rasp that scraped along her vocal cords and reverberated through her skull until her ears rang.
"I… am… Valeryon."
Better. Barely.
The words came out less jarring this time, but still carried a rigid, almost mechanical cadence.
No, perhaps to say it was better was relative when even the crudest automaton could have sounded more convincingly human than she did.
Her jaw tightened. Teeth ground together hard enough to ache as she dragged in a shuddering breath. Slowly, tentatively, she parted her lips again.
"Greetings. I am—"
The phrase broke apart in her throat.
The pressure smouldering beneath her sternum since waking surged upward without warning. She lurched over the marble basin as a series of guttural coughs tore through her torso, each convulsion harsh enough to leave her trembling against the cold stone.
The taste of iron flooded her mouth, thick and unmistakable. When she spat, dark crimson spread through the basin in branching streams threaded with gelatinous fragments that spread over the surface like a grotesque scattering of petals.
Her hands clamped around the basin's edge, fingers clawing for purchase. Veins stood out beneath taut skin, dark and swollen with strain, fine fissures split across them, seeping thin rivulets of blood that slid down her hands.
Eventually, the coughing ebbed into shallow, shuddering gasps.
Every inhale carved through her chest, raw and brutal, like razors dragged across the exposed nerves of her lungs and throat.
"I… No. My name is… No. Greetings, I am…" she sighed, unable to hold back a wince at the unpleasant croak that escaped her lips, impressively somehow sounding even worse than it had during her previous attempts. She could blame no one for its state but herself.
Compared to the careful maintenance of her vital systems—nervous, respiratory, circulatory, musculoskeletal—her phonatory and resonatory systems had always been neglected, patched together with crude, provisional repairs. As the sole sentient inhabitant of the Trial Grounds, she used them so rarely they had become almost vestigial. Their decay had crept in unnoticed, slow and insidious, like rust consuming iron.
At first, it was only a roughness—an edge she dismissed as strain that would pass. However, her continued neglect allowed the damage not just to linger but to compound, until one day she realised she no longer recognised her own voice, nor recalled what it had once sounded like.
Relentless strain had stripped her voice of its natural timbre. Ligaments warped into unnatural angles. Nerves misfired in erratic bursts. Thick cords of scar tissue bound her throat into grotesque knots, choking off resonance before it could form. What emerged was no longer speech but a warped echo: abrasive, guttural, primal—more beast than human.
Now, with only a Quarter Rotation left before the most important moment of her life, her neglect returned to confront her like a spectre. On the day her voice would matter most, it failed her completely.
There was only one real solution: total destruction and reconstruction of the vocal tract. However, the trauma required would trigger Nanny Bot's intervention—restraint, sedatives, indefinite surveillance, and judgment lasting anywhere from a few Rotations to several Periods—until she was deemed no longer a danger to herself.
She knew that outcome all too well. A few Cycles ago, she had tried to sever her own arm to correct a flawed regeneration and paid the price.
Technically, having reached the age of majority, she could be considered an adult, no longer under Nanny Bot's direct authority. Yet, having only just crossed the Rotation marking that milestone, the exact threshold remained uncertain—and she could not afford to find out.
The thought of her clansmen arriving to investigate her absence—only to find her restrained, sedated, and labelled a danger to herself—stirred an emotion too uncomfortable to name.
So, for now, she would make do, hoping—against all reason—that sheer effort might overcome anatomical fault.
She raised her head.
The Vanity reflected something closer to a revenant than the living.
Beneath the stark glare of the overhead panels, her lips gleamed wetly, stained red as if hastily lacquered by an unsteady hand.
Her heterochromatic eyes, one peridot green and the other cerise, glimmered from deep-set hollows. Bruised violet shadows ringed them, sharpening their brightness into something eerie, almost inhuman.
Her skin clung to bone with the frailty of ancient parchment. The soft fullness of her face had long since withered away, leaving her jaw and cheekbones honed into blade-sharp contours.
Still, she looked marginally better than she had three Periods ago. Another full Cycle, perhaps, and she might resemble someone recovering rather than someone freshly returned from the grave.
Crimson translucent panels unfurled around the vanity's periphery, lines of data cascading into place:
Height: 180.2 cm
Mass: 48.7 kg
Composition: Lean 61.3% | Adipose 9.1% | Deficit 29.6%
Metabolic Output: +87% (Regeneration Active)
Muscular Fatigue Index: Critical (Catabolism Detected)
Nutritional Status: Sub-sufficient | Refeed Protocol Recommended
Vocal Tract Integrity: 28% Functional | Severe Scarring | Reconstructive Protocol Recommended
Neural Strain: Moderate | Sleep Debt 42 hrs
None of it told her anything she did not already feel in her bones. With a curt flick of her wrist, she dismissed the display, returning the Vanity's surface to its seamless reflective state.
Having survived to her twentieth Cycle of life, she could scarcely believe the time had finally come, the start of her life as an adult, the Rotation of her Naming and the end of her confinement within the Trial Grounds.
The Naming Ceremony loomed just a Quarter Rotation away—the moment she would finally shed the numerical designation she had carried since birth as one of the nameless, uninitiated heirs of the Great Valeryon Clan and be initiated as an official member among her seniors and brethren.
For the first time since her conception, she would step beyond the boundaries that had defined her existence.
The cosmos beyond—vast, untamed, resplendent—would no longer be reduced to sterile simulations and didactic projections. At last, its mythic veil would fall away.
And she would enter it not as Zero-Nine, the designation etched into clan ledgers as the ninth-born and sole survivor of her generation, but as a Named heir of the Valeryon Clan.
Beneath the star-forged dome of the Citadel, she would soon stand before the assembled elite of the Orcus Galaxy: saints, sovereigns, scholars, and soldiers alike. Every gaze would converge upon her, watching, weighing, judging.
Ordinarily, the conferral of a Valeryon heir's name followed an exacting tradition. Astrological alignments were calculated by honoured astrologers, the Elder Council convened to deliberate, and the reigning monarch delivered the final verdict—determining the most auspicious given name from the letters an heir had earned through conquered Trials. Only then could the name be formally appended with the Valeryon surname.
However, her naming required neither counsel nor decree. Her name had long since been decided.
It waited only for her to claim it: to speak it aloud, and, in that single utterance, affirm her lineage, her birthright, and her dominion before all who bore witness.
Irrespective of all the other complexities of her circumstances, the announcement, though a task of great honour and gravity, should never have felt insurmountable. Yet this was the price of her own making—her ignorance, arrogance, short-sighted ambition, and neglect.
The temptation to abandon everything gnawed at her. In hindsight, the truth had never been hidden. It had always been there, laid bare for those who cared to see—but she, blinded by conviction and youth, had never paused long enough to understand.
Her first realisation of how deeply she had erred came several Periods ago—on the Period of Nihilim.
She emerged from the eighth and final chamber—the Hall of Darkness—half-blind and delirious. After so long without light, the first glare was agony: searing, almost vindictive. When her sight adjusted and the haze receded, he appeared—King Valeryon the First. Not the man, but a projection: a simulacrum preserved in light and code to deliver his final decree.
"By blood, sworn and unbroken. By ordeal, endured and transcended. By sacred rite and ancient law… I hereby entitle thee Crown Princess Valeryon the Second."
In the Rotations that followed, as she recovered, she dismissed it as a hallucination—a fever dream born of deprivation and exhaustion. Had it not been for the lingering pain in her eyes—and the quiet undertow of dread that refused to fade—she might have continued to believe that.
When at last she could keep her eyes open for a reasonable time under illumination, she sought proof—any proof—to dispel the unease lodged like ice within her bones.
The Founding Laws, as always, left no room for doubt: "The throne shall pass not by decree, favour, or election, but only to the Valeryon clan heir who, after the reigning monarch's death, has conquered all eight Death Challenges."
Because no heir had yet met that condition, the current reign of Queen Regent Valery the Third—and every ruler since the Founder—was, in legal terms, a proxy. Their sovereignty was one of stewardship: a bridge spanning the years until the Founder's true heir emerged.
Whether the omission of this clause from the curriculum was an act of malice or mercy, she could not say. It had not been hidden; it lay openly among the official edicts in the Archive, unredacted and unguarded—simply never explicitly drawn attention to, nor taught.
Perhaps the intent was to deter heirs from immolating themselves in pursuit of power.
If so, it had failed.
Like all clan heirs, she had been conditioned to be ambitious. But her ambition had never been for conquest or dominion; it was the pursuit of mastery—the hunger to perfect, to transcend, to prove herself through creation and endurance. Authority, territory, and governance had never interested her.
Now, every triumph revealed its thorns. Each letter of the Valeryon name she had earned—once a symbol of honour—had become another link in an unbreakable chain binding her.
The Founder had forged more than trials. He had bound succession itself with a sacred oath—the Founder's Succession Rite—decreeing that the heir who endured all eight Death Challenges would inherit not only the crown's glory, but its inescapable burden. The oath, older than any known working of magic, allowed no release, no revision, no reprieve. To defy it was to invite annihilation—not only of flesh, but of soul.
So she turned to the clan's legislative archives. Rotations blurred into periods as she sifted through brittle parchment and fading edicts, chasing ink that had nearly dissolved into the fibres. Every line was read and re-read; every decree weighed against the next for contradiction or ambiguity. She searched for an overlooked clause, a forgotten amendment—anything that might break the chain.
She hoped—desperately—for deliverance.
There was none.
No abdication.
No delegation or transfer of duty.
No appeal, no delay.
Nothing.
In the end, only two paths remained: accept her fate and ascend the throne, or refuse and be obliterated.
A brittle sound escaped her, caught somewhere between a sigh and a scoff.
Crown Princess.
What a farce.
Authority had never been hers to wield; it had always been wielded over her. Her education had been an exercise in obedience, not governance. She knew anatomy, biology, discipline, survival; skills for endurance, not leadership. She knew nothing of diplomacy's subtleties, negotiation's careful manoeuvres, or the austere demands of statecraft.
And yet she was expected to dethrone a monarch beloved by her people and command a sovereign domain in a galaxy on the brink of ruin. It was madness—an inevitable catastrophe waiting to unfold.
The Founder's Succession Rite recognised nothing of caution, nothing of competence, nothing of the countless lives that would hang suspended beneath the hand of an heir untrained to govern. It acknowledged only one immutable truth: she—Valeryon the Second—upon her Naming, was to be crowned monarch of the Valeryon Clan.
Unfortunately, her difficulties neither began nor ended there.
She hunched and released a long, ragged breath, only to wince as the motion sent a fresh lance of pain coursing through her torso.
Her hand drifted downward, past the sharp jut of her ribcage, until her fingertips found the hollow of her lower abdomen. The skin there felt scorched with sensitivity, raised and raw beneath ridged scar tissue, crusted with dried blood that flaked away at the edges. In places, the wound had split open again, damp with fresh blood where her coughing had torn them anew.
She pressed her palm more firmly against the flesh.
Beneath her touch, a muted green glow flickered to life, faint at first, then deepening as it spread outward in slow, concentric ripples. The light seeped into the injured flesh, easing the sharpest edges of pain. It did not erase the injury, only softened it into something more bearable.
Last night's procedure stayed in her memory like something half remembered, its edges softened and its details indistinct, yet still too sharp to dismiss.
The sedative had not taken properly. Whether from a miscalculation or her body breaking it down too quickly, she could not tell. What she did know was the moment consciousness returned, forcing its way through the anesthetic haze. Awareness came in sudden fragments, cutting through the fog and pulling her back to herself.
First came the smell, thick and metallic, saturating the air like smoke. It coated her tongue; every breath carried the taste of rust.
Then came sensation: a sharp tearing of flesh, nerves firing in sudden revolt, her body straining against restraints she could not see. Beneath it, something deeper shifted, a slow, deliberate movement in her abdomen, as if something essential had been lifted, turned, and set back slightly out of alignment.
When she finally forced her eyes open, light flooded in, harsh and unforgiving. At first, her vision refused to settle. The world returned in fragments: pale shapes, dark smears, shifting shadows. Slowly, the pieces came into focus, and she saw Them.
They stood over her supine body as she lay motionless in bed, tall and imposing in robes of iridescent black silk that caught every stray glint and broke it into oil-slick fractures of colour. Their face was hidden behind a shoulder-length veil trimmed with gold lace. Stitched into the fabric was their clan sigil: a phoenix in flight, its claws clutching a sprig of asphodel. The emblem held her attention with an almost gravitational insistence until movement at the periphery of her vision pulled her attention away.
They raised their hands.
Translucent green cubes formed out of empty air. They hovered above her body like holograms, casting a faint green glow across the room and over her skin.
The containment constructs were exquisite, artefacts of Valeryon magical craft at its zenith.
Inside each cube floated preserved organs, suspended as though trapped in flawless crystal. It took her a moment longer than it should have to realise she was looking at parts of her own reproductive system: the womb, the ovaries, the fallopian tubes.
The containers were designed to keep the organs whole and alive, their inner workings undisturbed. Blood still coursed through the vessels, while bioelectrical and immunological signals flickered through the tissues as though distance and separation meant nothing. Removed, yet still connected. Preserved against age, decay, and death.
"Fuck—"
The profanity escaped from the clansman like a stone dropped into still water.
She jerked at the sound, startled, body folding inward in a sharp, involuntary recoil.
Agony flared through her abdomen.
For a heartbeat, stars fractured across her vision. A thin, broken exhale slipped from her parted lips. When sight returned just enough to register her condition, she saw it: her own intestines spilling from the torn abdominal cavity in a dark, wet shimmer.
The world tilted violently, sound collapsing inward, and soon she slipped mercifully back into darkness.
When she awoke earlier that morning, feverish warmth clung to her sweat-soaked skin beneath the sheets.
For a fleeting moment, she had almost convinced herself it had all been a dream. Yet the raw ache carved across her abdomen, and the dark crimson stain spreading through the blanket stuck to her flesh, told her otherwise.
Ordinarily, a wound so slight would have meant nothing. The regenerative mastery she had honed across countless Cycles should have restored her body within a handful of Instances, perhaps even a Moment or two, without conscious effort. Yet when she had tried to heal herself, her magic faltered. It dragged against her will with unnatural resistance, as though something within her body opposed it.
Focusing her power with greater precision, she turned her magic inward and searched for the cause. What she found unsettled her: strands of foreign magical residue threaded through her flesh, lingering like barbed wire beneath the skin, contesting her power at every turn.
She had never encountered anything like it before. Through painstaking experimentation, she eventually uncovered the solution. Her magic could not regenerate the wound while the residue remained. It first had to purge the foreign energy entirely, disentangling it strand by strand, cleansing the flesh, and reasserting dominion over her own body before healing could proceed unhindered.
The process proved agonisingly slow. The clansmen's residual magic was far denser, far more stubborn, than she had anticipated.
By the time she was forced to abandon the effort and attend to other matters, she had managed only to close the wound superficially. Beneath the thin layer of regenerated skin, the flesh remained raw and fragile, so delicate that one careless movement threatened to tear it open again.
The chrome spout beneath the Vanity hissed as chilled liquid pooled in her cupped hands. She lifted it to her lips, rinsing away the metallic residue clinging to her palate. Heat flared beneath her skin as torn tissue knit itself back together. As her temperature rose, sweat gathered at her brow and slipped down her temples, trailing down between her shoulder blades and tracing the curve of her spine.
She wiped the moisture from her brow with the back of her hand, keeping it from slipping into her eyes, and exhaled a long, steady breath.
Despite the ordeal, the previous night's procedure and its grim aftermath were neither punishment nor injustice. It was a consecrated rite, one meant to safeguard the sanctity of the bloodline, preserve the resilience of its magic, and ensure its strength endured undiluted through every generation.
Upon reaching adulthood, each heir of the clan underwent the same ritual: their reproductive organs were removed, sealed within the Reproductive Archive, and held in stasis until the reigning monarch deemed their lineage worthy of continuation.
No Valeryon heir was ever conceived by chance. Only the sovereign's decree could permit one to exist.
Her own anomalous existence, condemnable though it was, had been no exception.
Pursing her lips, she studied her reflection in the Vanity once more, fixating on the contradiction in her gaze—the undeniable proof of her clan's transgression.
One iris glowed peridot green, unmistakably Valeryon: Keepers of the Graves, healers of flesh. The other burned a vivid cerise—the marker of her Florian heritage, the Keepers of the Gardens.
Within her veins flowed a union that should never exist. She was living proof of an indiscretion so grave it threatened not only her own life, but the fate of the clan itself. The blood that sustained her carried the mingled legacy of two Great Clans—an act forbidden by the Decennial Accords.
Forged in the ashes of a war that nearly annihilated the humanoid population of the Orcus Galaxy, the Decennial Accords defined the territories, rights, and prerogatives of the Great Clans—the rulers and arbiters of the First Realm's galactic order. Their clauses had been carved not through diplomacy but through blood-soaked conquest.
History made clear the consequences of crossing those boundaries: collapsed alliances, succession rivalries erupting into war, and entire lineages massacred in retaliatory purges.
Punishment for any discovered breach was absolute. Any clan found guilty of violating the Accords would be stripped of its authority, territory, and wealth—cast into exile and sanctioned so thoroughly to ensure that it could never reclaim its former glory.
Over the Cycles of her existence, as she grappled with the complexity of her existence, she had searched exhaustively—every archive, every clan record her clearance as an uninitiated heir permitted—for explanation, for justification, for vindication, and found nothing.
No treaties, no marriages, no collaborations—military or commercial—before or after the Accords. Nothing even hinted at any unofficial contact between the two Great Clans of her lineage.
The Florians were not even peripherally associated with any of the Valeryon clan's closest allies—Great Clans like the Sanders, and Durken—through which a clandestine alliance, as unlikely as it was, might have been concealed.
Officially, the ledger between the Great Clans of Valeryon and Florian were pristine without any hint to how they may have come to connect in any natural sense.
So, why?
Why had Queen Regent Valery the Third decreed a calamitous existence like hers into being?
Curiosity? Contingency? Coup?
How had it even been accomplished?
Seduction? Genetic theft? Human experimentation?
The possibilities spiralled endlessly, each more unsettling than the last.
Perhaps she would never know. Perhaps she was born to survive and struggle, carrying the secret alone, her purpose obscured until the moment it was demanded of her.
She wiped the remaining blood from the corners of her lips and drew a steady breath, trying to ease the tension in her body, with little success.
She exhaled sharply, taking a moment to gather another mouthful of water to rinse her mouth once more before turning away from the Vanity and heading toward the shower. Curved glass slid into place with a soft hiss, sealing her inside. Jets of icy water erupted from every angle, striking her skin like storm-driven rain. The shock stole her breath, but cooled the fever burning beneath it.
Once her pulse steadied, she brushed her palm across a wall sensor. The jets shifted, releasing thick ribbons of lavender-scented cleanser that streamed over her body. She worked it in with slow, deliberate motions, letting the fragrance ground her. Another gesture summoned a precise sequence of water, hair cleansers, and restorative oils.
She tipped her head back beneath the torrent, fingers kneading her scalp before trailing down its length, separating each strand to its heavy, water-darkened ends, brushing her ankles like slick silk. When she finished, the jets returned to water, and she rinsed until it ran clear. She lingered briefly in the chill, then triggered the glass to slide open and stepped out.
Droplets traced the lean, angular planes of her frame, glinting like scattered diamonds against her deep brown skin before striking the dark grey tiles and vanishing, absorbed by the nanomachines beneath, leaving the surface bone-dry.
Back at the Vanity, she activated the oral sanitation bots with a tap. Nanobots slipped past her parted lips, swarming through her mouth in precise, preprogrammed patterns. A sharp sting of mint cut through the lingering metallic tang. When she spat, pink froth spiralled down the drain, flecked with tissue her earlier rinse had missed. The process took longer than usual, but eventually the bots retreated to their alcove beside the faucet.
Eyes fluttering shut, for a moment she allowed her mind to empty, focusing solely on the cadence of her breathing, on the rise and fall that anchored her in the present. The ache beneath her skin eased; the silence settled.
Unfortunately, the peace that followed was brief, shattered almost immediately. A sudden, rhythmic pulsation throbbed against her left wrist.
Startled, she brought her arm up to inspect. The dormant Celestial Receiver embedded in her inner wrist had awakened. Its marble-smooth surface glowed with spectral blue light, each pulse in perfect synchrony with her racing heartbeat.
Though momentarily stunned, she understood its implications instantly.
The Inter-Galactic Origin Training had officially begun.