The universe did not end with a whimper. It ended with a scream of light so blinding it burned the shadows out of the corners of Elias's soul.
The lab was no longer a room; it was the heart of a star. Elias felt the Thorne Factor roaring through his veins, a torrential river of fire that used his body as a bridge. But the agony in his muscles was nothing compared to the sensation in his chest. For hours—or perhaps it had only been minutes—he had lived by the rhythm of two hearts. Now, that rhythm was fraying.
Thump-thump. A gap. Thump. "Lyra!" he choked out. The word was a puff of ash.
He could see her through the veil of white-hot radiance. She was no longer a woman of flesh and blood; she was a silhouette of glowing embers. The energy was literally unraveling her molecular structure, pulling the genetic "Catalyst" from her marrow and beaming it through the Iron Sovereign's massive array toward the dying sun.
Suddenly, the ship stopped screaming. The groaning of the hull ceased as the gravity of the Rift was countered by a new, massive gravitational pulse from the solar core.
The sun was waking up.
Across the sector, billions of people looked up as the bruised violet sky was torn asunder by a dawn that shouldn't have come. A wave of golden warmth washed over the colony ships, pushing back the cold of the void.
In the lab, the light began to recede, sucked back into the conduits. The magnetic locks on Elias's cradle hissed and retracted. He fell forward, his knees hitting the deck, his lungs hitching as he tried to find his own breath—a breath that no longer had a companion.
He scrambled toward Lyra's cradle. "Lyra? Lyra, look at me!"
The cradle was empty of the woman he had known. There was only a figure slumped in the restraints, her skin the color of fine porcelain, her dark hair turned white as bone. The silver fire in her eyes was gone; they were dull, fixed on a point far beyond the metal walls of the ship.
Elias caught her as she tumbled forward. She was weightless, as if the energy had taken her mass along with her life. He pulled her into his lap, his hands shaking so violently he could barely hold her.
"No, no, no," he whispered, pressing his ear to her chest.
Silence.
The "leash" was gone. There was no stabbing pain, no cardiac surge, no phantom pulse. There was only the terrifying, absolute quiet of a man who had been hollowed out.
"Lyra, come back," he pleaded, his voice breaking into a sob. He pressed his forehead against hers. "I'll give it back. I'll give the light back. Just breathe."
A faint, ghostly flutter moved her lips.
Elias froze. He leaned in closer. "Lyra?"
"Elias..." it wasn't a voice; it was the memory of one. Her eyes didn't focus, but a small, tragic smile touched her pale lips. "Is it... is it bright?"
Elias looked at the viewport. The sun was a brilliant, healthy gold, casting long, triumphant shadows across the deck. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he hated it with every fiber of his being.
"It's blinding," he whispered, hot tears falling onto her cold cheeks. "It's perfect. You did it."
"Good," she breathed. Her hand, translucent and cold, drifted up to touch his face. Her fingers brushed his scar—the one he'd received the day he thought she destroyed his world. "The Captain... and the Rebel... the story... has to end."
"Not this way," he cried. "We were supposed to have time."
"We had... the vacuum," she whispered, her eyes finally beginning to close. "That was... enough."
Her hand fell. The final spark of the Thorne Factor flickered out in her eyes, leaving them empty.
Elias didn't scream. He didn't roar at the heavens. He simply sat in the ruin of the lab, cradling the woman who had saved the universe, while the sun she had reignited mocked him with its warmth.
The bridge comms crackled to life. "Captain? Captain Thorne? The core is stable! We're receiving signals from the colonies. They're calling it a miracle. Sir... where are you? Where is Commander Vance?"
Elias looked at the radio, then at Lyra's peaceful, lifeless face. He reached out and closed her eyes for the last time.
"She's not here," Elias said into the comms, his voice sounding like it belonged to a dead man. "There's no one left but me."
He stood up, lifting her body into his arms. He walked toward the hangar, but he didn't head for the bridge. He headed for the Sparrow. He couldn't stay on this ship—a ship full of people who would celebrate a dawn bought with her blood.
But as he reached the hangar bay, he saw something on the monitors that made his blood run cold.
The sun wasn't just stable. It was expanding. And the data drive in his pocket—the one that still held the archived truth—began to beep with a new, frantic warning.
The "Great Fracture" wasn't the only lie.
To be continued.....