Chapter Text
Lone Star
At the ragged edge of known space, beyond the scattered debris of forgotten satellites and long-dead stars, floated a ring-shaped construct—massive, ancient, impossibly complex. An Ora Gate.
It turned slowly, eternally, around a heart of collapsing gravity. A black hole pulsed at its core, held in equilibrium by the surrounding structure. One half of the gate burned with a cold cerulean glow, the other with a seething crimson heat. Together, they shimmered in opposition—creation and destruction in eternal balance.
This was the battleground. The last stand.
The crew of the Morning Star —outgunned, outmanned, and barely breathing—had tried to stop him. Shieda Kayn, once an Ordinal of the Demaxian Empire, now something far darker, sought to harness the Gate’s mythic power. If he succeeded, he wouldn’t just conquer a galaxy—he would possibly own time, space, destiny itself.
They failed.
Down to their last breath and dwindling options, the Morning Star limped away from the fight, the body of Sona still cooling in the infirmary, the bridge lit by the flickering emergency lights.
“We have to destroy it,” Jinx said.
Her voice was hollow, none of her usual manic light. Grease smeared her cheek, and her orange hair clung to her sweat-slicked skin. Even her goggles sat lopsided.
Malphite, the towering alien brute, tough like living stone, rumbled from the corner.
“I know, big guy,” she said gently. “But it’s the only way.”
Captain Yasuo stood at the helm, his long coat stained with ash and blood. His fingers hovered over the control panel. “We don’t have weapons strong enough to take it out,” he muttered. “And Sona’s dead.”
Jinx didn’t answer right away. Her gaze was fixed on the spinning gate outside the viewport, her mind spinning faster.
“We crash into it,” she said at last. “Overload the light-speed drive. Use the Morning Star as the bullet.”
Silence fell over the bridge.
Yasuo turned to her, his mouth slightly open, caught between horror and awe.
Before he could speak, the Gate pulsed—a ripple of blinding light. The air in the bridge hummed. A frequency no one could quite hear but felt in their bones.
It had begun.
“It’s waking up,” Jinx whispered.
Malphite grunted low and solemn.
She nodded. “Yeah. Has to be activated manually.”
Yasuo picked up her thought. “So someone has to stay behind.”
The silence stretched again. There was still time to flee. They could abandon the galaxy to whatever horror Kayn had unleashed, drift to some outer rim and live out what little time remained.
But none of them moved.
Yasuo squared his shoulders. “We’re doing it. We’re destroying that gate.” His voice resolute.
Jinx gave a small salute, her smirk returning like a mask to hide the storm inside. “Aye, Captain.”
Malphite rumbled his agreement.
Yasuo turned. “Jinx, prep the drive. Malphite, ready the scout ship—”
“No!” Jinx snapped. “We’re not abandoning you. We go down together.”
Yasuo looked between them. After a long breath, he gave a tired smile. “Fine. You win. But move fast.”
Jinx darted off the bridge. She didn’t look back.
She slid into the engine room, her hands already moving before her body had fully stopped. Wires tore free under her fingers, switches flipped, coolant hissed from ruptured valves. The drive core began to hum, deep and angry.
Blue light filled the chamber. Heat surged. Warning sirens screamed. She smiled. A sad smile.
If only I’d listen to Sona … She thought.
“It’s ready,” she called over the comms.
Yasuo’s voice came a moment later. “Okay… On your way back, can you grab my sword? Left it in the docking bay when we came in. I want it at my side.”
She blinked. Yasuo never left his blade behind. But they’d been in a hurry.
“Sure,” she said. “On it.”
“Thanks, Jinx.”
She jogged through the corridor, the floor trembling beneath her feet. When she reached the docking bay, her path was blocked.
Malphite stood between her and the corridor, emerging from the scout ship Dawn .
“Big guy?” she asked warily. “What are you doing?”
He grunted low, his hard eyes soft.
“What do you mean, saving the important things?”
Another grunt. Slower. Sadder.
Her eyes widened. “No. No, no, no—don’t you dare.”
She turned to bolt, but he was already moving. He caught her mid-leap, wrapping her in his huge arms like she weighed nothing. She kicked, cursed, screamed.
“Stop! Let me go! We’re a crew, dammit!”
Malphite didn’t flinch.
He carried her like a rowdy child, gently, toward the scout ship and threw her inside.
She scrambled for the hatch, but he slammed it shut before she could get back out. His massive fist crashed into the release, sealing it.
Jinx pounded on the glass. “Malphite!”
Tears blurred her vision.
He looked at her one last time, exhaled slowly, and then—he spoke.
“Friend… live.”
It was gravel and thunder and sorrow. The first time she had ever heard him speak in Common.
And then he hit the release, decoupling the ships.
Jinx staggered back as the Dawn detached from the Morning Star . Her fists slid down the sealed glass as the two ships drifted apart.
She could barely see now through her tears.
The comm crackled to life one last time.
“I’m sorry, Jinx,” came Yasuo’s voice, quiet, distant.
A familiar grunt echoed behind him.
“One of us had to make it out,” he said. “And who better to tell our story?”
Jinx bit her lip, hands trembling.
“Live long, little sister.”
Then silence.
Outside the window, she watched as the Morning Star turned, its drive core glowing like a newborn sun. It accelerated—then vanished in a flash, piercing through the center of the Ora Gate.
For a second, nothing.
Then—detonation.
The Gate cracked open in a blinding pulse of blue and red. A shockwave tore through the void, slamming into the Dawn like a tidal wave. Jinx was thrown across the ship, her body weightless as it struck the hull.
Everything went black.
The scout ship spun silently through the stars, alone.
And Jinx drifted through darkness, her heartbeat the only sound left in the vast, cold void.
—
Jinx drifted.
Weightless, senseless, thought and time slipping through her fingers like stardust. Her consciousness flickered in and out, the dark pressing in from all sides like a slow, silent tide.
Jinx.
A red emergency light pulsed overhead—rhythmic, hypnotic, like a dying heartbeat.
Jinx…
The only sound was the static hiss of dead comms, echoing endlessly through the ship’s hollow corridors.
JINX!
Her eyes snapped open. A gasp tore from her throat as if breathing for the very first time. Air filled her lungs like fire, and her heart roared awake in a single, jarring beat. She coughed, sputtered, and clutched her head—pain blooming like a hammer strike behind her eyes.
“Aghhh!” she groaned.
Memories poured in without mercy.
Malphite. Yasuo. Sona. The Morning Star. The Gate. The explosion.
“NOOOOO!”
She curled into herself, hugging her knees tightly against her chest as her body floated in the middle of the dim, red-lit cabin. Her long orange braid drifted around her like a tether to another life, the metal wire of her neural prosthetic coiling gently around her shoulder.
She wept.
Not loud, not wailing—just a low, ragged shuddering of breath. The kind of crying that had nowhere left to go. Silent tears floated from her eyes, lost in the low gravity, scattered like ash in the void.
She wept until there was nothing left—until her throat was raw, her eyes were burning, and her soul felt scraped clean.
Friend… live.
Live long, little sister.
The words echoed, faint but clear, somewhere deep inside her mind.
She unfolded slowly, wiped the last stubborn tears from her cheeks, and took a long, grounding breath. Her left arm—a chrome-plated prosthetic with glowing energy conduits—whirred to life. With a focused pulse, it locked to the magnetic plating beneath her. The ship pulled her gently down.
Her boots touched the floor with a muted thud.
She moved, quiet but with purpose, gliding across the narrow corridor to the control panel. Her fingers flew across the interface, sweeping through alerts and errors. The screen flashed red with overlapping warnings: ENGINES OFFLINE . SHIELDS DOWN . LIFE SUPPORT CRITICAL . COMMS UNRESPONSIVE . NAVIGATION OFFLINE .
“Shit.”
Jinx dropped beneath the console, wrenching open a floor hatch with a clank. Wires spilled out like guts. She grabbed two, twisted them together, rerouted a third, and spliced the power coupling from a secondary line. Sparks danced in the shadows.
Back at the console, she flipped a final switch.
The Dawn hummed back to life.
Dim ceiling lights flickered on. The shields flared with a pale glow. And with a groan of shifting metal, artificial gravity stabilized.
Her knees buckled slightly as her weight returned.
“Okay,” she whispered. “That should hold for now.”
She didn’t stop. Her boots echoed softly as she moved to the rear of the ship—the engine bay. She pulled open another panel and threw the ignition switch.
The engine flared—
—then fizzled out in a crackling spray of sparks.
“Fuck.”
Her tone was tired, resigned. “I’ll deal with that later.”
Next came life support. She moved to the center of the ship and flipped open a hidden latch in the floor. A tower mechanism rose, humming faintly. She calibrated its controls, rewired its subsystems, cut off a power draw from non-essentials.
The tower pulsed with bright green light.
“There. That’ll keep me breathing.”
She took a breath. Then another. Trying not to think too hard.
“Shields up. Life support steady. Gravity stable,” she recited to herself. “Engine’s fucked. Comms are toast.”
Her voice echoed faintly in the silence that followed. Too loud.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
The ship felt bigger than it was. Too empty.
“One thing at a time,” she whispered.
The Dawn wasn’t meant for long hauls—just short missions, planetary scouting, getting in and out unnoticed. But it was sturdy. She’d built most of it herself.
Still, the explosion had done damage.
And in the direst emergencies… there was always the final option.
Cryofreeze.
She could sleep until someone found her. If anyone ever did. But the thought made her feel even more alone.
She walked toward the pod chamber—four metallic capsules mounted in the rear of the ship, sleek and cold. A switch flipped. Hissing steam poured from their seams as they unlocked with a hiss.
She stopped in the doorway.
Her breath caught.
One pod held her weapons. Her tools. Custom-forged, carefully crafted, beloved instruments of chaos and protection. Her heart twisted.
Another held the glowing Ora and the crystal sigil Sona had carried. A folded note rested beside them: Please return to the Templars.
Jinx swallowed hard.
The third pod—Yasuo’s sword. Resting quietly atop a silk cloth, its edge still gleaming. Another note: Please return this to my family.
She opened the final pod.
Inside, on a velvet cushion, sat a tiny ship in a bottle.
Her legs gave out.
She sank to her knees, the weight of it all finally too much. Grief and guilt collapsed on her like a dying star—dense, silent, inescapable.
Saving the important things…
Malphite’s words—his sacrifice—flashed through her again.
Her fingers curled into fists.
She stood.
Her breath came slower now. More deliberate. Her voice was steadier when it came.
“Okay,” she said aloud. “I’ll survive. I’ll deliver these. I swear.”
She closed each pod with reverence.
One by one.
Like laying flowers on graves.
—
Jinx sat cross-legged in the cargo bay, counting silver ration packets into a metal basket, her fingers moving with mechanical precision.
“…And one hundred and two.”
The packets made soft crinkling noises as she shifted them. They’d been meant for short planetary expeditions—lightweight, calorie-dense, enough to keep a scout team alive for a few days. But Malphite, in what might’ve been his last act of foresight, hadn’t only packed mementos into the cryopods. He’d packed survival.
Jinx gave a quiet nod of gratitude, not trusting herself to say it aloud.
“With the water in the tank… plus the recycler…” she muttered, doing the math in her head, “This should last me… about seven months.”
She paused, eyes scanning the baskets. “Not like I eat much anyway.”
With a flick of her wrist, she tossed the last packets into the pile and pushed it aside. Then she reached for something tucked between the baskets: a dusty bottle of liquor. One of three that had been scavenged from the captain’s secret stash. She’d found them right beside the rations.
A dry smile tugged at her lips. “Thanks, Yasuo.”
The bottle was warm in her hand as she stood. Her footsteps echoed through the Dawn , each one a stark reminder of how empty the ship truly was. The sound should’ve been comforting—proof that she still existed—but instead it rang hollow. A sound too loud in a place too quiet.
She didn’t let it get to her. Couldn’t afford to.
‘Fix the engine. Fix the comms. Ration the food. Recycle the water.’ She recited her tasks like mantras, anything to keep her mind occupied. Anything to drown out the silence… and the memories.
She stepped into the cockpit with a lopsided grin plastered on her face, trying to fake the swagger she no longer felt.
“I won’t be out here for seven months,” she said to no one in particular. “Nah. With my tools, I’ll get the engine running in weeks—nah, days. I mean—c’mon—I’m the best mechanic this side of the galaxy, ain’t that right, big guy—?”
She froze.
Silence.
Her voice echoed and died.
Her smile faltered. The grin collapsed into something hollow, something fragile. Her eyes misted, and she sank into the pilot’s seat, her body melting into the worn leather like wax under heat. The bottle sat heavy in her hands. She turned it over slowly, watching the amber liquid slosh behind the glass.
She held the bottle to the viewport and peered through it.
The broken gate hung outside, a shattered ring suspended in the black. Where once it glowed with opposing energies—light and dark, order and chaos—it now lay cold, dormant. Its halves drifted apart, pulled in slow spirals around the black hole at its center.
The singularity hadn’t collapsed.
It pulsed—slowly, faintly—with a strange, orange glow.
She stared into it.
“All that trouble,” she murmured, “just to harness whatever the hell was inside you.”
She popped the cork.
The scent hit her like a punch.
“Damn, Yasuo,” she winced. “How did you drink this crap?”
She hesitated, then lifted the bottle high.
“Here’s to you, Captain.”
The liquor scorched its way down her throat, burning like guilt.
“One for you, you damn moon wizard,” she muttered. “I… I should’ve followed your instructions.”
She took another swig, this one heavier. A warmth bloomed in her cheeks, too fast, too soon. She tilted the bottle again.
“Two for you, big guy,” she whispered. “You were… a better friend than I ever deserved.”
Another drink. Then another.
The edges of her vision began to blur, not from tears this time, but from the rising fog of alcohol and exhaustion. Her body slumped further into the chair. Her hand trembled slightly as she lifted the bottle once more.
“To the crew of the Morning Star . My… family.”
One final swig. A long one.
The burn came slower this time. Deeper. She lowered the bottle beside her boot with a soft clink.
Outside the viewport, the black hole pulsed.
Jinx stared at it.
Her mind, dulled by drink and grief, drifted further from the moment. The hum of the ship faded into the background. Her gaze remained fixed on the abyss, her thoughts spiraling with the gate’s broken pieces.
Then she heard it.
A low hum—soft, melodic. Familiar. Like a lullaby played across the strings of the void.
She blinked, slowly.
The black hole pulsed again. And there, in the swirling heart of darkness, something began to take shape. At first, it was indistinct. A blur. A trick of light and exhaustion.
She blinked again.
The shape clarified.
A silhouette.
Slender. Human.
Feminine.
Made of stars.
“…Huh?” she breathed.
Her eyelids drooped. The bottle slipped further from her grasp.
Jinx stared into the black hole, into the starlit figure forming within it.
And then—without a sound—she slipped into sleep.