The bridge hung in stunned silence, opal dust settling across the deck like fallen stars. Autasiel's shards glittered faintly under the glow-lamps, a constellation of loss scattered at their feet. Enkidar's wings remained flared, talons locked on the controls. Sari's hand hovered over her mouth, eyes wide. Nix floated mid-air, frozen, his wings limp.

  Metial rubbed his temples, voice hoarse but rhyming as the compulsion reasserted:

  "Reunited at last, the old chime awoke,

  But the master crumbled—fate’s cruel joke."

  The Autarch Bell lay still on the deck, its glow dimmed, the connection severed. For the first time since Roofmarket, the mold in their lungs eased...just a faint itch now, retreating like a tide.

  Then alarms shattered the quiet. Sensors lit up: multiple phase signatures inbound, closing fast from the Hades Gardens breach.

  Sari snapped to the console. "Royals—two colossal cruisers. Several scouts flanking us. They're locking on!"

  Nix darted to the viewport. "We woke the hornet's nest! Get us out—now!"

  Enkidar hauled the controls. The Prism lurched upward, engines flaring as it punched back into the anthracite strata. The walls closed in; raw coal and silver veins scraping the hull, sparks showering the bridge. The ship bucked, phase field flickering under the strain.

  Behind them, the cruisers phased through the rip, behemoths of World-Tree wood and obsidian armor, cannons glowing crimson, each one dwarfing the Prism. Whales next to a minnow. Their phase wakes tore the strata wider, resonance tumbling back into stasis in their path.

  The first volley of resonance bolts streaked past, grazing the shields. The Prism shuddered, violet sparks dancing across the hull.

  Sari: "Shields at seventy! They're herding us toward the void edge!"

  Enkidar banked hard, weaving through fossilized root clusters. "Hold on—pushing for the outer strata!"

  Nix clung to the console. "They're too big—too fast! We'll never outrun them! The next time you agree to shiny, I'm committing mutiny, feathers!"

  Metial staggered to his feet, eyes still bleary. His rhyme came strained, a warning born of fresh freedom:

  "The Royals pursue, their fury awakes,

  Seize the Bell for all our sakes!"

  Nix and Sari shouted in unison: "NO!"

  But the second volley hit home. A direct strike splintered the aft shields. Violet-gold energy punched through the hull. Air screamed out in a vortex, pulling loose shards and dust toward the breach. The Prism listed. Her engines sputtered as resonance feedback fried a coil. Debris flew: Sari slammed against her seat, Nix tumbled across the deck.

  Endikar fought the yoke, but the ship drifted uncontrollably toward a widening strata tear. The void beyond was black and absolute, low-pressure nothingness yawned like a maw.

  The breach widened: rock grinding against hull, magma flecks from the strata edge spewing in, sizzling on the deck. The void pull intensified, sucking air and loose items outward. The Autarch Bell rolled...dim but heavy...sliding towards the hole, drawn by the vacuum.

  Shots kept coming: another bolt grazed the wing, punching a second hole. Magma sprayed in through the breach, molten flecks burning the air, forcing Sari to dodge a glob that scorched her sleeve. The engines coughed, full failure imminent, leaving the Prism spinning in the void's grasp.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Endikar saw the Bell teeter on the breach's edge, about to be lost forever.

  He lunged.

  This is it.

  He thought the same flood would take him now: swallow his mind, his voice, his crew. He thought the Bell would turn him into another smiling puppet, or worse, kill them all to further its ambitions. He thought he was trading his soul to buy them seconds.

  He didn't know what would come next.

  He only knew there was no other choice.

  His taloned hand closed around it just as the vacuum yanked. Pain exploded in his shoulder as the pull stretched his arm. His shoulder joint screamed. He tasted blood on his tongue. For one frozen heartbeat he saw Metial again: eyes rolling back, hair lifting in unseen wind, body convulsing as the violet-gold flood drowned him from the inside and flared throughout the museum, destroying everything. He braced himself for the same inevitable oblivion.

  Endikar closed his eyes.

  Instead: a soft chime. Warmth spread up his arm: no pain, no takeover. A faint voice, quiet and broken: "We can prevail."

  Endikar gripped tighter: "Let’s get out of here."

  The Bell pulsed: golden light flowed up his arm, and out of the Bell into the hull. The breaches sealed: magma cooled and hardened into glassy patches, holes knitting shut with resonance threads. Shields reformed, stronger than before. Engines surged back to life, phase field stabilizing with a hum that drowned the alarms.

  The Prism righted itself. She banked hard away from the void tear. The cruisers fired again, but the shots glanced off the reinforced shields, dissipating harmlessly.

  Sari stared at Endikar, then back at her monitor, breath ragged. "It...fixed us. Mended all the systems almost instantly."

  Nix fluttered up, wings shaky. "More like adopted us. Great. A traumatized handbag with a repair kit."

  Metial slumped against the bulkhead, his green eyes clear. "The Bell makes a good choice. We may all revel and rejoice."

  Endikar looked at the Bell in his hand...dim but steady. He slung it on his belt opposite the inferior seerpent Bell. The Autarch Bell hung against his belt like it belonged there. No commands. No possession. Just quiet presence with an inescapable promise.

  The Prism slipped into a side vein, engines low, vanishing into the anthracite dark. The cruisers' signatures faded behind them. The pursuit was broken, for now.

  A single faint chime drifted across the bridge, almost grateful. Nix fluttered up, wings still trembling, and landed on Enkidar’s shoulder.

  He stared at the Bell hanging from the belt, then at the opal dust still clinging to the deck.

  “Well,” he said, voice cracking but dripping with venom, “congratulations, feathers. We just adopted a grieving, apocalyptic handbag that fixes ships and probably judges us in its sleep. Hope it likes acorn stew, because I’m not sharing my shiny with it.”

  The ship sailed on, carrying its newest, purposeless crewmember.

  End of Book