---
The room was paying attention.
Every member of the Cursed Dragon Clan present in this space — Shadow with her grief-compressed anger still visible in the set of her jaw, Vinzo with his arms crossed and his aura at its resting level, Hakota adjusting nothing on his collar because there was nothing to adjust, he was simply still — all of them oriented toward Mirus with the quality of people who had been in this space long enough to know that when Mirus used that voice, the following sentence was the sentence.
Xen Astra.
He sat with the quality he always sat with — the relaxed surface of someone who was entirely present underneath the relaxed surface, whose apparent ease was not detachment but the specific quality of someone who had decided ease was the correct presentation for someone who already knew they were the most prepared person in most rooms.
He looked at Mirus.
Xen Tenkai beside him.
Flat golden-black eyes forward.
Xen Astria on his other side — her hand on the table, not tense, present.
The dragon skull pulsed.
Mirus breathed.
**Mirus :** "From now. Our objective changes."
He said it.
He looked at the room.
**Mirus :** "We have lost too many pursuing paths that produced too little."
He looked at the dragon skull.
**Mirus :** "The seven who died. Dante and Delta. Haze before them. Sin before that."
He breathed.
**Mirus :** "Each loss was a cost. And the costs have not been producing what they were paid for."
He looked at the room.
**Mirus :** "So the objective changes."
He breathed.
**Mirus :** "We find the Dragon Goddess Astro."
---
The room received this differently from the previous sentences.
The previous sentences had been weight — the weight of loss, the weight of information about Sindra, the weight of the accumulated cost.
This sentence was direction.
The specific quality of a sentence that gave something to move toward rather than something to sit with.
Shadow looked up.
Hakota's eyes sharpened.
Vinzo unfolded his arms.
**Mirus :** "Her power essence."
He said it.
**Mirus :** "If what the records say about the Dragon Goddess Astro is accurate — and I believe it is — her power essence can reach even a being at Sindra's level."
He looked at the room.
**Mirus :** "Can kill a being at Sindra's level."
He breathed.
**Mirus :** "Which means her power essence is what we need before anything else. Before any other objective. Before any other pursuit."
He looked at the table.
**Mirus :** "Everything else stops. Everyone available turns toward finding her."
He breathed.
**Mirus :** "And we do this before anyone else finds her first."
He looked at Xen Astra.
---
**Xen Astra :** "Actually."
He said it.
He said it with the quality of someone who has information that is relevant to the current sentence and is about to deliver it.
**Xen Astra :** "My counterpart in the main timeline is already doing this."
He said it.
He said it calmly.
He said it with the quality of someone delivering information they had been holding for the right moment.
The room.
**Mirus :** "Explain."
**Xen Astra :** "The main timeline version of me — Astra, the Prince of all Infernos — has left his kingdom. He has a team. He is already traveling toward Astro."
He looked at Mirus.
**Xen Astra :** "He has already collected two of the seven dragon clans. The Demon Dragon Clan and the Angel Dragon Clan."
He breathed.
**Xen Astra :** "And he knows that Astro is alive. Still moving. He has been confirmed of this."
He looked at Mirus steadily.
**Mirus :** "Then he is ahead of us."
**Xen Astra :** "Yes."
A pause.
**Mirus :** "Then wipe him from our path."
He said it.
He said it with the same quality he said everything — complete, direct, the specific delivery of someone for whom the decision had been made in the same breath as the assessment.
**Mirus :** "We do not need the main timeline's version of you complicating our approach. He is an insect in the path of what we are building. Remove the insect."
He looked at Xen Astra.
**Mirus :** "I give the three of you that assignment."
He looked at all three of them.
At Xen Astra.
At Xen Tenkai.
At Xen Astria.
**Mirus :** "Find him. Remove him. Clear the path."
**Xen Astra :** "Understood."
He said it without hesitation.
He said it with the quality of someone who had expected this assignment and had been ready for it before it was given.
---
Beneath the mask:
Xen Astra smiled.
The specific smile of someone for whom this assignment was not a burden but the thing they had been moving toward since they walked through the door.
Not a villain's smile — the smile of someone who was very good at something and was about to do the thing they were very good at.
He breathed.
**Xen Astra :** "The first target."
He said it.
He said it to the room — not reporting to Mirus, sharing with the room because the sharing was part of the intention. He wanted them to know. He wanted the room to know.
**Xen Astra :** "Dragon Unite Kingdom."
He looked at the far wall.
At the cosmos through it.
**Xen Astra :** "The kingdom he built on Planet Wenta. The capital that Piko designed and built in a single day. The kingdom that Fin now runs as king."
He breathed.
**Xen Astra :** "His team. His friends. Every person he gathered and built something with."
He breathed.
**Xen Astra :** "First."
He looked at the table.
**Xen Astra :** "The second target."
He breathed.
**Xen Astra :** "Uzomas's solar system."
He looked at the room.
**Xen Astra :** "Uzomas himself — the Primordial Dragon Flame. Zailes with the void scythe. Blood Head with the Oni rage aura. And Indra Spysen — the celestial energy user who escaped after observing Astra in Volume 4."
He breathed.
**Xen Astra :** "They trained him. They were part of what he became. Remove the ones who built the foundation."
He looked at the cosmos through the far wall.
**Xen Astra :** "And the third target."
He paused.
The pause of someone who had saved something for the end.
**Xen Astra :** "Earth."
He said it.
He said it simply.
**Xen Astra :** "Where the people he loves most live."
He breathed.
**Xen Astra :** "Yuki. Who named him and raised him and taught him what was right and wrong. The sister who held him through everything and who he holds above all."
He breathed.
**Xen Astra :** "Blu. The president, the mentor, the trainer who taught him that the body carries the power rather than the other way around."
He breathed.
**Xen Astra :** "Honokage. Uraka. Everyone from Earth who made him what he is."
He breathed.
**Xen Astra :** "All of them."
He said it.
He said it with the quality of finality — not dramatic, the specific flat finality of a list completed.
**Xen Astra :** "They all die."
---
The room.
Shadow looked at him.
She was still.
The grief in her eyes — present, unchanged, the grief of Delta's widow — but alongside it now something else. The recognition of a direction. Not joy. The specific quality of someone whose grief had been given a target.
Hakota breathed.
**Hakota :** "You know these people very specifically."
He said it.
He said it with the quality of someone who had noticed something and was naming the noticing.
He looked at Xen Astra.
**Hakota :** "The names. The roles. The emotional significance of each one. You know them the way someone knows people they have spent time with."
He breathed.
**Hakota :** "Not from intelligence reports."
He looked at Xen Astra.
**Hakota :** "You know them the way you know your own life."
Xen Astra looked at him.
He looked at Hakota for a moment.
Then he removed the mask.
The face underneath.
The silver eyes — not the honest silver of the main timeline's Astra, this silver carried what it carried, the silver of the same origin that had traveled through different things and had arrived at a different place.
He looked at the room.
**Xen Astra :** "Because I am him."
He said it.
He said it simply.
**Xen Astra :** "I am not a copy. I am not a different version in the sense of being a different person. I am the same soul that grew in the same environment, that had the same childhood, that sat at the same table with Yuki on Earth, that trained under Blu, that built Dragon Unite and named the capital after Piko."
He breathed.
**Xen Astra :** "I know every person on every target list the way I know myself."
He looked at the table.
**Xen Astra :** "Because in the Xen timeline I chose differently. I was corrupted. The same soul, the same history, the same love for all of those people — and I chose differently."
He breathed.
**Xen Astra :** "Which means I know exactly what will hurt him the most."
He said it.
He said it with the quality of someone who had looked at a map made from their own interior and had found every vulnerable location on it.
**Xen Astra :** "And I know exactly in what order."
The room held the sentence.
Mirus looked at him.
The crimson eyes with the cosmos scars.
He looked at Xen Astra for a long moment.
**Mirus :** "Good."
He said it.
One word.
The full weight of it.
He put the mask back on.
**Mirus :** "Then you know what to do."
He sat.
He put his chin back on his hands.
He looked at the cosmos through the far wall.
**Mirus :** "Do it thoroughly."
He said it.
He said it with the quality of the final sentence.
**Mirus :** "Leave nothing for him to come back to."
---
Xen Astra looked at the cosmos.
At the galaxies rotating in their patient unhurried cycles.
Somewhere in that cosmos:
The main timeline's version of himself.
On a ship built by Piko.
With a team gathered across the dragon clans.
Moving toward Astro.
Moving toward everything the main timeline was building toward.
He breathed.
**Xen Astra :** "First the kingdom."
He said it.
He said it quietly.
He said it to the cosmos.
**Xen Astra :** "Then the solar system."
He breathed.
**Xen Astra :** "Then Earth."
He breathed.
**Xen Astra :** "And then — when everything he loves is gone — then we face each other."
He breathed.
He put the mask back on.
He looked at Xen Tenkai.
Xen Tenkai looked back.
He looked at Xen Astria.
She looked back.
They stood.
They walked toward the door.
The door opened.
They left.
The room held what they had said.
Mirus sat.
He looked at the cosmos.
He breathed.
The dragon skull pulsed its crimson.
The cosmos rotated.
---