I barely slept, not because my body didn't need it.
After everything we had learned, I could have collapsed for an entire day if my mind had allowed it, but it refused to give me a moment of peace.
The Yorm Belt, the Messengers, and the Obscure Galaxies.
And somewhere, far beyond all of that... Laura.
When I opened my eyes again, the room was still submerged in darkness; not a trace of light slipped through the curtains.
I remained there for a few seconds, staring at the ceiling and listening to the absolute silence of the house, until I finally drew a deep breath and accepted that sleep wasn't coming back.
I got up.
I tied my hair back, put on dark, durable clothes, tightened the guards around my forearms, and secured my sword.
When I opened the door, Tsukumo was already waiting for me in the hallway, fully equipped.
His long braids were tied behind his head, leaving his serious face completely exposed.
We exchanged a silent look. Neither of us needed to ask whether the other had slept; the answer was written beneath our eyes.
"Kânia?" I asked quietly.
"She's in the kitchen," he replied.
We went downstairs.
Kânia was still sitting at the exact same table where we had spoken only hours earlier.
Countless maps were spread before her. Some were drawn on aged paper, while others projected entire star systems across the tabletop through small crystals.
Red routes crossed planets, moons, and nameless regions, covered in handwritten notes she had made throughout the night.
Once again, she hadn't slept.
She had traded her shawl for more practical clothes.
When we entered, she raised her eyes and got straight to the point, her voice leaving no room for discussion.
"Sit down. Silver isn't here."
We obeyed.
Kânia touched one of the crystals, and a holographic map of Lavinsk expanded across the table, showing our planet first, then its moons, the neighboring worlds, and finally the entire system.
"Before anything else, you need to understand what you're getting yourselves into," she said, spreading two fingers to pull the projection farther away.
An enormous region filled with rocky points appeared at the edge of the system.
"This is Yorm."
I already knew the name, but I had never seen the entire belt represented like that.
It looked like a massive scar tearing through the absolute void, formed from millions of fragments.
Some were small, while others carried enough mass to be mistaken for moons.
Kânia enlarged a specific section.
Between two gigantic masses of rock, nearly concealed by severe gravitational interference, a narrow line emerged.
"And this is where Syfles is."
I leaned forward, narrowing my eyes.
It was barely visible.
"That's a route?"
"It was a natural route long before Lavinsk gained control of this region," Kânia explained.
"Over time, smugglers realized the anomalies caused by the meteorites could perfectly conceal energy signatures, communications, and ship movements."
"So they started using it."
She dragged a finger along the end facing our planet, causing small golden points to appear across the hologram.
"Currently, Lavinsk patrols this side."
"Our job is to prevent traffickers, mercenaries, and any threat coming from the Obscure Galaxies from using Syfles to freely enter the system."
Her finger crossed the passage and stopped on the other side, where the golden points gave way to red marks.
"The problem begins here."
"The mercenaries," Tsukumo concluded, narrowing his eyes.
"Exactly. Beyond our borders, they control entire sections of the passage."
"They constantly change rendezvous points, coordinates, and codes."
"Some stretches remain empty for weeks, then suddenly become heavily armed inspection posts."
"So Lavinsk protects the entrance to keep them out..." I studied the map.
"And they protect the exit to stop us from following anyone who manages to escape."
For several seconds, we remained silent, staring at the narrow line in the hologram: a corridor crushed between two lethal forces.
"I can get past Lavinsk's patrols," I said.
Kânia raised her eyes toward me.
"I know you can." She paused, closing her hand and making the entire projection of Lavinsk disappear, leaving only the Yorm Belt behind.
"That isn't the difficult part."
"The problem is that the moment you cross this point, you stop being warriors of Lavinsk."
"You carry no names and no titles. You do not mention Silver, the Queen, or the Domain of Strength."
Her gaze settled firmly on Tsukumo.
"Out there, being Vangor's son won't open doors. It'll put an enormous bounty on your head."
Tsukumo simply nodded, understanding the weight of the warning.
"And what about our aura?" Tsukumo asked, resting an arm on the table.
"That's the second problem. No matter how good your control is, scanners can still pick you up."
"Your new technique, however, is different."
As she spoke, Tsukumo fixed his gaze on a small stone lying on the table.
Without Kânia doing anything, the stone silently floated a few centimeters into the air.
"Use that to camouflage yourselves. On a scanner, you'll look like nothing more than another meteorite."
"Understood."
"Do what you need to do, but do it quickly."
Kânia slid three small pieces of paper across the table, each containing coordinates, symbols, and numerical sequences.
"These are transit points that still appeared in patrol reports from four months ago."
"In the Obscure Galaxies, that can be enough time for an entire organization to disappear and another one to take its place, but it's still better than going in blind."
I pocketed the papers as she deactivated the crystals, plunging the kitchen back into shadow.
"Now, the most important part. Silver cannot realize you've left until you're far beyond Lavinsk's patrols."
"The Queen summoned him before dawn."
I looked at her suspiciously.
Tsukumo understood the urgency as well.
"How much time do we have?" he asked, already preparing to leave.
"I don't know. With Silver, it could be very little."
"Then we leave now," I decided.
When we finally stepped outside, the first light of dawn was outlining the mountains.
The sky was still dominated by stars, but a thin blue band had begun cutting across the horizon.
The estate looked different beneath that light, perhaps because I knew I wouldn't still be there by the time the sun reached its peak.
I stopped on the grass and allowed myself a few seconds to take everything in.
The field where Kânia used to push us to complete physical exhaustion, and the rooftop where Tsukumo often sat in silent reflection.
Five years.
I had arrived in Lavinsk understanding almost nothing about that universe, and now I was about to leave it of my own free will.
Tsukumo stopped silently beside me.
Kânia came up behind us.
The morning wind tousled Kânia's golden hair as she watched us—not as the Goddess of War, nor as our relentless instructor, but simply as Kânia.
"Suki. Bring Laura back."
She gripped my shoulder firmly, her fingers tightening slightly against the fabric of my clothes.
"And come back with her."
I held her gaze, slowly releasing a breath before answering with the certainty she needed.
"I'll come back with her."
She nodded, looking slightly more relieved, then turned toward my companion.
"And you, like I told you yesterday, take care of him."
Tsukumo straightened, serious, keeping his eyes locked on hers without even glancing in my direction.
"Yes, ma'am."
There was no reason for me to object; deep down, she was right.
I looked at Tsukumo, and with a synchronized nod, we bent our knees and launched ourselves into the sky.
Lavinsk rapidly shrank beneath us as we suppressed our auras until they were nearly nonexistent.
The house vanished, the mountains became wrinkles across the land, and the cities faded into mere points of light.
The Sacred Ocean gleamed in the distance like an immense silver stain greeting the dawn, then quickly disappeared behind us.
We kept climbing; the air thinned, the temperature plummeted, and the blue sky surrendered to an absolute black scattered with stars.
Crossing an atmosphere no longer meant much to us.
But this time, the weight of the void felt different.
When I looked back and saw Lavinsk hanging enormous and blue behind us, I finally understood the scale of our isolation.
Silver wasn't ahead of us setting the pace. Kânia wasn't guarding our rear. No allied patrols surrounded us.
We had no official mission and no orders limiting how far we could go.
It was just the two of us.
Tsukumo followed my gaze.
"Already want to go back?"
There was no mockery in the question. It was genuine and serious.
I turned toward him.
"No."
"Neither do I," he agreed.
We turned back toward the star-filled void and accelerated.
There was no reason to hide our speed in open space.
I focused, compressing energy through my muscles and core before launching myself forward like an invisible projectile, until the stars around me seemed to stretch into lines of light.
Tsukumo kept pace without any visible effort.
We passed one of Lavinsk's outer moons, tore across the orbit of a gas giant covered in blue storms, and crossed nebulae of stellar dust that shimmered at the slightest disturbance.
The hours dissolved into the vastness.
But we both knew exactly when it was time to slow down.
Yorm stood before us.
For the first time, I understood why Kânia had called it a slaughterhouse.
The belt seemed endless, a chaotic wall of millions of rocky bodies drifting through the void.
Some rotated with lethargic slowness, while others collided in terrifying silence, breaking into razor-edged fragments that shot through the vacuum.
There were rocks the size of buildings, mountains, and even continents, with the largest carrying their own tiny rings of orbiting dust.
Twisted metal wreckage remained trapped between the stones, bearing silent witness to past disasters: the carcasses of ancient ships and shattered military structures.
Small electrical discharges crackled across mineral-rich masses of conductive ore, and far in the distance lay the dead, fractured half of an ancient planetary core.
Tsukumo stopped beside me, his golden eyes sweeping across the chaos.
"The coordinates."
I pulled out the piece of paper Kânia had given us, checked the numbers, and stared into the rocky expanse.
"This is it."
"Syfles?"
"Somewhere in the middle of all this. Once we cross it, we'll be beyond Lavinsk's reach."
I extended my senses and was immediately overwhelmed by a flood of information: violent gravitational interference, thermal signatures from constant collisions, vast mineral deposits, and echoes of ancient auras.
The signals tangled together, overlapping until they became a dense, confusing static inside my perception.
I even felt the beginnings of a headache.
"Now I understand why smugglers love this place. It's the perfect hiding spot," I murmured.
A stray rock came hurtling toward us.
Tsukumo raised one hand slightly, and the stone shifted a few centimeters off course without an explosion or shockwave, continuing onward as though it had never crossed our path.
"Kânia was right," he observed.
"If we use too much energy here, someone will notice immediately. It's like a dark forest."
"Yeah. If I turn on a flashlight, everyone will know exactly where I am."
We moved deeper into the darkness between the meteorites, flying at a speed that felt absurdly slow by our standards as we carefully threaded our way between colossal masses of stone.
Our auras remained suppressed, leaving no trails or bursts of energy behind as we followed the route on the paper with precision.
First point.
Second.
Third.
Then I saw the first light.
It flashed three times against the black horizon, far in the distance, squeezed between two asteroids before vanishing.
We stopped immediately.
"Did you see that?" I whispered.
"Yes."
We waited.
A few seconds later, the light appeared again, this time in another quadrant, giving two quick pulses.
Definitely not a natural phenomenon.
We resumed our advance with even greater caution, and several kilometers later, more lights appeared.
That was when I began sensing the presences.
Dozens of them.
Weak, fragmented, and meticulously hidden behind the masses of stone.
"We're not alone."
"We never were. They're communicating," Tsukumo replied, discreetly pointing to the right.
I followed his gaze.
Camouflaged against the back of a colossal asteroid was a metal outpost with no flags and no exterior lighting, betrayed only by a hatch darker than the vacuum surrounding it.
Farther beyond it, I spotted a second structure.
Then a third.
My heart quickened as the truth settled in.
Syfles wasn't merely a passage.
It was a fringe colony hidden in the dark.
Suddenly, a cold, metallic vibration passed through my mind.
It wasn't ordinary telepathy, but some kind of signal projected directly against our aura.
A distorted, mechanical voice reverberated inside my skull.
"Identify yourselves."
The Yorm Belt continued its brutal, silent dance around us as the voice sounded again, clearer this time.
"Two travelers. Unrecognized signal."
I could feel small energy signatures igniting among the wreckage.
One.
Four.
Seven.
Twelve.
They were closing the circle quickly.
My hand instinctively slid toward the hilt of my sword, but Tsukumo noticed and immediately stopped me.
"Not yet."
I pulled my fingers back as the voice returned with finality.
"Last warning."
We looked at each other.
Kânia had armed us with old routes, secret coordinates, and transit symbols, but no manual had told us what to say when confronted by an entire blockade right at the entrance.
For the first time in three years, I had finally found a road that might lead me to Laura.
And less than a minute after stepping onto it, the universe was already trying to send me back.
Tsukumo studied the signatures surrounding us, counting them.
"They're still asking."
"And what do you suggest I tell them?"
Tsukumo glanced toward Kânia's coordinates.
"A convincing lie."
I drew a deep breath.
Twenty presences.
Maybe more.
All of them waiting.
"We're mercenaries."
Silence.
The voice answered.
"Names."
Tsukumo looked at me.
And that was when I realized Kânia had prepared almost everything.
Except that.