The Foxfire Saga

Raya remembered the way the corridors of the ice-hauler hummed underfoot. A steady vibration that was less a sound than a feeling in her bones. It was comfort. Home. The entire ship smelled faintly of machine grease, overlaid with the sharper scents of cookpots whenever the crew gathered in the common galley.

Her mother used to braid her hair there, gentle fingers tugging while her father told stories about hauling from deeper in the belt. Stories of finding old derelicts, ghost ships loaded with strange cargo that paid out better than any ice ever could. She never found out if those stories were true, or just fanciful tales.

Sometimes, the entire crew would crowd around for those tales, faces flushed from cheap heater coils, mugs of nutrient broth steaming between their hands. It didn't matter that they were all under Haven's thumb, that quotas kept tightening. Together, it felt like enough.

Then the memory shifted. The steady hum of the hauler floor fell away, replaced by the deeper, heavier throb of spin-gravity. The corridors grew wider, too bright, lined with fresh paint that never quite covered the stress-lines in the metal.

The water reclamation station was supposed to be an opportunity. Her father wore a Haven contract manager's badge now, carried a datapad he never let go of, talked about steady pay, better food, real schooling.

But whenever Raya walked the halls, the station workers watched with narrowed eyes. Old friends from ice-hauler days turned strangers, muttering as she passed.

Then came the riot. Voices raised in the wide atrium, fists slamming into guard-railings, shouts for equity that blurred into roars of frustration. She remembered clutching her mother's hand so tightly it hurt, the two of them half-hidden behind an auxiliary pump housing.

Her father had tried to calm the crowd. He was always the one who thought words could fix anything.

She remembered the way he lifted his hands, palms out. Remembered the flash of something sharp in the crowd, the sudden weight of silence after.

Blood smeared across the station floor. Her mother's breath hitching into a soundless sob. Raya standing there, feeling everything hollow out.

It all layered over itself, memory upon memory, until it was hard to see where one ended and the next began.

The hauler corridors, the bright station halls, the shouting, the warm communal meals. It all blurred, twisting around each other like strands of ice and vapor.

When the memories bled away, Raya found herself standing on a smooth black plane that stretched in every direction, swallowing the light before it could reflect. Above her, something vast turned slowly. A shape she couldn't quite comprehend. It was banded in deep sapphire currents that churned and folded into themselves, slow storms that seemed to breathe.

Every rotation sent subtle pressure down through the void, like tides brushing against her soul. Her heart skipped, caught between awe and a strange, rising dread.

She had no word for it. Just a sense that it was alive in a way the rest of this hollow dark was not.

That's when she felt it. A colder thread of presence, winding around her like a tendril of dry frost. Her breath fogged, though there was no air here, only the illusion of it. And then he was standing before her.

Karn. Or what was left of him.

He looked almost as he had on Zephara's surface, long dark robes in disarray, his skin pulled tight over angular bones, eyes like burnt-out cores. But there was less of him, as if someone had taken an image and scraped half the pigment away, leaving only hints of shoulders, arms, a faint smudge of a sneer.

"Raya Solvi," Karn rasped. His voice was fragile, cracked, but it wormed through the void with a familiarity that made her stomach lurch.

"You stand in the thin places. Between breath and none. Between heartbeats. Between the living and the dead."

Raya's hand twitched toward the trident still clutched at her side. She lifted her chin. "I'm not here to fight you, Karn. Your war's done."

"My war? You still think so small." His outline flickered, widening, for an instant draping over the endless black like a monstrous cloak. Then it tightened back to human shape. "There is no peace. Only dissolution of boundaries. The living, the dead, all blended. All freed. No grief. No separation."

Something in her chest tightened, sharp and mean.

"You mean no selves," she said. "No mothers or fathers. No sisters. No lovers. Just… one big indistinct mass. You."

Karn's eyes burned a little brighter. "Does it matter? You carry all that hurt from your childhood, always caught between. Haven's pet or the colonies' traitor. Even your father was crushed by trying to bridge worlds. I offer you the same chance he died for, perfected. An end to lines, to choosing sides. All things made one."

The cold slipped deeper around her, brushing the walls of her mind. For an instant, she almost wanted it. To never again feel the sharp ache of being separate, of being other.

For a long breath, Raya stood frozen in Karn's reach, feeling the dark slip around her mind like cold water. Her pulse faltered. Her grip on the trident weakened.

Then something warm settled over her shoulders. Broad palms, rough from years working water processors, the pads of his thumbs circling the base of her neck in a small, grounding motion.

Her father. She tried to look back, but the void wouldn't let her turn fully. All she could see was a shadow of him standing behind her, a familiar weight against her spine. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes.

"Dad…" Her voice cracked on the old, small name.

He squeezed her shoulders, the same way he used to when she was little and afraid to walk the narrow support beams across the hauler's outer spine.

"I was wrong, Raya," he murmured. His voice was soft, full of regret and pride braided together. "I thought if I just kept trying to build bridges, sooner or later they'd stand. I didn't see the sand washing out from under every foundation."

His hands tightened with a fierce insistence just shy of pain.

"You've always seen deeper. Even when you were small, playing doctor with scraped knuckles and stubborn boys twice your size, you knew when to clean a wound, even when it hurt."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Karn's shape writhed ahead of her, trying to loom larger, to drown her father's words in its vast, dead promise. But that warmth at her shoulders held her steady.

"You can't fix everything by healing it, little one," her father whispered, voice close to her ear. "Sometimes you cut to save what matters. Sometimes you hurt, so the whole doesn't die."

Something inside her cracked open. She drew in a sharp breath, air tasting suddenly like iron. The void grew colder, deeper, reaching for her as if to swallow her whole.

But Raya reached back. She plunged her will into that dark, into the boundary none should cross, and came back with something new coiling in her chest, sharp and cold.

Karn's half-shadowed form tilted, that long, brittle smile creeping across his thin mouth. "Ah. So that's what you'll be, little healer. A blade, not just a balm."

Raya's hands glowed with a deep, corroded darkness that seemed to swallow the faint light around it. It drank greedily without crackle or flare.

"You're afraid," she said quietly. A revelation, spoken almost in wonder.

Karn's smile twitched. "I prefer cautious. The field grows… crowded. I'll pivot my ambitions elsewhere. You, however, will have a parting gift to keep your new convictions tested."

The void behind him rippled. Something immense shifted, scales scraping against the mirror-black ground with a slow, deliberate weight. A shape uncoiled, sleek and long-limbed, its silhouette all draconic power but wrong, the proportions sharper, leaner, almost insectile in the narrow taper of its skull.

Amber-gold eyes opened. Blue-white flames trickled from its nostrils, illuminating obsidian scales slick with what might have been oil or shadow.

Raya's breath caught. She braced the trident before her, new death-magic simmering cold along her wrists.

Karn's echo gave a small, mock courtly bow. "If you survive, healer, we may yet speak again. I suspect you'll be even more interesting then."

Then he was gone, vanishing in a whisper of dark that left only the beast, head lowering, eyes locking on her with a predator's patience.

The creature moved with a sleek, cruel grace that made Raya's stomach twist. Its claws were long and slightly curved, leaving gouges in the mirror-black floor as it prowled sideways, head tilting to study her with molten gold eyes.

Raya braced the trident across her body, feeling for the water threads that wove through this place. They were there. Thin rivers of power running up toward the vast turning sphere above. And when she pushed her will into the trident, some of them answered, flowing down in shivering currents to pool around her feet.

She lashed them forward, trying to bind the beast's forelimbs.

It hissed, rearing back, but then simply torqued, muscles rippling, snapping the water bindings like so much mist.

Then it was on her. Claws slashed out. Raya threw up a barrier with a sharp, instinctive flick of her wrist. Golden light met obsidian claws in a shower of brittle sparks, but the impact still drove her back, heels skidding across the slick ground.

She tried to angle to the side, keeping distance, using the trident to direct a slicing jet of water at its flank. It staggered, scales hissing where the strike bit, but then its tail swept around, low and heavy.

It caught her square across the ribs. The blow sent her flying. She hit the ground in a rough tumble, barrier flaring weakly around her, trident clattering from her grip for a breathless instant before she scrabbled forward and snatched it back.

When she came up on one knee, the beast had already drawn in a deep breath. Blue-white flames gathered at the edges of its jaws, spilling from its teeth like liquid plasma.

"—shit—"

Raya pulled her barrier tight around her just as the breath struck.

It felt like standing in the heart of a fusion drive. Her golden construct flared, lines of stress zigzagging across its surface as the flames pushed down. The sheer weight of that heat drove her lower, knees digging into the ground, shoulders shaking.

A thin line of blood trailed from her nose, pattering against her forearm.

Then the breath ceased. Raya sucked in air that tasted like scorched iron, blinking sweat and tears from her eyes.

Still here. Still breathing.

She rose, slowly, barrier flickering but intact.

Raya braced the trident against the ground for just a moment, pulling a deep, jagged breath. Her free hand hovered over her ribs, golden light flaring in unsteady pulses. The fractures there knitted. Enough to keep her upright, but that was all she had time for.

She'd fix it properly later. If there was a later.

When she looked up, the beast was already circling again, claws clicking faintly against the black glass. Its breath steamed from its jaws, each exhale laced with thin tongues of blue-white fire.

Raya lifted the trident, pulled at the threads of water above. This time she didn't try to bind it, she let the water come down in lashing coils, striking at its eyes, snapping at its nostrils.

It hissed, jaws snapping at the phantom strikes, neck weaving side to side.

Raya ran towards it, legs pumping in a desperate rush to close the distance.

It turned toward her, eyes flaring gold, claws flashing down. She threw her barriers in layered wedges, each angled just off the direct line of the strike.

The claws skidded along the planes of force, screeching as they shed sparks. One caught her shoulder, spinning her slightly, but she kept moving, boots digging hard for purchase.

Then she was there, within reach of its chest.

She dropped the trident, seized its slick scales in both hands. The dark magic rose up her arms like a living thing, cold as open space, as final as a grave. It was intimate in the worst way. Like her healing, she pressed her will inside, but instead of coaxing flesh to knit, she whispered to it to fail.

Scales blackened under her palms. Something beneath them twisted, rupturing with a muffled, sick pop. The creature convulsed around her, neck arching back in a silent, strangled roar.

Raya snarled through her teeth. "Not today. Not ever."

She pushed harder. The rot raced through it, veins of shadow spiderwebbing out from her hands. The beast staggered once, legs locking, then it simply crumpled, exhaling a last steaming breath that stank of burned rot.

Raya stood over it, chest heaving, hands still wrapped in that dark inversion of her old healing light. Slowly, it faded, retreating back inside her. Her stomach churned at the wrongness of it, but she held firm.

She let out a slow breath.

"Thanks, Dad," she whispered, voice catching on a small, broken laugh. "For finally telling me how to cut."

There was no reply, only the faint impression of strong hands leaving her shoulders, as if he'd stepped back. But the air seemed to lighten, a subtle lifting of weight.

Above her, the vast swirl of blue and sapphire churned. For the first time, it chimed. A deep, resonant note that rolled through the void and into her bones, both promise and warning.

The ground beneath her feet quivered.

Raya barely had time to suck in a startled breath before the mirror-black surface shattered, collapsing into itself in silent, rushing folds. She plunged down through water cold as memory, flailing once before her body remembered which way was up.

When she broke the surface, she found herself at the bottom of the geothermal vent, water pressing in heavy around her. Strange refracted light filtered down from above, gilding the rocky walls in shivering gold.

And standing there, just a few feet away, was Akiko.

Her ears twitched, twin tails trailing behind her in slow, deliberate arcs. Her eyes were tight with concern, their color almost painfully bright in this muted world.

One hand, the one not armored by the bulk of the mining laser, extended toward Raya, palm up, waiting.

Akiko's grip was strong but careful as she hauled Raya the last little distance up, then steadied her with a hand at her waist.

For a moment they just stood there in the heavy water, bubbles drifting lazily around them, their breathing the only sound inside Raya's helmet.

Then Akiko's gaze roamed over her, a subtle twitch in her ears, something pained and guilty flickering in those bright eyes. "You look like hell," she muttered finally.

Raya barked out a laugh that cracked into a sob halfway through. "Thanks."

Akiko's mouth twisted, trying for her usual grin. It didn't quite hold. She jerked her chin to one side, where her twin tails floated behind her in slow, sinuous arcs. "Hey. Look on the bright side. Twice the tails now. Twice the fun, right?"

Raya let out a strangled, watery sound. "Shut up," she whispered. Her hands came up, clumsy in the thick suit gloves, gripping the armored plates at Akiko's shoulders. "Just… shut up and hold me while I cry."

Akiko's expression softened. Without another word, she stepped in close, sliding an arm around Raya's back, pulling her in until they were chest to chest.

It wasn't perfect. The pressure suit, the gear, the awkward press of the mining laser at Akiko's side. But it was them. Alive. Together.

Raya leaned her helmet against Akiko, drew a shuddering breath, and let the tears spill unseen inside the suit.

Akiko didn't say anything else. Just held on, as tight as she could.