The undead destroyer drifted quietly beneath its new cloak, gliding past drifting comets and cold metal wreckage as it passed the threshold into Graeim Sector. Here, Federation control was tight. Patrol frigates moved like sharks across system lanes, scanning everything with heavy precision. But the destroyer? It passed through undetected—just a shadow in a sea of signals.

  Inside, the bridge felt oddly calm.

  Vermond lounged in the captain’s seat, fingers rhythmically tapping against the armrest. Erie stood by the new nav console, zooming in and out on star maps. Graeim was bureaucratic and industrial—a sector fat with logistics hubs, deep-core mining colonies, and paranoid local commanders.

  “Do not activate the cloak unless I say so,” Vermond muttered, eyes on the radar. “We’re not ghosts yet. We’re vultures in uniforms.”

  Erie smirked. “That’s poetic. You practicing again for your next auction poem?”

  “Shut it.”

  They passed a cluster of transport vessels, massive cargo haulers escorted by sleek military cutters. Erie flipped a switch, dimming the interior lights. “These people are on edge. We should look… respectable.”

  As if on cue, four of the undead elite, fully geared, stepped onto the bridge, silent as always. Helmets mirrored the fading stars outside the window. One carried a crate of spare energy cells, another held a datapad scanning encrypted Federation frequencies.

  Erie gave a low whistle. “Still can’t believe those guys are... y’know.”

  “They’re not undead,” Vermond replied without missing a beat. “They’re just… focused.”

  Focused monsters, Erie thought.

  Later, mid-sector

  They approached a checkpoint: a ring station shaped like a gyroscope, guarded by two Federation destroyers. A bored controller’s voice crackled through the comms.

  “Unknown vessel, declare intent and send verification ID.”

  Erie handed over a forged salvager ID. Vermond gave a quiet nod to the bridge—just one look. The undead adjusted positioning, dimmed heat signatures, and re-routed false cargo manifest data through side relays. The destroyer now appeared as an outdated salvager hauler from a long-dead registry.

  “ID verified. Proceed. And stay in lane.”

  The station shrank behind them.

  One jump later – Patreola Sector

  This sector was even worse. Tension hung in the stars like rust. Folako sympathizers whispered through comm relays. Federation security forces patrolled like angry wasps.

  At one fuel station, they saw a street preacher screaming at an armed squad.

  “The old empires return! You wear lies on your armor!”

  He was silenced with a pulse baton. Erie looked away. Vermond didn’t blink.

  “We’re getting close to the edge,” Erie muttered.

  “Good,” Vermond said. “That’s where we stop seeing uniforms. And start meeting... possibilities.”

  Erie zoomed the star map out again. The Outlaw Sectors loomed at the edge of known space, blinking red with warning markers: UNKNOWN. UNGOVERNED. UNCHARTED.

  “Next jump puts us past the line,” Erie whispered.

  Vermond stood, walking past the undead guards toward the central panel. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.

  The undead moved.

  Coordinates locked. Drives powered.

  Their shadows vanished once more.

  The outlaw sectors stretched out ahead like a dark wound across the stars, littered with forgotten satellites, fractured moons, and the drifting hulls of ships that dared too far. As the cloaked undead destroyer slipped silently through the void, its scanners picked up a faint signal—an old space station, tucked behind a shattered asteroid belt. It barely pulsed with life.

  “Only two corvettes docked,” Erie muttered, zooming in on the screen. “That place looks like it’s held together by duct tape and wishful thinking.”

  Vermond leaned forward, eyes narrowing. “Perfect.”

  Erie raised a brow. “Perfect?”

  “It's outlaw territory,” Vermond said, grinning. “No rules. No questions. That station’s exactly the kind of place to plant... roots.”

  Erie squinted at him. “You’re planning something again, aren’t you?”

  Vermond didn’t answer. Instead, he reached for the comms and directed a silent thought to the undead aboard. Somewhere in the ship’s hangar, the elite units began prepping silently, their black gear glinting under dim lights.

  The destroyer began its descent, cloaked, slow and calculated. Vermond’s mind was already racing.

  Whatever this station was... it would soon be something more.

  Vermond docked the destroyer silently and stepped out with Erie and four elite undead behind him, their pitch-black suits gleaming with quiet menace. But here in the outlaw sectors, no one looked twice—as long as you didn’t start trouble, you were just another shadow.

  The station interior was bleak. Dim lights flickered. Panels sparked in places. The air smelled faintly of fried circuits and stale food. They walked slowly through the abandoned corridors until they reached the central area—an open space with mismatched chairs, crates turned into tables, and a small crowd huddled around a pot of steaming soup.

  Seventeen people. That was it.

  They turned as Vermond entered, startled at first—but when they saw no weapons raised, they eased slightly. One of them, a scruffy old man with a greasy cap, stood up, chewing something suspicious-looking.

  “You don’t look like locals,” he said, voice hoarse. “Federation?”

  Vermond chuckled, raising his hands calmly. “Not quite. Just passing through.”

  “You armed?” the man asked warily.

  Erie grinned and patted the elite undead on the back. “Define armed.”

  That got a laugh out of a few of them. The tension eased. Vermond stepped forward, nodding at the pot. “Smells… edible.”

  “Barely,” the man shrugged. “Soy synth-paste with mushroom extract. It’s all we got left.”

  Vermond sat down on an empty crate. “What happened here?”

  The man sighed. “Used to be a trading outpost. Small-time smugglers, refuelers, runaways. Then the bigger pirate fleets came. Cleaned us out, took most of the station’s systems. Some left, some died. We stayed.”

  Vermond glanced around the station. Most of it was wrecked. The structure was solid. Docking ports barely intact. A command center crumbling up top. And most importantly… forgotten.

  He smiled faintly. “Then maybe it’s time someone cleaned it up properly.”

  Erie narrowed his eyes. “You’re thinking of claiming this soon to crumble place?”

  Vermond leaned back, staring up at the flickering ceiling.

  “Not just claiming it,” he said. “Im thinking of rebuilding it.”

  The scruffy man scratched his chin, watching Vermond as if measuring him. Then he stepped closer and said low, “This station… ain’t gonna hold much longer. The gravity’s half-dead. Air recyclers stutter on Thursdays. We’ve been patching things with hope and duct tape.”

  One of the others, a younger woman with a missing tooth and half-cybernetic arm, chimed in, “We stayed ‘cause we got nowhere else to go. But if you’ve got food… and power…”

  The man nodded solemnly. “We’ll follow you.”

  Vermond raised an eyebrow. “Follow me?”

  “As part of your fleet. You’ve got something, don’t you? A real ship. We seen the cloak flicker when you docked. That ain’t scrap tech.”

  Erie crossed his arms. “And in return?”

  The woman looked around at the others, then straight at Vermond. “We’ll work. Pilot, patch things up, scavenge, spy. You name it. We’re small, but we know these outlaw lanes better than anyone. You keep us alive, we’ll keep your secrets.”

  The group waited. One older man slurped his soup loudly.

  Vermond glanced toward the corridor that led back to the destroyer. His undead were still outside, perfectly still, like statues in the shadows.

  “Fine,” he said with a small grin. “We’ll send drone to haul over food, tools, and power packs. But if you’re in—you're in. No backing out if things get ugly.”

  The scruffy man gave a gap-toothed smile. “We outlaw folk… don’t get cold feet. We’ve had worse captains. Some were drunk space-rats.”

  Erie muttered, “We’re definitely upgrading from rats, then.”

  The group laughed.

  Vermond rose and held out his hand. “Welcome to the fleet, then.”

  They shook it. Just like that, the first outlaw sector alliance was born.

  The agreement was silent, sealed not with contracts, but with calloused handshakes, nods, and shared grim looks. The station creaked above them like a dying beast. Pipes rattled, lights flickered, and somewhere in the vents, something sparked for the last time.

  Vermond looked around once more and said flatly, “This place won’t see another sunrise cycle. Grab what matters.”

  The outlaws scrambled—toolkits, personal bags, a few tattered banners of old crews. No drama, no tears. Just survival.

  In less than an hour, the two rust-covered Corvettes were prepped for departure. Small spacecrafts—seven in total, each a dented testimony to decades of patch jobs and back-alley upgrades—hovered near the docking bay. The destroyer loomed silently nearby, cloaked no longer, its new black hull swallowing the light like a void.

  Erie stood beside Vermond as they watched the crew filter out. “This feels… weirdly noble for us,” he muttered.

  “Don’t get used to it,” Vermond replied with a smirk. “They’ll expect food.”

  Erie squinted. “We gave them the leftovers, right?”

  “No. We gave them the expired leftovers,” Vermond corrected, then turned and signaled one of the elite-geared undead waiting in the shadows. “Start scanning the ships. I want all of them marked, modified, and registered into the fleet network. No freeloaders.”

  The undead nodded without a word—always knowing what to do.

  As the last escape pod launched from the failing station and the lights dimmed for good, the outlaw crew floated in formation behind the destroyer.

  Two Corvettes. Seven barely-functional fighters. A handful of misfits. A cloaked undead destroyer with elite undead special forces.

  Vermond sat back in the command chair as Erie finished syncing the newcomers to their systems.

  “Fleet’s growing,” Erie said. “You gonna start calling yourself Admiral soon?”

  Vermond grinned, leaning back lazily.

  “Nah. Let them call me whatever they want. Just make sure they know one thing.”

  He looked out the viewport, voice cold and calm.

  “That we don’t stop.”

  The triangle crystal pulsed faintly in Vermond’s palm, its glow guiding like a cold star, pointing deep into outlaw space where Federation maps turned into question marks and ghost stories. He slid it back into its cradle near the console. Erie leaned over his shoulder, frowning.

  “You sure this rock knows where it’s going?”

  “Nope,” Vermond said, “but it’s confident.”

  Outside the viewport, the cloaked undead destroyer led the fleet. Two Corvettes followed close behind, each now outfitted with cloaking drives straight from Vermond’s deep crates. Seven ragged small spacecrafts trailed the line, like a convoy of scavenger pigeons following a shadow.

  “Corvette One, report,” Erie said over the comms.

  A beat. Then static. Then—

  “Uhhh… Corvette One here! Everything’s fine! We just... don’t know where the bathroom is.”

  “We have a bathroom?” another voice chimed in, probably from Corvette Two.

  “I thought that was the food storage—”

  “Guys, focus!” Erie snapped, slapping his forehead.

  “Destroyer here,” Vermond muttered dryly into the comms, voice low and composed. “You all sound like a pack of squirrels inside a jet engine.”

  “He talks! Like, actually talks!” someone from a small spacecraft blurted out. “Does he always sound like that? Kinda spooky but, like, cool spooky.”

  “Keep your comms professional,” Erie said, clearly done with everything.

  Vermond smirked but didn’t say anything. His attention was half elsewhere anyway—mentally tied to the destroyer, every hum of its engine, every pulse of its reactor in rhythm with his own thoughts. He could feel the elite undead on the Corvettes syncing with his will, quiet and precise, each stationed in the command centers, silent commanders beneath black helmets and thick gear.

  Erie leaned back with a sigh. “I swear, this fleet’s gonna fall apart just from personality clashes.”

  “They’ll shape up,” Vermond said. “Or fall off.”

  The triangle crystal blinked again, this time brighter. The direction shifted—angled deeper into the black sea of uncharted stars. The outlaw sectors had no patrols, no stations, no laws. Just wreckage, legends, and pirates bold enough to claim dead moons as thrones.

  “Adjust course,” Vermond said. “We go dark. All cloaking active.”

  With a collective hum, the destroyer shimmered out of view, followed by the two Corvettes. The seven small spacecrafts tried to fly cool—though one of them immediately bumped into the other.

  “Sorry! Didn’t see you there, I was cloaked!”

  “We’re all cloaked, dumbass!”

  Erie muted the comms and buried his face in his hands. “We’re gonna die out here.”

  Vermond leaned forward, eyes on the map, on the glow of the crystal. His voice was calm, certain, low.

  “No. We’re gonna arrive.”

  And in silence, the cloaked fleet entered the void.

  The fleet drifted at the edge of the unstable wormhole. Its swirling energy pulsed like a living storm, and every ship’s hull creaked in nervous response.

  Inside the bridge of the undead destroyer, Vermond stood silent. Erie adjusted the comms, his voice echoing awkwardly through the channel:

  > “Uh—this is Erie. To all ships: stay close. We don’t know what’s in there, but... try not to panic.”

  A pilot from one of the corvettes responded with a dry laugh,

  > “Panicking already, buddy. That wormhole looks like it eats moons for breakfast.”

  Another pilot chimed in,

  “Why are the elite guys on the destroyer just... staring at us? Are they even real?”

  Erie muted the comms with a sigh. “We should’ve given them instruction manuals.”

  Vermond waved him off, “They’re fine.”

  The seven small crafts locked into the destroyer’s docking bay with a series of clicks and gentle tremors. The elite undead guarded the bay, standing perfectly still. The pilots remained strapped to their seats, exchanging nervous glances with each other—and not a single one dared to ask why those armored figures didn’t breathe.

  Vermond stared at the illegal Federation map, then placed the triangle crystal beside it once more.

  The glowing lines shifted, then marked the wormhole with a question mark—but it was the only marked path forward.

  “Everyone, brace yourselves,” Vermond said, calm as a whisper.

  With that, the spacecrafts docked inside the the ship, the destroyer entered the wormhole. The corvettes followed, cloaked and sleek. Inside the wormhole, the universe stretched and warped—colors bled like oil in water, and stars flickered like dying candles.

  Then—silence.

  When they emerged, everything was still. Cold.

  Vermond’s eyes adjusted first. He glanced at the map.

  Nothing.

  No borders. No empires. No outlaw territories. Just a small blinking dot on the screen. The universe outside looked unfamiliar. Alien. Untouched.

  Then—the orb began to glow.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  His pupils shimmered, and the number in his eyes flashed: 68.

  A voice echoed in his mind. Not Erie’s. Not his own. It was her.

  Kiana.

  > “Brother…"

  > "You’ve come far. But further still awaits."

  > "Become stronger."

  > "Consume what’s left in there."

  > "Get everything.”

  Her voice faded like mist on glass.

  Vermond lowered his head. The silence was heavy. Erie looked over, raising an eyebrow.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Vermond gave a crooked smile. “She’s still guiding me.”

  Erie blinked. “She—wait. Your sister?”

  Vermond didn’t reply. He turned his gaze to the stars again.

  There was still more to take.

  More to consume.

  More to become.

  Vermond let the tension in his shoulders melt. He moved to the corner of the bridge and loaded rations and water containers into the salvager drone’s compartment. Not just for him and Erie—for the others too.

  The drone zipped out from the destroyer’s bay and floated into the adjacent corvettes. Its tractor beam extended, offering water packs and sealed food trays to the crews still sitting in their pilot seats.

  “Whoa… actual food?” one of them said, grabbing it like a sacred artifact.

  “And water, too? You guys are loaded.”

  The pilots unstrapped, relaxing a little, but still wary of the five silent elite undead who stood at attention nearby. Their black gear reflected dim lights like polished void, their presence intimidating and unreadable.

  Still, when one of them reached over—calmly and methodically—to plug in an energy crystal to a spacecraft’s recharge port, one of the pilots muttered under his breath:

  “Creepy, but efficient.”

  The soft hum of energy transfer pulsed in the hangar.

  Inside the corvettes, laughter rose for the first time in hours. They shared warm food, leaned back, and let themselves breathe. Even the claustrophobic tension of following Vermond through that wormhole faded for a moment.

  Erie sat beside Vermond on the observation deck, sipping water while kicking his boots up.

  “Hard to believe,” he said, watching the unfamiliar stars drift beyond the window. “We’re literally nowhere. And yet… I feel safer than in Federation territory.”

  Vermond didn’t respond at first. He just watched the stars, then finally said, “It’s the silence. It gives us time to think.”

  He reached up, gently touching the side of his eye. The number 68 was still glowing faintly. Kiana’s words echoed in him like a pulse, a warning and a promise.

  But this moment—they’d earned it.

  No alarms.

  No battles.

  Just a quiet breath in the void.

  As the soft hum of the destroyer's core thrummed like a distant heartbeat, Vermond sat quietly at the edge of the control deck. Erie had dozed off in his chair, arms crossed, muttering nonsense in his sleep about “cooler suits than the undead.”

  Vermond wasn't listening to him though.

  He was listening inward.

  His fingers flexed against the cold alloy of the console, his reflection faint in the glass panel before him. The number 68 in his eyes pulsed softly—no longer a curse, but a mark. A symbol.

  He could command undead. He could feel the connection—like threads between minds and bodies and souls. His will flowed into them like water into vessels.

  But…

  Was that all he could do?

  His hands trembled slightly. A static-like buzz tickled at the edge of his thoughts.

  What am I really?

  Is this what Kiana meant by everything left in there?

  He glanced down at his hand—and it flickered. A subtle distortion, like a heat shimmer, rippling around his palm. Not necrotic. Not undead. Something... different.

  He focused.

  And then his hand stopped shimmering—and instead, briefly turned transparent, like a ghost’s, before stabilizing.

  “What—was that?”

  He pulled his hand back quickly, shaking it, like he could dismiss it. But it had happened.

  Not a hallucination.

  Not a trick.

  There was something else. Buried deep. Sleeping. Waiting.

  A pulse of warmth echoed from the triangular orb inside the destroyer. It glowed faintly even now, buried in its chamber. As if it knew. As if it had always known.

  And for the first time, Vermond felt something in himself that was not a command.

  But a call.

  A whisper from the shadows of his power.

  “You were never just a necromancer.”

  The eerie silence of the void stretched beyond the black glass of the destroyer’s bridge. Stars blinked quietly, scattered like dust across a dark floor. The wormhole behind them had closed, leaving the fleet adrift in an unmarked space—no empires, no borders, just the unknown.

  Inside, the lights had dimmed to a soft blue. A false peace.

  Vermond sat alone in the command seat, legs folded, elbows resting on his knees. His fingers traced circles along the edge of the chair's armrest. The salvager drone had just finished its rounds—distributing water, ration packs, and recycled thermal flasks to those resting in the Corvettes and smallcraft.

  The elite undead stood at their posts, motionless, but alert. Their black tactical gear gave them a look of professional soldiers, not the reanimated they truly were.

  Vermond glanced at them—at their posture, their readiness.

  I can command them with ease… even sense their thoughts, simple as they are.

  But as he stared, something tugged deeper in his mind.

  A faint pulse, like a heartbeat not his own. A vibration—just at the edge of perception.

  He closed his eyes.

  For a moment, there was only silence.

  Then…

  A ripple.

  Like a memory that wasn’t his.

  Like power not yet summoned.

  His breath slowed. He reached inward. His mind drifted toward that pulsing core, deeper than his connection to the undead.

  What else is buried in me…?

  He saw flashes—an outline of a form not of bone or soul, but energy. Something ancient. Something waiting.

  But before he could focus more—

  "—ugh, did we stop at a spa or what?"

  Erie’s voice shattered the quiet like a dropped plate. Vermond blinked his eyes open, pulse returning to normal as he leaned back, covering the tension with a smirk.

  "You're awake."

  Erie sat up, hair a mess, rubbing his eyes with a scowl. “Barely. What happened? I dreamt I was fighting a sandwich that insulted your fashion sense.”

  Vermond chuckled under his breath. “Maybe your dreams are trying to help.”

  "Yeah? Maybe my dreams should mind their business," Erie grunted, grabbing a ration pack from the console. "What’s next?"

  Vermond stared at him for a moment.

  And didn’t answer.

  Not yet.

  He needed to understand more.

  But first... they had to move.

  The silence didn’t last.

  It never did.

  As Erie munched on his ration bar—loudly—Vermond stood at the edge of the bridge, gazing out through the transparent hull window. The stars no longer looked like stars. They shimmered oddly here, almost bending in place. The air around the destroyer felt thicker, even though space was vacuum. Like the ship was gliding through something unseen.

  He glanced down.

  The illegal Federation map still floated in a holo-frame beside him, glitching with static at its edges. No territories, no trade lines. Just that single dot pulsing softly on the grid. The triangle crystal now hovered above it, locked in place—but vibrating faintly, like a warning.

  “Alright,” Erie said, stretching. “Break time’s over. I assume your glowing death-rock still wants us to head into the cursed abyss?”

  Vermond nodded once. “Yes. And this place… isn’t mapped. At all.”

  “So… a surprise vacation then,” Erie muttered, buckling into his seat.

  Outside, the small spacecraft undocked one by one, pilots saluting quietly over comms. The two Corvettes followed in formation, cloaked, silent, gliding like wolves in deep shadow. The undead destroyer reactivated its new cruiser-class shielding system, plates humming with layered energy as the cloaking field shimmered into invisibility.

  Vermond closed his eyes.

  And thought.

  Like a switch in his mind, the engines responded. The undead destroyer stirred—not piloted, not steered, but willed. It moved like a ghost, powered by his intent. The undead crew below deck stood ready, eyes blank behind full helmets, fingers resting calmly over control panels they didn’t need to touch.

  “Fleet,” Vermond said calmly into the comms, “stay close.”

  A dozen voices chirped back, all slightly too eager:

  “Roger that, boss!” “Following, sir!” “Hope there’s food wherever we’re going!” “Are we still not allowed to ask about the silent guys in armor? Just checking.”

  Erie rolled his eyes. “Remind me again why we gave a bunch of underpaid pilots access to comms?”

  “Entertainment,” Vermond replied dryly, adjusting the crystal’s heading on the holo-map.

  Then it happened.

  The map’s glowing dot began to split—a faint trail spreading outward, like ink drifting in water. The crystal followed the motion, locking on, shifting course toward a cluster of shadows that hadn’t been there before.

  Vermond narrowed his eyes. "It’s changing."

  “What’s changing?” Erie asked, leaning in.

  “This place. It’s… alive.”

  Outside, something stirred. Space rippled—faint and almost impossible to catch. But it was there. Not a ship. Not a structure.

  A presence.

  And for just a moment, the triangle crystal let out a sharp, low-frequency ping. So subtle that only the elite undead shifted slightly at their stations—as if they understood something had just noticed them.

  Vermond didn’t speak.

  He just pointed forward, and the fleet followed.

  Deeper into the uncharted dark.

  For a moment, all was calm.

  Too calm.

  Vermond leaned over the holo-map as Erie grumbled about ration crumbs in his seat. The cloaked fleet cut through the void like shadows slipping through water—silent, cold, unseen.

  Then—

  BEEP.

  It was sharp. Mechanical. Not from the map.

  Erie blinked. “What was that?”

  A second BEEP. This time deeper—coming from the destroyer’s long-range scanner. Vermond turned his head.

  UNREGISTERED TRANSMISSION DETECTED.

  The words flickered onto the screen in red. Vermond walked to the console, fingers tapping to expand the signal. It wasn’t just garbled static. It was... patterned.

  A signal. A voice.

  “…o...ne…is…he...re…...”

  The destroyer shook.

  Just a small tremor.

  But the undead responded immediately—every elite undead snapping their heads toward the bridge, eyes behind their helmets glowing faintly. The rest of the undead paused in place, motionless, as if listening.

  Outside, something blinked into existence.

  An object.

  Spinning slowly in the void.

  It hadn’t been there a second ago.

  A floating capsule. Rusted. Burnt. Unknown markings long melted. And yet it broadcasted the signal—on every open channel now.

  “…don’t come…back...”

  Vermond’s eyes narrowed. His body tensed—but not in fear. Something stirred inside him.

  Then—

  BANG!

  The capsule exploded—not from a weapon, but from within. Something had burst out. Metal splinters flung into space as a black, wormlike trail of smoke and bone spiraled outward, curling, slithering like it had no true form.

  A sound followed.

  Not from speakers.

  From inside their heads.

  A whisper. A laugh. A welcome.

  Erie clutched his head. “What the hell was that?!”

  Vermond said nothing.

  He turned toward the window—his eyes flickering.

  68.

  And in the reflection of the glass, behind him—a shadow with a crown of bone lingered, smiling with hollow eyes… and then vanished.

  The shadow had vanished from the glass.

  But its presence remained—inside their minds.

  The pilots in the docked crafts began murmuring. One grabbed his seat belt, shaking. Another stared at his own hands like they didn’t belong to him. Even the elite undead paused—not from confusion, but recognition.

  "Something ancient," Vermond muttered, feeling a chill crawl up his spine.

  "Something... wrong."

  Then it hit them.

  Everyone.

  The undead. The living. Even the ship’s systems paused for a fraction of a second.

  A black pulse surged through the fleet.

  And then—

  They saw.

  Their bodies froze, yet their minds were pulled—violently—into a memory not their own.

  The skies were red.

  The stars burned like screaming wounds across the void. A fleet of twisted black vessels hovered over a dying planet, spewing violet fire and necrotic storms.

  The God of Death stood above them all.

  Towering. Cloaked in robes forged from stardust and bone. A face unseen—only a golden, flaming crown. His arms stretched toward the cosmos, and legions of undead ships bowed to his will.

  He was beauty. Horror. Power.

  And he was not alone.

  Humanity came.

  Not in peace.

  In fury.

  They launched weapons that bent time.

  Beams of anti-soul energy tore through the fabric of space. Titans of metal, infused with divine AI and voidborn warriors, surged from their wormholes.

  "PROJECT REQUIEM, LAUNCH."

  Thousands of Mech-Gods—human-made avatars towering like city-sized angels—descended.

  And the battle began.

  The skies cracked.

  The God of Death raised his hand—and from the bones of stars, summoned black serpents of death that devoured battleships whole.

  But humanity had prepared.

  They had planned for eons.

  They were afraid of death.

  And they made weapons even death feared.

  The Requiem AI Choir sang their song.

  Each note disintegrated undead armadas. They wielded light that severed souls. And though the God of Death struck them down by the thousands, they kept coming.

  “You fear dying again,” said the Requiem Choir.

  “We are here to make sure you stay dead.”

  The God of Death roared.

  Not in fear.

  In sorrow.

  The final blow was delivered not by a weapon—

  —but by betrayal.

  One of his own lieutenants, cloaked in flame and bone, turned on him—driven mad by humanity’s whispers and bribes.

  The traitor stabbed the God’s core with a crystal that shattered time.

  His crown fell.

  His body collapsed into galaxies of ash, scattered across reality.

  And all went black.

  Back in reality—

  Vermond fell to his knees, gasping. Erie staggered, blood dripping from his nose.

  The pilots were silent, staring ahead, unmoving.

  Even the destroyer’s engines hummed with unease.

  The orb at Vermond’s chest glowed bright red now. The number 68 flickered again—then steadied.

  "He was betrayed," Vermond whispered.

  "And we were made to forget."

  The wormhole behind them closed. Gone.

  And before them—only darkness.

  But in that darkness… the voice returned.

  “He was not the only one.”

  The space ahead was… wrong.

  Stars bent. Light flickered sideways. Even sound, despite the vacuum, felt distorted within the ship—a deep, constant hum, like a breath held for eternity.

  Vermond stood, eyes narrowing. Erie wiped his face with a sleeve, still shaken, but alive.

  “You felt it too?” Erie muttered, voice low.

  Vermond didn’t answer. His eyes were on the map.

  Still blank.

  Still no sign of the universe they knew.

  Except now, a single dot pulsed on the illegal map. A deep red, not like a Federation mark. It was carved into the map like it didn’t belong there. Like it had been hiding.

  And above it, a word formed in ancient code.

  “REMNANT.”

  The orb in Vermond’s chest pulsed again.

  “We’re going there,” he said, quietly.

  “Vermond…” Erie warned. “That’s not just a location.”

  He was right.

  As they moved, the space around them didn’t act like space. It felt aware. Shimmering lines, barely visible, snaked along the hull like ghostly limbs—watching, whispering. The small spacecrafts stayed docked. The elite undead stood silent, guarding.

  Then—on the horizon—

  a shape.

  Not a planet.

  Not a ship.

  Not a station.

  A ruin.

  No, more than that.

  A fractured colossus. A god-sized construct floating among shattered rings of steel and bone. Like the ribcage of a titan long dead, orbiting something unseen at its center.

  “That’s not human,” Erie muttered.

  “It’s not Federation… it’s not even necromancer-tech,” Vermond added.

  As they approached, the triangle crystal flickered faintly—and bent in midair, pointing downward into the ruin’s core.

  The remnant had called them.

  And within it—

  Buried deep—

  Something still lived.

  Not in flesh.

  Not in soul.

  But in memory.

  The massive construct loomed ahead—half-devoured by time, the other half wrapped in forgotten power. The moment Vermond gave the signal, the undead destroyer docked, its hull anchoring with an eerie silence to the ancient metallic bones of the remnant.

  The two Corvettes followed, sliding smoothly into dead hangars that once served giants. The six small spacecrafts hovered in formation before settling nearby.

  “Suit up,” Vermond ordered, already pulling the dark salvager armor over his limbs. Erie followed with a frustrated grunt, muttering about how nothing ever ends with a picnic.

  Outside, elite undeads marched in precise lines—fully geared in black, silent, and unreadable. They moved like professionals, not corpses. Their energy shields flickered briefly, then held stable. Each carried secondary energy pistols, high-precision scanners, and small utility packs. The front-mounted cams recorded every motion.

  From the ship’s prison decks and corridors, hundreds of elite undeads emerged—silent shadows flowing into the ruin. Some stayed behind to guard the docked ships, while others vanished into different sections of the vault.

  “They look… alive,” one of the Corvette crew whispered through comms, uneasy.

  “They’re focused,” Erie lied casually. “Private military types. Don’t ask questions.”

  The crew didn’t press.

  Inside the Remnant…

  The corridors were impossibly wide, made for something inhuman. The walls breathed faint pulses of energy—not quite dead, not quite alive. Symbols etched in unknown language pulsed faintly when Vermond passed, as though recognizing something inside him.

  “I don’t like this,” Erie whispered. “Feels like we’re being watched.”

  “We are,” Vermond replied.

  And he was right.

  Something deep within the Remnant was still conscious. Not awake, not moving, but… dreaming.

  And the dream noticed them.

  The triangle orb floated from Vermond’s hand, drifting deeper into the dark. He followed without a word.

  “Everyone, move slow. Weapons ready. Don’t trust what you see,” Vermond commanded through the shared comms. “Elite squads, spread. Log everything.”

  The undead nodded in silence.

  And then—

  A low vibration shook the floor beneath them.

  The orb flared.

  The map’s blank space bled a new mark.

  A symbol, older than even the Federation's oldest language.

  The seal of the God of Death.

  “Erie,” Vermond muttered.

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re inside His grave.”

  The deeper they went into the Vault, the stranger things became. Metallic thrones melted into the walls. Giant bone-like structures hung suspended in stasis fields. Echoes of dead languages whispered around them. And then… they found it.

  A chamber so vast it felt like a separate moon. Suspended in the center, like a king laid to rest, was a colossal figure wrapped in shadows and faded glory.

  “That’s… is that him?” Erie muttered, frozen.

  The elite undeads stopped, as if in reverence—or instinctual fear.

  There it was.

  The God of Death.

  His body, or what remained of it, floated silently. Armor half-broken. Cloak trailing like dried, cosmic ash. Chest caved in by what must have been the final blow of a forgotten war.

  And floating around him—artifacts.

  Jewels that glowed like stars. Broken weapons. Scrolls made from unknown metal. Rings that shimmered with fragmented time.

  Vermond blinked. Then without warning, walked up with the grace of a mall-goer on discount day.

  “That cloak looks… warm,” he mumbled.

  “What are you doing!?” Erie shouted.

  “Thinkin’ about the space station. You know how much we could save on insulation if I use this?”

  He reached forward.

  The cloak—the literal Cloak of the Death God—slid off like it was made of silk. It screamed faintly.

  He grabbed a floating crown.

  “This looks expensive.”

  A gauntlet? On it went. Boots? Into the crate. A cracked staff dripping with ancient residue?

  “Looks nice next to the coffee machine.”

  “Vermond, STOP!” Erie yelled, almost crying from laughter and panic.

  “He’s dead, Erie. You want me to just leave this stuff here for some archaeologist with a selfie stick?”

  Even the elite undead paused for a second, unsure whether to kneel… or laugh.

  Vermond then stared at a floating orb, the size of a small helmet. It spun slowly, shadows inside writhing like souls trying to scream.

  “This one feels cursed,” Vermond whispered.

  “Leave that one—” Erie warned.

  “Nah, fits the decor.”

  He grabbed it.

  All at once, a low hum spread through the Vault. The floating corpse twitched. Every elite undead instinctively raised their weapons.

  “...RUN,” Erie shouted, already turning.

  Vermond didn’t run. He strolled—hands full of god-tier loot like he was carrying groceries. The elite undead closed ranks around him.

  Behind them, the shadows began to move.

  Something ancient was waking.

  A fragment of the God’s mind—stirring from Vermond’s idiotic, glorious theft.

  The Vault trembled.

  A sound like bone grinding against reality echoed through the chamber.

  Behind Vermond, where the mighty corpse once floated, two glowing orbs of light opened—eyes.

  Erie’s voice crackled through the comms:

  “VERMOND. THE GOD IS MOVING. THE GOD IS MOVING!”

  The ancient figure stirred, rising—barefoot, bare-chested, and very bare-everything. Majestic. Terrifying.

  Absolutely not wearing a single thing.

  Vermond, still standing with arms full of god-tier artifacts, muttered,

  “…I might’ve looted a little too hard.”

  The five elite undead saluted silently, accepted the divine items, and swiftly phased back to the destroyer. The gear was already binding to them, enhancing their presence like mythic knights from beyond time.

  The God of Death blinked, slowly.

  “Where… is my power?” he said, his voice echoing like planets collapsing.

  He looked down. Then blinked again.

  “Where is… my cloak?”

  Vermond coughed politely.

  “Laundry day.”

  The god ignored it. His face was a ruin of wisdom and madness, but his eyes locked onto Vermond’s chest—glowing faintly under his shirt.

  He stepped forward.

  “You. You are the one…”

  The chamber dimmed. Time seemed to pause.

  “A fragment of me… already rests within you. I remember now. My final breath was not an ending. It was a passing.”

  Vermond didn't move. He didn’t even blink.

  The God of Death raised his hand, eyes now glowing with that terrible, ancient brilliance.

  “You walk among the dead, boy. But you do not yet understand what that means.”

  With a gentle touch, the god pressed two fingers against Vermond’s chest.

  The world exploded in green light.

  Symbols. Screams. Stars dying. Souls swirling.

  Vermond’s chest glowed as if a sun lived beneath his skin. His knees buckled.

  “This… is my final gift,” said the god. “My remnants, my will, my command. Go forth… and consume what remains.”

  The glow faded. The god staggered. His form flickered—dissolving, like dust catching sunlight.

  “Oh, also,” the God of Death added faintly, as his body vanished,

  “give me back my boots someday…”

  Then he was gone.

  The Vault fell silent once more.

  Vermond’s eyes snapped open. They now glowed with dark emerald green, the number 68 burning in them like branded fate.

  Erie’s voice returned on comms:

  “Uh, Vermond? Are you okay? You’re glowing

  like a cursed emerald disco ball…”

  Vermond cracked his neck.

  “We’re going deeper.”

  The light from the vanished god hadn’t yet faded from their eyes when the comms began lighting up.

  “This is Corvette One,” a voice echoed, slightly nervous. “Uh… Captain? You might want to see this.”

  “Fighter Three reporting—same here. There’s something massive in the debris fields. Actually… a lot of somethings.”

  The dark fragments of the Vault stretched for kilometers—crumbling corridors, torn statues, shattered halls that once held titanic death rituals. But in the distance, within the hollow husk of a shattered cathedral-like chamber…

  They saw them.

  Dark energy crystals. Dozens.

  Tall as shuttlecraft. Sharp as judgment. Each one pulsing with a heart-like rhythm, as if whispering secrets to the void.

  Erie let out a low whistle through the open comms.

  “I’ve seen energy cores, plasma converters, and even antimatter mines—but what are those things? They’re not even on the illegal market…”

  Vermond stood at the edge of the docking bay, staring out through the viewports. His emerald eyes gleamed.

  “Those are… remnants. Unrefined souls, maybe. Death’s harvest.”

  He pointed.

  “We’re taking them.”

  The salvager drone, sturdy and scuffed, beeped twice and launched into action. The triangular tractor beam flickered to life—then widened, adapted, bent light like a claw of invisible gravity.

  One by one, the giant dark energy crystals were pulled from their ancient resting places.

  Whirrrr—CRACK—whirrrrrrrrr—THUD

  The destroyer’s cargo bays groaned, filling with forbidden things no living Federation scientist had even dreamed of.

  Meanwhile, in the comms:

  “Fighter Six here… are we sure these aren’t cursed or something? My radar’s having feelings, Captain.”

  “Fighter Two to Corvette One… I swear one of the crystals looked at me.”

  “Corvette Two to All: Shut up and keep moving. Unless you want a glowing shard wedged in your bunk.”

  Erie snorted.

  “This is the weirdest day I’ve had in months… and that includes the time I woke up surrounded by skeletons.”

  The last few crystals were pulled aboard, and silence returned to the drifting grave of a station.

  Vermond’s thoughts drifted again—not to the crystals, but to something deeper. Hidden.

  Something still waiting beyond the walls of this place. Something older than even the God of Death.

  The destroyer rumbled gently as its engines warmed up.

  “Let’s move,” he said quietly,

  “before whatever owned those crystals decides to check its inventory.”

  The silence of the derelict tomb lingered behind them, a graveyard of dead gods and forbidden memories. Vermond and Erie had returned to the undead destroyer, drifting quietly above the station like a shadow-wrapped titan. The black hull gleamed faintly, streaked with salvaged metal from a hundred forgotten ships, cloaked and unseen in the void.

  Inside, the halls echoed with undead footsteps—Vermond's loyal, hollow-eyed elite marching through the ruins in full exploration formation. Cameras flickered from their helms, live feeds streaming back to the bridge, where Vermond sat beside Erie, eyes half-lidded, fingers resting calmly on the control panel.

  "Let them go deeper," Vermond muttered, his voice low, almost reverent.

  The undead pushed through the vault corridors, past collapsed altars, broken monoliths, and shattered murals of the God of Death's rise and ruin. The feed buzzed with static as one of them—Unit 07—descended into a hollow beneath the shattered throne.

  There, nestled in the very tomb of the god, something pulsed.

  Beneath layers of blackened stone, a glow emerged. Dim at first, but growing. It wasn’t bright like plasma or radiant like purified energy.

  It was dark.

  Darker than voidspace.

  Darker than anything Vermond had ever seen.

  Unit 07 reached out. The camera focused.

  A sword.

  Its blade shimmered with a malevolent depth, a black so deep it twisted the light around it. The edges glinted with an obsidian gleam, the hilt bone-carved and etched with runes long erased from time. It looked ancient and impossibly intact—almost breathing.

  “That… that’s not a weapon,” Erie whispered. “That’s a Reaper.”

  Vermond watched in silence, his emerald eyes catching the slow pulse of power in the blade. “Bring it aboard,” he said, voice calm but charged.

  Back aboard the destroyer, Vermond had taken the time to arrange the items they stole—no, inherited—from the god himself.

  On a broad table in the core chamber, they lay gleaming under cold white lights:

  A ring, obsidian and etched with a moving sigil that never stayed still.

  A cloak, flowing and ragged, whispering with voices that shouldn’t exist.

  A pair of boots, silent as shadows, their soles somehow not touching the ground.

  A belt, jagged with bone clasps, pulsing with life force like a second heartbeat.

  And the crown—jagged, regal, almost mocking in its elegance.

  But it wasn’t just a crown.

  Tucked between the wicked points of the crown, nestled in the center like it had always been there—

  A necklace.

  A small one. Silver, with a black shard embedded like a frozen tear.

  And it pulsed.

  Vermond leaned closer, brushing dust from it. As his fingers touched the crown, the necklace shimmered and sent a subtle pulse through the table. The sword's dark glow, still sheathed beside it, flickered in recognition.

  Erie raised an eyebrow. “You sure none of that is cursed?”

  Vermond chuckled softly. “Everything worth power usually is.”

  The destroyer remained silent. Watching. Waiting.

  The Reaper was aboard.

  And the pieces of a dead god’s legacy now sat in the hands of something far more unpredictable.

  Vermond.

  The ancient structure floated silent in the dark, orbiting a ghost of a planet long devoured by time. The shattered husk of the God of Death’s ship, its hull still intact in defiance of ages, loomed like a monolith of forgotten wars. The Reaper Sword was aboard, the god-tier artifacts secured… but Vermond’s instincts stirred again.

  He stood at the command bridge of the undead destroyer, cloaked in the dim glow of old monitors and flickering necro-tech lights. His emerald eyes burned faintly, a flicker of 68 visible as he surveyed the drifting mass of cracked, sacred alloy.

  His voice echoed through the comms.

  “Time to salvage again.”

  The undead moved instantly, streaming from the destroyer like shadows in a perfect formation. The salvager drone zipped ahead, tractor beam humming to life, already pulling fractured hull panels into the cargo bay. The structure groaned in protest—but it was nothing compared to the hunger Vermond now carried.

  “Let’s strip this godship clean,” he muttered.

  The two Corvettes chimed in through the comms, a mix of static and awkward humor:

  “Uh, Command? You sure this place ain’t cursed?” “Too late. We already stole the god’s shoes.” “Just hand me the wrench, I ain’t touching that glowing stuff.”

  Laughter followed across the lines, even as the salvager crews got to work. The humans aboard the Corvettes had come to respect—if not fully understand—Vermond’s strange calm and his growing legend. With tools and tech in hand, they floated over in their suits, assisting the undead in cutting, stripping, and transporting the god-tier alloy.

  Panel by panel, chunk by glowing chunk, the undead destroyer began to transform.

  Gone was the patchwork plating of dead frigates and derelict salvage. Now, the front hull gleamed with a dark regal finish, marked by runes that pulsed faintly with death energy. The old bones of the godship were reforged into Vermond’s vessel—its very presence now whispering stories of something ancient, unknowable, and undead.

  Erie leaned by the side of the observation deck, watching it unfold.

  “You’re giving this ship a soul it never had,” he muttered, half to himself.

  Vermond smiled faintly without turning. “No. I’m giving it a past.”

  The Reaper Sword remained sheathed in the central chamber, pulsing once as though it heard. The god-tier crown on the table shimmered again, just barely.

  The undead destroyer was being reborn—its shape no longer that of a salvager’s dream, but a vessel feared even by the void itself.

  The salvage should’ve ended. The god-tier hull was secured. The Reaper Sword slept inside the destroyer. The crown and necklace hummed faintly from the armory’s altar. Erie was already preparing the navigation for their return trip… but Vermond wasn’t ready.

  Something inside him tugged—like a pulse from the void. A knowing.

  He turned from the console and whispered to himself, “One more pass…”

  Time passed in the silence of the titan’s grave. The massive corpse of the God of Death’s vessel hung still. The undead roamed tirelessly, stripping its remains. But just when they believed everything had been claimed, one of the Corvettes crackled through the comms.

  “Uh, Vermond? You might wanna see this…”

  Floating in the deepest docking bay of the titan ship… a vessel lay hidden.

  A frigate, not large—sleek, sharp, and completely unlike anything they'd seen. Its surface shimmered like onyx dipped in starlight. God-tier wasn’t just a title now—it was reality. Untouched. Undisturbed. A final relic.

  Vermond’s eyes snapped open, the emerald green flaring with power. “Board it. Now. Corvette team, fighters, get on that ship. We’re taking it with us. We leave after that.”

  There was no room for argument. The tone in his voice was final, commanding—tinged with something ancient.

  The crew complied. The elite undead moved first, followed by the Corvette squads and fighter pilots in formation. The god-tier frigate’s airlock opened easily, as if expecting them. Inside, it was pristine. No dust. No rot. No decay.

  Everything glowed faintly in a soft, ominous light. The walls pulsed with strange veins of energy, smooth as obsidian and warm like breath. Controls were strange, written in no known language, yet instinctively understandable.

  “It’s like the ship’s… alive,” one pilot muttered.

  Still, they managed to undock the frigate and set course toward the destroyer.

  From deep within the ruined titan ship, the God of Death stirred one last time. No longer moving, but watching. Feeling.

  He smiled faintly, a whisper escaping from his half-formed lips as space rippled around him:

  “Grow stronger, young god…”

  Vermond’s expression flickered for a second. He thought he heard something… but the voice was already gone.

  He turned back toward the screens, watching the god-tier frigate align beside the destroyer.

  Whatever it was… whatever that ship held… it was now part of them.

  The fleet aligned in silence, the god-tier frigate at its heart like a black arrowhead aimed at the unknown. Behind them, the titan’s remains faded into the distance, swallowed by the darkness of space.

  And before them… it opened again.

  The Wormhole.

  The spiraling anomaly churned, wild and unstable, yet its pull was undeniable. The same one that brought them beyond maps, beyond death, and into forgotten power. It surged like a pulse—calling them home… or warning them.

  Vermond didn’t flinch.

  He sat in the command seat aboard the destroyer, now reinforced with the bones of a god, the helm glowing faintly under his touch. The Reaper Sword hummed nearby, stored but never fully silent. The god-tier items rested in containment, radiating quiet menace.

  “All ships, prepare for entry,” he said calmly over the comms.

  The frigate’s controls shimmered in response, understanding. The Corvettes and fighters, now emptied, floated like discarded shells. All of the crews—every single soul—now resided within the god-tier frigate and the undead destroyer.

  As the wormhole drew closer, Vermond turned slightly to Erie, who stood watching beside him, arms crossed, wary but silent.

  “You feel that?” Vermond asked.

  “Like a gate about to shut,” Erie muttered.

  “Then let’s not be late.”

  The wormhole swallowed them.

  Again came that violent light-speed compression, the soul-tearing hum, the way reality folded like paper. For a moment, no stars—no galaxies. Just endless, blinding distortion.

  And then—calm.

  Vermond exhaled slowly and looked at the illegal Federation map. This time, the projection flickered… then flared to life.

  The empires returned.

  Graeim. Patreola. The Outlaw sectors. Stars. Trade lanes. Fleet routes. The Federation’s sprawl.

  Everything.

  The map pulsed, as if syncing with the triangle crystal and Vermond’s presence. They were back.

  But different now.

  “They’ll never understand what’s returned,” Erie said quietly.

  Vermond didn’t respond. He just stared at the glowing map… then at the frigate floating outside.

  A god-tier ship… a silent fleet… and powers that humanity once destroyed, now burning anew inside him.

  He turned, eyes still glowing emerald, the number 68 pulsing faintly in his gaze.

  “Let’s see where this power leads us.”