In the far-future of Kingdom 39, the Slavic Continuum stands as a bulwark of order in a galaxy where memory is reality. Admiral Sineus is the architect of that order, a man whose will is law and whose authority is absolute. But his entire legacy is built on a single, monumental lie: the erasure of a heroic fleet to prevent a civil war. Now, the past he buried is clawing its way back. In the Zarya System, a patrol is annihilated by ghost ships—the very fleet Sineus unmade from existence. This new enemy, the Ashen Choir, is no mere echo. Intangible and invisible to sensors, their attacks strike not at hulls, but at the memories of Sineus’s crews, turning loyalty into terror. As ships and lives are lost, Sineus finds his own psionic ability to sever memory failing, the psychic feedback threatening his command. His ruthless rival, Admiral Kurov, exploits the chaos, seeking to strip him of his command. Forced into an uneasy alliance with a principled archivist who believes erasure is a sin, Sineus must find a new way to fight. He secures a high-risk deal with the isolationist Brotherhood of the Mountains for a technology that can make the ghosts solid, but it only reveals a more terrible truth: the enemy is not a monster, but the embodiment of the very heroes he sacrificed. With the ghost fleet preparing to unmake an entire world, Sineus faces an impossible choice. He can reveal the truth of his actions to the galaxy, restoring the lost fleet's memory to weaken them but sacrificing his status and shattering the Continuum's morale. Or, he can use a forbidden Precursor artifact to erase the very concept of heroism from the sector, saving billions but gutting the soul of his civilization. The perfect Gzhel Weave of order demands a price. To restore order, a painful truth must be remembered. But what happens when the only man who can bear that truth becomes a living monument to a secret that could tear the universe apart?
34 chapters
In the far-future of Kingdom 39, the Slavic Continuum stands as a bulwark of order in a galaxy where memory is reality. Admiral Sineus is the architect of that order, a man whose will is law and whose authority is absolute. But his entire legacy is built on a single, monumental lie: the erasure of a heroic fleet to prevent a civil war. Now, the past he buried is clawing its way back. In the Zarya System, a patrol is annihilated by ghost ships—the very fleet Sineus unmade from existence. This new enemy, the Ashen Choir, is no mere echo. Intangible and invisible to sensors, their attacks strike not at hulls, but at the memories of Sineus’s crews, turning loyalty into terror. As ships and lives are lost, Sineus finds his own psionic ability to sever memory failing, the psychic feedback threatening his command. His ruthless rival, Admiral Kurov, exploits the chaos, seeking to strip him of his command. Forced into an uneasy alliance with a principled archivist who believes erasure is a sin, Sineus must find a new way to fight. He secures a high-risk deal with the isolationist Brotherhood of the Mountains for a technology that can make the ghosts solid, but it only reveals a more terrible truth: the enemy is not a monster, but the embodiment of the very heroes he sacrificed. With the ghost fleet preparing to unmake an entire world, Sineus faces an impossible choice. He can reveal the truth of his actions to the galaxy, restoring the lost fleet's memory to weaken them but sacrificing his status and shattering the Continuum's morale. Or, he can use a forbidden Precursor artifact to erase the very concept of heroism from the sector, saving billions but gutting the soul of his civilization. The perfect Gzhel Weave of order demands a price. To restore order, a painful truth must be remembered. But what happens when the only man who can bear that truth becomes a living monument to a secret that could tear the universe apart?
World
