The shuttle docked with a chime that was not metal on metal, but a harmonic resonance that vibrated through the deck plates. Sineus stepped out, not into a sterile airlock, but into a vast, glowing cavern. They were inside the Crystalline Synod, a neutral station grown over millennia from a single, colossal living crystal. Its walls were not built but faceted, each surface a perfect plane that pulsed with a soft, internal light. The air was cool and carried the clean scent of ozone mixed with a faint, mineral tang, the exhalation of the station itself. Ksenia Voronova, the archivist assigned as his shadow, walked a half-step behind him, her simple grey robes a stark contrast to the shimmering environment.
Their escort, a silent automaton of polished chrome and jade from the Celestial Mandate, led them through corridors that were not hallways but geometric voids within the crystal’s heart. Every contract, every treaty sworn within these walls, was mnemonically imprinted into the station’s lattice, becoming a tangible, unbreakable part of its existence. The Synod was not just a witness to agreements; it was the memory of them. This was the only place Stoyan Forgehand would meet.
They emerged into the Grand Reception Chamber, a cavern so immense its ceiling was lost in a haze of self-generated light. Here, the Rite of Weightless Counsel was in progress. Dozens of delegates from the great powers drifted in a controlled microgravity field, their bodies suspended in the silent ballet of galactic politics. Holographic banners shimmered in the open space, displaying the sigils of their respective civilizations. Sineus saw the golden sun of the Caliphate and the balanced hexagrams of the Mandate. His gaze lingered on the Continuum’s own banner: a brilliant, flowing pattern of the Gzhel Weave, its cobalt blue and pure white lines projecting an image of flawless order.
A Caliphate navigator, his eyes the solid blue of a man who has stared too long into the void between Song-Paths, drifted past. His robes of sand-colored silk left a trail of phantom spice in the air.
Sineus knew this was not a party; it was a battlefield. Every glance was a probe, every word a potential weapon. His fleet was shattered, his authority questioned, his homeworld bleeding reality. Yet here, he had to project absolute strength. To show weakness was to invite predators. The cost of this deception was a constant, grinding pressure on his will, a choice to actively forget the truth of his broken ships and dead sailors for the sake of strategic survival.
He spotted Chancellor Xian Tian, the head of the Celestial Mandate, a still point of serene calculation in the floating chaos. The Chancellor gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod. The support in the Synod had come at a price, a debt now owed to a power that forgot nothing and forgave nothing. A lesser Boyar from a subservient Continuum house floated toward him, a crystal flute of shimmering liquid in his hand.
— Admiral Sineus, — the Boyar said, his voice smooth and practiced. — An honor. We hear you bring order to the Zarya System with admirable speed. To the resilience of the Continuum.
Sineus took an offered flute. The liquid was cold, tasting of minerals and starlight.
— The Continuum’s resilience is the sum of its parts, Boyar. We all serve the integrity of the whole. To the Pravda.
He drank. It was a lie of omission, a carefully constructed narrative of success. A necessary act of forgetting. As the Boyar smiled, Ksenia, standing at Sineus’s shoulder, leaned forward. Her voice was a whisper meant only for him.
— His subtext is fear.
The word was not an emotion; it was data. She had read the mnemonic undercurrent of the Boyar’s greeting, the psychic tremor of a man terrified of the instability on the frontier, hidden beneath his polished words. Sineus’s expression did not change, but the information was logged. The lie was confirmed. As if in response to the dissonance, the holographic Gzhel Weave of the Continuum’s banner wavered for a fraction of a second, a single thread of blue desaturating to a dead, ugly grey before the projector corrected the flaw. No one else seemed to notice.
Then, the atmosphere in the chamber shifted. A new figure entered, not from the grand archway but from a heavy-set service portal. He did not float. He stood on a solid, brutalist grav-platform of dark iron that moved with the unyielding purpose of a glacier. It was Stoyan Forgehand. He wore no silks or formal robes, only a heavy leather apron over a simple tunic, his arms thick with muscle. He ignored the drifting delegates, his eyes scanning the chamber with the impatience of a craftsman looking for a specific tool.
His gaze found Sineus. He stopped his platform across the cavern. He gave a single, sharp nod. It was not a greeting. It was a summons.
The floating delegates continued their silent, weightless dance, oblivious. The low hum of the crystal filled the air.
