He took a step. The universe dissolved into a scream of light. It was not heat that struck him, but memory. A hundred thousand betrayals, a hundred thousand moments of disbelief, all focused into a single, unbearable point of psychic force. The intricate Gzhel Weave of the Choir’s grief surrounded him, its cobalt lines twisted into expressions of agony, its white spaces filled with the cold of the void. He felt the final, shuddering moments of a thousand loyal sailors as their reality was unmade by his own hand, a century ago. This was not a battle. It was a penance.
He took another step, pushing through the incandescent wall. The price of this passage was to endure their collective death, to feel every severed memory as if it were his own. The Choir’s voice was not a sound but a torrent of pure, weaponized truth flooding his mind. Butcher. Traitor. You made us. He saw his own face, younger and colder, on a thousand dying viewscreens, giving the order that had damned them all to this half-life of pain. He did not flinch from the accusation. He accepted it. His every forward step was an act of confession.
The psychic pressure intensified, threatening to crush his consciousness into dust. He was a single point of will against an ocean of righteous grief. The elegant patterns of the Choir’s light-form tightened around him, trying to absorb him, to make him another thread in their tapestry of sorrow. He focused on the memory of Ferapont Orlov’s sacrifice, on the clean, absolute finality of his mentor’s choice. That was a debt. This was the payment.
He broke through. The screaming lattice of light was behind him, the psychic noise fading to a dull roar. He stood on the final stretch of the causeway, a kilometer of dark metal leading to the Loom’s core. He was staggering, his uniform singed by energies that had no physical properties, his mind a raw, open wound. But he was unbroken.
— Admiral! — Ksenia’s voice, thin and strained, cut through the residual chaos from the causeway. His crew was still on their knees, recovering from the psychic blast. She alone stood, her hand gripping the railing, her eyes fixed on him.
He did not turn. He could not afford to. He straightened his back, the motion a monumental act of will, and continued his solitary walk toward the heart of the Chronos Loom. The machine’s thrumming hum grew deeper, a questioning tone that vibrated in his bones. It was aware of him, of the paradox he represented. He was the creator and the would-be unmaker of the ghost at its gate.
He reached the core nexus. It was a simple, unadorned console of the same non-reflective metal as the causeway, floating silently above the singularity of pure white light. The air here was cold and smelled of ozone and immense, contained power. He felt the ancient, alien consciousness of the Loom watching him, waiting for his intent. It was not a tool to be commanded, but a power to be petitioned.
He placed his bare hands upon the console’s surface. It was cold as a tombstone. He closed his eyes, shutting out the light, the chasm, the watching eyes of his crew. He gathered the shattered remnants of his will, the memory of his sin, the conviction of his new purpose. He did not ask for erasure. He did not ask for preservation. He asked for synthesis.
— Integrate, — he commanded, his voice not a sound but a psionically-charged command projected directly into the mind of the machine.
The Chronos Loom answered. The white light of the singularity flared, becoming absolute, washing out all detail in the vast chamber. The deep hum rose in pitch and volume, a sound that was not heard but felt, a vibration that threatened to tear the very atoms of the moon apart. The Gzhel Weave of the Ashen Choir, the wall of screaming grief, dissolved. It did not explode or fade. It unraveled.
A hundred thousand threads of incandescent light, the disembodied souls of the Verniy Fleet, pulled free from the tapestry of their shared agony. They flowed from the space where the wall had been, not scattering into the void, but forming a single, brilliant river of light that surged toward Sineus. It was a torrent of ghosts, a flood of memory, and it poured directly into him.
He felt the mind of Captain Aris Thorne of the cruiser Verniy, his final, defiant oath of loyalty sworn to Sineus’s own face on a viewscreen. He felt the terror of Ensign Katya Petrova on the frigate Smeliy as her memory of her mother’s face dissolved into grey static. He felt the cold resolve of the gunnery chief on the Gordiy, who kept firing even as his ship ceased to exist around him. He felt their lives, their deaths, their century of screaming confusion in the dark. He was no longer just Valeriy Sineus. He was the butcher and the blade, the monument and the tomb. The paradox was complete, contained within the vessel of his own consciousness.
Then, silence. The river of light was gone. The psychic scream that had filled the chamber was gone. The wall of grieving light was gone. The Ashen Choir, the ghost fleet born of a forgotten sin, had been given a final, permanent home. The threat was neutralized. The system was saved. On the causeway, Ksenia and the others felt the crushing psychic pressure vanish as if it had never been. They saw their admiral standing alone at the core of the great machine, his head bowed.
The hum of the Chronos Loom returned to its steady, deep tone. The white light at its core softened to a gentle, quiet glow.
He turned, and his crew saw that the war was over but the ghosts were now inside.
