NO STARS

At first, Ren'ō counted his breaths.

One. Two. Three.

The numbers gave shape to the dark. They proved sequence still existed. Sequence meant time. Time meant there might be an end.

At ten thousand breaths, he stopped needing air.

His lungs continued moving out of habit. The Void offered nothing to inhale, yet the Divine Remnant refused to let his body die. Hunger arrived and never completed itself. Thirst burned through him until pain became background noise. Sleep came in violent fragments, each dream ending with La-Sol 7 breaking beneath his hands.

He tried to move.

There was no direction.

He shouted Laana's name. The sound did not leave his mouth. He screamed at the War God, at the Remnant, at the empty place where the universe should have been.

Nothing answered.

Ren'ō opened the pendant he had carried from the laboratory. Its outer casing was cracked, but the core still held Laana's final recording.

He activated it.

Static touched his mind.

You were right. Power does not decide what you become. Choice does.

The message ended.

He played it again.

And again.

By the time he had repeated it a million times, he could hear imperfections that may not have existed: a breath before his name, a tremor on the word choice, the faint collapse of the laboratory behind her.

He began speaking to the recording.

"You could have picked a less demanding final lesson."

Static.

"I am considering ignoring it."

Static.

"You would hate this place. No coffee. Terrible lighting."

Static.

The first century passed without announcing itself.

Ren'ō knew only because the military implant in his skull continued counting, though its digits had lost practical meaning. One hundred years. Three hundred. Eight hundred.

His body did not age.

His mind did.

He replayed every battle he had ever fought. Practiced movements against enemies that were not there. Built the corridors of Citadel Nine from memory and walked through them until the imaginary walls dissolved.

Sometimes Laana waited in the laboratory.

Sometimes she accused him.

Sometimes she smiled and told him he had done enough.

Ren'ō knew she was not real. That knowledge did not stop him from answering.

At the end of the first millennium, he attempted to destroy himself.

He gathered the Divine Remnant around his heart and compressed it until his chest became a sun. His body vanished in golden fire.

For a perfect instant, there was nothing.

Then the Void rebuilt him.

Ren'ō opened his eyes in the same dark.

He laughed.

The sound existed only inside his skull, thin and cracked.

"Of course," he said. "That would have been convenient."