DIVINE REMNANT

The blast erased the laboratory's western half.

Ren'ō felt himself lifted, turned, and thrown through heat. The world came back in fragments: broken ceiling, ash in his mouth, the wet sound of his own breathing.

Laana crawled toward him through burning debris.

Her coat was torn. Blood darkened one side of her body. In her right hand, the completed vial shone like a captive sun.

The War God stood within the crater, untouched.

"There is no possible way a mortal can obtain the power of divinity," he said.

Laana reached Ren'ō and pressed two fingers to his throat.

"If anyone can," she whispered, "it is you."

Ren'ō tried to speak. Blood filled his mouth.

She removed the injector cap.

He caught her wrist weakly. "Laana... no."

"You promised to protect me."

"Still... working on it."

"Then live."

The needle entered beneath his collarbone.

She depressed the trigger.

The Divine Remnant entered his bloodstream.

Ren'ō's body arched off the floor.

Every nerve opened at once. Golden fractures spread beneath his skin. His broken arm snapped straight, then bent backward as bone rebuilt itself incorrectly and broke again. He tried to scream, but the sound tore apart inside his chest.

The War God watched.

"Foolish," he repeated.

Laana held Ren'ō's face between blood-slick gloves. "Stay with me."

He could no longer see her.

The ruined laboratory dissolved.

Ren'ō stood barefoot in the vastness of space.

He was a child again.

Stars surrounded him in every direction. Planets drifted close enough to touch. Galaxies turned like luminous storms beneath an invisible ocean. There was no pain. No smoke. No gravity.

"Where am I?" he asked.

His voice made no sound, yet the universe heard it.

A blue world passed before him. He reached toward it, entranced.

The stars flickered.

His mother's face appeared inside one. His father laughed inside another. A red desert opened in a third. Training yards. Barracks. Dead friends. Laana standing in the first laboratory doorway, annoyed that he existed.

Hundreds of golden memory-orbs filled the dark.

He saw her stealing food from his plate. Arguing over impossible equations. Falling asleep over a console while he draped his coat across her shoulders. Standing beside him beneath the blackout sky.

Meeting you felt like fate.

The child Ren'ō turned among the memories until tears lifted from his face and became stars.

Then the memories changed.

Laana bleeding beside his adult body.

The War God waiting.

La-Sol 7 burning.

A voice moved through the cosmos. Not Laana's. Not his own.

WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH POWER THAT CANNOT RETURN WHAT YOU LOST?

The child looked down at his hands.

Golden light gathered in his palms.

"I will make sure he cannot take anyone else."

The universe inhaled.

Ren'ō opened his eyes.