Helena's Skathrith floats above her, a pinpoint of shifting light against the stellar display. As her thoughts churn, so does its form, becoming a goblet like the one she holds, then stretching into a jagged knife, and finally warping into a hollow crown. The shapes unsettle her, though her composure remains intact. The wine in her hand, as always, is for effect. It catches the light of a red supergiant reflected in the glass, glowing faintly in the dim chamber. She lifts the goblet to her lips, letting the liquid touch her mouth without drinking, because being an Eidolon ensures that indulgence of wine or any other escape is a distant memory.
A faint vibration brushes her neck.
The torq.
Helena's lips tighten as she places the goblet down with deliberate care, her fingers never trembling. She turns her awareness inward, flipping her consciousness in an act that feels both natural and disorienting. The room dissolves as her vision shifts backward, and her head becomes a black, featureless cube. The plane around her is vast and chaotic, a lattice of folding geometries, ever-shifting but always tethered to her will. Stars pulse and contort, threading themselves into faint constellations. Helena feels his presence before she hears his voice, a heaviness in the expanse that drags the shapes around him into sharper definition.
"Andros," she says before his form solidifies.
He steps forward, his appearance fractured at first but resolving with a slow, deliberate rhythm. His armor, crimson and black, is dulled from long campaigns, the sigils etched into its plates flickering faintly, barely maintained by his intent. His silver-streaked hair clings damply to his temples, but it is his hands that draw Helena's attention. Andros rubs his left palm with his right thumb, over and over, his eyes darting to it as if attempting to catch something in the act of vanishing. He does not seem to notice he is doing it.
"Andros." Helena repeats his name, sharper this time.
His head jerks upward, as though he has only just realized she is there. "Helena. Beloved." His jaw tightens as he continues the obsessive motion against his palm. "It has been a long night."
"Oh." She tilts her head, studying the exhaustion in his posture, the way his shoulders hunch beneath invisible weight. "You have been having one of those as well?"
"The Ronolyths." He mutters the word, his thumb still tracing circles on his palm as though attempting to catch something in the act of vanishing. "They are the worst Autochthons we have faced in six years. Every day we lose weeks in the field without even realizing it, entire battalions erased from time itself before they can comprehend what is happening. Soldiers wake up older, or younger, or they do not wake up at all because the moment they were born has been unwritten." He shakes his head, the gesture heavy with exhaustion. "Wait. You said as well. What is wrong?"
Helena's gaze sharpens, and the Skathrith fractures above her, edges splintering into sharp, disconnected fragments that refuse to align. "The Northern Front goes poorly? Have they mastered the temporal arcs?"
"No. No." The Dularch takes a deep breath, steadying himself against the fractured geometry around them. "Thank the Autarch they have not mastered it yet. But they are close, Helena. Close enough that I can feel time bending around their positions. Close enough that my commanders report memories that never happened."
"Define close."
He waves the question away with visible frustration, his hand cutting through the air between them. "Stop trying to distract me. Something is wrong. What is it? Is it Titus? The children?"
"The Ronolyths are no small matter if they approach mastery of the arcs," she begins, but her voice lacks conviction.
"Enough." His voice cuts through her deflection like a blade through silk. His reflection fractures across the glass-like edges of the plane, his focus sharpening until she can feel the weight of his full attention. "They are no worse than the Thrynix swarms we faced in the Upper House, and you know it. Now, I command you. Speak."
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Helena stiffens like frozen water, then slowly melts, lowering her head in a deep bow that carries centuries of practiced deference. "As my Drake commands..."
Andros grips her chin between thumb and finger, halting her bow before it can complete. His touch feels more like the memory of touch than the real thing, filtered through layers of distance and dimensional barriers.
"You are no flower, Helena."
"No?" She watches him through narrowed eyes, testing the weight of the moment, searching for what lies beneath his exhaustion. "What am I, then, my Drake?"
"Thistles."
She cannot stop the laugh that escapes, bright and genuine. The sound breaks the tension like glass shattering, and for a moment, the plane around them stabilizes, the folding geometries settling into something almost peaceful.
Andros whirls away from her, rubbing his thumb against the back of his hand as he begins to pace, his shoulders hunched, his double pupils locked on things Helena cannot see. The armor plates shift with each step, catching phantom light from nonexistent suns.
Helena folds her arms, watching him move through the fractured space with the familiarity of decades. "It is the children."
Andros stops mid-stride, his entire body going rigid. His gaze snaps back to her with the force of a physical blow. "What has happened?"
"They are strong." Helena speaks quickly, the Skathrith above her wavering between a crown and a blade as her emotions leak into its form. "They survived the First Baptism, as we knew they would. Their torqs are fine work, and they show no signs of trauma from the descent." She pauses, her fingers brushing the edge of her own torq. "But Titus forces them to face third-year trials already, pushing them beyond what any first-year should endure."
Andros exhales slowly, the sound carrying the weight of battlefields and broken treaties, of decisions made in darkness that echo through generations. "You provoke him too much."
"He deserves it." Ice creeps into Helena's voice, spreading through her words like frost across dark water. Her fingers press harder against her torq, the metal warming beneath her touch. "He hates me, Andros. Truly hates me, in a way that goes beyond politics or power. And he thinks punishing them is a safer way to vent that hatred than confronting me directly."
"Safer for him." Andros's words fall flat, stripped of inflection. "But not for them."
Helena's silence answers what her words will not. Above her, the Skathrith fractures into a jagged map of stars, each point representing a decision, a consequence, a child caught between powers they cannot control.
"They are strong," Andros agrees quietly, turning back to face her. "But not invincible, Helena. No one is."
Helena stiffens, her jaw locking as she searches for words that refuse to come. "And who is? Who among us can claim invincibility when the Nihil still lurk in the spaces between realms?"
Andros turns away, his shoulders bearing weight that has nothing to do with armor or campaign fatigue. "Do not let your hatred of him blind you, Helena. You mock Titus every time you see him. Do you think he does not notice? Do you think he will stop at the children if you push him far enough?"
Her voice drops to a whisper, barely audible even in the silent plane. "If he lays another finger on them..."
"What will you do?" Andros rounds on her, and the plane ripples with the force of his movement, folding geometries collapsing and reforming in response to his emotion. "Kill him? Overthrow him? He is still my co-ruler, Helena. Without him, the balance collapses. Without him, House Azure fractures, and without House Azure, who keeps Malkiel stable while I wage war across the stars?"
"Perhaps it should."
Andros's gaze is heavy, carrying depths of meaning that words cannot express. "And what will be left for Castor and Penelope if it does? What inheritance do they claim from a shattered house, a broken empire? You think you protect them by fighting Titus, but you may doom them to ruling ashes."
Helena looks away, her throat tightening with things she cannot name, emotions too complex to untangle even in this space where thought becomes visible. The Skathrith above her shivers, unable to settle on a single form.
"Tell him." Andros's voice brims with something fierce and desperate, an edge she has not heard since the darkest days of the Second Shattering. "Tell him you are my line."
"What?" Helena's eyes snap back to his, searching his face for meaning. "What are you saying?"
"Tell him if he touches you, I will lead the Umbral Legion home." The words emerge flat, factual, carrying the weight of absolute certainty. "I will mount his head on a spike before Malkiel so all can see what happens to those who harm what is mine."
"What about our children..."
"We can always have more."
Helena stiffens, her entire body going rigid as though struck. Her breath catches somewhere in her chest, trapped between horror and understanding. The words she wants to speak tangle in her throat, refusing to emerge, because she knows he means it and she knows he is wrong and she knows there is truth buried in the wrongness.
Andros dissolves into the plane before she can respond, his form flickering and fading like a star collapsing into itself. The crimson armor fragments first, then his silver hair, then his hands still rubbing at phantom sensations, until nothing remains but the memory of his presence and the weight of his words hanging in the geometry around her.
When Helena's consciousness snaps back to her body, her reflection fractures across the glass panels in a thousand different configurations, each one showing a different conquered star system, a different victory, a different cost. Her Skathrith, jagged and unsteady, coalesces into the shape of a metallic thistle, all thorns and no softness, a perfect mirror of what she has become. She stares at it for a long moment, letting the silence of the empty chamber settle around her like a shroud, before finally speaking.
"They will be enough," she murmurs.
The words hang in the empty chamber, neither promise nor threat but something harder to name. Her shadow stretches behind her as she strides out, each step sharp and decisive against stone, carrying her toward decisions she has not yet made but can already feel taking shape in the spaces between thought and action.
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Ablations (ongoing)