The restored Emperor King's hands clenched into fists, stellar energy crackling between his fingers in unconscious response to rising anger.
Everything began with the manipulated betrayal…all those years ago!
A moon disappeared beneath the Sea of Thalassara's surface, its drowning marked only by a brief flare of light that was immediately absorbed into the aquatic expanse.
"We need to learn more information about these Outsiders," Achilles said with finality. "Not just their capabilities or locations, but their nature. What they are, what they want, why they've chosen our Star Seas as their stage."
His father was quiet for a long moment, processing implications that rewrote centuries of understanding.
When he spoke, his voice carried the dangerous calm of someone who had moved past anger into something colder.
"If what you're suggesting is true," Adras said, "then every moment of grief, every death that shaped us, every choice we thought was ours... it was all orchestrated?"
