KYLYZAZ: SHADOW OF THE VOID
---
The ship came down two weeks after the Nin was pulled from the bog.
Fenris watched it fall from the roof of the Kylyzaz headquarters, his dark-vision tracking the trail of fire across Opralic's orange sky. Another vessel. Another crash. The frozen desert was becoming a graveyard for things that didn't belong here.
"Should we investigate?" Hyra's voice crackled through his communicator.
"No."
He didn't move. Let whoever it was freeze. Let the Snapping Tea pick the bones clean. The Nin had been an accident—a moment of weakness that he'd spent fourteen days regretting. The creature was alive now, recovering in the medical wing, looking at Fenris with those storm-cloud eyes every time he passed. Asking questions without words. Wanting things Fenris couldn't give.
He didn't need another mistake.
The ship hit the ice three miles north of Wint. The impact shuddered through the ground, a vibration Fenris felt in his teeth. A plume of smoke rose against the pale sky, black and oily, the kind of smoke that came from engines pushed past their limits.
Someone's running, he thought. Running from something.
"Fenris." Kyra this time, her voice tight. "We're picking up a distress signal. One survivor. They're moving."
"Let them move."
"They're moving toward the city."
He was already running.
---
The survivor had dragged themselves half a mile from the wreck by the time Fenris caught up.
They were small—barely five feet—with fur the color of rust and old blood. A red panda, he realized, though the proportions were wrong, the limbs too long, the fingers tipped with claws that looked like they'd been sharpened by hand. Their clothing was a mess of scorched fabric and makeshift armor, mismatched pieces that suggested someone who'd been on the move for a long time.
They were also bleeding. A gash across their ribs, deep enough to see muscle, and they'd tied it with what looked like a bedsheet.
Fenris landed in front of them, hard enough to crack the ice.
The survivor stopped. Looked up. And for a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Up close, the red panda's face was young—younger than Fenris had expected—with wide, dark eyes and a set to their jaw that spoke of stubbornness bordering on stupidity. Their fur was matted with blood and engine grease, and there was something in their expression that Fenris recognized instantly: the look of someone who had stopped being afraid a long time ago and hadn't figured out what to replace it with.
"You're the wolf," they said. Their voice was rough, scraped raw by smoke or screaming, but there was a defiance underneath it that Fenris found almost admirable. "Fenris Void. The apex predator."
"Who's asking?"
The red panda's lips peeled back in something that wasn't quite a smile. "Crimson Ailurus. And I'm here to join your little hero club."
Fenris stared at them.
"I'm sorry," he said, "did you hit your head on the way down?"
"The ship was already crashing. I hit my head before that." Crimson touched a bruise above their ear, wincing. "Doesn't change why I'm here."
"And why is that?"
"I need to kill someone."
The words hung in the cold air, as sharp and final as a blade. Fenris felt something stir in his chest—not surprise, exactly. Recognition, maybe. The same hunger that lived in his own bones, reflected in smaller, rust-colored eyes.
"Join the club," he said. "We've got a waiting list."
He turned to leave. Let the others deal with this one. Hyra loved strays. Kyra would probably adopt it. He'd go back to his quarters and let the world sort itself out.
"Wait."
He didn't wait. He kept walking, his boots crunching through the ice, each step carrying him further from the wreckage and the bleeding stranger who thought heroism was something you could just decide to do.
"I know what you are," Crimson called after him. "I know what happened to you. The accident. The spirit. The thing you've become."
Fenris stopped.
"I know because the same thing happened to me."
He turned. Slowly. His claws had extended without his permission, and he could feel the cosmic patterns in his fur shifting, responding to something he didn't fully understand.
"No," he said. "It didn't."
Crimson met his gaze without flinching. "A facility. Out past the Pera belt. They were experimenting on us—on people like us. Trying to fuse human DNA with something that shouldn't exist. Most of us died. I didn't."
"Us?"
"They called us the Ailurus Protocol." Their voice dropped, something bitter creeping into the edges. "Cute, right? Like we were a science project. Like we were things."
Fenris had heard rumors. Whispers about black sites in the outer system, about programs that made his own accident look like a workplace mishap. He'd never believed them. Or maybe he'd never wanted to.
"What did they fuse you with?"
Crimson's smile returned, wider this time, showing teeth that were just slightly too sharp. "That's the thing. I don't know. They never told us. They just... did it. And when we started surviving, when we started becoming something more, they tried to shut us down."
"Us?"
"There were seven of us. I'm the last one." They touched the gash on their ribs, and Fenris saw their claws—the ones they'd sharpened by hand—leave fresh marks in the ruined fabric. "The others are dead. And I know who killed them."
The wind picked up, carrying ice crystals that stung exposed skin. Fenris stood motionless, watching the creature in front of him, trying to decide if they were lying.
Gullible, a voice whispered. That's what you are now. Too trusting. Too easy.
But he wasn't trusting. He was calculating. Weighing. Measuring.
"Your ship," he said. "It didn't crash by accident."
"No."
"You were running from something."
"From someone." Crimson's jaw tightened. "His name is Vex. He was one of us. The strongest of us. And when the facility went dark, he decided that meant we were free to do whatever we wanted. He wanted to burn the system down. The rest of us... didn't."
"So you fought."
"We tried. He killed them. All of them." Their voice cracked, just for a moment, before hardening again. "I ran. I've been running for three years. And I'm tired of running."
Fenris understood. He understood better than he wanted to.
"There's nothing here for you," he said. "We're not heroes. We're pest control on a frozen rock that no one cares about. If you want someone to help you kill your monster, you're in the wrong place."
"I don't want help." Crimson took a step forward, and despite the blood loss, despite the crash, there was something in their posture that made Fenris's instincts flare. "I want training. I want to get stronger. And I've heard stories—about what you can do. About what you are."
"I'm not a teacher."
"You're not anything," Crimson said flatly. "That's the problem, isn't it? You used to be something. A marine. A soldier. Someone who believed in things. Now you just... exist. Waiting. Hunting things that don't matter."
The words hit harder than they should have. Fenris felt his hackles rise, felt the cold fury that lived in his chest start to burn.
"You don't know anything about me."
"I know you saved a Nin from a pack of Snapping Tea. I know you didn't have to. I know you could have let them die." Crimson's eyes narrowed. "I know you're not the monster you pretend to be."
The silence stretched between them, taut as a wire about to snap. Somewhere in the distance, a Snapping Tea screamed—a thin, desperate sound that was swallowed by the wind.
Fenris made his decision.
"Hyra," he said into his communicator. "We've got another one."
---
The medical wing was cramped and under-equipped, which meant it was exactly like every other part of the Kylyzaz headquarters. Fenris leaned against the doorframe while Mila—the lizard trainee from the bog, who'd somehow become the team's unofficial medic—worked on Crimson's wounds.
"I'm fine," Crimson kept saying, while Mila stitched the gash on their ribs with hands that only shook a little. "It's just a scratch."
"It's a hole," Mila said, her voice tight. "You've lost at least a pint of blood. If you'd been out there much longer—"
"I wasn't."
"You were lucky Fenris found you when he did."
Crimson's eyes flicked toward the door, meeting Fenris's gaze. "Lucky," they repeated, and there was something in their tone that Fenris didn't like.
He left before Mila finished stitching.
Hyra was waiting in the corridor, her vulpine features arranged in that careful neutral expression she used when she didn't want him to know what she was thinking. It never worked.
"Well?" she said.
"Well what?"
"The new one. What do you think?"
Fenris thought about the way Crimson had looked at him. The way they'd said I know what you are. The hunger in their voice when they talked about killing.
"I think they're trouble."
"We could use some trouble."
"We've got enough trouble." He started down the corridor, Hyra falling into step beside him. "They're running from something. Something that killed six of their kind and is probably looking for the seventh."
"And you want to turn them away."
"I want to know what they're really after."
Hyra was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. "You don't trust them."
"I don't trust anyone."
"That's not true." She touched his arm—briefly, gently, the way she used to touch Sergeant Kael before the accident. "You trusted me. Once."
Fenris pulled away. "That was a different life."
"It was the same life. You're just... different now."
She left him there, at the intersection of corridors that led to his quarters, to the common room, to the mission board with its color-coded urgency markers. He stood for a long moment, not moving, not thinking, just... existing.
You could leave, the voice whispered. Take the new one. Go after this Vex. Something worth hunting for once.
Or you could stay, Kael's voice answered. Protect what's here. Be better.
He went to the common room.
---
Crimson found him there an hour later, moving stiffly but already healed enough to walk. Mila had given them a clean uniform—Kylyzaz standard, blue and grey, too big for their smaller frame. They'd rolled up the sleeves, and Fenris could see the scars crisscrossing their forearms, old and white against rust-colored fur.
"The others are avoiding me," Crimson said, settling into the chair across from him. "Except the lizard. She asked a lot of questions."
"Mila's curious."
"She asked what I could do. What my abilities are." They flexed their fingers, and Fenris saw the claws extend—longer than they should have been, sharper than nature intended. "I told her I'd show her later."
"What can you do?"
Crimson smiled again, that sharp-edged thing that wasn't quite friendly. "Wouldn't you like to know."
Fenris didn't respond. He'd learned, over the years, that silence was the best weapon against people who talked too much.
It worked. After a long pause, Crimson's smile faded.
"I can feel things," they said quietly. "Emotions. Intents. The things people try to hide." They looked at Fenris, and for a moment, their expression was almost vulnerable. "I can feel yours. The hunger. The anger. The... sadness, underneath it all."
"You're an empath."
"I don't know what I am. I know I can see through lies. I know I can feel when someone wants to hurt me. I know I've spent three years running from someone whose emotions are nothing but hunger and hate." They leaned forward, and Fenris caught a whiff of smoke and engine grease, the smell of someone who'd been burning bridges for a very long time. "Vex is coming. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But he's coming. And when he gets here, he's going to tear this place apart."
"You don't know that."
"I know what he is. What they made him." Crimson's claws scraped against the armrest, leaving marks in the synthetic fabric. "He was the strongest. The fastest. The one who could have been anything. And he chose to be a monster."
Fenris had heard this story before. He'd lived it, in his own way. The power that changed you. The choices that defined you.
"Why here?" he asked. "Why come to a frozen desert on the edge of nowhere?"
"Because no one comes here. Because it's the last place anyone would look." Crimson's eyes met his, and there was something almost desperate in them. "Because I heard there was someone here who understood what it was like. To be unmade and remade. To become something you didn't ask to be."
Fenris didn't have an answer for that. He didn't have answers for any of it.
He stood, his chair scraping against the floor, and walked to the window that overlooked the frozen desert. The sun was setting, painting the snow in shades of crimson and gold, and for a moment he could almost pretend that the world was beautiful.
"We'll give you a room," he said without turning. "You'll train with the others. You'll go on patrol. You'll follow orders."
"And if I don't?"
"Then you leave. We're not your army. We're not your revenge." He finally looked at her—at them, he corrected himself, though the distinction felt strange in his mouth. "You want to kill your monster, that's your business. But you don't bring that fight here."
Crimson was quiet for a long moment. When they spoke again, their voice was softer.
"What if the monster comes here anyway?"
Fenris thought about the Nin in the medical wing. The trainees in the bog. The people of Wint, huddled in their frozen city, waiting for something to save them.
"Then we kill it," he said. "Together."
It was the closest thing to a promise he'd made in seven years.
---
That night, Fenris dreamed of stars.
He was standing on the hull of a ship that wasn't his, watching nebulae swirl in colors that didn't exist in any human spectrum. The void stretched around him, infinite and hungry, and somewhere in the darkness something was watching.
You're changing, a voice said. Not the hunger-voice, not Kael's voice. Something older. Something that had been there since the beginning. The new one. They're changing you.
"I don't want to change."
What you want doesn't matter. What you are doesn't matter. Only what you become.
The dream shifted. He was in the bog again, the Nin's hand in his, the Snapping Tea's blood on his fur. He was standing over Crimson, watching them bleed, feeling something he couldn't name stirring in his chest.
You could save them, the voice whispered. You could save all of them. Or you could let them burn.
"I'm not—"
You're not anything, the voice agreed. Not yet. But you will be.
He woke with a start, his claws buried in his mattress, his breath fogging in the cold air of his quarters. Outside, Opralic was rising, painting the world in shades of orange and red.
In the room down the hall, a red panda who'd been unmade and remade was staring at the ceiling, feeling the emotions of everyone around them, looking for something that might make the hunger stop.
Neither of them slept again that night.
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END OF CHAPTER TWO