Yao and Chen pushed forward, deeper along the catwalk, hugging the wall.

Two more intersections. One side passage collapsed, the other half-melted from an earlier blast.

“We’re being herded,” Yao realized. “The attackers took out specific corridors.”

“Why?” Chen asked.

“Control,” Yao said. “It’s easier to kill people in funnels.”

They reached a ladder shaft leading back up.

Yao peered upward.

“The escape pods are three decks above this one,” he said. “If the bays are still intact, they’ll be on the far side of that level. But if the attackers wanted to prevent anyone from leaving—”

“They would target the launch systems first,” Chen finished.

They looked at each other.

It was a gamble.

But staying here wasn’t an option.

“You first,” Yao said, jerking his chin toward the ladder. “If someone’s waiting topside, I’d rather they shoot the bulletproof Teleopean first.”

“I am not bulletproof,” Chen said, almost politely.

“Compared to me? You might as well be.”

A beat.

“Climb, sweetheart.”

Chen froze.

The word slid into him like a blade of light—familiar, warm, and wrong all at once.

A word from a language he knew.

A language he could understand without remembering ever learning it.

Something tugged sharply in his mind—

…but then it vanished.

“Hey!” Yao barked, sharper this time. “Move!”

The trance shattered.

Chen inhaled once, steady and controlled, and began to climb the ladder—

but his pulse was no longer steady.

Somewhere in the hollow between his ribs, the ghost of that forgotten word kept echoing.

Nothing.

They reached the hatch.

Yao tapped Chen’s ankle once.

Wait.

He pressed himself to the ladder, bracing.

“On three,” he whispered. “You push it open. I’ll shoot through the gap if anyone’s stupid enough to stand right in front.”

Chen nodded.

Yao counted under his breath.

“One… two… three.”

Chen shoved the hatch open.

No gunfire. No shout.

Just—

Smoke.

The metallic tang of blood.

And the faint whine of a damaged siren spilling dim light onto six bodies sprawled out in a circle.

Soldiers.

Armored. Armed.

Dead.

Yao’s stomach clenched. He was on his feet in an instant, closing the distance.

He knelt beside one of the bodies, fingers brushing the insignia on the breastplate.

Not station security.

Teleopean military.

A frontier detachment.

So someone had called for help.

They just never left.

“Whoever did this knows exactly where to strike,” Yao said. “They cut comms, hit the engines, sabotaged evac, and then slaughtered the team sent to stabilize things.”

He breathed out slowly.

“This isn’t random terrorism. This is strategic.”

Chen stepped past him, scanning the ruined area with a quiet, unreadable stare.

“So we cannot leave,” he said.

“Not by official routes,” Yao said. “But these places always have unofficial ones.”

Chen looked at him, finally deciding to ask the question that had been bothering him for a while.

“How do you know so much about this place?”

Yao didn’t answer directly- he just smiled faintly.

Elsewhere on the station

Xiao, pull yourself together!”

Lan heaved Xiao up—no small task, since Xiao weighed twice as much. Golden blood poured from the chest wound, soaking his clothes. His uneven breaths and cold sweat showed he was hanging on by sheer will.

“Leave me. You go…”

Xiao suddenly shoved Lan away. His weakened body couldn’t stay upright anymore; he collapsed onto the cold floor of the corridor.

They’d been drinking happily in the bar when the explosion hit—sudden, violent, without warning.

Right after that came the screams, the shriek of twisted metal, the chaos.

In the chaos, Xiao and Lan lost the Xuan brothers. When they finally broke free of the hall, the comms were completely jammed. With no hope of contacting anyone, they headed for the emergency exits and the lifeboat bay to escape on their own.

But halfway there, they were ambushed—by enemies they couldn’t even see.

Xiao dropped several cloaked attackers on instinct. Lan, untrained, was pinned by an invisible assailant—until Xiao burst in, slammed the attacker off him, and pulled him into a retreat.

That was when Xiao took the hit.

“Radioactive fluid… Without serum in three star-hours, I’m done,” Xiao gasped, the toxin chewing through his blood and organs. “Go. Warn Teleopea…”

“Shut up! I know what to do!” Lan cut him off, irritated more from panic than anger. He lifted his left wrist and activated his forearm device. A tiny holographic projector popped up, displaying a three-dimensional map of the entire space bar.

Two small red dots pulsed in one of the storage rooms on the third level.

That was their current position.

“Damn it, someone’s deliberately jamming the comms!” Lan tried again to raise an outside channel. “Who the hell is this powerful?!”

To kill off nearly all the Teleopeans present this fast—

“...They’re… Royal Guard…” Xiao’s vision was starting to blur. His breathing slowed.

“How do you know?” Lan demanded.

“When I fought them… their technique… I know it…” Xiao’s reply broke apart.

With Xiao’s skill, he absolutely had the qualifications to join the Royal Guard and become one of Teleopea’s elite. But due to his bloodline—and his own refusal to swear loyalty to the Star Emperor—he’d chosen instead to serve under the Council as a field commander with almost no real prospects of promotion.

Hearing that, Lan stared at him in disbelief.

“You’re saying…  No way. The Star Emperor can’t possibly be steering the whole civilisation toward war like this!”

“…” Xiao didn’t have the strength to argue. He’d already accepted he was probably going to die.

Still… dying here, anonymously in some corridor? That felt pathetically unsatisfying. The thought rankled.

“Xiao! Don’t you dare close your eyes! Hey!!”

Seeing Xiao sag further against the wall, Lan grabbed his shoulders and shook him hard, panicking.

“Great, someone’s still alive!”

The storage room door slammed open. Lan’s head snapped up, instincts taut.

Two figures stepped through the doorway.

Golden eyes widened. Recognition turned instantly into hope. “Chen! You’re alive?!”

It was Chen—Xiao’s companion from earlier.

Beside him stood someone Lan had never seen before. He looked like a Teleopean, but also… didn’t.

“Well, since we’ve found survivors, let’s all get the hell out of this place together,” the black-haired man said. He held a heavy handgun in one hand, and still managed to grin.

“You okay?” The black-haired man holstered his weapon and offered Lan a hand, expression open and friendly despite his dishevelled appearance.

Lan didn’t trust strangers by default. His gaze stayed cautious and guarded.

Chen gave Lan a small nod, a quiet signal that this man wasn’t a threat. Then he moved past him and knelt down beside Xiao. Lan quickly explained, voice shaking with a childlike hitch,

“He’s been poisoned with radioactive fluid. If we don’t treat him soon, he won’t make it.”

“I know.” Chen’s answer was calm. He reached out and laid a hand lightly on Xiao’s forehead. “I can slow the spread of the toxin.”

“How?” Lan asked anxiously.

“By transferring the poison from his body into mine.”

Lan and the black-haired man both sucked in a sharp breath.

“That’s suicide,” the black-haired man said first. “Even if you want to shift the toxin to yourself, how are you planning to separate it out and move it into your own system?”

“That’s why I’m going to swap blood with him.”

Chen turned to Yao. “Can you grab the med kit over there?”

Following the direction of his finger, the black-haired man—Yao—spotted a medical case half-buried behind some crates. He dragged it out and handed it over.

“You’re really going through with this?” he asked.

He didn’t like it. Sure, they’d just met, so he had no right to interfere with this Teleopean’s choices—but watching someone throw his life away like this still sat wrong in his gut.

“Yes.” Chen’s voice didn’t waver. He took the med kit and flipped it open.

Chen pulled out a device: a cubic machine, about thirty centimeters on each edge, with two transparent tubes extending from opposite sides. Each tube ended in a metal disk fitted with delicate mechanisms.

“How did you know there’d be a dialysis unit in there?” Lan asked, voicing the same question in Yao’s mind. It was his first real encounter with Chen; he had no idea who this person was or what he’d done before.

“Subspace is a shared secondary dimension. As long as something is stored in subspace, if you know where to look, you can retrieve it from any subspace pocket—even across light-years,” Chen said while working. His fingers flew over the cube’s surface, inputting commands.

“No one’s ever exploited it that way,” Lan murmured, realisation dawning. Then, with sudden determination: “Let me be the one to exchange blood with Xiao. He got poisoned because of me in the first place!”

“No. If it were you, your body wouldn’t hold out for long.” Chen shut that down immediately. “My predecessor died of this toxin. My body now carries partial resistance. I can endure it far longer than you.”

“But—”

“Acting on impulse isn’t smart right now,” Chen said, still calm. Lan bit down on his lower lip, frustrated yet unable to refute him.

“Let me at least program the device for you,” Lan said finally, giving in with a helpless sigh.

One of Teleopea’s best young electronic engineers got the configuration done in no time.

Once the machine was ready, Chen undid the clasp at his cuff, rolling up his sleeve to reveal a pale but well-toned forearm. He triggered the mechanism at the end of one tube; the concealed reinforced needle shot into his skin, piercing a major artery. A second line tapped into a vein.

Golden blood immediately flowed from his artery into the tube, reaching the cubic machine and entering circulation.

Chen then rolled up Xiao’s right sleeve and attached the other two tubes the same way, linking into his circulatory system.

Black-streaked blood began to flow out of Xiao’s artery, joining the loop in the device.

“With a direct transfusion like this, you’re not worried about blood-borne diseases?” Yao muttered as he crouched off to the side, talking mostly to himself.

“Don’t worry. There aren’t many diseases that can actually kill us,” Chen replied, having heard him anyway. He closed his eyes, focusing on enduring the process. Up close, it was obvious that his forehead was already beaded with cold sweat.

This has to hurt like hell, Yao thought.

Foreign blood plus radioactive toxin—no matter how tough Teleopeans were, the immune reaction would be brutal. They might not die of it, but they’d suffer.

When the exchange finally completed, Lan quickly disconnected the tubing from both of them.

Colour was already returning to Xiao’s face; his breathing had steadied, his awareness beginning to return. In contrast, Chen looked like death—ashen, trembling, his arm barely able to hold his weight.

“You all right?” Yao stepped in immediately, catching Chen before he could topple over. His fingers felt the nonstop tremor running through the Teleopean’s muscles.

“Been better,” Chen said with a crooked little smile.

“...Why…?”

The weak voice broke the air between them. All three turned toward it.

Xiao was fully conscious now. He struggled to push himself upright, golden eyes fixed on Chen, full of confusion.

The man who had just risked his life to save his.

They barely knew each other.

To Xiao, what he’d done made no sense.

“Being born into a name and barred from living the life you actually want… Dying like that would be a waste,” Chen said, meeting his eyes, voice quiet but deliberate.

Xiao went rigid.

That… was what I was thinking right before I blacked out.

How could a royal with sealed telepathy read that?

They eventually made it to the docking level and managed to find an emergency craft. Before the crippled space bar lost all power and deorbited into the gas giant’s atmosphere, the four of them escaped.

Through the viewport, the burning wreck of the station turned into a streak of light, torn apart in the upper layers of the gas giant’s clouds.

Chen sat silently, enduring the violent crawl of toxin through his veins.

Why had he saved Xiao?

Probably because the despair Xiao felt facing his own death was too similar to what his predecessor had experienced.

His golden eyes lowered slightly, as if he were contemplating something far darker beneath the surface.

Then a shadow caught at the edge of his vision.

He refocused.

Black hair, straight and long, falling down a man’s back—Yao, sitting turned away on one of the opposite chairs.

Chen’s gaze locked there, unblinking.

Familiar.

“I’m sorry, may I interrupt you for a moment?”

Suddenly, his line of sight was blocked. Chen had no choice but to look up at the obstacle in front of him.

Xiao.

The usually taciturn, inwardly proud Teleopean warrior was staring down at him with a grave expression. Chen frowned slightly, not understanding.

Honestly, it was a very oppressive angle. His instinct was to reject it.

Just as he was about to object, Xiao did something he did not expect.

He dropped to one knee.

Right knee to the floor, right hand over his left chest, fingers curled in a half-fist—

The highest form of warrior’s salute.

“You risked your life to save mine.” Xiao’s golden eyes locked onto Chen’s, his usually flat tone carrying an iron finality. “From this moment on, my life is yours.”

“You are welcome,” Chen said, a small smile touching his lips. Even drained and pale, the curve of his mouth had an effortless grace that made Yao—who’d been watching the whole time—pause for a second.

“How may I repay you?” Xiao pressed.

That smile sharpened, touched by the faintest hint of mischief. Chen lifted his left hand and pointed at the Teleopean warrior.

“I want your oath,” he said. “A warrior’s unwavering loyalty.”

“Xiao?” Lan’s voice was uncertain. He glanced between them.

Xiao wasn’t Royal Guard, but he was a powerful Teleopean warrior with a strong sense of honour. When a Teleopean warrior swore fealty to a ruler, that vow lasted until one of them died. It didn’t change.

And the one asking for that vow had no titles whatsoever—but he still dared to demand it from Xiao.

“Unwavering loyalty, as you command.” Xiao answered without hesitation—for the first time in his life making a gesture of submission to someone else. “Vot’z Sullantte.”