Creation Details
Prompt: “Smoke clung to the ribs of the ruined station.
Panels sagged, cables drooped like gutted veins, and every few seconds a distant groan ran through the metal as something big shifted out in the dark. The fires were mostly out. The screaming wasn’t.
Sera stepped over a fractured rail, toolkit clattering against her thigh, and tried not to look at the bodies.
“Watch your footing,” someone called behind her.
“I am,” she lied.
The airlock corridor had become a trench of twisted hull and dried scorch. The blast doors at the far end were jammed half‑shut, teeth of metal pressed together like a clenched jaw. Someone had tried to pry them open—melted edges, warped hinges. Too late.
Her gaze snagged on a small shape against the wall.
A boy, maybe twelve, maybe younger—it was hard to tell under the ash and blood—sat with his back to the bulkhead. One sleeve of the station uniform hung empty. His other hand was open on his knee, fingers slack, as if he were still expecting another hand to land in it.
Sera’s chest tightened. She approached slowly, boots crunching over glass.
“Hey,” she said, softer than she used with adults. “Can you hear me?”
His eyes flicked up. Dark, unfocused. They slid past her, toward the half‑crushed doors.
She followed his gaze.
There, just inside the seal, the floor was burned clean—a circular patch where no debris remained. The plating had bubbled, then cooled, a warped mirror. She imagined heat so intense it killed before the sound could form.
Her mouth went dry.
“Okay,” she murmured, more to herself. “Okay.”
She shrugged off her outer jacket and draped it around his shoulders. He didn’t flinch at the touch, just blinked like he was waking up underwater.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
He stared at his remaining hand. “Kyzrael.”
“I’m Sera.” She crouched, trying to get in his eyeline without blocking his view entirely. “You’re not staying in this corridor, Kyzrael. You’re coming with us, all right?”
His jaw moved. “My mom said… stay back. Be safe.” His voice cracked on the last word. “They didn’t.”
Sera swallowed the answer she wanted to give—no one was safe here—and said instead, “Your mom was right about staying back. Now I’m going to be annoying and make you move anyway.”
Behind her, one of the crew called, “Sera! We need you at the port side seal!”
“In a minute,” she shot back.
She slipped an arm under Kyzrael’s good shoulder. He was light, too light, but his feet found the floor on reflex when she tugged.
“There you go,” she said. “One step at a time. Don’t look at the doors if you don’t want to.”
“I have to,” he whispered.
She didn’t argue. They moved.
As they turned out of the corridor, Sera’s eyes caught a flicker of movement further down, near a jagged breach where the station opened to a view of the shattered docking ring.
A figure stood there, motionless.
Tall, older than Kyzrael—fifteen? sixteen?—in a torn uniform marked with an insignia that made her stomach drop.
Al‑Rhazim colors. Crest she’d seen on briefing slides tagged with words like “doctrine,” “command,” “responsible.”
Her fingers tightened on Kyzrael’s shoulder. “Nazim bastard,” she hissed under her breath.
The boy didn’t react; his gaze was still locked on the corridor behind them. But the figure by the breach turned his head.
Their eyes met across the wreckage: Sera with ash in her hair and a half‑conscious child under her arm, the other boy standing alone on a strip of clean metal.
He wasn’t surveying the damage like a commander. He was staring at a patch of floor in front of him with the same hollow intensity Kyzrael had turned on the doors.
Sera’s shout rose on instinct. “Security! We’ve got—”
She stopped herself halfway.
He hadn’t reached for a weapon. His hands hung at his sides, fingers slightly curled. His face was wrong for a victor—no satisfaction, no disdain. Just a rigid, stunned focus on that spot.
There was another clean circle there—no rubble, just cooled metal and a faint pattern like ash had once lay there and been blown away.
Someone jogged up behind her with a rifle. “You see something?”
She took a breath. “Al‑Rhazim uniform at the breach,” she said, voice clipped. “He’s not moving. Get eyes on him. Don’t shoot unless he does something.”
The soldier swore under his breath and raised his scope.
Sera leaned closer to Kyzrael. “Can you walk a little more?”
He turned his head, following her line of sight. His body went rigid against her as he saw the other boy.
Recognition hit both of them like a physical impact.
Kyzrael’s pupils shrank. The older boy—Nazero, though she didn’t know the name yet—also froze, a flinch barely visible from this distance. For a heartbeat, the wreck of Maker’s Wing fell away and they were somewhere else:
A hangar, still intact. Zerohan between them. Radiance, Decay. A flash of light that turned flesh to dust. A child slammed against a wall by a force he couldn’t see, watching his family disappear.
It was all there in their faces.
Sera felt Kyzrael’s breath hitch. His hand curled into a fist in her jacket.
“That’s him,” he whispered. It could have meant anything.
Across the gap, the older boy whispered something too, his lips forming a single word Sera couldn’t hear.
He took a half‑step forward.
The soldier beside Sera shifted his aim. “He’s moving. Orders?”
Sera’s throat tightened. The right answer, according to briefings, was simple: detain, neutralize, eliminate.
But she remembered Kyzrael’s empty sleeve. The way his eyes had looked like that boy’s eyes now.
“Hold,” she said. “Just hold. He’s not charging.”
The soldier hesitated, then obeyed.
For a moment, the three of them stayed locked in that triangle of sightlines: Sera at one point, Kyzrael at another, Nazero at the third, standing on their ghosts.
Then Nazero did something small and enormous: he raised both hands, palms empty, and stepped back from the clean circle on the floor.
His jaw was clenched so hard she could see it from here. He didn’t look away from Kyzrael when he spoke, voice low but carrying.
“I’m… leaving,” he said. “I’ve seen enough.”
It wasn’t an apology. It wasn’t a threat either. It sounded like a sentence pronounced on himself.
The soldier muttered, “We should bring him in.”
“Later,” Sera said. “Our wounded first.”
She turned Kyzrael away, guiding him toward the med zone. After a few steps, he glanced back over his shoulder.
Nazero was still standing there, watching them go.”
Art Style: Dark Fantasy
Color Mode: Full Color
Panels: 1
Created: