The Driftknight shuddered. A low groan rippled through the hull as the docking bridge retracted. The airlock hissed, pressure seals breaking with a metallic finality.

A moment later, the RCS thrusters kicked in, pulses echoing down the spine of the ship like a heartbeat. They drifted free of the Sovereign's shadow.

Akiko strapped into her auxiliary couch, watching the forward display.

Debris swirled in lazy spirals. Shattered rock, twisted hull plating, the torn remnants of things that hadn't made it out.

The Sovereign slipped out of frame.

Ahead lay the hoard.

"Quinn," Kara said over the bridge-wide comms. "Easy does it. We're not trying to impress anyone."

"Aye, Captain," Quinn replied, hands moving across the controls. "RCS only. No need to wake the neighbors."

The ship slid forward, slipping between jagged shapes and drifting husks. The debris moved like it was still alive. Slowed, but not still. Gravity had fractured here, and it hadn't forgotten.

Akiko scanned the wreckage. A freighter impaled on a broken asteroid. A fighter wing with no ship to fly from. Scars left by the dragon's fury.

And somewhere deeper in the field, its hoard.

Kara leaned forward. "Lila, eyes sharp. Just because the big one left doesn't mean the little ones did."

"I'm watching," Lila said, already sweeping the sensors. "No signs yet. But the debris is noisy. Could be hiding anything."

Akiko narrowed her eyes, catching the subtle twitch of movement in the outer edges of the field. Probably just drift patterns. Probably.

But the dragon's space still felt claimed.

The proximity alert chimed. A low, restrained tone.

Quinn nudged the controls. The Driftknight slid around a splintered hunk of asteroid.

"Relax," he said, though his usual humor was absent. "Still got it."

"Let's hope so," Kara said. "Because once we're in the hoard…"

She didn't finish. She didn't need to.

Whatever waited in that field... dragonbones, tech, treasure, teeth...

It was theirs to claim. If they survived it.

The Driftknight crept forward on puffs of thruster gas, its hull casting faint shadows across the ruins of the mountain.

Where once there had been a peak, now, only absence. The dragon's fury had carved it hollow, a broken crown ringed in shattered stone. Below, a yawning crater exposed to the void, jagged and raw, glowed with lingering mana mist.

Akiko leaned closer to the display, her breath shallow.

The mist shifted in slow spirals, unnatural and alive. It pulsed with an internal rhythm, casting eerie reflections across the exposed wreckage at the crater's base.

Sunken ships, twisted hulls, debris caked in crystalline rot. Some ancient, corroded like fossils. Others recent, still bearing the dragon's claw marks.

"Lila," Kara's voice crackled over the bridge comms. "Find us a stable tether. I don't want drift screwing up our exit."

"Working on it," Lila said. Her fingers moved fast across the console. "There's a few anchor points along the outer ring, but they're brittle. I wouldn't trust them with a sneeze."

"Then don't sneeze," Kara replied. "Quinn, keep it slow. Touch nothing."

"You wound me," Quinn muttered, but his grip on the controls stayed steady. The ship shifted sideways in a feather-light burn.

Akiko watched the crater draw closer, its edge studded with jagged stone and the bones of failed salvagers. Down below, the mist curled like a warning.

Lila's voice broke the silence. "We're tethered. Two anchors, minimal stress. It's holding."

"For now," Kara muttered. Then, louder: "Alright, little fox. Your lead."

Akiko unclipped her harness, standing in the low gravity with a light push. Her boots clunked softly against the floor.

"No heroics," Kara said. "No glowing trinkets unless Lila gives the all-clear."

Akiko flashed her usual half-smile. "I've matured. I only touch glowing things with permission now."

Kara arched a brow. "Cute. Don't test me."

The smile faded. Akiko gave a nod. "Got it."

She moved toward the airlock, Raya just behind her, suit clipped and helmet sealed. Lila followed, slinging a sensor rig across her back.

Kara's voice followed them. "Eyes up. If it looks wrong, leave it. We're here to learn, not die."

Akiko paused at the hatch, looking back. "Understood."

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The airlock hissed open, casting the soft green glow of the mist across her helmet.

And suddenly, she was somewhere else. A memory. A crypt. Another glowing object.

Kaede's voice, sharp and clear: "Don't."

But she had. And everything after had broken.

She clenched her jaw as the lock sealed shut behind them. Her breath fogged the inside of her visor.

How many times have I been here?

Staring at something forbidden. Thinking, what's the worst that could happen?

The answer had pulled her across worlds. Torn her from Kaede. From everything that had felt like home.

Now, even the Driftknight, even Kara, was something she could lose.

She exhaled slowly, grounding herself.

Across the chamber, Raya and Lila finished securing their gear. Neither spoke, but she could feel their presence anchoring her. They were counting on her to get this right.

No reckless dives this time. No impulse. She might've smiled at the irony. Trying not to be reckless might be the most reckless thing she'd ever done.

But still, she would try. Because this time, it wasn't just her fate tangled in the glow. It was everyone's.

She stepped through the airlock and into the dragon's grave.

Her magboots clamped softly to the Driftknight's outer hull as she emerged into what had once been a mountain.

Now, it was a cavernous ruin, jagged edges curling inward like the stone itself had flinched. The shattered peak exposed raw rock and void, a gaping wound rimmed with slow-moving mana mist that shimmered faintly even in airless silence.

Lila followed close behind, tether secured and eyes scanning. "Structural integrity's a joke," she muttered. "This place is barely holding together."

Raya was the last to exit. She hesitated just past the threshold, her breath audible through the comms. "I can feel it," she whispered. "The mana… it's heavy. Twisted."

Akiko felt it too. Her HUD struggled to stay stable, visuals distorting around the edges, like the air itself was rejecting their presence. In one corner, Takuto highlighted a flicker of residue still clinging to scorched hull fragments, tagged with a soft-red warning glyph.

"Not surprising," she said, eyes sweeping the broken interior. "We've got dragon fire, mana rot, and centuries of bad luck. Real welcoming."

Below them, the lair stretched out in eerie stillness. Shattered ships drifted like carcasses, containers sheared in half, plating peeled back like skin. A scorched shuttle wedged into the rock caught her attention, its surface pulsed in her augmented vision, faint lines of energy radiating from within.

"This place doesn't just feel wrong," Raya murmured. "It feels alive."

Akiko's tail flicked. The mana clung to her skin like static, humming beneath her thoughts.

"Dead or alive," she said, "we're here to rob it blind."

Lila knelt by a chunk of torn hull, scanning with her rig. "Most of it's junk. If there's anything good, it's deeper in, and probably guarded."

Akiko nodded, steps cautious as she moved forward. Her HUD flashed fresh warnings. Mana spikes, subtle but growing. Like ripples from something sleeping.

"Careful with your magic, Raya," she said. "This place doesn't seem like the type to forgive curiosity."

Raya didn't answer right away. Her gaze caught on a shadow further in.

"Akiko… look."

Nestled among the wreckage were warped bodies. Dragonlings. Twisted in death, their forms were wrong. Spines jagged, scales bloated with corrupted mana. Even now, faint pulses of energy clung to their remains like breath that refused to end.

Her HUD lit up, tagging them as unstable. The scales still shimmered, marked by faint, rhythmic pulses of residual mana.

Akiko crouched beside one. The corpse was contorted. Elegant once, maybe. Now just another reminder of what raw power left behind. The scale beneath her hand was cold and humming.

Raya stepped closer, her voice thoughtful. "You remember how hard it was to cut through these things. Even with your foxfire claws."

Akiko nodded once. "Yeah. Like slicing through armor."

"But you tore through that pirate gunship like paper," Raya continued. "So these scales… they're tougher. Way tougher."

"Which would be useful," Akiko said slowly, "if they weren't soaked in corruption."

She tapped the scale. "This much taint… we can't use them without cooking ourselves."

Raya didn't flinch. Instead, she knelt beside the body. Her fingers brushed one of the scales, then paused.

"Maybe," she said, "they don't have to stay corrupted."

Akiko tilted her head. "You're going to purify them?"

Raya closed her eyes. Light bloomed between her palms soft and golden, warm even through the void between them. The glow spread across the scale like water through silk. The embedded mana twisted, resisted—then receded. When the glow faded, the scale gleamed. Untainted and usable.

Raya leaned back, winded but smiling faintly. "See? It's possible."

Akiko eyed the now-stable reading in her HUD. "That's one scale out of… what, thousands?"

Raya's expression didn't waver. "One at a time."

Akiko let out a breath, half-exasperated, half-awed. "You're dangerously optimistic."

But she smiled. Just a little.

"Alright. Let's see how far we get before I lose interest."

Behind them, Lila stood and stretched, already looking toward a ruined ship embedded deeper into the wall of the lair.

"You two enjoy your magical dragon scrapbooking," she said, flicking her scanner back to life. "I'm checking that hulk. Looks like it's still got power running through the conduits."

Akiko waved her off. "Try not to explode."

"No promises," Lila muttered, boots clanking as she disappeared toward the shadows.

Raya knelt again, her light blooming soft and slow.

Akiko crouched beside another dragonling, claws brushing over the curved armor of its body.

She hadn't expected the dragon's departure to leave anything behind. But here it was.

Wreckage. Wonder. And maybe... if they were careful... something worth keeping.

The pile of dragonling scales grew slowly beside them. Gleaming, purified, and hard-won.

Each one took effort. Akiko's foxfire claws to pry it free, Raya's golden glow to scrub away the corruption. Over and over. Precision and magic. Sweat and mana.

Akiko tugged at a particularly stubborn scale, her claws sparking faintly along the ridges. With a snap, it came loose, and she stumbled back, catching herself on one knee. Her arms trembled from the strain.

Raya chuckled without looking up. "You know, I'm starting to feel bad about this whole division of labor. Maybe we should trade jobs for a bit."

Akiko shot her a glare, brushing hair out of her face with the back of her wrist. "Sure. Let's see you peel one of these off without breaking a nail."

Raya smiled, fingers already glowing as she touched the new scale. The corruption recoiled, peeled back, dissolved. "Wasn't planning to use my hands. That's your department, isn't it?"

Akiko groaned and dropped into a crouch beside her. "I've always been speed over power. That's always been my angle. But this—" she gestured at the hulking corpse in front of them, "—is just brute strength. And I'm clearly not built for it."

Raya finished the scale and set it on the pile. "Could be the microgravity."

Akiko blinked. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Raya leaned back on her heels. "Muscle atrophy. You lose mass fast in microgravity if you don't do resistance training. I'm guessing your suit's been masking it, but now you're noticing."

Akiko looked down at her arms. Thin. Too thin. "Wait… are you saying I've been getting weaker this whole time?"

Raya nodded. "Welcome to space. We're all trying not to turn into limp noodles."

Akiko groaned, burying her face in her hands. "Amazing. So now I need to work out? Between dragons and Haven patrols, I'm supposed to hit the gym?"

Raya grinned. "Just imagine it. Swole Akiko. No one would dare touch you."

Akiko snorted, then laughed despite herself. "That's the worst mental image I've ever had."

"I'm just saying," Raya teased. "Next time we're back on the Driftknight, maybe grab some resistance bands. Unless you want me doing all the heavy lifting forever."

Akiko rolled her eyes, stretching her sore shoulders. "Fine. But don't cry when my massive biceps start stealing all your spotlight."

Raya laughed, the sound soft and warm in the hollow of the dragon's lair, and for a moment, the wreckage didn't feel quite so heavy.

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