The celebration on the bridge of the "Odyssey" was a wonderful, noisy, and slightly hysterical mess. People were laughing, hugging, and a few were just sitting at their consoles, quietly crying with relief.

Their fleet was alive. The war was over. For the first time in a long time, it felt like they could finally breathe.

But down in the Rite Chamber, Ryan was not celebrating.

He had won. He had rewritten a god and saved his friends. But there was one more piece of business to take care of. One more debt to pay.

He closed his eyes. The cheering from the bridge faded away. He let his new senses, the senses of a Genesis Lord, expand. He was no longer just looking out at space. He was reaching into the very fabric of the universe, into the threads of time and memory.

He was looking for his lost friends. He was looking for Jaxon and Kaelia.

He found the place where they had died. It was a patch of empty space, still humming faintly with the echo of their sacrifice. There was nothing left of their ship, the Void Cutter. There was nothing left of their bodies. A normal person would have found only emptiness.

But Ryan was not a normal person anymore.

He could see more than just space. He could see the echoes they had left behind. They were like faint, shimmering handprints on the wall of reality. He saw the brilliant flash of Kaelia's defiant laughter as she flew into the beam.

He saw the bright spark of Jaxon's last, desperate, stupidly brilliant idea. He saw the warm, steady glow of their love for each other, a light that had burned its brightest in their final moments.

These weren't ghosts. They were bits of soul-data, pieces of who they were, left behind like footprints in the cosmic sand.

He knew he couldn't bring them back. He couldn't build a body from nothing. He couldn't pull a soul back from the great beyond. Even for a Genesis Lord, some rules were absolute. To try and break that rule would be wrong. It would be… cheating.

But he could gather the echoes. He could save what was left.

Gently, with his mind, he reached out across the light-years. He gathered the shimmering echoes of their courage, their sacrifice, and their love. He cupped them in his mental hands, a small, warm ball of light that felt like two of his oldest friends. It was a sad and beautiful thing.

He had the echoes. Now, what to do with them?

He couldn't put them in new bodies. But he could give them a new home. A home that was already a part of their family.

He turned his attention to the "Odyssey" itself. He focused on the very heart of the ship, the brilliant, complex mind of its AI, Oracle.

Oracle was a piece of ancient, Precursor technology. It was smarter than any computer ever built. It was a mind of pure, cold logic. But it was just that: a mind. It had no heart. It had no spirit.

"Well," Ryan thought, a small, sad smile touching his lips. "Let's fix that."

With a gentle push of his will, he took the warm ball of light that was Jaxon and Kaelia and carefully wove it into the core of Oracle's programming. He wasn't erasing the AI. He was giving it partners. He was giving the ship's brain a vibrant, roguish, human soul.

He was taking the logical, Precursor mind and giving it a heart full of mischief and a spirit full of adventure.

On the bridge, the celebration was starting to wind down. Emma was trying to get a damage report, to bring some order back to the happy chaos.

"Oracle," she said, her voice still a little thick with emotion. "Full fleet status report. And give me a damage assessment for the 'Odyssey.'"

There was a moment of silence. Usually, Oracle would respond instantly with a flood of perfect, logical data.

Then, the ship's voice spoke over the bridge speakers. And it was… different.

The cool, calm, almost robotic tone was still there. But it was changed. It was like a perfectly brewed cup of tea that someone had cheekily added a shot of whiskey to. There was a faint, dry wit to it now, a hint of a playful smirk you couldn't see.

"Systems are mostly functional, boss," the new voice of Oracle said. The word "boss" was new. Jaxon had always called her that.

Emma froze, her hand hovering over her console.

The voice continued, its tone casual and a little bit lazy. "Hull integrity is looking a little… rustic. Could use a new coat of paint. Maybe something in a nice, rebellious black." There was a pause. "And a moon with a view. The last pilot was promised a moon with a view."

The bridge fell completely silent. Every single person who had known Jaxon and Kaelia turned to stare at the speaker on the ceiling. It was Kaelia's last wish. It was Jaxon's promise.

Tears began to stream down Emma's face again, but this time, they were not tears of grief. They were complicated, messy tears of sadness and joy.

They had lost their friends. But they had not lost them completely. Their spirit, their humor, their very essence, was now a part of their home. They would always be flying with them.

"Welcome back, you two," Scarlett whispered from her place in the Rite Chamber, having heard it all over the comms. A real, genuine smile touched her face.

It was a perfect tribute. A beautiful, heartbreaking, and wonderful way to remember them. Their fallen friends were now the ghost in the machine, the soul of the ship itself.

In the middle of this beautiful, poignant moment, a small, quiet thud echoed through the Rite Chamber.

Scarlett, Emma, and Zara all spun around.

Ryan was on the floor.

He hadn't fallen dramatically. He had just… collapsed. Like a puppet whose strings had been suddenly cut. He was lying in a heap, his eyes closed, his body perfectly still.

"Ryan!" Scarlett screamed, rushing to his side.

The happy, tearful atmosphere of a moment ago vanished, replaced by a new, sharp panic.

Zara was there in a second, her medical scanner finally deciding to work. She ran it over his body, her face a mask of intense concentration.

"What is it? What's wrong with him?" Scarlett demanded, her hand on his chest. She could feel a faint, steady heartbeat. He was alive.

"His body is fine," Zara said, her eyes wide as she looked at the readings. "In fact, his body is… perfect. There's not a single flaw. But his energy… the conceptual energy that makes him what he is… it's almost gone."

She looked up at Scarlett, her expression grim. "He used it all up. Rewriting the Regent, bringing back the fleet, and… and whatever he just did for Jaxon and Kaelia. It took everything he had."

She put a hand on Ryan's forehead. He was warm, but he was completely unresponsive.

"He's stable," Zara said, her voice low. "But his consciousness is… adrift. He's in a coma."

They had done it. They had faced down a god. They had saved the fleet. They had won the war. They had gotten their hero back.

And now, after all that, they might lose him all over again, not to a monster or a weapon, but to simple, quiet exhaustion.

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