She looked past him, at the endless black sewn with distant, cold stars. It was not the void that defined them. It was the small, fragile arc of light—the Astra —and the nine hearts beating inside it.
“Aries.”
“What if we’re wrong about everything?” she asked, the question slipping out before she could tether it. “What if the people who sent us out here—what if the lies are bigger than we think?” -DB- Kanata no Astra
She looked at his faceplate. Behind the reflective glare, she could see the shape of his jaw, the scar near his eyebrow he’d gotten from the worm-beast on the forest planet. He was not the same boy who had boarded the Astra five weeks ago. None of them were.
They were lost. But they were lost together . She looked past him, at the endless black
Behind them, the Astra ’s airlock cycled open. Quitterie’s annoyed voice echoed over the comms: “Are you two having a moment ? Because the atmospheric processor is beeping, and Luca burned the rehydrated eggs again .”
The void does not whisper. It does not threaten. That is what Aries Spring feared most as she drifted, tethered by a single silver thread to the rusted hull of the Astra . Below her, the planet they’d named “Shummoor” rotated—a marble of ochre and violet, beautiful and utterly indifferent to the nine teenagers clinging to life above it. “Aries
Kanata grinned. He tugged Aries’s tether, pulling them both back toward the ship.