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UNCLAIMED WOMEN DO NOT SURVIVE.

In its place, someone—probably Jessa—had written:

NO ONE SURVIVES ALONE.

NO ONE IS OWNED FOR BEING PROTECTED.

An alarm sounded from Pela’s relay room—not an orbital weapon this time, but atmospheric entry. Everyone in the yard looked up as a burning point crossed between the twin moons, followed by a second and then seven more. Drop-pods.

Human life signs—nine frightened arrivals who would become the compact’s first large-scale sanctuary test, not a new set of prizes for competing camps.

Ash Camp moved before fear could become law. Medical teams loaded kits. Sanctuary guards assembled. Rath’s channel opened from Red Basin with coordinates and an argument about who controlled the nearest landing field.

Dreven looked at Kesta, and she recognized the question without mistaking it for permission to protect her. He was asking how they would meet the problem together.

“Choose with me,” he said.

Kesta tightened the shuttle key beneath her shirt and reached for her medical bag.

“Yes.”

Together, they ran toward the falling stars.

EPILOGUE

The Name She Keeps

Six weeks later, Kesta stood inside the repaired Hallow shuttle with one hand on the launch control. The engine could carry her beyond Kharon-Veil’s inner weapons. The stolen observer codes might open a route to a neutral relay. Elara believed the odds of reaching human space were poor but real.

Poor but real had once been enough to make Kesta run toward anything called freedom. Now, with the shuttle humming around her, freedom felt less like distance and more like the ability to choose what happened next. Behind her, Dreven waited on the landing pad. He had not entered without invitation, though he had spent weeks helping repair the ship that could still carry her away from him.

Kesta checked the cargo twice: copied evidence, medical samples obtained with consent, casualty names, Project Helix authorizations, and messages from families who no longer trusted the dead to remain remembered without witnesses.

She was not leaving today. The shuttle had become more useful than a single escape route: a courier, an evidence carrier, and a standing promise that choosing to stay did not require surrendering the horizon. Kesta powered the engine down and stepped outside. Dreven’s expression did not change until she handed him the secondary access key.

“Hold this,” she said.

His fingers closed around it carefully. “For how long?”

“Until the first evidence run. Then you give it back.”

“Yes.”

“No dramatic vow that you will keep me safe from every sky?”

“I have learned that dramatic vows create administrative problems.”

She laughed and touched his horn, a private greeting that still made heat move through both of them. Their bond warmed in answer, a sensation Kesta could now receive without searching it for command. What remained felt simpler: recognition.

At the edge of the landing field, the newest human survivors entered Ash Camp under the compact’s sanctuary guard. None wore personal claim bands. Each received food, translation, medical care, and the terms of departure before anyone asked what labor they could perform. Fear, rivalry, and old customs remained. The compact gave the affected person the first voice in what happened next. The first evidence run had been delayed twice.

Once because the western engine coupler cracked under pressure. Once because a newly arrived woman panicked when she learned the shuttle might leave without her testimony. Elara postponed departure rather than treating a witness as cargo to be scheduled.

Kesta spent the delay training two new medics. One was human. The other belonged to a species whose translucent skin showed every pulse of fear. Both learned the same rule first: treatment permission was not permission for data collection.

Across the landing field, Dreven supervised a sanctuary drill under Keth’s authority. He still moved like a warlord. The difference was that people could now tell him no without first calculating whether they would survive it. He had not become gentle. He had become accountable.

Their bond carried his amusement when Jessa corrected his evacuation route and his irritation when she was right. Kesta felt the emotions as distant weather, not instructions. She could close her attention to them when she needed privacy. The first time she did, Dreven had gone pale. Then he had asked how to make the boundary easier. They were still learning.