Orion sat alone in his quarters, posture relaxed but mind razor-sharp. He had initiated the secure comm minutes ago, bypassing several layers of encryption only he and his father had access to. The screen flickered once before stabilizing—Cassian's image materialized, seated behind his polished obsidian desk on a distant flagship.
He had co here with a simple purpose: to gauge his father's reaction.
And the mont he spoke the na—Hekatryon—he got exactly what he wanted.
Cassian's expression tightened. Not by much, just a flicker, a fractional delay in his usually seamless control. A pause, a hesitation—uncharacteristic for a man who had mastered the art of deception in both war and politics. But Orion had been raised to notice these things. And once seen, they couldn't be unseen.
A silence stretched across the encrypted channel, the air between them sohow heavier despite the physical distance.
Cassian's face smoothed over, regaining its usual unreadable calm. His hands, resting on the desk in the video feed, remained still—no twitch of fingers, no subtle motion betraying unease. But Orion had already seen it.
His father knew.
"Where did you hear that na?" Cassian's voice ca through the comm with no lag—level, composed, but Orion caught the shift in its weight. This wasn't casual curiosity—it was controlled restraint.
Orion didn't answer. He just waited.
The briefest flicker of consideration—how much to say, how much to withhold.
Then, finally, his father exhaled, leaning back slightly. "You are too perceptive for your own good, kid. You'll learn about it in the Special Candidates Program."
A confirmation. Not in the way Orion had expected, but a confirmation nonetheless.
"So, it's restricted knowledge," Orion pressed, keeping his tone neutral. "You know what it is, but you can't tell ?"
Cassian t his gaze evenly through the screen. "I don't have the authorization to explain it. If I grant you access to it, the mont you touch the classified archives, alerts will trigger. The Confederacy watches everything tied to Hekatryon." His voice hardened, and for the first ti, Orion sensed sothing else beneath it—not just caution, but sothing colder. A quiet irritation.
Not directed at Orion.
Directed at the fact that even he, Cassian Reyes, was bound by these restrictions.
But Orion didn't take it as a warning to stop. He took it as sothing else entirely.
Don't you dare get caught looking.
For a few monts, neither of them spoke.
Orion considered his next move carefully. There were always ways to get information, even when it was locked away. Especially when it was locked away. But the fact that his father—one of the most powerful n in the Confederacy—was unwilling or unable to speak freely ant that this wasn't just classified. It was sothing else.
Sothing dangerous.
"Hekatryon," Orion said again, testing the word on his tongue. "It was discovered in the Raptures, wasn't it?"
Cassian's jaw tensed, but he didn't confirm or deny.
"I'll find out sooner or later," Orion continued, watching the image of his father. "But you already know what it is. You already know what it does."
Cassian's fingers finally moved in the feed, tapping once against the polished surface of his desk. A calculated motion, deliberate in its aning. A signal.
"You're not wrong," Cassian admitted at last.
His voice was steady, but there was an edge to it now—sothing asured and sharp.
And Orion realized then that this was the limit of what Cassian was willing to give him. Not because he didn't want to share more—but because he couldn't.
Not without consequences.
"I see," Orion said finally, leaning back in his chair. His mind was already racing, running through possibilities, connections. If the Academy had entire programs dedicated to it, if accessing the wrong archives could trigger alarms, if even his father was unwilling to speak on it openly—
Then Hekatryon wasn't just rare knowledge. It was forbidden knowledge.
Cassian studied him through the screen for a long mont. Then, as if coming to a decision, he gave a single nod.
"You'll have your answers soon enough," he said, adjusting his collar. "Just be patient."
Orion held his gaze for a beat longer before ending the transmission with a respectful nod.
Patience.
That was sothing he had never been particularly good at.
The screen dimd, going dark.
But Cassian's last words lingered.
"So things are locked away for a reason."
Orion stared at his reflection in the black glass of the comm display.
Then he gave a small, knowing smile.
And with that, he stood.
The encrypted connection stabilized with a low chi, and the dark screen gave way to Aurelia's image—hazy at first, then sharp. Her surroundings were obscured, as if a cloaking field blurred the background into shadow.
She didn't speak right away.
Instead, she stepped back slightly from her comm unit, folding her arms as though gathering her thoughts. Her expression was pensive, guarded, as if debating how much to reveal even over a Dominion-grade secure line.
Then, finally, her voice ca through the speakers.
"Hekatryon was found in a Rapture," she said, voice steady despite the weight of her words. "Buried deep within the monolithic cathedral."
Orion leaned closer to his display, every muscle taut. He didn't respond imdiately. He waited, letting her continue at her own pace.
"It wasn't just a material, a relic, or an energy source," Aurelia went on. "It was a system of knowledge. A frawork for comprehension itself."
That phrasing struck him hard. A frawork. Not a re artifact, not sothing to wield, but sothing more—sothing foundational, recursive. Sothing that redefined the user as much as it revealed the world.
"The lost civilization didn't just use Hekatryon," she continued, her voice faintly distorted by static. "They beca part of it."
Orion's breath caught.
"Their greatest minds dissolved into its structure, leaving behind echoes of what they once were."
Her words sent a chill across his skin, even through the artificial comfort of the sealed chamber he'd taken the call in.
This wasn't about weapons. This wasn't even about dominance.
It was about sothing else entirely. Sothing buried beneath layers of lost ti and forgotten warnings.
It explained so much.
Why Hekatryon reacted to intent. Why it manifested powers based on cognition.
It wasn't technology.
It was resonance.
The deeper one understood it, the more it aligned with their comprehension. Reality itself tilted to match their insight.
Orion let the implications settle like cold ash inside his chest.
Then, after a pause, he spoke.
"If Hekatryon is unlocked by comprehension," he said carefully, "why hasn't the Dominion mastered it?"
Aurelia's expression darkened on the other end of the line.
"That's the part they don't want you to ask."
The silence between them was deafening.
"They tried," Aurelia said at last, her voice a bitter murmur. "They poured resources into it. Scholars, scientists, researchers—they all studied Hekatryon, obsessed over it, sacrificed entire research teams in pursuit of understanding it."
She leaned forward slightly on her end, her eyes hard as tal.
"But no matter what they did, the system refused them."
Orion felt it then—that creeping cold at the base of his spine. A knowledge he didn't want but couldn't turn away from.
Then Aurelia gave the final piece.
"But there was one bloodline that could."
He already knew. Deep down, he had always known.
"House Valken," he said quietly.
Aurelia nodded, her voice like stone. "And the mont the Dominion realized that," she continued, "they erased House Valken from existence."
"But why? Shouldn't they research what made them capable of using it?" Orion inquired.
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