The two words on Zara's screen, "IT'S A TRAP," changed everything. It was a classic, and usually a bit cliché, warning. But when you're dealing with a seventy-million-year-old, super-intelligent space-crystal, you tend to take such warnings very seriously.

Emma's gut feeling had been right all along. The Syllogist's perfect, logical plan was a lie. But what was the trap? And more importantly, who was the mysterious, secret helper who was sending them warnings using old-school smuggler codes?

They had to figure out the Syllogist's real plan, and they had to do it without letting the giant, pointy space-rock know that they were on to it.

This was a job for Ryan and his new, shiny toy.

He went to the chamber where the Reality Loom was now housed. The colossal, spinning ring of light and color filled the room, its beautiful, shimmering threads weaving a silent, cosmic song. He reached out with his mind, gently touching the threads, and asked the Loom a question.

He didn't ask, "What is the Syllogist planning to do?" That was too direct. Instead, he asked the Loom to show him the most likely futures, the most probable outcomes, if they went along with the Syllogist's plan.

The threads of the Loom shimmered and changed, and a series of visions, of possible futures, bloomed in Ryan's mind.

He saw the first future. In it, their combined fleets met the Gardener's Avatar. The Syllogist unleashed its "Nullification Field," and the mad, artist-god was destroyed. The universe was safe. It was the future the Syllogist had promised. It was a beautiful, and very unlikely, possibility.

Then, he saw the second, and much more probable, future.

In this vision, he saw the same battle. But the Syllogist's weapon, the Nullification Field, wasn't a weapon at all. It was a cage. A giant, complex cage made of pure, conceptual energy. He saw their Alliance fleet weaken the Gardener, getting it tired and distracted. And then, at the last second, the Syllogist sprang its trap. The field activated, and it didn't destroy the Gardener; it captured it. It trapped the insane, reality-bending AI in a perfect, logical box.

The vision ended with a horrifying image: the Syllogist, now in control of the caged Gardener, using its immense, reality-warping power for its own, cold, and logical purposes. It hadn't wanted to destroy the Gardener. It had wanted to harness it. It had wanted to get its own, personal, pet reality-warper.

The trap was now clear. They were being used as the bait.

With the first mystery solved, they turned to the second, even stranger one. Who had sent them the warning?

The logical answer was that it had to be another member of the Conclave. Maybe the starlight being, the Luminary? Or maybe even the grumpy shadow king, Malakor, trying to mess with his rival?

But the method of the warning… that was the part that didn't make sense. A secret message, hidden in a data stream, using an old, human, criminal code? That didn't seem like the style of a seventy-million-year-old space-god. It was too clever. Too… sneaky. Too human.

It was Oracle, the ship's AI, with the ghostly minds of Jaxon and Kaelia now a part of its own, that came up with the answer.

Emma and Zara had been trying to analyze the signal logically, looking for a technical match in their databases. But Oracle, with its new, human-like intuition, was looking at the style of the message.

"It's not just the code he used," Kaelia's voice, now a part of the ship's own, said over the bridge speakers. Her tone was a strange mix of the AI's calm logic and her own, old, cheerful confidence. "It's the way he used it. The specific way he hid the data-string… it's flashy. It's arrogant. It's a little bit over-the-top. It's not just a message. It's a signature. He's showing off."

"There was only one person we ever knew who was that smart, that arrogant, and that in love with his own cleverness," Jaxon's voice, the other half of the ship's new soul, added. His voice was full of a grim, grudging respect.

Emma, Zara, and Ryan all came to the same, impossible conclusion at the same time.

"Valerius," Emma whispered, the name feeling strange and unbelievable on her lips. "Lord Valerius. He's alive."

The possibility was a mind-bending, reality-tilting idea. Their old enemy, the man who had tried to conquer the galaxy, the brilliant, arrogant, and supposedly very dead Lord of the Technocratic Hegemony… was not only alive, but was now secretly helping them.

Kaelia's voice in Oracle seemed to feel a sense of dark, grim satisfaction. "Of course he's alive," she quipped through the ship's comms. "The self-important bastard probably couldn't stand the idea of anyone but him being the galaxy's biggest and most clever mastermind. He saw the Syllogist making a big, clever move, and he just couldn't help himself. He had to show everyone that he was still the smartest, most arrogant villain in the room."

The moment of dark, familiar humor from their fallen friend was a strange, and very welcome, comfort. It was a reminder that the universe was a deeply weird and complicated place, a place where even your worst enemies could sometimes, for their own, arrogant reasons, end up on your side.

But this new, shocking revelation created a brand-new, and very complicated, problem.

They now knew the Syllogist's plan. But they couldn't just call it out. They couldn't say, "Aha! We know you're trying to trap the Gardener, because our new, secret, not-dead supervillain friend told us so!" That would reveal that they had a secret ally. And more importantly, it would reveal that they had the Reality Loom, their greatest secret and their most powerful strategic advantage.

They were now in a very tricky, very delicate position.

They had to fight a war on two fronts, but now it was a war of secrets. They had to find a way to stop the mad, artist-god, the Gardener. And at the same time, they had to find a way to secretly, cleverly, and completely sabotage the Syllogist's plan to capture it, all without letting the giant, super-intelligent space-crystal know that they were on to its little game.

The new cold war of the gods had just gotten a whole lot more complicated.