CHAPTER 53: 3029

Ahce had believed, with the kind of conviction that lived in bone and blood, that she and Reichardt would outlive every enemy foolish enough to stand against them. She thought the world would break before they did.

Instead, belief snapped first.

One moment, the battlefield roared around her, a tangle of smoke and spellfire, of steel flashing and claws raking the air.

Next, the universe stopped breathing.

Bullets hung suspended mid-flight. Shrapnel froze like glitter trapped in amber. Even the wind halted, blades of grass locked in place. Her own heartbeat tried to follow but failed, trapped between beats.

Ahce couldn’t fire. Couldn’t scream. Couldn’t even blink.

Time had abandoned them.

Then light arrived.

Not a flare. Not an explosion. Something older, hungrier. A catastrophic brilliance that rose over the horizon and devoured it whole.

It didn’t burn. It ruptured.

Reality buckled. The ground crumpled beneath her boots as if crushed by invisible hands. The sky fractured into jagged panes. The world folded inward like a map being snapped shut. And in that last fraction of a second before everything tore, she saw Reichardt reaching for her.

His hand stretched toward hers. His lips formed her name in a silent plea she would never hear. His eyes were raw, terrified, furious.

Then the universe ripped them apart.

Darkness took everything.

-

When Ahce opened her eyes again, the world wasn’t black. It was white. A blinding, sterile white that erased all sense of distance.

Not battlefield white.

Not smoke or ash.

Her throat scraped when she tried to breathe. "Where am I...?"

The bed beneath her felt too smooth, sheets engineered rather than woven. The ceiling glowed without a single lamp or flame. The air carried no scent at all. No earth. No gunpowder. No blood.

Just silence.

A sharp mechanical whir spun at her side. A spherical droid glided into view, its metal gleaming, rings of blue light orbiting its core like miniature moons.

"Master, you’re awake!"

Master?

Ahce pushed up too fast. Pain streaked through her ribs. "You... talk?"

"All Companion Units possess full verbal communication, Master," the droid chirped, puffed up with digital pride.

She blinked at it, long and slow.

Hallucination? Concussion? The afterlife?

This can’t be heaven. Heaven wouldn’t look like... whatever this is...

Her voice came out thin. "What’s the date?"

"Today is March 15," it answered brightly. "Year 3029."

Her breath hit a wall.

"Three... thousand... twenty-nine?"

"Yes, Master!"

The number didn’t sink. It crushed.

A thousand years...

Not heavy. Not believable.

Impossible...

The droid continued rambling, offering facts as cheerfully as if it were giving a tour. Each one landed like a hammer against her skull.

She was no longer Ahce Pentecase of the Eastern Duchy.

She was Ahce Qin. Youngest daughter of the Qin Clan, one of the ruling families within the Orion Galaxy, under the Zevonden Universe’s interstellar order.

Not adopted. Not fabricated. Not reborn.

Lost.

Lost and displaced by time itself.

According to Qin’s archives, she had vanished as a child during a spatial fracture event. Presumed dead. Searched for until grief emptied into ritual. Then, by some miracle, discovered unconscious near the military border of Planet Zed 088, where her eldest brother, Alexander Qin, identified her through genetic resonance.

She had the Qin traits...

Black, naturally curling hair. Eyes dark like liquid ink. A genetic signature tied to ancient star-founders from the Blue Planet. She matched two at a glance. The blood test sealed it. She was Qin.

She had always been Qin.

Ahce sat trembling, the revelation detonating inside her far more violently than any battlefield blast.

If she had lived to be found in this era...

If Earth no longer held her name...

If noble houses had turned into star empires...

Then the only truth her heart could shape tasted of rust and loss.

Did Earth die the same night she lost Reichardt?

And did she die with it?

Her fingers curled tight into the sheets, knuckles bleaching white.

A thousand years.

A brother she had never met.

A galaxy she had never dreamed existed.

And somewhere, lost in the ruins of time, the man whose hand she failed to grasp.

Her breath trembled.

"Reichardt..." she whispered, the name cracking apart on her tongue.

The room stayed still.

Not a wall. Not a light. Not a single star answered.

The door slid open without sound.

Huh?

Ahce flinched, instinct tightening her spine, but the figure who stepped inside wasn’t a soldier or medic. He moved with too much control for that, too much contained tension. Broad-shouldered, tall, dressed in a uniform patterned with deep navy folds and silver rank lines that shimmered like starlight. He paused in the doorway as though the moment itself had weight.

His eyes found her.

Dark. Familiar.

Painfully familiar.

"Ahce..."

The way he said her name almost knocked the breath from her lungs. Not as a stranger testing a foreign syllable. Not as a commander checking a patient’s identity. It was the voice of someone who had said that name a thousand times before she ever learned to walk.

Why did it feel familiar?

Alexander Qin crossed the room in three slow steps, each one careful, almost reverent. His jaw trembled once before he caught himself, but not fast enough to hide it from her. He stood in front of her bed and exhaled like he’d been holding that same breath for centuries.

"You’re really here," he whispered. "My little sister... truly here."

Ahce didn’t know what to do with the grief and warmth clashing in his expression. His silhouette was unfamiliar, but the emotion pouring out of him wasn’t. It was raw in a way nothing else in this new world had been.

He reached out, stopping just short of touching her hand. Asking permission in silence.

She gave a tiny nod.

His fingers closed around hers with shaking gentleness. As if she were made of breath and could disappear again at the slightest pressure.

"I searched," Alexander said, voice thick. "We all did. Every one of us refused the official ruling. They said the fracture swallowed you, that your body was gone. But I never believed it. Not even once."

His free hand lifted, brushing a strand of her dark hair with careful awe.

"You still have it," he murmured. "The curls. The same eyes. You look exactly like Mother did at your age."

Ahce swallowed, throat tightening. "I don’t... I don’t remember any of that."

"It’s alright." He gave her hand a small squeeze. "You’re here now. That’s enough. That’s everything."

She didn’t know why that made something inside her finally crack. Maybe because no one in a thousand years of the future seemed to understand her. But this man, this stranger who wasn’t a stranger, held her hand like he’d been carrying the ghost of her for most of his life.

Alexander drew a slow breath, gathering himself.

"There were five of us. Four boys... and one little sister." His eyes softened further. "You. Our only girl. Our miracle."

I don’t have my memories of them...

He let out a shaky laugh. "Every time you got into trouble, the four of us nearly tore down the house fighting over who was responsible for watching you. You had all of us wrapped around your finger from the moment you were born."

Ahce felt warmth pulse faintly in her chest. A history she didn’t remember... but one that remembered her.