CHAPTER 54: WELCOME HOME

Alexander straightened, slipping back into the composed grace of a seasoned officer without losing an ounce of tenderness.

"We’re not on a civilian vessel right now," he said. "This is a military ship. The Fourth Stellar Fleet."

She blinked. "Military...? Why am I..."

"It wasn’t safe to leave you on Zed 088," he explained gently. "There were too many eyes. Too many political parties who would’ve used you before you even knew your own name."

His gaze hardened just slightly. Protection. Anger. Oath.

"Uncle Lyr handles command of the Fourth Fleet," he continued. "We left as soon as we secured you. We’re already en route to the capital star, Agartha."

Agartha...

Huh?

Isn’t that the mysterious inner dimension back on Earth?

Was it a coincidence?

"The capital is an S-ranked planet," Alexander said. "Our home. Where the Qin Clan resides."

The way he said our home made her chest ache. She tried to imagine it. A planet built around starlight, a clan with a thousand years of history, four brothers who loved a sister they believed dead.

A life she had never lived.

"You’ll meet them all soon," he said softly. "Your other brothers... they’ve been preparing for this day their whole lives."

Her voice cracked. "I don’t know how to be who they remember."

Alexander shook his head immediately, face warm and certain. "You don’t have to be anyone except the girl sitting right here. Sister is not a role. It’s you. Whatever time has taken, we’ll rebuild it together."

Ahce’s eyes burned. She didn’t pull away when he brushed his thumb across her knuckles. Didn’t flinch when he leaned just slightly closer, as if shielding her from the entire ship with nothing but his presence.

"You came back to us," Alexander whispered.

It took several days for the Fourth Fleet to make its final approach toward the capital star, but for Ahce, time stretched like a thin wire pulled taut. The ship hummed with energy, engines thrumming beneath her feet, corridors alive with personnel moving around often. Yet inside her chest, everything remained painfully, stubbornly still.

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Reichardt. The battlefield. The rupture. His hand reaching for her across a collapsing world.

No matter how many futuristic hallways she walked through, no matter how many screens displayed her name and identity as Ahce Qin, her mind kept slipping backward, reaching for a man trapped a thousand years behind.

He is gone...

She told herself a million times.

That universe is gone.

The old timeline had collided with another to create this one. Zevonden.

The Milky Way no longer existed except as scattered relics in academic archives.

But knowing it didn’t stop the ache.

People in this era spoke of Earth the way ancient monks once whispered of mythical temples. A mother planet, a cradle of early humanity. A place of blue oceans and animal life, known now simply as the Blue Star.

A concept.

Not a home.

Alexander handled all communication with the Qin Clan, making sure expectations didn’t crush her before she even arrived. He told them she needed time to recover. Time to breathe. Time to learn how to exist without unraveling.

Their parents were away on an expedition with the royal family, deep in the outer systems. Even if they wanted to rush home, the journey back from those territories took weeks. Maybe months. Space didn’t bend easily, even in this era.

Ahce wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or terrified.

She spent most of her borrowed days reading the brief profiles Alexander provided about her siblings, trying to stitch together familiarity from names she didn’t remember.

Her second brother, Arnold. A prodigy scientist whose work revolved around genetic instability and mental collapse, the most common sickness plaguing interstellar society. Brilliant, meticulous, probably sleep-deprived. She imagined him buried in data holos, speaking in soft sentences that carried too much weight.

Her third brother, Amiel. A businessman who built empires out of empty plots of land and paper contracts. Real estate, commerce, and resource trade. Everything except food, which he openly avoided as if culinary ventures personally offended him. Alexander said Amiel was charming but ruthless when negotiation called for it.

Her fourth brother, Achilles. A mecha engineer of such talent that military factions tried to poach him every year. Alexander spoke of him with a mix of pride and exasperation, claiming Achilles cared more about giving robots personalities than maintaining his own sleep schedule.

Among her brothers, only one lived permanently in the capital.

Amiel.

It was him she met first.

The fleet entered Agartha’s orbit with a shudder of decelerating thrusters. From the observation deck, the planet bloomed beneath them like a living jewel. Agartha wasn’t a world of oceans and continents, but one of luminous rings, floating citadels, and landmasses suspended in layered strata of atmosphere.

A star-ranked planet. A world powerful enough to bend the harmony of the system around it.

When Ahce stepped off the docking platform, the air felt different. Lighter. Thinner. Infused with a faint metallic sweetness like static before lightning.

Waiting at the end of the corridor was a man dressed in a long, pale coat with golden seamlines tracing its edges. He held a holopad in one hand and a drink in the other, sipping it as if this entire meeting were a casual brunch.

His hair was dark and straight, falling neatly behind his ears. His eyes were the same deep Qin black, but unlike Alexander’s solemn calm, Amiel’s gaze sparkled with interest, sharp and playful.

He saw her and froze.

Not with disbelief.

With realization.

Then his lips pulled into a slow, disbelieving smile. "So it’s true..."

He lowered the drink, stepped closer, and studied her face with the same deliberate care a merchant used when evaluating a priceless artifact, except there was no greed, only a kind of wonder that softened the cynicism in his expression.

"Ahce," he murmured, voice strangely gentle. "Our long-lost sister."

She felt the air catch in her throat.

Amiel let out a breath that trembled just enough to betray him.

"You look just like the portrait Mother kept in her study. Except you’re taller. Less baby-faced." He smirked faintly. "Though if Achilles sees you, he’ll probably still argue we should wrap you in bubble shielding before anyone else touches you."

Ahce didn’t know what to say. Words wobbled on her tongue, unstable.

Amiel’s gaze softened further, recognizing the overwhelm in her eyes.

"Hey," he said, stepping close enough to rest a warm hand on her shoulder. "You don’t have to force anything, alright? No expectations. No pressure."

He tapped his chest lightly. "I’m Amiel. Third brother. Resident capital hostage. And... I’m really glad you’re here."

There it was again.

The emotion she didn’t know how to accept.

Family.

Claiming her without hesitation.

Her throat tightened. "I... hope I can be who you remember."

His smile turned unexpectedly tender.

"Ahce," he said, "you don’t owe us the past. Just let us be part of your future."

She didn’t trust herself to speak. So she nodded, and Amiel’s hand squeezed her shoulder once, warm and steady, grounding her in a world she hadn’t yet learned how to stand in.

"Come," he said, guiding her gently forward. "Let’s take you home."