And that, Aries realized, was the only north star they had ever needed.
Kanata grinned. He tugged Aries’s tether, pulling them both back toward the ship.
She adjusted her helmet, the click of the visor deafening in the perfect silence. Breathe, she told herself. One… two… three.
The void does not whisper. It does not threaten. That is what Aries Spring feared most as she drifted, tethered by a single silver thread to the rusted hull of the Astra . Below her, the planet they’d named “Shummoor” rotated—a marble of ochre and violet, beautiful and utterly indifferent to the nine teenagers clinging to life above it. -DB- Kanata no Astra
They were lost. But they were lost together .
Home. The word felt foreign now. Was it the planet they’d left behind, with its warm sun and cold betrayals? Or was it this—this creaking, patched-up ship where every ration was counted and every shadow held a secret?
“You’re thinking too loud,” he said. “I can hear your brain grinding from here.” And that, Aries realized, was the only north
“What if we’re wrong about everything?” she asked, the question slipping out before she could tether it. “What if the people who sent us out here—what if the lies are bigger than we think?”
It had been eight days since they’d escaped the crumbling remains of the old military base. Eight days since Funicia had cried for a mother who wasn’t coming. Eight days since Kanata had grinned that reckless, impossible grin and said, “We’re going home. Together.”
She looked past him, at the endless black sewn with distant, cold stars. It was not the void that defined them. It was the small, fragile arc of light—the Astra —and the nine hearts beating inside it. She adjusted her helmet, the click of the
She looked at his faceplate. Behind the reflective glare, she could see the shape of his jaw, the scar near his eyebrow he’d gotten from the worm-beast on the forest planet. He was not the same boy who had boarded the Astra five weeks ago. None of them were.
“Aries.”
“Then we’ll find a bigger truth,” he said. “That’s the deal. We don’t leave anyone behind. Not in space. Not in the past.”