Behind the town's municipal building, two spacecraft stood skillfully concealed behind old, dust-stained sheets. Their hulls consisted of dull metal; from the outside, they looked like abandoned wreckage, but as one drew closer, it became clear they were still living machines. Two Calosians were engaged in a silent but frantic ritual around the ships with their toolkits—tightening cables, closing panels, and performing final checks on the engine cowlings.
Epra, the Dermovox, and Hogna, the Azt, crouched on the ground just before boarding. Despite having different bodies and different physiologies, they were shrouded in the same silence. The prayers spilling from their lips could neither be fully heard nor completely lost; it was as if even the dust of this planet was listening to their whispers.
Standing a few steps behind them was Lara—the woman the Dermovox called the "Holy Shepherd"—with her hands raised. She traced intricate movements in the air with her fingers, blessing each of them in different ways. This blessing was neither entirely scientific nor wholly religious; it hung suspended in that gray zone the galaxy was so accustomed to.
Meanwhile, Sevda's memory module had already been scanned. The data had been meticulously selected. During transmission, one specific detail had been attended to: Hianyan would recognize at first glance who this information came from. For this reason, Edmond's face had been placed on the message's opening screen.
Hianyan, struggling to cope with the maddening void of waiting in the midst of a stalled war, jumped from his seat the moment he saw the incoming email. His eyes locked onto the screen. Without hesitation, he forwarded the file to Capazo.
Capazo did not waste a moment. As soon as he received the documents, he shared them with friends he knew as Legal Inspectors. A chain reaction had begun. Papers changed hands, data multiplied, and reality gained official status.
And at that exact point, the direction of the war began to change.
Now, this was a war that Labiba had almost no chance of winning.
Edmond would use the spaceship Hikmar and Azrak had used when descending to the planet and subsequently abandoned in Uruzen. However, it was imperative they hurry to reach that ship. For the moment the SWR (Supreme World Republic) armies began to spread across the entire planet, things would complicate rapidly. Even if Edmond Kingsley were found justified by the court for his actions, he still possessed an identity and a past citizenship. This was more than enough reason for the SWR's bureaucratic reflexes to kick in.
Therefore, the temporary lull the war had fallen into was an opportunity for them. They needed to leave before the planet was completely besieged and while eyes were turned elsewhere. Neither Hikmar nor Edmond was officially a party to this war. Hikmar's situation was even clearer: as a Cyoh Katum priest, he was one of those not expected to be associated with any armed conflict. His presence was practically invisible to SWR systems.
The real advantage lay in how the spaceship would be perceived during scans. When the SWR forces patrolling the sky scanned the ship, the systems would not generate any warnings since Edmond did not have an active identity. Forcibly entering and searching a ship clearly belonging to a Cyoh Katum priest was a major risk both diplomatically and culturally according to SWR protocols. Furthermore, no unit would bother obtaining special permission for a single unidentified passenger.
At most, it would be assumed that an ordinary Calosian woman was accompanying the Cyoh Katum priest, a situation the SWR would not deem noteworthy. As long as the systems did not produce suspicion, the soldiers would not ask questions.
One might think that Edmond being a Weisshafen could betray him during scans. However, this was no longer a possibility. The moment a Weisshafen died, all their records were permanently deleted from the system to prevent their genetic data from being used for any purpose. This was one of the strictest and most irreversible clauses of the Weisshafen protocol. Everyone was certain Aldoux Weisshafen was dead. Therefore, Edmond's genetic trace would find no match in any SWR scanning network. Just like the Calosian natives…
Edmond cast a distant glance at Sevda, whose dusty clothes and the hem of her skirt swayed rhythmically with her hair in the dusty wind. The girl was indeed waiting, sighing dejectedly.
With a slight smile, Edmond approached her. The woman looked at Edmond first from the corner of her eye, then turned her face directly toward him.
"Ah… maybe you'll want to ask me to come with you, but let me tell you before you ask. I… I can't go… These people here need me, and I must stay."
Normally, Edmond had no intention of asking her. He didn't want anyone to witness what he would do in the life ahead of him. Especially someone like Sevda, who knew him well and perhaps still saw him as a hero, even if only on a small scale. But still, these words fell from his lips:
"I know that no matter how much I insist, your mind won't change, because you are perhaps one of the most principled women I have ever seen or known. If these people need you, then you stay here… Because that's who you are… Perhaps the only angel of mercy left in this dead galaxy…"
Sevda seemed to smile at these words, but her eyes did not. She averted her gaze from Edmond and turned it toward the horizon, toward the hazy sky rising behind the half-ruined buildings.
"You know me so well," she said in a soft voice.
Edmond fell silent for a moment. The wind passed between them, blowing Sevda's hair toward Edmond's face. In that moment, he involuntarily breathed in Sevda's scent; dust, metal, and a very faint smell of ozone… It was the scent of this planet. Of this war. And perhaps of everything he no longer belonged to.
"Yes…" he said finally. "I know you."
He took one more step closer. There was now barely a breath's distance between them.
"I also know the novels you read… I might look like an ignorant, spoiled noble, but I once read the digital copies of them too."
As Sevda stood almost breath-to-breath with Edmond, she struggled to hide her shyness since her emotion modules were malfunctioning. As her cheeks turned a shade of red:
"Which books?" she asked. Yet, this wasn't a question she sought the answer to; it was merely an effort to cling to time.
"Those books you hide by the window…" Edmond said. "It's interesting that when I look at myself in the mirror, for some reason, I feel like I see one of the characters from those books. Quite a coincidence, isn't it?"
His smile was more than enough to convince Sevda.
"A very big coincidence…" Sevda said.
Her gaze drifted to Edmond's lips. Edmond looked at her lips too. The final distance remaining between them was so fragile it could have closed with a single wrong breath.
But Edmond had no desire to do that. That wasn't what he wanted.
He could no longer afford to bond with someone, nor to lose someone he was bonded to. His heart was in no state to handle another blow. Moreover, his own life was about to enter a path of no return. A man with such a life had no right to approach a woman.
He slowly pulled back. He moved his lips away from Sevda's face and took a deep breath. Sevda coughed too; as if she were releasing not a held breath, but a suppressed possibility.
"Edmond…" she said, but the rest of the sentence did not come. Likely some words of love were crossing her mind; but out of excitement, she couldn't bring those words together into a meaningful sentence. Her heart was beating very fast, her thoughts were entangled. So she stopped, took a deep breath, and with a moment's courage, took refuge in what she felt was the safest place:
"If you return from death again where you're going, don't worry… This time, I'll make you a face that looks like that old spoiled and ugly face of yours."
Edmond paused for a moment, then burst into laughter. This laughter was neither mocking nor light; on the contrary, it was like something that had been building up inside him for a long time finally leaking out.
"Yes…" he said, his smile softening. "I will miss you too, Sevda."
Then, with heavy steps, he began to walk toward Hikmar, who was waiting for him by the beat-up vehicle. As he plodded along the dusty ground, he stopped for a moment and turned around. He raised his hand, waved to Sevda, and let his voice reach her through the wind:
"Don't worry! You will find that man…" He hesitated for a second. Then he completed the sentence from the only place that wouldn't hurt them both: "Because you deserve that man."
Sevda did not answer. She just stayed where she was. She didn't lower her hand until Edmond vanished from sight. And in that moment, she realized: Some farewells hurt not because of the words left unsaid, but because the ones that were said were far too true.
"I hope you find the peace you are looking for!" Sevda shouted as Edmond got into the vehicle.
Edmond, getting into the car, murmured. "I'm sorry, but I highly doubt it…"