Chapter 52
The El'Vertigo court bloomed like a mechanical flower—holo-webbed nobles floating in spheres of light and lineage, every word they spoke twisted with ceremony and suspicion. Sigils spun mid-air, glowing with layers of ancestral code. My own emblem barely shimmered, like even it was ashamed to be here.
Lord Fiji's voice cracked through the chamber like a whip.
"Pablo El'Vertigo," he intoned, his hologram stretched to exaggerated height, swathed in imperial silks woven with flickering black data. His four eyes blinked in perfect intervals—calculated, reptilian.
"You return reeking of ash and gutter blood, speak of voidborn threats, a rogue warrior, and rebel deviance—then dare suggest abandoning your station... to enlist in the Kruger ranks?"
Gasps and jeers rippled through the court. They sounded like children who'd been told the sun might not rise.
I stood unmoving beneath their judgment, hands clasped behind my back, jaw clenched so hard I felt a molar shift.
"I'm not abandoning my duty," I said, my voice low but steady. "I'm re-forging it. The Void didn't care about class or title. It nearly ended us. Kiro held that line alone. I won't let him face it again without me."
A sharp laugh echoed from a matriarch's sphere. "You'd fight beside a relic-bound stray? He reeks of corruption. The kind we quarantine."
"He bleeds for this planet," I shot back, louder now. "While you were busy counting ships and secrets."
That shut them up, if only briefly.
Fiji leaned in, his hologram flickering with icy composure.