“What do we ride?” Lourna Dee cried, lifting a clenched fist on a thin, bare arm cabled with muscle. She was Twi’lek, of about forty years, whip-thin with green skin the color of swamp water, emaciated lekku with bone-white stripes dangling from the back of her head. She wore armored leather made from the hide of a kell dragon and a mask to match, with just the one arm bare and a single long-bladed knife sheathed on her thigh.

Lourna stood next to Pan Eyta on a raised platform at one end of the Great Hall of the Nihil, at a banquet table covered with rich food and potent liquor. Dozens more of these tables were placed throughout the hall, amid towers of flame pushing back the endless night. They were laden with indulgences for all to consume from as they chose. Food, drink, drugs. As much as they liked.

“THE STORM!” the Nihil shouted back.

The third and final of the Tempest Runners shouted out his own question. This was Kassav, an aged Weequay with skin like sun-dried meat, wearing only a fur cape, stained leather trousers, and his own mask—a thin plate of hammered metal with slits cut into it for eyes, nose, and mouth. A horrible parody of a face.

“Who guides us?” he bellowed.

“THE EYE!” came the answer, and at these words, the Nihil turned toward another platform, set lower than that of the Tempest Runners, where one person sat alone, at an empty table.

Marchion Ro.

He wore a mask, too, but not like the others. His was unique, even in the Great Hall of the Nihil. Smoked transparisteel with a single symbol slashed into it, a primitive, brutalist etching, swirls and lines that evoked a stylized planet-killing superstorm as seen from space, with its central eye centered roughly over his face. His clothes were simple—black pants and jacket over a sleeveless white tunic, and tight leather gloves with padding at each knuckle. His limbs were long, and what parts of his skin were visible were slate-gray. He wore no obvious weapons.

Marchion tilted his head back, gazing out into the void that surrounded them all. Strange lights flickered in the far distance, at the edge of vision, through the full spectrum. The Nihil called this place No-Space, and only they knew how to get there, via secret roads through tortuous hyperlanes unmapped in the galactic databases. Roads delivered by Marchion Ro, and his father before him.

The Great Hall of the Nihil had no walls or ceiling, just invisible vacuum shields creating a dome of breathable air above a broad durasteel platform hundreds of meters long. It looked and felt as if it were adrift in the great nothing.

The symbolism was obvious, and intentionally so. With the Nihil…all was light and life. Outside…cold, empty death.