“Your mind must be opened,” Darai whispered, “so that you can see whose side you really wish to be on. I tried to bring you to my end of things, in the beginning. Don’t you remember when I visited you in Lunamere? Before your sister ever did.”

But Valen was lost to the pain. Lost to the shadows. And as he screamed, the darkness reached inside and dragged its claws across his mind.

“All this time, I needed you to grow stronger. To hone your skills, so that you could rise up and give your sister the power she needed. Then, finally, once your body failed and I got you out of the way... I would become the king Exonia needs.”

“You will never be king,” Valen said through gritted teeth.

Darai’s power rolled through his mind. Such pain. Such fire.

Suddenly, a scene came to life before Valen, and he saw Exonia.

He saw his home, but it was a place of darkness, an endless sea that spread on forever. The only light came from a dark tower in the distance, and below it, the conduit. A swirling abyss of colors that was the other side of the Void.

Soon it would be opened.

Soon it would allow the Exonians through.

“Look at them,” Darai’s voice said gleefully, as Valen stared in horror at the other world. “Look at your people.”

The Exonians had no bodies.

It was a sea of shadows, writhing beneath the surface, endlessly hungry. Eager to devour, to take up a place in a body. They had never had bodies, could not walk freely the way the Mirabellians did, and they were forced to stare through the conduit forever, seeing the Mirabellians in all their mobility. Their lives, walking among the many planets and worlds.

The Exonians hissed and snapped their shadow-jaws.

“When they come through to this world, Valen,” Darai told him, “they will take the bodies that are already waiting here. They will become a perfect army, to head out and conquer other places. Other worlds beyond this. With your power, with your might...imagine what I will accomplish.”

No, Valen wanted to say.

But fear had stolen his voice.

The Exonians were supposed to be peaceful. That was the truth Valen had always been told, that Nor had believed, too. The Exonians were living in a dying world. They were meant to come to Mirabel, and survive alongside the people who existed here. Nor would rule over them, in a world without war. A world fully given over to peace.

She’d gone about it in the way she had to, and the wicked things she’d done would be worth it in the end, when Exonia and Mirabel became one.

But this?

This was a monstrosity.

This would be murder, of an entire galaxy full of people.