Even now we still know little of the Corians, as no one has seen or heard from one (that we know of) in over a thousand years. We still do not know the scope of space they control aside from the dukedom that was forced upon them by Emperor Jocaba III. We do know that they refer to themselves as a "kingdom," separate from the Empire. Their borders are closed. All attempts to scan that area of space are reflected back. They do not trade with any other dukedom, or any other species we know. They have sealed their realm.

— Excerpt from The Complete Analytical History of House Cori'a, by Willah C.S. Borga, Professor of Empire History, University Atlantium

Chapter II

The Wandering Ember

Guar's flagship hung in orbit above New Tullivor like a predator poised to strike. At the rear of the command deck, the Blood Prince stood before a glowing holotable, a small red marker blinking near the starport.

"Denl'o is approaching the starport, my Prince," an officer reported, his voice clipped with caution.

Guar's lips curled. So the rat scurries well. Soon, the Sword of Fire would lie within his grasp.

He turned toward his admiral, a tall, willowy Corian whose fine robes and carefully measured tone marked him as one of his father's chosen observers — a voice that never rose, which was somehow worse than one that did. Guar despised him, and suspected, though he had no proof beyond the timing of his father's hologram arriving before New Tullivor's ashes had even cooled, that it was this same observer who had already reported the temple to the King.

"Move the ship to the system's edge," Guar said. "Far from the shipping lanes. We will wait for Denl'o's return."

The admiral exchanged a wary glance with the ship's captain. "Forgive me, My Prince, but we cannot. The King has ordered our immediate return."

The temperature on the bridge dropped like a held breath.

Guar stepped forward until his face was inches from the admiral's. "How considerate of you," he said softly, "to remind me that obedience was ever optional." The fire behind his eyes burned crimson.

"My Prince, I am under direct orders from the Ki—"

The word never finished. Guar's blade flashed, a glowing arc; the admiral's head struck the deck before his body fell. The captain smirked while the bridge crew silently gasped in horror.

Guar exhaled slowly, letting the rage subside to a steady ember. An admiral's blood on the deck was never a message meant only for the crew. It was a message to the throne. His father would hear of this within the day, however far the ship ran. This was no longer a son testing the edge of his patience. This was a declaration, written where it could not be unwritten. Guar found, distantly, that the thought did not frighten him nearly as much as it should have.

"Captain."

"Yes, my Prince!"

"Take us out of orbit. To the edge of the system. We wait for Denl'o."

The captain hesitated only long enough to swallow, his eyes flicking once to the admiral's body, then away. "Helm, break orbit. Take us clear — now."

As the ship began to move, Guar's reflection shimmered in the viewport — cold, regal, and bloodlit by the stars.

"Callaeous will soon be mine," Denl'o whispered as he approached the starport on New Tullivor, his grin sharp with ambition. The memory of the temple fire burned behind his eyes. "With the Sword of Fire, I will free myself of Cori'a's throne."

The words burned sweetly on his tongue. Guar — unworthy, whatever crown he claimed heir to — was no fit hand for the blade. Denl'o had risked his life while Guar basked in hollow glory. Enough.

The Muqtaric were Cori'a's spy caste, bred thin and quick for generations so the ruling Balisco line could stand tall and unchallenged above them. Caste in Cori'a ran through the mother's line, and had for longer than anyone alive could say — a rule so old it had stopped looking like a rule and started looking like the shape of the world. Two children could share a father and grow up strangers to each other's blood, one raised soft in the palace under a Balisco mother, one raised to disappear under a Muqtaric one, and no court in Cori'a's long history had ever thought to ask why the arrangement suited the Balisco line quite so well. Denl'o had never asked either. It was simply how things were ordered, the way gravity was ordered, until a man had cause to wonder who had built the arrangement and for whom.

Denl'o would serve that arrangement no longer. He would step into the light, free of Guar's grasp — and of the caste that had shaped him only to serve it.

Muqtaric were born for espionage — small, quick, and easily overlooked, bred to move unseen through Balisco wars and Balisco secrets alike. Their minds, honed for precision and deceit, were the deadlier weapon, and the warrior caste had never once suspected it. Denl'o was proud of that heritage. He was only tired of spending it on someone else's throne. A spy who left bodies behind him was a soldier who hadn't been caught yet, nothing more — and whatever else happened tonight, he meant to leave the starport the way he'd entered it: unseen, unremembered, unmourned by anyone he hadn't chosen to mourn.

He drew from his sleeve the scrap of parchment he'd taken from the abbot's body. The edges were charred, and the sigil upon it had burned down to almost nothing — an ember, not ash. It pulsed once, faint as a dying pulse, as if it too were waiting to see what he would do next.

On the back, half-burned markings remained: NDE-193. A ship's name, perhaps — proof the abbot had moved the sword off-world before Guar ever reached the vault. He was close. So very close.

The starport loomed ahead — a lattice of steel and light above a metropolis that never slept. Civilian ships thrummed on the launch pads. Guards patrolled thick as smoke. Denl'o's plan was simple: infiltrate, trace, disappear. Simplicity, he already knew, would not survive contact with the terminal doors.

The facility was on high alert. Guar's battleship hung above the planet like an executioner's blade, and every checkpoint below had felt it. Patrol drones swept the crowds with red eyes. Denl'o drifted with the tide of travelers until he reached an information kiosk.

"May I help you?" asked a human attendant, her smile pulled thin with strain.

"Yes," he said smoothly. "The nearest lavatory?"

She gestured. "That way — far wall."

"Much obliged." His tone was polite. His eyes never stopped scanning.

Inside the lavatory, he waited for silence, then pried open a vent panel. The gap was narrow, but he'd wriggled through worse; it was the quietest way past the checkpoints, and quiet mattered more than dignity. The vent swallowed him whole. Dim light flickered over metal as he crawled deeper. When the tunnel curved down, he slid — metal shrieking beneath him. The impact rattled his teeth.

"Srat," he hissed, and brushed dust from his robes. A laser grid shimmered ahead, an ancient deterrent. "Old tricks," he muttered, smirking despite himself.

He rolled a metallic sphere toward the grid. It unfolded like a flower, mirrors refracting the beams until they blinked out. Denl'o slid past, a predator's grin ghosting his lips. Ahead, a faint glow spilled from a vent. He eased the grate aside and peered through: a locker room, dim and empty, no cameras humming in the corners. He dropped silently into the room below.

He was in — for exactly as long as it took the room to stop being empty. Three humans stood there, weapons already coming up, as startled by him as he was by them.

He didn't waste breath on a lie this time. In a blur he closed the distance, twin blades snapping from his wrist launchers, checking each strike at the last inch to drive the flats and pommels instead of the edges. Three quick blows. Three bodies folded, breathing, unconscious, into a heap of armor.

Denl'o straightened, smoothing his robes, allowing himself a small measure of satisfaction. Clean. No blood to explain, no corpses to trigger a manhunt before he'd even left the locker room. He retrieved his blades, slid them back into their launchers, and moved to the door. A small cylinder pressed to the panel sealed it behind him with a hiss of molten metal — a delay bought, not a problem solved.

The corridor beyond was dim, thick with ozone and coolant, empty. He kept to the walls and found, near its end, a door standing ajar — a small utilitarian office, a desk cluttered with datapads and half-finished reports, a cup of something hot and untouched beside a glowing console. Someone would be back soon.

He didn't wait to find out how soon. His fingers flew over the controls. Manifests, departure logs, cargo lists scrolled past. He filtered for the fragment from the abbot's parchment: NDE-193.

SHIP IDENTIFIED: THE WANDERING EMBER

Irony curled through him like smoke — an ember chasing an ember, the ship's name echoing the very sigil pulsing faintly against his own skin.

DEPARTURE: NEW TULLIVOR — 02:13 STANDARD HOURS AGO. DESTINATION: UNKNOWN / DATA ENCRYPTED.

His pulse quickened. Found you.

But the record went no further than the name. This terminal was a shipping clerk's, not a Portmaster's — enough to confirm a needle in the haystack, nowhere near enough to plot a course after it. If he wanted the vector, the true map, he would need the source, and the source sat behind better doors than this one.

He tore the data-spike free, no closer to being caught than he'd been ten minutes ago, and slipped back into the corridor. Boots sounded somewhere ahead — a routine patrol, not a hunt, and he let them pass two turns over before he moved on. His gaze swept the concourse beyond the locker room's service exit and found what he needed: the Portmaster's Office, its nameplate gleaming like a provocation.

The hunt had only begun.

Denl'o watched the Portmaster's Office from the concourse's edge, reading its rhythms — the pulse of security scans, the cadence of the doors, the traffic of clerks with their data-slates. Within minutes, the station's rhythm beat in time with his own.

He melted into the crowd, a weary, forgettable trader. A micro-drone the size of a grain of rice slipped from his sleeve and vanished among the ceiling lights. Moments later, sparks rained from a maintenance panel, alarms shrieked, and guards swarmed toward the smoke — chaos, perfectly timed.

He slipped through a service door as the tide surged the other way. Two clerks argued over shipment logs, backs turned. Denl'o stepped into view with one of the forged ID chips he always carried for exactly this purpose, and the brisk impatience of a man used to obedience.

"Inspection. System audit. Check your comm logs if you doubt me."

"I — yes, sir. The Portmaster's in a meeting."

"Good. Continue your work."

He crossed to the inner door, palmed the scanner. The chip blinked green. He slipped through.

The Portmaster's office was silent, lined with star charts and the stale scent of cold caf. A single console glowed on the desk. Denl'o sat and worked the controls — cargo manifests streamed past, thousands of ships. He filtered again for the fragment he already had, chasing the rest of the record this time.

DEPARTURE VECTOR CONFIRMED. ENCRYPTION KEY: —

The console froze.

SECURITY BREACH DETECTED. LOCKDOWN INITIATED.

The lights bled to crimson. Doors sealed with a hiss of hydraulics. Beyond the glass walls, alarms wailed — faster and more absolute than a routine breach response had any right to be. This was not his own diversion catching up with him. Something else was guarding this record, and it had answered before he'd even finished reading it.

He cursed and tore the data-spike free. Partial data remained: the ship's name and departure vector. The encryption key, the true map, was gone.

Boots thundered in the outer corridor. The Portmaster burst in with two guards. "You! Step away from that terminal!"

Denl'o turned slowly, offering a faint, courteous smile. "Apologies. Routine audit — perhaps I overstepped."

The guards leveled their rifles.

He moved first. A flick of his wrist — one blade, aimed to disable, not kill — dropped the first guard clutching a ruined hand before he could fire. The second fired anyway; a plasma bolt grazed Denl'o's shoulder, white-hot pain flaring down his arm. He drove forward and slammed the man into the wall, hard enough to still him, no more.

The Portmaster lunged for a panic switch. Denl'o kicked the console, shattering it, and hurled a smoke pellet. Gray haze swallowed the room.

Down the hall, two more officers appeared. He hurled a flash charge; white light burst, blinding them. He vaulted the railing and dropped to the freight level below, pain ripping through his shoulder as the wound reopened, and cut through the chaos toward a maintenance hatch. Behind him, security shouted orders, boots hammering metal.

He keyed the hatch and slipped into a crawlspace. Darkness swallowed him whole. He pressed his back to the wall, breathing through clenched teeth. The data-spike glimmered faintly in his hand — The Wandering Ember. Two hours gone, but the trail was still warm.

Blood trickled down his arm. He smiled — wounded, hunted, and no closer to becoming the thing he'd left the caste to escape. Not yet, at least.

Denl'o crawled from the vent into a deserted service corridor, pressed his palm to the wound, drew a steady breath, and moved on. At the corridor's end, daylight flickered through a narrow window. Beyond lay the landing zone — ships rising and descending in bursts of fire and dust. No guards. He slipped outside.

"Halt!" a voice shouted.

Two security officers sprinted across the tarmac, rifles raised. Denl'o ran, energy bolts scorching the air behind him, and cut around the nearest hangar wall — gone. By the time they reached the corner, he was already flat against the hangar roof above them, cloak stilled against the metal. He waited until they passed beneath, arguing over which way he'd gone, then dropped soundlessly behind them. One silver disc, thrown low — blue lightning — and both men convulsed and went still.

Denl'o stepped over them without breaking stride. Two guards, one throw, nobody dead. He preferred it that way — not out of mercy, but economy. Corpses drew searches he didn't have time to outrun.

The next hangar held a small freighter, narrow-framed and sleek. A man knelt beneath it at an open access panel, humming to himself.

"Fine ship," Denl'o said, approaching.

The man looked up, grease-blackened hands. "She's my pride and joy. One of the last TST Lightnings still flying. Modified Mackenssa J-six, and I converted the jump drive to a J-seven myself."

"Impressive. You take passengers?"

"Sorry. Cargo run to Neeba IV. No room."

"A pity." Denl'o's hand rose, pistol already aimed. "Then I'll take it. Quickly."

"Wait — you can't —"

"Drop the weapon!" A guard filled the hangar doorway.

Denl'o grabbed the pilot's collar and threw him clear, out of the guard's line of fire, then turned and fired once — a stun bolt, not a kill shot. The guard dropped. The pilot, sprawled and furious but unhurt, scrambled up shouting after him as Denl'o sprinted up the ramp.

"I'm stealing your ship, not your life," Denl'o called back, almost rueful, and sealed the hatch.

The cockpit lights flared as he dropped into the pilot's chair, fingers flying across the controls. "Show me your strength, old ship." He shoved the throttle forward.

The Lightning rose, clearing the hangar in a burst of fire and wind. Within seconds the starport shrank below — alarms, smoke, and flame receding into the void. He allowed himself a sharp grin, sleeve still wet with blood.

He had a name. He had a vector. For the first time since the temple burned, he had a straight line to follow instead of a fragment to chase. Whatever the Muqtaric had made him, tonight he had chosen, again and again, not to become only that. It would have to be enough for now.

The Wandering Ember was two hours ahead — and Denl'o, wounded but unbroken, would not rest until he caught it.

Guar did not love waiting. He loved steel, fire, and command — but waiting gnawed at him like rust. He sat upon his throne at the dreadnought's heart, alloy veins threading from chair to deck, binding his will to the ship's core. When Guar moved, the ship seemed to move with him. Except now, it did not.

His jaw tightened. Denl'o had been gone too long. Somewhere behind him, unspoken, sat the thing he had done to the admiral — not regret, exactly, but a low awareness that word of it would reach his father's ear long before he ever reached his father's throne room. Let it. A man who feared the message should not have sent it.

A tone sounded. "Incoming vessel."

"Battlestations," the captain barked. "Target—"

"Wait." Guar's voice was low and dangerous. "That's Denl'o."

"Sire, his transponder reads—"

"It's him. Get him aboard."

"Yes, my Prince." The captain turned sharply. "Weapons officer, prepare the grapple beam."

Emitters charged for a grapple lock — but before they fired, the smaller ship flared white and vanished in a burst of light.

Guar's hands clenched around the throne's arms. "Follow."

The dreadnought banked — then shuddered. Lights flickered. The deck's vibration faltered. Power drained from the consoles one by one, like dying stars, until every screen on the bridge went dark at once. Not the ragged flicker of a malfunction. The clean, deliberate silence of something switched off on purpose.

"Report," Guar said.

"Sire — there's no fault. Nothing failed. It's as if—" the captain's voice thinned "—as if someone reached in and simply turned us off."

Silence.

"Denl'o." Guar said it quietly, and the certainty in his own voice unsettled him more than the dark bridge had. He thought of every system Denl'o had ever had cause to walk past unescorted — engineering, comms, the drive core — handed without question to a man bred never to be noticed doing anything at all. He had called that loyalty, once. He was beginning to understand it might only ever have been access.

This had not been decided at the starport. A man did not carry the tools for this on a single afternoon's notice. Whatever Denl'o had planted, and wherever, he had planted it before New Tullivor ever burned — which meant the betrayal Guar was only now discovering had been waiting, patient as the god the sword was named for, for far longer than Guar cared to guess.

"The hunt," he murmured, "was never only mine."

Next in the Quest for the Star Anthology

Callaeous Found

In the cold dark between the stars, the signal pulsed—an echo of something ancient, something alive.

​At first, the Empire mistook it for debris, a phantom transmission lost in the static of forgotten wars.

But those who listened closely heard more than noise. They heard a voice.

It whispered of a sword once buried in flame, of a brother’s betrayal, and of a prince who would not die.

Now, far beyond New Tullivor, a golden dreadnought stirs from its long silence.

Engines awaken. The hunt begins.

For the fire has been found again—and it remembers every hand that tried to wield it.

© 2026 Michael J. Barnes

Quest for the Star and all associated characters, locations, organizations, and story elements are the intellectual property of Michael J. Barnes. All rights reserved.

No portion of this work may be reproduced or distributed without permission from the author.