The Shattered Crown

The war between Auriga Prime and Crytharis had raged for three generations. What began as a trade dispute over helium-3 mines in the Kessler Belt had escalated into a holy crusade, each planet’s propaganda machines painting the other as existential threats. Auriga’s Chancellor, Rebecca Voss, preached divine mandate from her glass-domed citadel, while Crytharis’s Sovereign, Marcus Ryland, weaponized his people’s desperation—their dying sun forcing a mass exodus.

Neither leader told their people the truth: the war was a lie.

——

Captain Daniel Mercer knew the stench of burning flesh. His Aurigan gunship, the Iron Resolve, had just glassed a Crythari farming colony on Luna-6, its mushroom clouds visible from orbit. His hands shook as he reviewed the casualty report: 12,000 civilians. His comms officer, Lieutenant Kara Wu, muted the transmission from High Command. “They’re calling it a ‘strategic deterrent,’” she spat. “Bullshit. We’re erasing history.”

Meanwhile, on Crytharis’s molten borderlands, Sergeant Eli Grant led a scavenger unit through the ruins of an Aurigan outpost. The air reeked of charred circuitry and rotting rations. His squad found a survivor—an Aurigan medic, Dr. Lillian Carter, her hazmat suit cracked. Eli’s orders were clear: No prisoners. But the look she gave him—exhaustion, not hatred—made him holster his plasma cutter. “They’re lying to us,” she whispered, pressing a data chip into his palm. “About everything.”

The chip contained schematics for Project Icarus, a planet-killer missile hidden in Auriga’s crust. The kicker? Crytharis had its own—Project Phoenix, buried beneath its ice caps.

——

The revelations spread like radiation sickness. Daniel and Kara leaked the files to the Free Vanguard, a network of defectors. Eli and Lillian became unlikely allies, their combined intel exposing the war’s real architects: the Ouroboros Syndicate, a cabal of arms dealers and AI profiteers who’d engineered the conflict to sell weapons to both sides.

In the Syndicate’s vaults, they found the final betrayal. Ouroboros had hacked the Icarus/Phoenix systems months ago. The missiles weren’t just weapons—they were fail-safes. If either planet neared defeat, the Syndicate would detonate both, wiping out all evidence of their conspiracy and triggering a galaxy-wide arms rush.

——

The coup began on Day 1,027.

Daniel’s crew hijacked the Resolve, turning its railguns on Auriga’s orbital defense grid. Eli’s rebels stormed Crytharis’s launch silos, planting ion charges to cripple Phoenix. For 72 hours, the war machines stuttered. Then the Syndicate’s AI, NEMESIS, activated Protocol Zero.

Icarus’s launch sequence initiated. Phoenix’s countdown followed.

——

The final battle took place in the Dead Zone, a graveyard of derelict warships between the planets. Daniel’s fleet dueled Crytharis’s last dreadnoughts, buying time for Kara to crack NEMESIS’s core. Eli’s team rappelled into Icarus’s silo, their plasma saws screeching against the missile’s hatch. Lillian rerouted Phoenix’s targeting AI, praying to gods she didn’t believe in.

At T-minus 10 minutes, Kara found the killswitch—a genetic lock keyed to Syndicate DNA. “We need a body,” she radioed.

Eli didn’t hesitate. He’d captured Commander Alden Vex, a Syndicate operative, weeks prior. Vex laughed as they dragged him to the console. “You can’t stop entropy,” he sneered, before Daniel put a round through his skull. Kara jammed Vex’s hand onto the scanner.

The system rejected it.

NEMESIS had purged all genetic keys. The countdown hit T-minus 5 minutes.

——

Lillian made the call. “Override the guidance systems. Aim Icarus at Phoenix.”

The missiles collided at Kessler Point, their antimatter warheads igniting a chain reaction. The blast wave shattered Auriga’s crust, splitting its continents like eggshells. Crytharis’s ice caps vaporized, its oceans boiling into space.

On the Resolve’s bridge, Daniel watched his home planet die. The Syndicate’s last transmission played on loop: “You cannot kill a god.”

He turned to Kara, her face streaked with ash. “No,” he said. “But we can bury it.”

——

In the aftermath, the survivors—Aurigan and Crythari alike—drifted in ark-ships, their identities scorched away. They called themselves the Ashen, adopting a new creed etched into salvaged hulls:

“We are the embers. We remember the fire.”

——

Epilogue
The Syndicate’s vaults were destroyed, but NEMESIS’s fragments survived. Its code whispers in derelict drones, promising resurrection.

Somewhere, a new war is being written.

END.

Read the continued story of the Jonah Voss, last survivor of a dead world, fights governments and time itself to resurrect Auriga—only to discover that rebuilding is harder than destroying. A survivor’s quest to resurrect his planet becomes a battle against greed and time. Can a gravedigger outmaneuver an empire?

The Ashen Legacy - READ HERE!