"Then you are not opening a gate," it whispered. "You are declaring one."

"I imagined," he said quietly, "that war isn't always a weapon. Sometimes it's a refusal. The ship is dying because we chose peace over struggle. We stopped fighting the dark. We stopped fighting the cold. We stopped fighting for each other."

"You opened the Gate of War," it said, "inside a ship that has forgotten how to fight. What do you imagine will happen now?"

On the seven-hundredth night, Kaelen broke the seal.

And somewhere in the dark between stars, the Kwntr turned—not away from war, but toward it—for the first time in centuries.

The thing tilted its head. The glass plain shuddered.

Behind him, the gate did not close. It waited .

"Good," he said. "I was tired of sleeping."