Episode 1

Chapter 1: Severed

My name is Sera Ashford, and tonight my family threw me away.

Not in some metaphorical sense. They printed a severance agreement, stamped the family seal on it, and made me sign it in blood. My blood, specifically. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The Ashford estate. Dustmere Colony. One of those frontier settlements at the edge of nowhere, the kind of place where everyone pretends they chose to live here instead of admitting the core worlds wouldn't have them. The Ashfords are old money by Dustmere standards, which is kind of like being the tallest kid in kindergarten, but my mother Helena is King-tier, so nobody says that to her face.

King-tier means her contracted beast could level a city block. It also means she hasn't heard the word "no" in about fifteen years, and it shows.

My father Kael is Gold-tier. Quiet guy. Nice guy. The kind of guy who watches his daughter get beaten and says nothing, because saying something would mean having a spine, and Kael Grandmont sold his spine the day he married up.

Three brothers. Caelen — eldest, big, hits hard. Ronan — second, follows whatever Caelen does. Dorian — third, away at the academy in Sovereign City, the only one of them I actually like. He's not here tonight. Yara made sure of that.

Yara. My adopted sister. The girl my parents brought home as a baby and loved more than me from literally day one. She's spent the last two years making my life hell, and she's really, really good at it.

Right now she was kneeling in the middle of our living room with both hands on her face, shoulders doing that shaking thing. Big performance. Her cheeks were completely dry.

"My star-energy pendant is gone!" She pointed at me. Her voice cracked in exactly the right places. "She went into my room — she stole it!"

Helena slammed her hand on the alloy desk. Bang.

"Sera. Where is it?"

I wiped blood off my chin. Yeah. Blood. Caelen already hit me. We'll get to that.

"Did you check the security feeds?" I said.

"The cameras went down two days ago." Helena had this look on her face, like she was enjoying this. "The same two days you were in her room. Funny, isn't it?"

Right. Funny. The cameras always went down at exactly the right time for Yara. Two years of this and the script never changed. Yara cries, Helena convicts, I bleed.

Tonight Caelen got things started early. About thirty seconds before Yara launched into her little performance, he stepped up and backhanded me across the face. Not a slap — a full backhand from a Gold-tier contractor. I flew into the display shelf on the far wall. Holo-frames, trophy cases, twenty years of Ashford family achievement — all of it came crashing down on top of me.

I got up. Spat blood. Looked him in the eyes.

"That's the last time," I said. "Last time anyone in this family puts a hand on me."

He didn't say anything. They never do.

So here's the situation. Yara doing her crying act, Helena playing judge, me with blood running down my chin and nowhere to wipe it.

"I didn't take anything," I said.

Yara stood up. Tears off, just like that. She walked over to me with her head tilted, already smiling before she even said it.

"Kneel." No trembling, no cracking voice. "Get on your knees, crawl between my legs, and apologize. Do that and I'll let it go."

Nobody said a word.

Two years. She stole my training resources. She drugged my food before exams. She got me locked in a storage closet for three days by telling Helena I'd "threatened" her. Two years of me swallowing it because some stupid part of me kept thinking — if I'm good enough, if I just take it, someone in this family will eventually notice.

I didn't kneel.

I headbutted her in the nose.

God, it sounded good. Yara screamed — not the fake kind, the real kind — and went down with blood pouring through her fingers.

For about two seconds nobody moved. Then she lost it. She scrambled up and came at me swinging, open-palm slaps, left right left right, nails dragging across my cheek. Each hit snapped my head to the side. I tasted more blood.

Ronan grabbed her and pulled her back. She fought him, mascara running down her face.

I spat on the floor and looked at her.

"Those slaps," I said. "I'm going to remember those."

Helena was already pacing by the viewport, talking into her comm to nobody in particular. She just wanted me to hear. "Ungrateful girl — we fed her, clothed her, and she turns around and bites us. Some animals just can't be tamed."

On the staircase, my father was gripping the railing. He looked like he wanted to say something. He didn't.

Yara pulled free from Ronan and went to the side console. Opened a drawer and pulled out a document — clean, pre-printed, family seal already stamped at the top.

She'd had this ready. God knows how long she'd been waiting to use it.

A severance agreement. Full disownment.

She dropped it on the table. "Sign."

I didn't even read it. Picked up the pen, signed my name, and pressed my thumb — still bloody — against the seal at the bottom.

Then I put the pen down and walked to the door.

At the bottom of the stairs, I stopped and looked up at Kael.

He was crying. He wouldn't look at me. His hand came up halfway, then dropped back down.

I waited a few seconds. Then I turned around and walked out.

---

Dustmere's storm season hit early this year. The wind went right through my shirt, and the ice-sleet got into every cut on my face. No coat. No money. No communicator — I'd left it on the hall table and I wasn't going back for it.

I made it six blocks before my legs quit.

I went down in an alley behind a shuttered supply depot in the fringe district, the part of Dustmere with the condemned buildings and stripped cargo containers. I sat against the wall and pulled my knees up and just kind of stayed there.

The cold got worse. Everything Caelen and Yara had done to me tonight showed up at once — face swollen, lip split, ribs aching from the shelf. I was shaking and I couldn't stop.

I wasn't going to cry. I was not going to sit in a freezing alley and cry over the Ashford family. Not anymore.

My vision went blurry. The alley started going dark at the edges.

I was passing out. I might actually freeze to death back here. Nobody was going to come looking.

Everything went black.

Then, right before I was completely gone — a voice. In my head. Not my thoughts, something else. It sounded like an automated announcement at a transit station, the kind nobody listens to.

*"Desperation threshold detected. Host qualifies for activation. Supreme Star Beast System — online."*

Warmth hit my chest. Actual, physical warmth, not the emotional kind. It spread outward and the cold backed off. The pain in my face faded. My hands stopped shaking.

The voice kept going, same tone.

*"Starter package deployed. Gold-tier Star Beast Egg x1 — stored in spatial inventory. Main quest activated: 'First Shop' — establish a Star Beast Station within 72 hours. Reward: classified. Timer begins now."*

My eyes opened.

There was a display in front of me — no, not in front of me. Projected onto my retinas. Blue-white text, geometric panels, data I couldn't make sense of yet. Like someone had stuck a military command interface inside my skull and it kept calling me "Host."

I stared at it.

Then I started laughing. Not because anything was funny. I don't even know why. I just sat there in the alley, face covered in blood, and laughed until my ribs hurt.

"Seventy-two hours?" I said out loud, to nothing. "Sure. Why not."

I got to my feet. My legs held.

"Fine."

---

Back at the Ashford estate, in the living room with Sera's blood still on the floor, Yara pulled the tissue away from her nose. She checked her reflection in her comm screen and tilted her head, checking the damage.

Then she smiled. Not the one she'd been selling all night.

Upstairs, a holo-display flickered. Dorian's face, time-delayed from Sovereign City. He'd been trying to call during the whole thing, but the house system was blocking outside connections. Yara had set that up too.

His call went to voicemail. Then his message. Then his second message.

Nobody picked up.

On the staircase landing, Kael slid down the wall and sat on the floor. His hands were shaking too hard to work his personal terminal. He pulled up a file he'd been avoiding for eighteen years — sealed with Helena's signature and a DNA verification stamp.

He read the first line.

His face went white.

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