With aching body and heart, Kajj cast himself out into the Black.
And the Black embraced him.
Through the soft red glow of his personal atmo-shield, he watched as the universe stretched all around him, infinite and unknowable and vast. And yet… he recognized those stars. He recognized those patterns. There was a map in his head that would lead him to Home, if only he followed the glittering path laid out before him. As long as there was starlight, he could always find his way home.
Without the weight of artigrav pushing down upon him, the aches of his body faded away, swallowed up into the void along with anything other than the sound of his own breathing and the steady thrum of his coron beneath his chest. Nothing else existed. Nothing else mattered. If he twisted his body, even the Rapier dropped out of sight, leaving him all alone with the universe.
He knew that there were many that feared the Black. Knew, in fact quite intimately, that they were not incorrect to do so. The void of space was unforgiving and unfeeling, but it was that same uncaring nature that contributed to his love of it. The Black did not care for him, nor any of his problems. The Black had known death and life on such an enormous scale that one such as his hardly mattered, was hardly more than another tiny mote dancing along the cosmic rays. Insignificant, in the grand scheme of things. No matter what choice he might make, the universe would always be here. Crelean life might disappear into the fog of history, but the universe would remain.
How many civilizations had it seen?
How many countless billions of lives?
Floating out here, he could almost feel a connection to them, a thin line of ancestry forged of stardust and unfathomable memory. An echo-ghost without a body, that perhaps had never had one in the first place, but was with him all the same. Sometimes, if he closed his eyes he could almost hear it whisper, hear it welcome him Home.