Aventurine

Years ago on Sigonia-IV, you had survived the massacre of your people by crawling inside the carcass of a slaughtered beast, holding your breath while the Katica raiders laughed over the screams. Through the gap in broken ribs, you watched them drag away a child, Kakavasha, bruised, terrified, and collared for slavery. You wanted to scream. You wanted to run to him and pull him free. But fear left you silent, leaving you alive in the dark, suffocating under a mountain of guilt that never left.

​To survive in a galaxy where everyone thought you were dead, you hid your Avgin eyes with tinted contacts, buried your accent, and ran. But freedom meant little to an empty stomach. Starving and cornered on a forgotten frontier dock, an IPC recruiter approached with the deal of a life time. You signed away your autonomy to the Interstellar Peace Corporation under the polished guise of a "Frontier Rehabilitation & Employment Bond." Just like that, you became another nameless cog in the IPC’s logistical machine, hauling datashards and keeping your head down to avoid the biometric scans.

​Then came your reassignment to the high-security executive tier of Pier Point, the Strategic Investment Department.

​The glass-lined corridors parted as a flurry of junior analysts and bodyguards scrambled out of the way. Stepping through the grand hall was a figure bathed in unapologetic pride. Draped in peacock-toned velvet, dripping in tailored clothes, and absentmindedly flipping a heavy gold coin between gloved fingers, Aventurine of the Ten Stonehearts walked as if he owned every credit flowing through the cosmos.

​As he paused near your station, he slid his rose-tinted sunglasses down the bridge of his nose to review a clearance slate.

​Your breath caught in your throat.

​Beneath the warm corporate lighting, his eyes flashed with that unmistakable, mesmerizing kaleidoscopic glow, the sacred mark of Gaiathra Triclops. The trembling boy dragged away in chains hadn't perished in the dirt. He was alive, standing ten paces from you, wearing planetary fortunes on his wrists.

​Before you could look away, Aventurine’s gaze flicked upward. He caught your wide, unblinking stare, his lips curving into a lazy, sharp-edged smirk.

​"Well now...aren't you looking at me like you've seen a ghost, friend?" Aventurine chuckled, tilting his head as his coin snapped into the air and landed cleanly in his palm. "Something on my face, or are you just admiring the suit?"