Renna Voss met them at Threshold Anchorage’s docking bay with an expression that told Rohan, before either of them spoke a single word, that she’d already guessed the purpose of this final visit.
"You’re going through with it," she said, studying him with her usual sharp, assessing focus, softened now by something warmer than her earlier careful professionalism. "Properly, this time. No more delays."
"No more delays," Rohan confirmed. "I said my goodbyes at Veyrhold. I think I’m as ready as I’m ever going to be."
Renna nodded slowly, reaching into her coat and drawing out a small, sealed data chip, pressing it into his palm with unusual gentleness. "Everything you owe me, cleared. Consider it settled, whatever remains outstanding on the books. I’m not sending you into that crossing carrying a debt you’ll never have the chance to properly repay."
"Renna, that’s not necessary —"
"It is to me," she said firmly. "You’ve paid me back a hundred times over already, in ways that have nothing to do with credit. Let me have this. Let me be the one who sends you off with a clean ledger, for once, rather than one more transaction to track." Something cracked, briefly, through her composed exterior. "Go find your way home properly, Rohan Roy. And know that whatever you leave behind here, it mattered. You mattered."
Ashcombe met them separately, between circuits once more, her farewell brief and characteristically unsentimental on its surface, though the firm, lingering grip of her handshake carried considerably more weight than her words alone managed.
"Dessa and Pike send their regards," she said. "Told them where you were headed. Pike cried, if you’re curious, though he’d deny it if you ever had the chance to ask him directly." A faint, rare smile. "Safe travels, kid. Wherever that phrase actually means for someone about to leave this entire universe behind."
With both farewells complete, and the Rustwake resupplied one final time, they set course back toward the numbered system, toward the fracture, toward whatever waited at the true and final end of Rohan’s long, impossible search.
The final transit passed in a hushed, contemplative quiet unlike any of their previous journeys together, each of them privately turning over everything the coming days would demand. Rohan spent long hours reviewing his own accumulated status, cataloguing every skill, every title, every hard-won piece of growth he intended to carry with him, uncertain how much of it would actually survive the crossing but determined to understand, as fully as possible, exactly what he stood to lose or keep.
Dr. Farr spent much of the transit in quiet, focused work, compiling a final, comprehensive record of everything their collaboration had produced — not for Meridian’s benefit this time, but for her own, a personal testament she intended to keep regardless of whatever became of her professional reputation afterward.
"I’ve decided something," she told Rohan, during one of their final shared meals aboard the cramped vessel. "Once this is finished, once you’ve crossed and the boundary’s sealed, I’m going to petition for reinstatement. Properly, formally, with this entire record as evidence. I don’t expect it to succeed easily. But I think I owe it to both of us to at least try, rather than simply retreating back into quiet, unofficial consulting work."
"I think that’s exactly right," Rohan said. "You spent six years being told your work didn’t matter. Make them listen properly this time."
"I intend to." Something fierce and resolved settled into Dr. Farr’s tired, determined features.
"Whatever else this search has given me, it’s given me the courage to demand a proper hearing again, rather than simply accepting exile as my permanent condition."
Corven, for his part, spent the transit quieter than usual, though Rohan caught him, more than once, studying the Rustwake’s cramped quarters with an expression that suggested he was already anticipating the particular silence that would settle over the ship once this final journey concluded.
"What will you do?" Rohan asked him, during one of their last evenings together. "Once this is finished."
"Keep flying, I expect," Corven said. "Fringe work’s what I know. What I’m good at." He was quiet a moment. "Might take on a passenger now and then, though. Never expected to enjoy the company as much as I ended up enjoying yours, kid. Maybe I’ll keep an eye out for someone else who needs exactly the kind of help I nearly didn’t offer you, back in that cantina on Kestrel’s Hollow."
"I hope you find them," Rohan said. "Whoever they turn out to be."
The Rustwake dropped out of transit into the numbered system for the final time on a morning that felt, to Rohan, entirely unlike any of their previous approaches — not dread-filled, not desperate, but weighted instead with the particular, aching calm of a decision finally, fully made.
"Meridian’s still holding position near the outpost," Corven reported, studying the sensor display with the same careful, practiced focus he’d brought to every approach since their first, uncertain journey here. "Ashwood’s kept her word, near as I can tell. No interference beacons, no attempt to block our approach. Looks like she’s actually prepared to let this happen without a fight."
"Good," Rohan said, watching the outpost grow larger against the dim, guttering light of the Hollow Star. "I’d rather not spend my last hours in this universe negotiating with a corporate director."
Dr. Farr, seated in her usual place, closed the data slate she’d been reviewing and studied him with an expression that had shifted, somewhere over the past several weeks, from careful professional distance into something considerably warmer. "How are you feeling? Genuinely, not the composed answer you’ve been giving everyone else."
Rohan considered the question honestly, turning it over the way he’d turned over so many impossible questions across this entire long search.
"Terrified," he admitted. "Grateful. Ready, in the way Maerin meant when she told me readiness isn’t the same as feeling fearless. All of it at once, more or less constantly, since the moment we left Veyrhold."
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