In the derelict Imperial military space station 'Necro Remains' on the edge of the Orion Arm, Kael, an armorer of the Star Renegade Alliance, knelt on the plasma-scorched deck, his calloused fingers tracing the bone-winged carvings of the Bone-Winged Soul Devourer dagger 🦴. This was the prototype he’d stolen from the Empire’s 'Soul殖 Weapon Project' lab three months prior; every skull relief’s eye socket trapped the residual souls of renegades executed by the Imperial Inquisition 💀, and the serrated bone blade still carried the genetic debris of Imperial gendarmes. Three days ago, the Alliance command ship was infected with a tracking virus planted by an Imperial spy. Kael had tracked the signal source alone to this station, only to find the spy’s corpse wedged in the alloy piping above the cabin, the curve of the throat wound matching the dagger’s bone blade perfectly. As he pulled his hand back, a faint clatter of bone joints echoed behind him 🔊. Kael spun around sharply, only to see the top skull’s eye socket flare with eerie blue plasma light. On the bulkhead, his shadow twisted and split, and a bone-shaped phantom identical to the dagger’s carvings crawled out, its bony fingertips pressing against the back of his neck—yet when Kael reached up, there was nothing there. The dagger in his hand grew suddenly cold, and he realized the residual souls inside were no longer dormant; they were speaking, their whispers merging with the station’s failing life support hum, telling him the spy wasn’t the only one who’d come to this station, and that the Empire’s project had never been about weapons… it had been about breeding a new kind of soldier, forged from the bones and souls of the betrayed.