The response in the chamber came fast, fast enough that even Seris lost some of her usual stillness, which didn’t happen often.

The awakening spread through the ship more cleanly than it had with the thirteenth hull, smoother from the start, the bond forming more strongly and more stably right away.

Aurelian felt it before he fully saw it, the presence taking shape with a reaction which was much stronger than he had when he had contracted with other ship girls of the same rank.

When the light finally settled, the second shipgirl stood in front of him.

She was quieter than the first, taller, too, with long dark hair that carried a faint steel-blue sheen under the chamber lighting, and her presence made the room quiet down much more than before.

Although it was not a bad thing, it is something that makes you think deeper as to what kind of ship girl she is to command such an expected scene.

She looked around, taking in the space, the people, the surroundings, then brought her attention back to Aurelian with a calm that felt natural rather than forced.

There was no confusion in her expression, no hesitation.

"You’re my commander and the one who awakened me?" she asked.

"Yes."

Her eyes moved briefly, taking in the nearby hulls, pausing on Seris and Meren for a moment before returning to him again, her focus steady.

"From the looks of it, my awakening was because of the need for ship girls to help you with something?"

"It is."

That drew the faintest hint of a smile from her, small but real.

"I see, then I am more than happy to help."

Rhoswen leaned slightly toward Aurelian, lowering her voice just enough to keep it between them. "I like this one already."

He ignored the comment and kept his attention on the new shipgirl.

"You’re a high-grade engineering ship," he said. "You’ll be handling repair, recovery, construction, and anything more complex that the others can’t deal with cleanly."

She listened without interrupting, taking in the words without reacting too quickly, which in itself told him enough about how she thought.

Then she asked the question that surprised many people in the room.

"Do you have a name for me?"

Aurelian paused for a moment when he heard the question.

He hadn’t planned one ahead of time, as most of his earlier ship girls had their own names, and his hopes for the awakening were low from the start, but when he looked at this new ship girl, a name came up in his mind which he found suited for her.

"Meridian," he said.

She repeated it quietly, almost under her breath, as if testing how it felt.

Then she gave a small nod.

"I’ll take it."

That was how Meridian became part of the Crownward March.

The lower-grade engineer stayed with the bastion as planned, and if she felt anything about not being chosen for the more demanding work ahead, she didn’t show it.

If anything, she seemed settled by the idea of having clear work to do in the place that had brought her into existence. Meridian, however, was a different case entirely. She was too valuable to leave behind.

Aurelian had expected one useful engineer from the batch.

He had gotten two.

And one of them was exactly the kind of higher-grade specialist the March would need going forward.

That alone made the effort worth it.

He should have left it there.

Instead, because the ruin field had been sitting in the back of his mind for too long and because the strike route through Mournveil still wasn’t fully finalized, he decided to use the time he had for something practical.

He wasn’t going to recover the four cruisers yet.

That decision hadn’t changed.

But he wanted to see the site himself. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Now that Meridian was active and he had a fast escort available, there was no reason not to confirm what was actually there.

If the situation was worse than the system had suggested, he needed to know before making further plans. If it was better, that mattered just as much.

So preparations started immediately.

Rhoswen volunteered before he even asked, which didn’t surprise anyone.

Meridian accepted the assignment without hesitation, her calm focus the same as it had been from the moment she woke.

Aurelian made one adjustment this time, something he realized he should have done earlier in other operations.

Before departure, he had extra drones and support frames loaded, enough to handle surface work and unstable structures without forcing him to step into every broken section himself.

There were times when he needed to act directly, but there was no reason to make that the default when it wasn’t necessary.

Two days later, they reached the edge of the route leading toward the ruin field.

The trip itself wasn’t smooth.

Unlike the more stable routes closer to Haven or the mapped path through Redglass, this stretch of space had been left alone for a long time, and that came with its own problems.

At one point, a natural void disturbance crossed their path, not large enough to count as a full system-wide event but strong enough to cause problems.

It disrupted their transit stability, shook shield values, and forced them to slow down more than Aurelian would have preferred while they corrected course.

By the time they cleared it, both ships had taken some shield wear.

Nothing serious, but still something that he wanted to add to his memories as a new experience.

Rhoswen, who usually didn’t care about things like that, still looked slightly annoyed by the idea that empty space itself had managed to get in her way.

"I liked fighting the beasts more," she said.

Meridian, who had spent most of the disturbance checking route integrity, seemed to have gotten the way Rhoswen spoke as she countered.

"Yeah, that’s because that way you can ram into things, unlike now, where you have to be careful about the way you drift."

Rhoswen looked at her for a moment, then let out a short snort as she didn’t deny it.

Aurelian almost smiled at that.

Once their speed dropped and the destination region finally came into view, the first thing he noticed was the light.

Or rather, the lack of it.

What lay ahead wasn’t just empty space.

It was dead light.