The Echo of Rose: 3

Voltra Sparks has given Azessha everything she ever wanted. Now, it's time for her to pay the price. There's work to do, and Voltra intends to keep her new pet very busy.Aboard The Eclipse, far from Antioch and deeper in Corvid-controlled space, Voltra keeps her stolen chapel-platform hidden along a prison route, waiting for the right vessel, the right weakness, and the right corpse. Her new asset, Azessha, is blind, obedient, hungry, and no longer limited to one body. Through Delil's silent bond, she can touch the dead across impossible distances, and every body she marks becomes a future door.What begins as a careful contamination of a prison transport becomes something far larger. On a frozen moon beneath a gas giant, the Corvid theocracy hides a prison built on labor, suffering, and saintglass: the rare material that makes wormhole travel possible. Voltra wants an army. Azessha wants bodies. Delil wants to understand what she is becoming before the gardens growing through the dead teach her the answer. But the more the gardens spread, the less they belong to Azessha alone.As spores move through prisons, ships, and forgotten corpses, Delil's presence grows stronger, stranger, and harder to separate from the rot blooming in her name. Xah watches in horror as monsters become family, prisoners become resources, and Voltra turns every atrocity into data.