The stars above Volar's Reach still trembled.
The arrival of the Ledgerborn wasn't a spectacle. It wasn't loud, or destructive, or cinematic. It was silent.
That silence was worse.
Because silence meant certainty.
Kairos Vant, Sovereign of the Nexus, stood face to face with the first Divine-Class Trader in a thousand recorded galactic cycles.
And she was smiling.
Not with warmth, but with inevitability.
The Trader Beyond Trade
She hovered an inch above the floor—untouched by gravity or realm. Her cloak shimmered with embedded holograms: markets long dead, trade wars forgotten, offers that had never been made.
Kairos opened his mouth. "You're—"
"I am what you will become," she interrupted.
Her voice layered, as though speaking from every market Kairos had ever entered.
