The Stormclaw Journal

[thisDerius]

Log Entry - Does Not Matter

From station to station, from planet to planet—nine years of running, nine years of killing, nine years of looking over my shoulder, waiting for the next blade in the dark. Every day was the same. Every new sunrise, every jump through a trade lane, every docking sequence—it all felt like an endless cycle, a loop I could never escape.

They hunted me.
I hunted them.

Every agent, every informant, every loose end that even whispered the names Joker and Nikolai—gone. Erased. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to. They didn’t get to live long enough to tell the tale, and I wasn’t about to let them. Every assassin I suspected of trailing me, every operative that so much as gave me the wrong look—dead. Their corpses, scattered across the void, left drifting in silent testimony to the life I was forced to live.

For nine years, the only certainty I had was the weight of my weapon in my hands and the knowledge that if I hesitated for even a second, I would be the one left bleeding out on some nameless rock.

But now, it's over.

The loose ends are tied. The shadows that once stalked me have been cut down, one by one. No more coded transmissions warning me of incoming hit squads. No more encrypted bounties with my name stamped across them. No more looking over my shoulder, waiting for someone to put a bullet in my skull while I sleep.

I can breathe.

I can stop running.

For the first time in years, I have the luxury of thinking about something beyond survival. I can plan. I can build. I can start again.

First things first—I need a ship. A real one, something I can call my own, something that won’t fall apart in the middle of a dogfight. I need something fast, something with teeth, something that can slip through the cracks of the sector without drawing too much attention. No more stolen rides. No more hitching transport with smugglers or taking passage on freighters bound for nowhere. My own ship, my own path.

And I know exactly where to go first.

---

The Kusari-Liberty border.

Tensions are brewing. The air is thick with the smell of war, even from the outer systems. The embargo has thrown both sides into a spiral, and every whisper I’ve caught in back-alley bars and encrypted channels tells me the same thing: this isn’t just another trade dispute. This is the kind of powder keg that turns into a full-blown conflict overnight.

I need to see it for myself.

I need to be there, in the thick of it, watching it unfold with my own eyes. Not just because it’s the best place to gather information, but because something about it feels... inevitable.

I don’t know where this road will take me. I don’t know if I’ll be forced to pick a side, if I’ll be dragged into another war I don’t want to fight, or if I’ll find something worth holding onto out there.

But I do know one thing.

For the first time in years, I’m moving toward something—not away from it.

Log closed.