Elias closed his lantern. The sky was a little darker, but the stars were safe. He turned back toward the frozen belt, waiting for the next spark to grow too bright.

"You’ve seen enough," Elias whispered. He didn't feel joy in the task, only a quiet reverence.

Elias stepped into the vacuum, his boots finding purchase on the invisible ley lines of gravity. He reached the comet in a heartbeat. It was a jagged mountain of cobalt ice, screaming in a frequency only he could hear.

He raised his shears. Instead of cutting metal, they snipped the gravitational thread that held the comet’s core together. With a final, silent flash, the "Silver Path" disintegrated. The ice didn't shatter; it dissolved into a soft, shimmering mist that would eventually settle as stardust on the very worlds it had once threatened.

Elias did not carry an axe, but a heavy, light-drinking lantern and a pair of shears forged from the core of a collapsed moon. In the celestial archives, he was known as the Exécuteur de comète . His job was simple: he was the one who decided when a comet’s journey was over.