The command center was a relic of a forgotten age, its walls pulsing with ancient power, sealed tight against the toxic tides outside. The air inside was crisp, untouched by time, yet thick with a significance that defied explanation.
At the heart of the chamber sat the throne, dark and commanding, exuding a silent authority as though it alone remembered the secrets buried in the dust of centuries. It beckoned with a crown, a gateway to lives long past.
Thalyn Ka’el’s breath came in shallow gasps as the throne eased her back to an upright position, her pale knuckles gripping its arms. Her green eyes flicked around the chamber, like a cornered animal.
Hearing the gasps, Dr. Elara Voss stepped closer, concern edging her calm voice. “Thalyn, are you alright?”
“I...” Thalyn blinked, forcing the static from her vision. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “It just happened, the throne… it pulled me in. I put the crown on my head and suddenly... I was someone else.”
Commander Jaxon Hurst approached from across the chamber, his voice controlled, like a hammer ready to fall. “And you didn’t think to inform me first?”
Her jaw tightened. “Didn’t know what was happening. One moment, I’m standing here. Next, I’m in the chair, the crown on my head... It was like the chair was calling me.”
Jaxon’s face didn’t move, expression carved from the same steel that lined his shoulders. “We came here to salvage. Not to have our scout hijacked by Elders.”
“No one hijacked me.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Korr Draven, the team’s archeologist who had been inspecting a peculiar piece of machinery, looked up, blinking slowly like he'd just surfaced from another dimension. “You interfaced with an Elder device?! That’s incredible. What was it like? What happened?”
Thalyn opened her mouth, then closed it. There were no clean words for what had just happened.
She rubbed her forearms, grounding herself in the feeling of flesh. “It felt too real. The pain, the fear.” Her voice grew quieter. “Everything felt... wrong. I didn’t know where I was, or who I was. It wasn’t like watching. It was happening to me.”
She shook her head, eyes steady now. “There was someone. A voice. Female, sharp, sarcastic. She knew me, maybe. She sounded like a roommate with boundary issues.”
Korr’s lips parted, eyes full of wonder. “Memory transference, inheritance of thoughts… and lives. The Elders wielded power far beyond what we grasp.”
“She doesn't look like she inherited much beyond a migraine,” Jaxon muttered. “I don’t like it.”
“Not helping,” Elara said quietly.
Thalyn’s gaze drifted back to the crown gleaming darkly in the low light. “Whatever it is,” she said, “it’s not finished with me.”
Jaxon followed her gaze. “So you’re going back in.”
“I need to.” Her voice was firmer now. “If this place has answers, that’s where they are.”
“We’re already risking too much staying here,” he growled. “Stranded in the ruins. Nira’s gone. We don’t even know if this place has a clean exit.”
His eyes slid toward the far end of the chamber, past the low hum of alien consoles and the dim gleam of cracked panels, settling on the sealed entrance.
Beyond it, half-shrouded in shadow, the sentinel droid stood. Its coal-green optics pulsing faintly. Thalyn followed his gaze. Felt the pressure of those eyes again, measuring. Not hostile. Just... aware.
It had stood there unmoving since they’d first staggered bleeding through that very threshold. When the guardian’s roar still echoed in their bones. It hadn’t stirred then. It didn’t now.
Jaxon turned back to her. “And you…”
“…volunteered,” Thalyn cut in. “I know the risk.”
But Thalyn could feel it, a cold current, a pull like a whisper at the back of her mind, drawing her in. Her jaw set, muscles tightening against the pull. “I have to go back,” she said, her voice filled with quiet determination.
Korr’s eyes sparked. “She’s right. If that throne’s the key, we can’t leave the door locked.”
Jaxon looked to Elara. “Vitals?”
“Stable. But the neural load’s high.”
Jaxon paused. Two fingers tapped the butt of his sidearm. “Go in,” he said at last. “But if you start slipping, we pull you out. No arguments.”
Thalyn nodded, easing herself back onto the throne, placing the crown on her head with a deliberate motion, as the chair reclined again.
The hum of the chamber deepened, rising through the floor into her bones. Her eyes flickered once, then closed.
Darkness swallowed her.
And there, in the dark, it started again, the murmur of a life not hers, whispering like old leaves in a dry wind, drawing her deeper into the abyss.
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