The stone vibrated softly against her cheek, though the rest of the chamber lay draped in the ghostlight hush of the ruins. Thalyn exhaled slowly, eyes half-lidded, the echo of past memories still pulsing behind them.
Her back pressed to the cracked column, she sat in the dark chamber, legs folded beneath her, posture somewhere between rest and collapse.
“…It’s reactive.” Korr’s rough voice broke the silence. “Neural resonance, I think. Biofeedback. Possibly an override function, hardwired into the lattice. With the right cortex, it wouldn’t just interface. It might... answer.”
His voice had the parched edge of someone too long buried in whispers and dust.
“You want to test it on someone without knowing what it does, again?” Elara’s response was tight with concern. “Don’t you remember what happened to commander?”
Their argument hissed through the shadows, pitched low and cutting. The object in question, a spiraling shard of Elder alloy, half-organic and pulsing faintly, rested between them on a slab.
Thalyn turned her head slightly, observing them with tired detachment. Elara's fingers drummed at her sides. Korr was leaning over the device, his bony fingers twitching just above the spiral.
“And here we see the mating ritual of the velvet doctor and the bone-crazed archivist,” Arvie said, voice dry as powdered ash. “Truly, a courtship for the ages.”
Thalyn almost smiled, but a knot in her gut pulled tighter. It wasn’t pain, not quite. More like magnetism. A feeling that had no word but one meaning: Go.
She rose, silent. A droid stood in attendance at the door. She was mistress now.
The air outside the chamber hung heavy with the weird clarity of twilight. Nether clouds glowed violet beneath the cliffs. The strange sanctuary of the ruins still held, no poison seeped in here. The jungle waited, brooding beyond the windows.
She moved fast, muscle memory guiding her. Past the curved hallways, deeper into the bones of the ruin, until the smaller command center rose before her like an ancient heart. It recognized her at once. The droids inside turned in perfect unison, heads bowing.
“Mistress,” they intoned.
The second throne sat in the center of the room, low and coiled like a waiting serpent. It lacked the gravitas of the central seat, but it hummed. She hesitated. That pull again, like thirst.
Thalyn stepped forward and sat.
The throne stirred beneath her, rising with a subtle shift. She placed the crown on her head.
For a moment, nothing.
Then her vision fractured. Vertigo flared and vanished. The chamber still surrounded her, but behind it, layered like a second skin, she saw the jungle.
She gasped.
Through the throne’s interface, she felt the land.
Bioluminescent threads ran like veins through the undergrowth, flickering faintly. Heat signatures pulsed across her awareness, life in myriad forms. Thousands of soft, crawling presences. Shapes low to the ground. Slow.
Her companions glowed like embers: Elara and Korr back in the central command. Farther off, near the cliffs, Jaxon moved with intent, his silhouette radiating focus. Mining, probably. She could almost feel the flex of his muscles as though standing beside him.
The throne allowed more than vision, it offered proximity without presence. With the barest will, she could draw the ghost of any location close, as if peering over a shoulder or whispering through the leaves.
“Oh, this is going to be addictive,” Arvie murmured. “Mistress, with vision like this, you could spot a shardwing mid-flight.”10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOf0lqjyGxb
Thalyn wasn’t listening.
There were other signals, faint, yet sharp in a way that left no room for doubt. They hummed in threads beneath the ambient static. Not life, but potential, cold, directive, waiting.
Her spine stiffened.
“Droid,” she said quietly. “What am I feeling?”
The construct pivoted its obsidian head, optics whirring with a soft modulated hiss. It tilted slightly, as if listening to a deeper frequency.
“The nearest resonance cluster is thalorite, mistress. Embedded through the western cliff strata.”
There was a pause. A deeper hum somewhere beneath them, almost subliminal.
“But… something else,” she murmured, her voice half-thought. The pull in her neural crown had changed, more pointed. A presence, threaded through her cortex.
The droid hesitated. Then: “There is a secondary locus. Difficult to define. Possibly a potent artifact. Its emissions correspond to mutacell potential.”
She turned toward it, narrowing her eyes.
“Where?”
Instead of answering, the construct raised an arm. A pale filament of static threaded from its forelimb to her head, and suddenly her inner vision was alight. A map unfurled behind her eyes, not overlaid on the terrain but impressed upon it, etched in ghostly fire.
A city emerged in her mind’s topography, enclosed, ribbed in atmospheric shielding, nestled within the valley like a coiled relic.
“There,” she said, more to herself than to the droid. “It’s probably in Revantis.”
The construct emitted a soft click of acknowledgment.
“The signal’s stronger in that direction. Now that you’ve sensed its presence, the map can mark the resonance for now. You may recall the attraction when needed.”
She didn’t speak. Just stared eastward, where she could almost see the skeletal curve of the domed city rising pale on the horizon.
The mind-console lit up again behind her eyes, soft glyphs, transparent layers. Flows extended from her position like threads of light. One led to Revantis. But another…
Thalyn leaned forward.
The second pull was deeper. Farther. It wasn't on the edge of her thoughts, it was her thoughts. A craving nested in her bones. The longing she'd felt since waking was no random feeling.
She swallowed. “There’s another.”
The droid paused. Its voice shifted subtly. “A long-range signal, yes. Purpose undefined. Strength anomalously high. Localization is undecided.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Another pause. “Its designation exceeds access level. Perhaps the mistress will find the meaning in the journey.”
“Translation,” Arvie said, “your fancy castle has a haunted basement, and it wants you to crawl in blind.”
Thalyn’s mouth twitched. But something cold stirred behind her ribs.
She rose from the throne slowly, exhausted by the experience. The mental map faded, but the feeling remained, clawing the edge of her awareness.
The droids bowed again as she passed.
By the time she returned to the command chamber, night had settled like a velvet hand. Biolights glowed in the pillars, and the air had that strange hush again, more than silence. Waiting.
All three of them were there now.
Jaxon leaned against a bulkhead, arms folded, smudged with ore dust and sweat. Korr was fiddling with a severed drone limb. Elara sat cross-legged, her gaze soft but alert.
“I found something,” Thalyn said as she stepped into the spill of overhead light. “In Revantis. I can sense, a mutacell cache or some other potent artifact in there. The other throne helped me spot it.”
“Abrisen’s still waiting in there.” Jaxon grunted. “You think he’s can’t find us because we peeled off his slaver tech? We step foot inside that dome and his spies might sniff us out before we get past the perimeter scaffolds.”
He exhaled through his teeth. “Besides, Low sector’s a furnace of bad wiring. Last time I checked, the gangs were cannibalizing each other over scrap tech.”
“I’m not suggesting we go tonight. I know we have to be careful.”
“You sure?” Elara raised a brow. “You look like something’s chasing you.”
“It’s not.” Thalyn hesitated. “Something’s calling.”
Korr made a noise somewhere between a cough and a curse. “More riddles. The ruins are already halfway alive. Now they whisper too?”
“I think I can track the artifact,” Thalyn said. “Something’s changed in my mind. We might not get another shot before that place collapses into another territory war.”
A silence stretched between them. Jaxon scratched the scar along his jaw, then gave a short nod.
“We go in quiet. Low sig. I like it that way, whispering into the beast’s ear.” He glanced toward the loot behind them. “Besides, there’s salvage to sell.”
“What about Echo?” Elara asked quietly. “You’ve been under long. What did you see?”
Thalyn looked down at her hands. Flexed the fingers. Still getting used to how perfect they felt. “He made it. Smuggled into an old academy med-bay. They patched his NeuroLink with an illegal pod. Then got out.”
There was a long silence.
Finally, Jaxon stretched, the joints in his cybernetic arm groaning like old floorboards. “Well, let’s get some rest. You look ready to fall over.”
“I am.”
Elara touched her arm as she passed. A brief, silent comfort.
Thalyn lay in the side alcove, eyes closed but mind churning.
The tug was still there. Now that she’d felt it, it didn’t fade. A needle in her thoughts, vibrating with silent insistence.
As she drifted toward sleep, Arvie’s voice slid in.
“You feel that, right? That tremble? Like a storm under your skin? Something’s coming, mistress, and it’s going to change you.”
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