The air buzzed with static, the kind that lived in your bones and whispered of old tech still humming after aeons.
A low thrum echoed through stone and skin, barely audible, but constant, felt in the ribs. The air shimmered in subtle, shifting folds, like oil on black water disturbed by currents no human eye could follow. Soft flickers moved along the curved walls, like something creeping.
Lieutenant Korin paced the length of the chamber with precise, mechanical steps, his boots tapping on stone older than recorded time. The floor was a seamless stone, dulled by age, inset with swirling filigree of burnished gold.18Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxu4KsaOpwZ
Every few turns, Korin paused beside the command panel, metallic surface veined with pale circuitry, and glanced toward the tech.18Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAOCxI3cifV
“Well?” he asked again.
The technician, a wiry man with high cheekbones and full ocular shielding, shook his head without looking up. “Still nothing.”
Two marines stood at attention near the arched entrance, the silvered lenses of their visors casting back the eerie ambient glows that pulsed along the walls. Beyond them, through lattice-cut windows, the brittle light of Vael pressed inward, almost accusatory. The filtration seals held, mostly. But the wind still brought whispers. Sometimes literal.
Below, in the wider caverns carved into the cliffside, the tribesmen murmured to one another. Their voices floated upward in soft chants and uneven hymns. None among them dared approach the threshold of the ruin.
Vael had once been Eden.
A world sheathed beneath a planetary shroud woven from controlled solar flare and stabilizing magnetic fields, forgotten tech from a forgotten era. From time immemorial, it had tempered the wrath of the mother star, bathing the land in hues of lavender and gold. The orchards yielded crystalline fruits. The herds were fat and exotic, the type no offworlder had ever seen.
Then, one cycle, the veil collapsed.
No warning, no flare, just light, raw and unfiltered, lancing through the heavens and roasting everything in the open. The herds died in droves. The crops withered to ash. What life remained crawled into valleys and shadows, clinging to the bones of the ancient city carved into the cliffside. They named it Mhutha’Vael. Mother’s protection.
And here, in one of her eyes, the ruin breathed.
“Lieutenant!” The tech snapped upright. His voice tight. “Motion, bearing forty-seven, half a click out.”
Korin was already at the window, monocular raised. The ashlands stretched flat and endless, shimmering with mirage. Then, movement. A lone figure, lurching forward through the gray. Each step kicked up soot. Wind curled it back like the strokes of a giant brush.
He turned. “Send the lift. Now.”
The lift was cobbled together from an old mag-crate rigged with a platform and a winch. It groaned its way down the cliff face toward the ashen plains. By the time it reached the bottom, the murmurs from below had risen to a chant, low and thrumming, matched by the growing clamor of the tribesmen. A name passed between them, gaining weight with every repetition.
“Du, vai, nor… Du, vai, nor… Du, vai, nor…”
The figure collapsed into the lift.
Moments later, Commander Duvainor stood among them once more.
His tattered uniform was blackened at the edges, plating blistered and warped. His boots were gone, burned away somewhere along the journey, and the flesh of his feet, raw and split, left wet marks on the stone. Ash clung to him like a second skin, streaked through his silver-blue hair and the grooves of his jaw. His eyes, unprotected, burned green as polished flame.
“By the Divines…” Korin muttered. “Sir, what in void happened?”
Duvainor limped forward, waving off the medic with a silent glare. “Took a shortcut. Bad idea.”
“What kind?”
“There was a sinkhole, hidden beneath the hot surface ash. Driver’s dead. I climbed. Walked the rest.”
“Sir, your feet…”
“They’ll heal.”
He shrugged the satchel from his shoulder. The canvas was torn and scorched in places, but the clasps still held. He unfastened them with care and drew out a bundle wrapped in dark cloth.
From it, he revealed a metallic object, pulsing faintly with inner light, shaped like an asymmetrical star fractured inward.
Korin leaned forward. “Is that-?”
“The artifact. Yes.”
“But how did you…? I mean, how do you even know what it is, or what it does?”
Duvainor held the younger man’s gaze. The silence stretched.
“You’d either try to kill me,” he said quietly, “or throw me in cryo, if I told you.”
He turned from the group and limped to the center of the chamber.
There it loomed. A monolith of angles and interlocking spheres, inert but wrong, as if its geometry strained against comprehension. It emitted no light, no heat, only a pressure on the soul, like standing at the edge of something vast and awake.
Duvainor reached the base, felt along the sculpted surface, found a shallow depression like the absence of a star. He placed the artifact inside.
A click.
A breath.
Then the world shifted.
There was no sound, only a sensation, as if some immense, unseen weight had been lifted from every molecule. The air grew sharper. Clearer. The shimmer across the walls brightened for a breath, dimmed, and then settled.
Outside, the world darkened. The searing glare of Vael’s exposed sun softened. One of the marines slowly reached up and removed his protective visor. Blinking.
“…Divines.”
Through the windows, the chanting surged into rapture. The tribesmen poured out from the caverns. The voices beat against the cliff like war drums.
“Duvainor! Duvainor! Duvainor!”
A static hiss crackled in Duvainor’s mind.
# Commander?
# Yes.
# What happened down there? We lost your signal.
# I’ll explain later. Our ship crash landed. We need repairs.
# At once, sir. Uh, your droid is requesting a channel. Patch her through?
# Go ahead.
Another voice came through, irreverent, warm with mischief and modulated sarcasm.
# Master, you’re late. And, I found the ruin. It’s lovely.
# Great job, Arvie.
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