Midday pressed through the relic skylights in narrow beams, sharpening dust into slivers of silver. In the stillness of the command center, the light shifted like breath across stone and steel. Glyphs pulsed faintly in ancient circuits, lighting the vaulted chamber in cold intervals, like a mind dreaming in a language it no longer remembered.
Jaxon Hurst worked in quiet rhythm, his cybernetic arm hissing faintly with each motion as he folded another soot-streaked rag over a metal relic and passed it to Korr Draven, who hovered nearby. Korr didn’t thank him. He tutted, hissed, unwrapped the parcel, and re-folded it according to some fevered geometry only he understood. The relic vanished into one of his packs, right between two copper-glass coils, exactly as he required.
“No, no,” Korr muttered, “sensitive to vibration on the left side. Orientation is critical.”
“Pretty sure that one was a doorknob,” Jaxon said. “But hey, far be it from me to disturb your sacred rites.”
Elara Voss chuckled softly from the next bench, where she rolled thin artifacts into resin-lined cloth. “It’s no rite,” she said with mock serenity. “It’s a structured neurosis.”12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnix2OiiS2l
Korr straightened, indignant. “It’s a precision interface with entropy.”
“Right,” Jaxon said, deadpan. “And I’m a poet in a flak jacket.”
“You kind of are,” Elara murmured. “When you’ve had enough stimbrew.”
Then the chamber trembled. Not a quake. Not tectonic.
A sound.
A low, rolling roar moved through the stone like thunder cracking, deep, distant, but unmistakably alive. They stilled. A second roar followed, sharper now, layered with screeches and subharmonics that bypassed the ears entirely and went straight to the spine.
They ran to the shoulder-high windows carved into the far wall.
Fog clung to the edge of the jungle, the canopy there danced in slow panic.
Two colossal monsters advanced through the underbrush, scaled, horned, part bone and part nightmare. One walked hunched on jointed limbs, sinewed and armored in ridged bone. The other glistened with chitin plates and bore a spined crest that shimmered like it was jittering between frames of reality.
“Netherspawn,” Jaxon growled.
The creatures tore into each other with primal fury, shattering trees like toothpicks. Clouds of birds, dusted in iridescence, scattered into the air alongside glowing insects that streamed toward the ruin. Smaller fauna, scuttlers, half-hounds, pack-beasts, bolted from the jungle, only to veer away at the ruin’s edge, howling, disoriented. As if they’d glimpsed something there that refused to fit into their world.
The ruin remained still, untouched. Like a blade submerged in water.
Then one of the beasts, a horned, bellowing thing with gaping wounds across its flank, reeled backward from a blow and stumbled into the clearing just beyond the windows. It crashed down hard, breath misting in ragged bursts. For a moment it lay still. Then, with a shudder, it tried to rise, but failed. Claws raking the stone, massive head lifting toward the watchers inside.
Its eyes found them. Wide. Yellow. Not human, but not unknowing either.
The victor approached, snarling low, but stopped. It studied the ruin, sniffed the air once, then turned. Let out a frustrated roar that shook loose a cloud of dust from the skylights, vanished into the thick jungle. The sound of its retreat dissolved slowly into the hum of the insects.
Jaxon was already moving. He pulled his rifle from the wall, locked his mask into place, and crossed the shimmering doorway without hesitation.
Elara murmured something under her breath.
Korr just watched, pupils dilated, fingers twitching like antennae.
Jaxon returned, silent and grim, blood spattered up one sleeve. He placed the rifle against his pack with deliberate care.
“Wasn’t quite dead,” he said. “Now it is.”
He hesitated. “Might’ve something in the gallbladder. If the stories hold.” Then he picked up a blade, turned, and stepped out again.
Elara sighed. “Field surgery. Of course.”
The chamber’s hum returned.
From a back alcove, Thalyn Ka’el stepped into the light, bleary-eyed but alert. Her gaze moved across the others, then past them to the window.
“What in the void happened while I was out?” she asked, voice hoarse. She blinked hard. The beast’s carcass glistened in the light. Her breath caught.
“Divines,” she whispered. “Thank Yvian we didn’t meet that on our way in.”
Jaxon returned, bloodier than before, but holding something jagged and pulsing, a shard of crimson and gold, like fossilized flame. He dropped it onto the table. The skylight caught it, and for a moment it looked like it breathed.
Korr approached reverently.
“Spinal garnex,” he whispered. “Beautiful.”
“If it doesn’t hatch something in the night,” Elara raised a brow, “I’ll be impressed.”
Thalyn didn’t speak. She was still watching the crystal. Then slowly, she turned back to face them.
“I need to tell you something.”
They looked up.
“When I mapped the routes into Revantis, the image of the city, it burned into my mind. I went into memory recall right after.
She paused. “And I saw it again. Exactly the same. But this time… it was Echo who saw it.”
They stilled.
Elara frowned, not quite blinking. “You remembered something from the past… that you only learned later?”
Thalyn nodded. “It wasn’t déjà vu. I didn’t even know what it was in that moment. But now… I do. It was the same vision.”
Korr’s mouth opened, then shut. His eyes twitched like overloaded capacitors.
“Impossible. Memory doesn’t work that way. Nothing preserved should influence the source. Unless…” He paced, muttering.
“Unless what?” Jaxon asked, wiping his blade with a cloth.
Korr began pacing. “Unless we’re not dealing with memory. Or not only memory.”
He looked up. “We need to test it.”
Jaxon raised an eyebrow. “You want to run experiments? Now?”
“We’ve got time while we pack,” Korr said, dragging a curtain and snapping it around a corner. “One session. A controlled prompt. Induce a memory, embed a pre-seed warning from this moment. See if it reaches the other side.”
“You want me to send a message?” Thalyn asked.
“To your past Echo-self,” Elara murmured. “Not directly.”
Korr’s voice tightened. “Elara, warn him about Solastis. Tell him to escape. Repeat it until she transitions.”
Elara stepped closer. Her voice turned to steel.
“Solastis will fall. Everything gone. You have to leave. Save who you can. Get out before it happens…”
“I’ll spotlight her,” Korr muttered. “Make it stick. Let’s go.”
Thalyn nodded. “Arvie?”
The voice slid into her skull, amused and unbothered.
“Oh sure. Memory experiment with impromptu stage lighting and whispered doomsday warnings. Very clinical. Let me grab my popcorn protocol.”
“Queue the next one.” Thalyn said.
“Memory loaded,” Arvie purred. “Welcome back to the past. Try not to cause a paradox bigger than your emotional baggage.”
And then, with a flicker behind her eyes, she was gone.
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