The Wraithling tore free from the void-thread with a jolt that rattled its bones and bled static into the hull. For a moment, everything was silent too silent. Even Aethra's voice paused as if the ship itself needed to remember how to breathe.
Then, the viewport cleared.
Oron Karth hung before them like a wound carved into space. A broken world. Its atmosphere shimmered with aurorae born from dying magnetic fields, and its surface was a scarred continent of obsidian and ash. Floating shards of former moons drifted in slow orbit—some the size of cities, each marked with strange ruins that flickered in and out of phase with reality.
Aelira exhaled sharply. "That's not a grave. It's a battlefield."
"No," Ethan said quietly. "It's both."
The Dead Throne.
It sat at the heart of a storm—an ancient citadel impaled on a pillar of crystal rising from the planet's core. The tower looked as though it had grown from the crust itself, wrapped in vines of metal and bone. Above it, a ring of shattered warships hovered in geosynchronous orbit—silent sentinels from a war long erased from records.
Aethra's voice returned, strained and reverent. "I… recognize this place. But I should not."
Ethan's hands gripped the armrests. "Bring us in. Controlled descent. Eyes open."
"Descending," Aethra said. "But you need to know… something is waking up."
The Wraithling dipped into the stratosphere, its hull sheathed in ghostlight as it pierced through auroral storms. The skies of Oron Karth were not like any Ethan had seen—amber lightning crawled horizontally across cloudbanks, and the wind whispered in languages that hadn't been spoken since before the Silence Wars.
Below, the ruins sprawled like the bones of titans—monoliths half-sunken into ash dunes, cathedral-sized vaults twisted by gravity distortions, and sigils scrawled across the land as if the planet itself had been branded.
They passed over a ring of colossal statues—each a different alien monarch, thrones crumbled, faces eroded, all gazing toward the same distant peak.
The Dead Throne.
It loomed at the center of it all, unmoved by time. The crystal spire it sat upon pulsed with a heartbeat rhythm one Ethan could feel in his skull, as if the planet had decided to think again.
Aelira leaned over the console. "We've got movement. Down there."
A projection expanded: heat signatures subtle, flickering, humanoid. Dozens. Maybe more. Surrounding the base of the spire, cloaked in distortion fields.
"Survivors?" Ethan asked.
Aethra's reply was slow. "Not alive. But not dead either."
He felt the chill ripple down his spine. "Great. Ghosts with a grudge."
"Or sentries," Aelira said grimly. "Guarding whatever's still on that throne."
The Wraithling banked, cutting engines to silent mode, and dropped into a landing sequence atop a fractured plateau near the throne's base. Runes flared to life beneath them, older than any language in the System's database.
Ethan and Aelira met eyes.
Time to descend.
The throne's entrance was sealed behind a veil of shimmering voidlight—an energy curtain rippling like oil on water, anchored by a pair of statues with hollow faces and swords sunk into the stone.
Ethan stepped forward. The System pinged softly in his mind.
[Anomalous Site Detected: DEEPLOCK-CLASS]Access Status: PENDING…Biometric Echo Found.Identity Fragment Recognized: GHOSTWAKE ARCHIVE.…Access GRANTED.
The veil collapsed inward with a sound like rushing breath. Cold air spilled out.
"Remind me not to touch anything glowing," Aelira muttered, blades loose in her hands.
The interior was vast, ribbed like the inside of a great beast's spine. Obelisks floated in slow orbit, casting alien shadows. The ceiling disappeared into darkness, but far ahead stood the throne itself—if it could still be called that. A twisted shape of metal and obsidian, fused with a skeleton larger than a human, its arms outstretched as if in welcome—or judgment.
But it wasn't empty.
A figure sat upon it.
Wrapped in broken armor, veins of light pulsing through the cracks. One eye socket glowed dimly. The other wept black mist.
Aelira whispered, "That's not a corpse."
"No," Ethan said. "It's a memory."
The figure rose—not moving, but projecting. A phantom stepped down from the throne, clad in warborn regalia. Its voice echoed across the chamber.
"Kaelen Varros. Last of the Signet-Bearers. You return at last… wearing a stranger's name."
Ethan's breath caught.
It knew him.
The phantom extended a spectral hand. "Will you reclaim your truth… or be consumed by it?"
The System chimed again.
[GHOSTWAKE EVENT: DEAD THRONE INTERFACE]Choose: ACCEPT — DENYWarning: Path Irreversible. Memory Core Will Overwrite Dormant Constructs.
Aelira stepped closer. "Ethan. What is this?"
He stared at the prompt. Heart hammering.
"Something I buried. And something I might need to become."