"Do you still dream in words?"
"No," said the child of stars. "We dream in structure."
"Then we are already dead," said the sapien, smiling. "Just—don't forget we tried." - Sigil Fragment 299a
Hurtling through the dark void of space, Kali twisted in the grip of zero gravity, his visor catching one last glimpse of Daedalus One. The ship was engulfed in flames, a brilliant, dying star against the ink-black backdrop—burning with a fury that rivaled the sun as seen from Earth. Its hull ruptured, molten arcs spraying outward in slow, graceful trails, like blood in the vacuum.
He had warned them. Again and again. The mission was too dangerous, the calculations imprecise but they wanted their Mars landing, and the glory that came with it. Now the flagship of the Eos Initiative was a graveyard, and Kali was all that remained to bear witness. He could feel a gravitational pull on him, not clear at first but now it was outright glaring. It yanked him, away from the Daedalus One, away from Mars' orbit, pulling him farther from Earth and everyone on it.
When he angled his head to see his assailant, it sent shivers through his spine. At the edge of his vision, space convulsed—twisting inwards like a wound torn into the fabric of reality. A distortion hung there like a tear in a canvas, subtle at first, like heat shimmer or a ripple in glass.
And then—he fell even faster.
Not downward, not in any direction his brain could comprehend. It was more like being peeled from his coordinates like every atom of his body had been tagged and dragged through a corridor made of folded time and not-space. Vision imploded into tunnels of light, bent into rings, and then vanished entirely. His thoughts echoed as if spoken in a cavern of mirrors.
He wasn't sure when the scream left his throat—or if it ever did. Sound bent. Thought bent. Time fractured into a thousand slivers, each reflecting a different version of him: running, dying, watching, waiting.
Inside the wormhole, there was no inside. It wasn't a tunnel but a topology of impossibility—a Mobius labyrinth stitched together with equations too vast to write.
He floated, but also fell—downward, sideways, inward—through memory.
A smell surfaced: jasmine and ash. His mother's voice. The hum of a ship that hadn't launched yet. A sharp pain in his side—no, a heartbreak, no—an explosion he hadn't survived or hadn't yet. A child laughed behind him. His voice, but wrong. Younger. Or older.
Something peeled back—vision, self, coherence—and then suddenly, violently, it all snapped forward. Like slamming awake from a dream underwater. Gravity returned. Orientation. Breath. He collapsed to solid ground beneath a strange sky. A sun he didn't recognize burned in a different color, and the stars above him whispered new names.
He was somewhere else. And somewhen else. And maybe not entirely himself anymore.
The ground beneath him was soft, not the wet kind of mud, but loose fine sand sifting between his fingers as he clutched onto them. His blurred vision refocused, it was day, so he could see quite clearly, for all the good it could do him. Nothing was recognizable, only the dust and sand of arid plain stretching for miles.
His breath hitched, as a loud warning beep blared from his suit. In two quick motions, he grabbed the visor and yanked it off, dusty air filling his lungs.
"That was stupid," he mumbled, realizing he wasn't even sure if the air had been breathable, after all, this could not be Earth, though it bore some semblance. His best guess was he had been sucked into an Einstein–Rosen bridge and had been sent somewhere else. As for where this was, he had no clue, nor any hope of returning.
The thought made him scramble to his feet, and for a moment he froze, thinking of his friends and family whom he may never see again. "Shit," he cursed, as frustration gave way to anger.
His anger didn't last long before a ferocious snarl snatched his attention, the dust haze hindered him for a moment before he saw the thing. It loped into view with a predator's patience, four limbs moving in smooth, gliding synchrony. Its legs were too long, jointed backward like a raptor, and tipped with claws that scored faint lines in the dry soil. Its hide shimmered dully, not fur or scale, but something like matte carapace stretched over muscle.
Fear had been a close companion of his since the Eos Initiative began, now, it lay with him on the very same bed. He couldn't move, nor dare to breathe. He simply stared, and it stared right back. Finally, he shifted and it pounced.
Inches from his face, a sharp ring caused him to wince, eyes shut in pain. When he opened them, the creature lay at his feet, cut cleanly in half. Next to it, a woman stood, watching him with intense curiosity.
Her hair was grey with streaks of white, but she was remarkably young. She wore a peculiar vest that looked like something from the military along with shorts that stopped after the knees. But what drew his attention was the hand that held her machete. It was metallic, gleaming in the sunlight, akin to a cybernetic implant from the games he played on Earth. Her two feet were the same, only the right arm being organic.
"Keth'vaan?" she asked, locking eyes with him.
"What?"
She groaned, then closed into him before pressing a small metallic strip behind his ear. "I asked why you were staring," she said while taking a step back.
"I wasn't," he salvaged a lie, unsure if she was friend or foe.
"What are you doing out in the wilderness? Are you from the outposts or the cities? And what's with the get-up?" she fired all three questions at once, confusion clear in her voice.
"Wait, how can I understand you?" he asked.
She pointed to the strip behind her ear. "It takes the pure intent of what you want to say and translates it. Are you from another star system?"
"You could say that," he replied. "I fell into a wormhole, at least that's what I think."
"Which star system?"
"The solar system."
"Never heard of it," she replied in a tone that suggested she thought he was lying. "You'll be coming to the outpost with me."
"Sure," he agreed. It wasn't like he had any other plans, plus her still gory blade terrified him quite a bit. "Shouldn't we be leaving before more of those things come?" he added, seeing that she had no intention to move.
"Velarachne quadris typically hunts in packs but this one was a rogue, you can tell because it's weaker," she explained. "We'll leave after I'm done marking this ruin's location."
For the first time, he followed her eyes to see what she was looking at. The dust haze masked it a bit, but he could roughly make out a tower in the distance and for some reason, it seemed to call to him.
"Come along," she ordered, her tone clipped and determined as she strode purposefully toward the ancient obelisk that jutted from the ruin like a relic of a forgotten era. Kali hesitated just a moment before shedding the bulk of his spacesuit, the heavy fabric clattering softly against the desert floor as he peeled it away. In the sudden exposure, the brilliant light of the sun caught his copper-brown skin, igniting it with a warm, glistening glow. His afro, slightly disheveled by the rigors of space travel, bobbed with every step he took, and he reflexively ran a hand through the tangled curls, hoping, however vainly, to restore some semblance of order.
"Be quick!" she barked over her shoulder as she pressed farther away from him. The urgency in her voice snapped him into motion. Kali quickened his pace, his boots echoing against the aged stone, and within a few seconds, he closed the distance between them, his heart pounding in sync with his determined strides.
Stopping for just a fleeting moment, he opened his mouth to speak. His throat constricted with the weight of unasked questions; he paused, battling with the need to break the silence. Finally, with cautious sincerity, he said, "I still don't know your name."
She paused mid-step, a flash of amusement crossing her stormy gaze before she turned her head to meet his. With a slight tilt of her chin and a soft, confident smile, she replied, "Priene, sayer of the minor chord. What's yours?"
"Kali," he answered, his voice steadying with acceptance, as if that simple word sealed their pact amid cosmic ruins and the remnants of a lost world.
"Come on then, Kali," she urged, the echo of her footsteps guiding them onward. "We have a ruin to mark," she added, and together they continued toward the looming obelisk.
As the dusty haze lessened, he started to notice things about her that he had previously glossed over. Her skin looked denser than what one would consider normal, it was tougher too, and her ears were slightly pointed too. Slowly, he began to realize that she wasn't as human as he first thought.
She walked with restraint, as though she had pulled a bow taut and was afraid the slightest unnecessary movement would set it off. Soon, they arrived at the foot of the tower. From afar, it had loomed impossibly tall, its upper edges blurred and exaggerated by the shifting dust fog that clung to the horizon like a veil. But up close, the illusion broke. The tower was still massive—easily thirty meters high, but its base was squat and wide, built not for grace but for permanence. The stone was a dark, porous material, matte against the faint light, and shimmered strangely where the wind had worn it smooth.
Priene approached the entrance or what should have been one. There was no visible door, no seam or parting in the surface. Just a single slab of wall, unbroken. It stood so completely sealed that one might assume the idea of an entrance was merely a misinterpretation of shadow and shape.
"This will require explosives," she murmured, more to herself than to him. "And not the normal kind."
Kali stepped closer, looking up at the monolith's structure, noting how it seemed to have grown out of the ground rather than been built upon it. He tilted his head, caught between awe and curiosity. "Did your people build this?" he asked, his voice tinged with admiration. The tower, for all its silence, bore presence. Not just age, but intention. A structure meant to endure.
Priene was quiet for a moment. Her eyes traced the lines along the stone, searching for something, though whether it was an answer or a sign, he couldn't tell.
"No," she finally said, her voice a shade lower. "Humans did."
"Humans?" he asked, shock rippling through him.
Priene gave him a sidelong glance, her face unreadable beneath the shifting haze. "Your lack of common knowledge suggests you are from an undiscovered star system," she said, dryly, with just enough disdain to sting. "A primitive one at that."
She stepped away from the obelisk, her boots making dull sounds against the gravel-laced earth. Her tone cooled further, becoming instructional, like a teacher bored with the syllabus. "Humans were the first, and perhaps the greatest, civilization we know of. They conquered most of the known universe, colonized it, and bent it to their will. For a time, they ruled uncontested." She paused, eyes sweeping the horizon as if she were recalling distant thunder. "But that was before their extinction."
Kali staggered under the weight of her words. Extinction. He had thought—no, he had known—that he was lost in space. Displaced. Off-course. But now, something far worse clawed into his gut, the cold suggestion that he was not just out of place... but out of time.
Priene had already turned east, her pace unchanging, unaffected by the storm of realization brewing behind her.
He stumbled into motion, mind spinning with impossible thoughts. How far in the future? How long have I been gone? Was this all that remained?
"Where are we going?" he asked, though his voice lacked force.
She didn't answer. Her eyes were locked on something in the distance. Then he saw it, a shape beneath a tarp, hunched like a buried beast in the dust. A vehicle, most likely, boxy and squat with heavy wheels suited for rough terrain.
She reached it, grabbed the tarp with both hands and pulled it back in a single smooth motion. Dust billowed out like breath from a sleeping machine. Beneath it stood a battered but functional roverlike vehicle, streaked with old oxidation and fitted with crude hardware and reinforced bumpers.
"Get in," she said curtly, sliding into the driver's seat.
He hesitated for only a second before climbing in beside her.
She tapped a control panel, coaxing a low hum from the vehicle's core. The console lit up in unfamiliar glyphs, some half-decoded by his translator implant.
"We must return to the outpost before dark," she said, as the rover began to roll forward, the ground trembling slightly beneath its tires. "Velarachne are not the worst things out here."
Kali blinked, startled. "Wait—what's worse than giant dog things?"
Priene didn't answer.
She just drove.