Chapter 1: Landing in the Ashes
The Signal
The distress beacon wasn't supposed to exist.
According to every star chart, Kordalis-9 had been classified as dead for nearly seventy standard years —
a collapsed mining colony, wiped out by cosmic quakes and industrial sabotage.
But the Red Radiant's long-range scans told another story:
A faint, stuttering pulse.
Old emergency codes.
SOS.
And something deeper under the signal —
a strange resonance that made the Radiant's instruments glitch and flicker.
Aboard the Red Radiant
Inside the ship's command deck, the crew studied the holo-projection:
A cracked planet with a dying atmosphere.
Abandoned mining complexes half-buried in black ash.
Ghost towns, flickering weakly under a burned-out sun.
Plo furrowed her brow, scrolling data rapidly.
"The resonance signature is similar to the ones we detected near multiversal fractures," she murmured.
"But… unstable. Like a splinter of reality stuck here."
Kaelen stared at the readouts, silent.
Iselyra stood at the viewport, arms folded, Frostbrand slung across her back, cold eyes watching the planet spin.
Jaxen whistled low.
"Sounds cursed. Probably is. We going?"
Zaraya grinned.
"Of course we're going."
She slammed her fist lightly onto the console, setting a course.
"Ghosts, curses, broken worlds — we're Dawnbreakers, remember?
We don't run from stories like this."
The ship descended into the dying atmosphere.
Kordalis-9: The Surface
The Red Radiant touched down on cracked black stone.
Ash clouds swirled across the ruined landscape.
Winds howled through the skeletal frames of mining rigs and collapsed habitat domes.
The sky was a permanent sickly gray —
sunlight barely filtering through the shattered atmosphere.
Gravity was lower here — every step felt strangely floaty, unsteady.
The crew disembarked carefully:
Zaraya leading boldly, cosmic gauntlets humming faintly.
Kaelen at her side, blade loose in his hand, senses sharp.
Jaxen scanning with a shoulder-mounted drone, muttering about ghosts.
Plo riding Drex, tapping readings furiously.
Iselyra taking the rear guard, eyes scanning the ash-choked horizon.
The distress beacon was close —
buried somewhere inside the largest mining complex.
The First Haunting
As they moved deeper,
the ash under their boots shifted.
Shapes stirred in the corners of vision —
shadows moving where nothing should.
Faint whispers crackled through comms.
Jaxen spun, blaster drawn.
"Did you hear that?" he snapped.
Kaelen nodded grimly.
Zaraya's smile faded, replaced by a fierce focus.
Plo paled slightly, clutching Drex tighter.
"The resonance… it's alive," she whispered. "It's leaking through the cracks."
Inside the Mining Complex
The Dawnbreakers reached the shattered entrance of the central mining hub.
Rust and ice coated the collapsed walls.
Flickering old signs hung sideways, written in long-dead trade languages.
The beacon's signal pulsed from inside —
but it was twisted now, distorted into something… wrong.
As they passed through the entrance tunnel,
holographic ghosts flickered into existence:
Miners laughing, shouting, working —
then collapsing mid-stride.
Families fleeing toward emergency shelters — only to vanish mid-run.
Time itself seemed fractured here —
echoes of the dead playing on infinite loop.
The Deeper Pull
Deeper inside the complex, near the old reactor core,
the signal grew stronger —
and so did the fractures.
The Dawnbreakers found walls warped like melted wax,
floors looping impossibly back onto themselves,
gravity twisting sideways.
Something wasn't just haunting this place.
Something had broken it.
Cliffhanger Ending:
As they moved toward the reactor,
the walls pulsed — once, twice —
and a figure stepped into the light:
Not alive.
Not dead.
Eyes glowing with unnatural blue light,
body flickering in and out of phase with reality.
A miner's uniform still clung to the twisted form.
It opened its mouth — and a chorus of voices screamed out from within.
The echoes of the dead.
The reactor behind it glowed with fractured multiversal energy —
unstable, leaking into this world.
Zaraya stepped forward, fists crackling.
Kaelen's blade ignited with shadow.
Iselyra's breath misted in the freezing air around her.
Jaxen muttered under his breath:
"Yeah… definitely cursed."
Plo stared wide-eyed, recording everything frantically —
even as Drex growled low and defensive.
"Incoming," Kaelen said calmly.
And then the ghost-miner charged