Kael Vire reminded himself of that as he carved open the soldier's skull.
The outpost lab stank of copper, coolant, and something he couldn't name—like the inside of a machine that had forgotten it was alive. He worked alone, hunched under flickering lights, the buzzing of the emergency generator syncing with the slow rhythm of his breath. His fingers were steady, but his mind drifted.
She was maybe twenty. Half her face had been replaced with grafted armor, fused with old tech and spell-welds—remnants of the war no one talked about anymore. Her dog tags said "JUNO K., 3RD MOON STRIKE."
Kael didn't know her.
Except something inside him whispered that he did.
"Kael…"
He froze.
The voice didn't come from the speaker. Or the hallway. Or any of the dozen surveillance systems in the lab. It came from inside his head. Soft. Familiar. Like a lullaby hummed through broken glass.
"Kael… don't forget me."
His breath caught. The scalpel dropped from his hand and clattered to the floor. The humming in the walls grew louder. Something ancient stirred in his chest—like an old wound he didn't know he had flaring to life.
Not again, he thought.
Not another echo.
The last time he'd had one, an entire sector of the outpost had collapsed.
He stumbled back from the table, blinking hard. The air shimmered with static. The lights flickered twice, then died with a low electrical pop.
Darkness.
Then: click-click-click.
Something moved in the shadows beyond the operating table.
Kael's pulse spiked. He reached into his coat and pulled out the plasma knife, flicking it on. The dim blue glow cast eerie shadows across the room. The corpse of Juno K. lay still on the table—but her face… it had changed.
Her cybernetic eye turned to look at him.
"Please," she whispered. "Before the moon awakens."
Kael staggered back, crashing into a shelf of expired bio-serums. Glass shattered around him. The hum turned into a screech—like a chorus of broken voices singing out of tune. The walls of the lab warped, as if reality itself was peeling at the seams.
He shut his eyes. "It's not real. Not real not real not—"
Silence.
Then—
DONG
A deep vibration echoed through the ground, like a cathedral bell buried beneath a thousand miles of earth. The sound came from above.
From space.
From the Hollow Moon.
Kael opened his eyes.
Juno's body was still.
The lights snapped back on. The hum faded. The world returned to normal—mostly. But Kael wasn't fooled. The echo was stronger this time. Sharper. Like someone—or something—was learning how to reach him.
He glanced at the monitors. One screen was cracked, bleeding code in a dead language. Another flickered with static. And one… displayed a new symbol. A crescent eye, carved from bone and wrapped in circuitry.
A symbol he'd seen only once before.
In a dream.
Just before the world fell apart.
He wiped the sweat from his face with a trembling hand.
"I really need to stop opening dead people's heads," he muttered. "This job is killing me."
Another beep sounded.
Incoming transmission.
Unknown origin.
He hesitated, then accepted it.
The message was only three words.
"It's starting, Seer."