The sky was a bruise-colored canvas, smeared with the ash of forgotten cities. Smoke curled above the distant ruins, lazily circling the jagged spires of what once might have been a tower—now a tombstone for a world that had devoured itself. Kael adjusted the scope on his rifle and lowered it slowly. No movement.
"Clear," he whispered, though no one needed to hear it. It was protocol. It was comfort.
Around him, the squad moved like wraiths, silent beneath the black-and-silver standard of the 7th Recon Battalion. Their boots crunched gravel, their breath hissed through filtered masks. The air outside the citadel walls was tainted with more than dust. Monsters roamed the wastelands—some with claws and eyes, others with words and lies.
Kael tapped the signal on his wrist console. Green pulse. "Advance, three clicks northeast. Target is the derelict relay outpost—Echo-17."
The squad moved.
This was Kael's tenth field mission, and he felt the same twinge of excitement and nausea he always did. It was a sickness that came from hope. Hope that maybe they'd find survivors. Hope that today wouldn't be the day someone got ripped apart screaming. Hope that the world wasn't already lost.
They passed a cracked mural buried in rubble—a depiction of the old world, before the collapse. Children dancing in a field. Kael lingered only a moment. Sentiment was dangerous out here.
"Captain, movement ahead." Seren's voice cut into the comms, calm but urgent.
Kael crouched beside her, his eyes narrowing. Between the scorched trees and decaying steel beams, something shimmered—a ripple in the air, like heat. Then it vanished.
"A mirage?" asked Rook, the youngest in the unit.
Kael wasn't sure. "Weapons up. Watch for flank."
They pushed forward slowly, nerves wired taut. Every second was a strain against the fear knotted in his gut. But when they reached the outpost ruins, all they found was silence—and something worse.
A circle of bodies.
Dozens, arranged in a perfect spiral around the collapsed relay tower. Most had long since decayed, their uniforms weathered beyond recognition. Yet each corpse's face had been stripped clean. No blood. No signs of struggle. Just skinless skulls gazing up at the sky.
"What the hell is this?" Seren murmured.
Kael's heart hammered. He knelt by one of the bodies. The spiral wasn't random—it was a symbol. A glyph. Old-world? Cultic?
He scanned the corpses again and saw it: all were from different factions. Military. Civilian. Resistance. Even scientists from the White Cloister. Enemies, now arranged like they'd died in unity.
A chill crept down his spine.
Then his fingers brushed something embedded in the soil.
A shard of obsidian, veined with faint silver light. It pulsed—once—like a heartbeat.
Kael recoiled.
"What was that?" Seren asked.
But Kael couldn't answer. The pulse echoed in his bones. A voice—not heard but felt—whispered across his mind.
We remember you, Kael.
His breath caught. The shard vibrated, and the glyph around them began to glow faintly. Too faint for normal eyes. But Kael could see it now. As though something in him had... awakened.
He backed away, heart racing. "Everyone out. Now."
"Sir?" Rook asked.
"I said move!"
The squad broke formation, retreating toward the transport ridge. But before Kael could follow, the ground beneath him gave way.
He fell—through ash, through time, through something older than memory.
Darkness swallowed him.
And then—light.
A cavern, pulsing with veins of living crystal. Structures like bones jutted from the walls, humming with forgotten energy. In the center, a massive cocoon, split down the middle, hollow.
Kael staggered upright. His comms hissed static. His pulse thundered.
Then the whisper came again, louder this time.
You were born to consume. To end. To begin again.
His body convulsed. Visions flooded his mind: cities burning, monsters kneeling, his own hands bathed in crimson light.
He screamed—but no sound came.
Above, the ceiling cracked. Light speared in.
"Kael!" Seren's voice rang out.
He looked up—eyes now faintly glowing.
And then—
A figure stepped from the shadows of the cavern. Humanoid. Towering. Faceless.
It spoke in a voice like shattered glass.
"You are not the first."
Kael turned to run, but the cavern collapsed inward with a roar.
Dust. Silence.
Darkness.
---
Back at command, a transmission buzzed across secured channels—encrypted, erratic.
Then a voice broke through:
"Kael is gone… but something else came back."