Thalyn jolted upright as the throne released her. The other life faded like smoke, leaving an ache behind her eyes. Routine now, but that didn’t make it any easier.
She stood, legs trembling, the familiar sting in her cybernetic legs reminded her that, despite everything, she was still Thalyn Ka’el. With a deep breath, she steadied herself, casting a quick glance around the chamber.
Korr was muttering over relics scattered across a table slab, his fingers jittering as they traced ember-lit runes.
Dr. Voss sat cross-legged by a pillar, blue head tilted back, eyes closed, seeking calm in the quiet that never lasted long enough.
The chamber smelled of stone dust and something faintly metallic.
Without a word, Thalyn slipped away to the makeshift restroom, splashing cold water on her face. The chill snapped her back to the present.
When she returned, Elara’s concerned eyes followed her. The commander had just returned, his heavy boots echoing off the chamber walls as he placed a metal box on a nearby shelf. The faint scent of freshly drilled rock clung to him.
Thalyn shared her experience with the group. She spoke of Jaraek and Reya, survivors clinging to what was left, and how going by the name Echo, she had promised to help them.
“Echo, huh?” Jaxon grunted. “How ironic. But don’t get all heroic on an empty stomach.” He tossed her a ration pack before sitting heavily, his gaze on the mineral detector still clutched in his hand.
They spread out their sleeping bags, the ancient walls offering refuge from the poisoned world beyond. Jaxon took watch, his gaze tethered to the entrances by reflex, even as he lost himself in private thought.
Thalyn drifted into sleep, but her rest was troubled. Arvie’s voice echoed in her head, playful as ever, teasing her about what she’d experienced. “You know, Thalyn, you’ve got a special diary in that head of yours. Care to navigate your past? I dare you.”
Thalyn frowned in her sleep. “A diary? What do you mean?”
“It’s an automated diary, darling. Very rare, and I’d bet you’re the only one on this entire moon with it. Just… don’t try to remember the past. Relive it, like you did with my master’s life. You know how it feels by now. Start simple, like… how you ended up here.”
The suggestion lingered, tempting yet unnerving. Could she really walk back into her own past? The concept was alien, yet the throne made it plausible.
She woke to dim glyph‑light. Jaxon’s steady breathing confirmed he hadn’t left the post. Elara’s eyes gleamed with curiosity.
“I had a dream… of sorts,” Thalyn whispered, sitting up carefully. “Arvie said I’ve got a device, like the one in the throne. An automated diary.”
Elara leaned forward. “A diary… inside you?”
Thalyn nodded. “Arvie dared me to use it. To relive my memories.”
Elara’s expression was a strange mix. “Then you must try it, Thalyn. This could be…”
Korr cut in. “A discovery. If you can relive the past with the same clarity…”
Thalyn’s eyes met Jaxon’s, and he gave her a single, firm nod. “Do it, Ka’el. We’ve got your back.”
With a deep breath, she closed her eyes. At first, she tried the obvious approach. She tried to remember the breather chamber, the tention, the time they had left the dome behind.
She searched for it the way people searched for any memory, reaching backward through fragments and impressions. The clank of pressure seals. The smell of Nether rot. Jaxon's gruff voice.
Nothing happened.
The memories were there, but distant and flat, no different from a thousand others. Frustration crept in. Then she remembered the throne. Not the images it had shown her, but the feeling of it. The surrender. The past wasn't something to recall. It was something she could step into, just as she had before.
Arvie had told her not to remember. Relive.
Thalyn let the fragments go. Instead of chasing details, she reached for the sensation of standing in the breather chamber. The weight of her rifle strap against her shoulder. The faint sting in her legs. The anticipation tightening in her chest as the outer doors prepared to open.
She searched not for an event, but for that familiar pull and something shifted. A tremor deep inside her, like a thread pulled loose. She leaned into it and let it pull her down. The chamber around her vanished, the air thickening, everything growing strange and distant, the veil parting.
And suddenly she was outside the breather chamber again. Ahead, Nether stretched to the horizon, its toxic air clinging like guilt. The dome rose behind her like a mountain, ancient metal disappearing into the mist.
The expedition moved immediately, leaving the metropolis behind.
Somewhere above the poison and the endless canopy, the mountain waited. The sky churned, a sickly bruise above them. The jungle below breathed, twisted roots reaching out as if to claim her.
Every nerve fired, instinct driving her forward. The darkness beyond the trail seemed almost watchful, and the poison-laced wind whispered cruel threats, yet she grinned, feeling free of the misery of city life.
The trek was as treacherous as expected.
Acidic dew dripped from leaves overhead. She felt the sap eat into her suit, smelled the singe of burning fabric, and heard the growl of unseen predators.
Something enormous pushed through the jungle not too far away. Branches snapped. A tree leaned. Then silence.
Jaxon motioned forward. Nobody argued.
Twice Elara stopped to treat chemical burns where the jungle had eaten through protective layers. Korr nearly walked into a carnivorous flower larger than a transport crate because he was busy staring at his scanner.
Jaxon grabbed him by the collar. The flower snapped shut where Korr's head had been.
Korr stared. “Remarkable.”
Jaxon stared back. “You almost got eaten.”
“Yes. Remarkable.”
And they continued upward.
The jungle came at them in waves. Every rustle of the leaves was a warning, every shadow a lurking predator.
“Movement,” Nira called quietly. Everyone froze.
A beast tore out of the brush, six legs, too many teeth, venom spattering the ground in slow, sizzling drops. Thalyn’s gun barked, the recoil rattling through her limbs, but the beast shrugged it off.
Jaxon shouted something, which she ignored, but the next moment his cybernetic arm flashed, faster than a blink, and the creature hit the dirt with a wet thud. Efficient as always.
And they kept climbing.
The jungle didn’t relent. It pressed them, forced them to move faster, harder. The ground was treacherous, every step a potential fall into the abyss, gloved hands grabbing at vines that burned and tore. Thalyn’s legs ached, the cybernetics grinding under strain.
The gorge yawned before them. Thalyn cleared it in a single leap, then turned just in time to see Korr's footing vanish beneath him. She reached, unsure if she could grab him. Jaxon’s arm caught him just as the ground crumbled beneath them.
The world fell away, and for a moment, everything was weightless, timeless, then solid ground. Her metal legs absorbed the force of the drop, but the relief was brief as the jungle closed in again.
Shadowhounds darted through the undergrowth, their eyes cold embers. Thalyn moved with a fluidity born of desperation, her weapon an extension of her body, firing in controlled bursts until the beasts scattered.
And still they climbed.
The mountain slowly emerged through gaps in the mist: dark stone, impossible cliffs, jagged crags, and a cave.
Nira spotted it first, a narrow opening hidden behind a curtain of hanging roots. The smell reached them before the entrance did: rot, old blood, and something sour beneath it all.
“Spineclaws?” Elara asked.
“No,” Thalyn said quietly. The bones scattered around the entrance were too clean.
At first they saw nothing. Then screaming erupted from inside the cave, wet, broken sounds that were almost human.
Several figures stumbled from the darkness.
Ghouls.
Their limbs hung too long, and their skin bore the marbled scars of a lifetime spent in Nether.
Jaxon fired a burst into the stone beside them. One creature clawed desperately at its own skull, trying to tear the sound out. Another collapsed to its knees. A second burst followed the first. The ghouls recoiled and fled into the jungle.
Elara watched the last of them disappear into the mist. “They were people once.”
Jaxon just nodded, his face grim, as they shouldered their gear and continued the climb.511Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiH3WB6L0Rn
The mountain grew steeper, the jungle grew meaner, and everyone was exhausted.
And then, of course, the sky turned black with wings. Because why not? Talons slashed the air, filling it with the static of shrieks. Nira's rifle was spitting fire, cutting through the swarm. Elara shouted something drowned out by the madness.
Nira kept firing, and creatures burst into feathers and black blood. More replaced them.
Thalyn dropped behind a massive root just as talons raked sparks across her shoulder plate. Jaxon stood his ground. His cybernetic arm snapped upward in a brutal blur. A heavy crack split the air, and a winged terror hit the rocks and didn't get back up.
Nearby, Korr was shrieking, a manic cocktail of thrill and terror, until a carrion drake slammed into his chest. The thrill vanished instantly. Thalyn dragged him clear before the creature could remove his face.
The fight became chaos, a storm of gunfire, screams, wings, and black blood, until the swarm vanished as suddenly as it had arrived, peeling away into the canopy as if yanked back by an invisible leash.
Nobody felt relieved. Things capable of frightening those predators were rarely friendly.
Exhausted and bleeding, they formed a tight perimeter to orient themselves. The jungle had stopped. No insects. No wind. No movement in the undergrowth. Even the sound of their own gear felt too loud.
Thalyn frowned. Something tightened in her gut. She found herself staring into the mist, toward a place she couldn't see and couldn't explain. “This way,” she told the others. They exchanged uncertain glances, then followed.
Ahead, the mist thinned as though pushed back by an unseen hand.
The gate emerged from the mist, a fracture in the mountain. Dark stone, too smooth to be natural, ran upward in impossible vertical lines. Veins of black metal, half-eroded by time, threaded through it like exposed bone.
The jungle noise died completely at the threshold, replaced by a dread that crawled under the skin. Ancient carvings whispered of forgotten things, of curses buried deep.
They went further in. Jagged corridors, broken arches, open sky cutting in pale strips through collapsed ceilings far above. Carefully they advanced until they reached another gate.
A huge slab of black metal, half buried in stone. Ember glyphs pulsed on the surface. It opened before anyone touched it. After the initial shock, they stepped through it.
Inside, the air felt different. Charged with some strange energy. It seemed clean, but none of them lowered their masks.
The door slammed shut behind them, and from the shadows, something unfolded, limbs first, too many of them, jointed wrong, scraping stone as they unfurled to a height that swallowed the ceiling lights. Its body was a lattice of dark metal and colorful circuitry, pulsing faintly ember. Where a face should have been, there was only a vertical seam of cold blue light, and it fixed on them like a wound opening.
“You do not belong here,” it rasped, the voice low and guttural.
Thalyn’s heart pounded in her chest, her breath quick and shallow, a shiver tracing the length of her spine, as the chamber darkened.
Jaxon, ever the optimist, lobbed a grenade. The explosion lit up the ruins, dust and stone flying. The guardian didn’t flinch, its form rippling like smoke, unimpressed.
The ceiling went next. A groan first, deep and structural, the sound of something old deciding it was finished holding itself together. Then a crack split the dark above them, jagged and white-hot with falling light, and the world came apart in pieces.
“Watch out!” Nira's scream cut through the chaos. Thalyn's mask filled with dust before she understood why, stone shrieking against stone, and somewhere deep below, something stirred. Probably ancient, probably angry.
Jaxon yanked Thalyn back just as another chunk of the ceiling gave way, crashing down with the sound of breaking bones. Thalyn looked for Nira through the dust and falling debris. She was hauling Korr up by the strap of his pack as the floor beneath them both split wide.
“Go!” Nira shouted, shoving Korr toward the others.
“Nira!” Thalyn screamed, and felt Jaxon's grip lock around her like a vice.
Nira's eyes found hers across the gap, no fear in them, only regret. Then the floor gave way and she was gone. The ground trembled, the walls cracked, and the world began to fall apart around them, swallowing Thayn’s screams.
They ran, Jaxon dragging her through the debris, the others struggling to keep up. They stumbled over debris, hands grasping blindly, pulling each other up, running again, hearts hammering against ribs. The guardian’s menace loomed, a weight at their backs, driving them forward into the narrow passage that led to the chamber where they now stood.
As they sealed the door, the guardian did not follow, but another droid came to watch them like a sentinel.
At that moment, she snapped back to the present with a gasp, lurching upright. Her chest heaved, and her cybernetic legs whined into a high-pitched overdrive as she tried to brace herself on a floor that was no longer crumbling beneath her.
She blinked, her vision swimming in the dim ghostly light of the command center. The air in her lungs was suddenly stale and sterile, instead of the choking dust of the collapse. For a terrifying moment, she didn't know she was back in the present. She pressed the heels of her hands hard against her eyes, a shuddering breath escaping her lips. Her chest ached. The grief of losing Nira, a wound she had spent hours trying to scar over, had been torn open again, cold and suffocating.
“Thalyn, relax, your pulse is redlining,” Elara’s voice cut through the ringing.
The medic was beside her in an instant, a medical scanner casting a pale blue glow across Thalyn’s face and neck. Elara stared at the readout, her eyes widening. “Unreal. The neural patterns...” She glanced at the display again. “You actually went back. You experienced it all again.”
Elara looked up from the screen, the scientific awe on her face dissolving the moment she saw Thalyn’s tortured stare. Without another word, Elara powered down the scanner and wrapped her arms firmly around Thalyn. She pulled the scout into a tight, grounding embrace, one hand pressing against the back of Thalyn's head.
“You're back, Thalyn,” Elara murmured quietly into her shoulder. “You're with us.”
Korr hovered just behind them, oblivious to the heavy silence. His fingers twitched as he stared at the space above Thalyn's head, already calculating. “A flawless mnemonic loop,” he muttered. “If she can sustain that state, the navigational applications are staggering. We could reconstruct the entire descent. The structural data alone...”
“Stow it, Korr,” Jaxon’s voice was a low, gravelly rumble.
The commander stood a few paces away, arms crossed, the servos in his cybernetic shoulder whining faintly as he shifted his stance. He didn't crowd Thalyn, but his sharp, analytical gaze swept over her, silently assessing her stability. He gave Korr a single hard look that instantly silenced the archaeologist.
Thalyn leaned into Elara's embrace for a long moment, letting the steady rhythm of the medic's breathing anchor her to the reality. The phantom echo of the hectic events finally faded from her mind. Gently, she pulled back, offering Elara a tired, tight-lipped nod of thanks.
She stepped away and looked past Jaxon toward the center of the chamber. The throne sat waiting in the gloom, its ancient glyphs pulsing softly like embers in a dying fire, drawing every gaze back toward it.
Thalyn let out a slow, ragged breath and rolled her shoulders. “Alright,” she said. “Let's see where this goes.”
Jaxon was quiet for a moment, studying her. Then he gave a slow nod.
Thalyn crossed the chamber and lowered herself onto the throne. Her fingers lingered on the edge of the crown before she settled it onto her head.
As the chamber dissolved into shadow, she felt the familiar pull of the throne once more.
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