The air inside the pod was thin, sharp with the metallic tang of recycled oxygen. Captain Mara Voss adjusted her visor, her gloved fingers brushing the cold polymer of the control panel. Outside, the planet’s surface stretched in jagged ridges of obsidian rock, fractured by veins of iridescent blue light that pulsed like a heartbeat. She had seen images of Erebos-9 before—grayscale satellite scans, data points, and vague reports of “anomalous energy signatures.” But nothing prepared her for the silence. No wind. No sound. Just the low hum of her suit’s life support and the rhythmic click of her own breath.
“Status report,” Commander Riel’s voice crackled through her earpiece, clipped and precise.
Mara glanced at the readout. “Power levels at 78%. Atmospheric composition: 62% nitrogen, 30% argon, trace oxygen. No signs of life. But the readings—” She paused, narrowing her eyes at the fluctuating blue lines on the scanner. “They’re shifting. Like something’s moving beneath the surface.”
A beat of static. Then Riel’s voice again, colder this time. “Stay within range. If this is a trap, we don’t have the manpower to extract you.”
Mara exhaled, her breath fogging the inside of her visor. She had expected caution, but the edge in Riel’s tone unsettled her. The mission was supposed to be a routine survey, a quick check on the planet’s viability for colonization. But the encrypted transmission she’d received two days prior—short, fragmented, and signed only with a single symbol: a spiral etched into a circle—had changed everything.
She stepped out of the pod, boots crunching against the brittle ground. The sky above was an inky black, but stars were absent, as if the universe itself had turned away. Her boots left no imprint. The ground was too hard, too still. She raised the scanner again, watching as the blue lines coalesced into a pattern—geometric, deliberate. A message.
“This isn’t natural,” she muttered, her voice swallowed by the silence.
A sudden tremor shook the ground. Not violent, but undeniable. The blue lines flared, then collapsed into darkness. Mara stumbled, gripping the scanner as her suit’s alarms blared. The readout flickered, then went black.
“Mara?” Riel’s voice was urgent now. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” she said, but the words felt hollow. The ground beneath her feet was no longer solid. It was… shifting.
Then the sky fractured.
A rift split open above the horizon, a jagged tear in the fabric of the world. Light poured through, not from the sun but from something deeper, something ancient. The air thickened, charged with an energy that made her teeth ache. Mara’s visor dimmed as the scanner rebooted, its screen flashing with a single word: “ACCESS GRANTED.”
“Riel,” she said, her voice steady despite the chaos around her. “I think I just found what they were hiding.”
The rift widened, and the silence shattered.
***
The corridor was narrow, lit by a sickly blue glow that pulsed in time with Mara’s heartbeat. She moved cautiously, her boots echoing against the metal floor. The air here was different—thicker, heavier, as if the walls themselves were breathing. Her scanner hummed faintly, its readings unstable.
“This place isn’t supposed to exist,” she whispered, more to herself than anyone else.
A door slid open ahead, revealing a vast chamber. At its center stood a structure—tall, spindly, and alive. It was made of the same iridescent blue material as the planet’s surface, but here it pulsed with a slow, deliberate rhythm. Strange symbols scrolled along its surface, shifting and reforming like liquid.
Mara approached, her breath shallow. The moment her hand touched the structure, a surge of heat flooded her suit, followed by a flood of images—flashes of a civilization long dead, their technology woven into the very bones of the planet. She saw cities rising from the ground, their spires reaching for the stars. She saw ships like hers, but larger, more perfect, vanishing into the rift. And then she saw the end: a war, a collapse, a choice to bury their knowledge beneath the surface, waiting for someone to find it.
A voice filled her mind, not spoken but felt. “You are not the first. You will not be the last.”
Mara stumbled back, her pulse roaring. The voice was gone, but the weight of its words remained. She turned, expecting to see Riel, but the corridor behind her was empty.
“Riel?” Her voice was tight. “Do you copy?”
Static. Then a single word, spoken in Riel’s voice but distorted, as if coming from somewhere else entirely: “Run.”
Mara didn’t hesitate. She turned and ran, the chamber’s glow fading behind her as the walls began to shift. The structure’s pulse quickened, its blue light intensifying. Something was coming.
***
The pod’s systems were failing. Mara slammed her fist against the control panel, sparks flying as the lights flickered. Outside, the rift had grown, its edges glowing with an unnatural light. The ground trembled, and she could feel it in her bones—a force beyond comprehension, something that didn’t just move but *wanted* to.
“Riel,” she said, her voice hoarse. “If you’re out there, I need a way out.”
No response. Just the sound of her own breath, ragged and loud.
The pod shuddered as something massive moved beneath the surface. The ground cracked, and a column of blue light erupted from the fissure, illuminating the sky. Mara’s visor flickered, then went dark.
She was alone.
***
When the lights came back on, the pod was gone. She stood in a vast expanse of white, the air thick with a low hum. The ground was smooth, seamless, as if she had stepped into a dream.
“Where am I?” she asked, her voice echoing in the silence.
A figure appeared ahead, humanoid but not quite. Its form shifted, like liquid caught between states. “You have seen the truth,” it said, its voice a chorus of overlapping tones. “The choice is yours.”
Mara stepped forward, her heart pounding. “What choice?”
The figure extended a hand, and the world around her dissolved. She was back on Erebos-9, the rift still open, the structure pulsing. But now she understood. The planet wasn’t a dead place—it was a vault, a guardian of knowledge too dangerous for any one species to wield.
She had two options: take the knowledge and risk repeating the same mistakes, or leave it buried and let the cycle continue.
The voice returned, softer this time. “Choose.”
Mara closed her eyes. The silence was no longer empty. It was full of possibilities.
