The descent into the atmosphere of Zul-Karak felt like falling through a furnace. Outside the viewscreen, the air was a thick, hazy orange, choked with particulates that pinged against the Celestial Vanguard's hull like a billion tiny bullets.
"Shields at sixty percent and holding," Elis reported. Her hologram was wearing a pith helmet and a scout uniform—her way of 'getting into character' for a planetary expedition. "The friction is generating some weird heat signatures, Kael. This isn't just silicon and quartz down there. It's... ionized."
"THE SAND REMEMBERS THE OLD WARS," Ignis rumbled, his voice vibrating through the floorboards. "THEY ARE THE ASHES OF A BILLION WAR-DROIDS. DO NOT TRUST THE SILENCE."
Kael stood at the airlock, checking his gear. Beside him, Valerius was checking the power cell on his heavy gauntlet.
"Listen to the ship, boy," Valerius warned. "Zul-Karak wasn't always a desert. It was the foundry world for the Starborn Fleets. When the Vorthax first invaded, the ancients didn't surrender the factories. They detonated the planet's core. They turned their greatest achievement into a graveyard."
The ramp lowered, and the heat hit Kael like a physical blow. The "sand" wasn't yellow; it was a shimmering, metallic silver. It stretched out in endless dunes under a dying red sun.
Kael stepped out, his boots sinking into the metallic grains. Immediately, he felt a tingle in his fingertips.
"Elis, I'm feeling a pulse," Kael said, looking at his hands. "It's like the sand is... breathing."
"That's the Chronometric Resonance," Elis replied through his comms. "On the Starborn scale, you're currently a Tier 1: Awakened. You're like a radio tuned to the wrong frequency. The planet is trying to broadcast to you."
"Tier 1?" Kael asked, dodging a sudden gust of wind that sent silver dust swirling. "How many Tiers are there?"
"Ten," Valerius answered, stepping off the ramp. "At Tier 1, you can move energy. At Tier 5, you can command the elements of a world. At Tier 10... you become a Singularity. You become a Star." The General looked at Kael's glowing hand. "Right now, you're a flickering candle in a hurricane. Stay focused."
They walked toward the ruins of the Archive of the Ancients, a massive black pyramid half-buried in a silver dune.
Suddenly, the wind stopped. The silence was absolute.
Krrrrr-chik.
The sound came from beneath the sand.
"Movement!" Kael yelled, drawing his blaster.
The silver dunes around them began to liquefy. Hundreds of shapes rose from the ground. They weren't the Chrono-Wraiths from before. These were Sand-Soldiers—mechanical skeletons formed from the metallic dust, held together by glowing blue ley-lines.
"The planetary defense system," Valerius growled, drawing his sword. The blade hummed with a violent amber light. "They think we're scavengers."
"Wait!" Kael shouted, stepping forward. "I'm a Starborn! I'm on your side!"
The Sand-Soldiers didn't stop. One of them, a four-armed construct with blades for fingers, lunged at Kael with terrifying speed.
Kael reacted on instinct. He didn't fire his blaster. He reached out with his mind, trying to find the "current" inside the construct.
Connection.
He felt the flow of energy holding the silver dust together. It was a code—a simple, repetitive command: EXTERMINATE INTRUDER.
"Override!" Kael screamed, thrusting his palm forward.
Instead of a blast of fire, a wave of blue geometric runes erupted from his hand. The symbols hit the Sand-Soldier, and the construct froze mid-air. The silver dust that formed its body began to vibrate, then suddenly lost its shape, collapsing into a harmless pile of glitter.
"He just de-compiled it," Elis whispered in awe. "Kael, your resonance just spiked to Tier 1.5!"
"There are too many of them!" Valerius shouted, parrying three blades at once. "Kael, the Archive! Find the access port! Use the Cube to shut them down!"
Kael turned and sprinted toward the pyramid. Behind him, he heard the roar of Valerius's sword and the metallic clatter of the soldiers. He reached the base of the black stone and found a circular indentation.
"The Cube," Kael gasped, pulling the obsidian relic from his bag.
He slammed it into the slot.
The pyramid didn't just open; it shouted. A pillar of blue light shot from the apex of the structure into the sky, punching a hole through the orange clouds.
The Sand-Soldiers across the desert all dropped to their knees, their glowing eyes turning from red to blue. They dissolved back into the dunes, returning to their rest.
Kael leaned against the stone, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Did... did I do that?"
"You didn't just shut them down," Elis said, her voice trembling slightly. "You just signaled the entire sector. Kael... that beam? Every Vorthax ship within ten light-years just saw it."
Valerius walked up, wiping silver dust from his shoulder. He looked at the sky, then at the pyramid doors that were slowly sliding open.
"The Archive is open," Valerius said grimly. "But the hunt just got a lot more crowded. We have maybe twenty minutes before the first Vorthax dropships arrive."
"Then let's make them count," Kael said, stepping into the darkness of the tomb.
Inside, the walls were lined with holograms of ships—six of them, all shaped like dragons, all dark. But in the center of the room, one hologram was flickering with a faint, hopeful light.
"SISTER," Ignis's voice whispered through the comms. "I HEAR HER. SHE IS CALLING FROM THE CORE OF A FORGOTTEN SUN."