Kael didn't move for a long time.
The wind had died after the Resonant vanished, leaving a hollow silence in its wake. No whispers. No echoes. Just the distant moan of the Wastes and the occasional groan of metal sagging under centuries of forgotten weight.
He stared at the dagger.
It pulsed in his palm—faintly, like a sleeping creature's breath. Its surface was etched with markings he couldn't read: not runes, not letters. They shifted slightly when he looked at them, as if the metal was remembering something.
Kael had handled ancient tech before—pre-Last Sol artifacts still surfaced now and then—but this was no relic of man. It was older.
"You're not going to speak? That's fine. I can talk enough for both of us."
Kael blinked. The voice in his head was dry. Female. Cultured, but laced with venomous humor. It reminded him of a noblewoman he'd once met while stealing water from a caravan—elegant and completely unbothered by the idea of stabbing someone if they used the wrong spoon.
He sighed. Then signed.
[What are you?]
"Names first, scavenger. You wouldn't pick up a stray in the Wastes without asking its name, would you?"
He hesitated.
[Kael. Kael Ardent.]
"Ardent? Oh, dear. That's practically poetic."
Kael rolled his eyes.
"I'm Nyxis. Or I was. It's been a while. Time doesn't pass the same way when you're sealed inside the chest cavity of a dead god."
Kael stiffened.
[Dead... god?]
"Yes. You pulled me from a corpse, remember? Though to be fair, 'corpse' is a generous term. More like... fossilized memory. The god of oblivion didn't go quietly."
Kael looked away. His hands were still shaking. He wiped the sweat from his brow with a sleeve crusted in salt and dust.
The ruins around him were beginning to glow with the first light of dawn. A dull crimson hue filtered through the haze—what passed for sunlight now. The sky had no warmth. Just a cracked shell of color hanging above a dying world.
"I can help you, you know," Nyxis said. "That voice of yours... it's not just a curse. It's a mark. A tether."
Kael didn't respond. His memories stirred.
The man he killed. The boy whose skull cracked from a whisper. The dog that never got up again after he'd cried during a sandstorm. Even when he didn't speak—his voice leaked.
Lirin had called him a weapon. Then left.
"You're echoing," Nyxis said again, gentler now. "Not speaking. Your voice resonates with things that shouldn't hear it. That's why you kill."
Kael closed his eyes.
[Can you stop it?]
"I can teach you to aim it. To wield it like a blade. If that's what you want."
He stood slowly. Muscles ached. But the fatigue felt distant now, like it belonged to someone else. Nyxis slid back into the sheath he'd fashioned from old synth-leather, still warm against his side.
He looked toward the east. Toward the distant shimmer of Serathis—the last real city this side of the Red Wastes. He hadn't been there in months. Didn't plan to go back. But now...
Now he had questions.
And something told him Serathis had answers.
The path was not empty.
By midday, Kael had crossed into the salt fields. What had once been an ocean was now a flat, cracked expanse of glittering white. He moved quickly, keeping to the ruins of cargo haulers and broken skycraft. The sun never truly rose, but its fractured light made it easier for predators to see you.
Nyxis hadn't shut up since morning.
"So you're from the southern ring, yes? You've got that stubborn silence they breed into you like it's a virtue."
Kael ignored her.
"Not judging. I like it. But silence won't save you forever. Eventually someone talks louder. Shoots faster. Or just gets lucky."
He stopped beneath the broken hull of an old lifter. There was a nest nearby—scavenged parts, bones, some kind of fur. Recently used.
[Keep quiet.]
Nyxis laughed softly in his head.
"Of course, commander. I'll mute the mystical blade that rips apart the fabric of space and whispers inside your skull. Because stealth is key."
Kael crept past the nest and dropped into an old tunnel shaft, landing with a grunt.
His boots crunched something that wasn't rock.
He looked down.
Teeth. A lot of them.
Then the thing in the dark opened a second mouth.
It moved fast.
Too fast.
Kael barely ducked as a claw passed over his head, slicing through steel. He rolled sideways, pulled Nyxis, and slashed.
A scream—not human—filled the shaft.
The dagger drank it. Pulled it in. The thing convulsed, spasmed, and dropped.
Black ichor hissed as it hit the salt.
"Ah," Nyxis purred. "That was a marrow-walker. They don't usually travel this far south. Something's pushing them out."
Kael cleaned the blade on his cloak and moved on.
He didn't ask what.
But he'd learn soon enough.