"Some stars fall inward, not outward."
The ramp hissed and parted, letting in not air but history, a scent that cut through the pod like smoke from a pyre, gritty and primal. Sand met sky, and the wound they made together was color, heat, and absolute silence.
The planet sprawled before them: a plain of black dunes, ribbed and restless, the ground burned to a shine beneath a sky that bled rust and old wine. The horizon itself seemed warped by ancient violence, as if gravity had been twisted in some old, unspoken war.
Adam stepped out, and the first thing he felt was wrong. The gravity was just a shade too heavy, and the air clung to the skin like oil. He tasted salt and iron, the tang of something that wasn't quite air, not quite hostile, but deeply, intimately alien. Every breath was a negotiation.
DeadMouth hovered at shoulder height, lens set to a tight, worried angle. For once, no jokes. Only the small whir of his engine, a mechanical heartbeat in a world that remembered other, older gods.
PAW unfolded beside them, every movement deliberate, claws extending, sensors pulsing. The black shell shimmered with that impossible light, bending the color of the world around it—its own moving eclipse. The machine crouched, scanning, ready for anything the horizon might imagine into being.
NYX's voice hummed in their comms, cool and glassy, as if afraid to raise her voice in this cathedral of sand and shadow.
"Atmosphere stable, but volatile. No biological markers yet. Energy readings—anomalous. Recommend caution, Captain."
Adam swung up onto PAW, feeling the click of the harness, the welcome pressure of the saddle. He gripped the rail, fingers shaking with adrenaline, with purpose, with a fear he couldn't name. It felt good to hold something real.
DeadMouth drifted forward, optics fixed on the landscape.
"At least it's not raining blood," he muttered. "Although, to be honest, this feels like the kind of place where the sand might get ideas."
Ahead, the heat-haze shimmered with a mirage that wasn't a lie: a structure half-drowned in light, half-lost to reflection. It bent the sun around it, turning solid metal to ghost, ghost to prophecy. Not a building, not a ruin, more like a memory waiting to be recognized. Adam felt the pull. He knew, in some deep marrow-layer, that it was why he'd come.
PAW surged forward, and the world changed with every stride. Dunes unraveled under metal claws; the air flexed. They passed ragged stones, the bones of mountains split by forces older than time, each one shadowed with old pain. The farther they went, the heavier the silence grew, as if they were descending into the ribcage of something holy, something never meant to be trespassed.
Then...the statues.
Dozens. Maybe more. Each one the size of a cathedral, carved from black stone that ate the light. Some knelt, hands folded in prayer or in warning. Some stood tall, arms spread, faces cracked by the sun, mouths open in a silent, endless song. None were truly human, their skulls too long, their eyes too many, or too deep. Their bodies wrapped in stone that mimicked cloth, war-worn and weathered, yet humming faintly, as if still remembering the day the world fell.
Weapons glowed softly in their hands, shapes that belonged to dreams of war, each one flickering with a blue-white heart, technology and ritual fused by necessity, by desperation.
Adam could not help it: he bowed his head as they passed the first one, a gesture made for no one. For a moment, the statue seemed to move. Just a shift, a grinding of impossible joints. The massive head turned, and eyeless sockets fixed on Adam. He felt it, not as sight, but as pressure, a hand pressed to the back of his neck, a whisper of a name lost before memory began.
PAW faltered, his gait breaking, sensors whirring in confusion. DeadMouth's voice came, raw and thin:
"Did that just...? Nope. Nope. I do not like this. Not one bit."
Adam swallowed hard, the world spinning with ancient recognition and dread. His heart beat a little faster, not with fear, but with the certainty that this was a place where every step forward was a step deeper into someone else's memory. Maybe even his own.
And all around them, the statues waited. Watching. Remembering.
"NYX. What are these things?"
Static bled through the comms—a hesitation. Then her voice, softer now, weighted by something Adam didn't want to name.
"I have no data. These were not meant to be seen."
The words hit harder than a warning. Not forbidden, just... impossible.
The dunes fell behind, replaced by ragged teeth of stone, jutting from the ground like the skeleton of some ancient titan. Each step jolted PAW's frame, but the machine adjusted—shoulders narrowing, stance low and elastic, claws flexing for purchase.
Then, with no warning but a silent coil of energy, PAW leapt—an arc of black and cyan, clearing a chasm with the grace of a hunting cat. It landed, soft as a shadow. Again, and again. No lurch, no rattle, just a fluid, joyful violence in motion.
Adam felt his own pulse sync with the rhythm, the rush of air and gravity turning dread to adrenaline. He could almost forget the hunger in the land behind them.
DeadMouth piped up, voice rough with nerves he'd never admit to having.
"Show off. Next thing you know, it's going to start demanding tuna and a personal therapist."
Adam gripped the side rail tighter, eyes fixed on the horizon—the strange structure was close now, the mirage sharper, bending light and memory.
He keyed his comms, forcing a casual tone. "NYX, I'm heading toward that reflection. Do I get a parade, or just another existential ambush?"
The delay was longer this time. The static wasn't just distance—it was something else. Something like a shiver.
NYX's voice came through, ragged at the edges.
"Nothing on the surface. Yet. But I detect... subterranean vibrations. Movement. Pattern inconsistent with tectonic activity."
A longer silence.
"Be on guard, Captain."
The protocol was gone. What came through was older—reverence. Maybe fear.
Adam felt it too, in his bones, the way the rocks thrummed beneath PAW's feet, how the air pressed in, tighter, more alert. Even the sky above seemed to lean closer, hungry for what would come next.
The structure ahead no longer looked like a beacon. It looked like an eye. And Adam, riding forward, knew what it felt like to be seen.
Something here wasn't dead. It wasn't even asleep.
It was waiting.
* * *
Suddenly, the sand shifted.
It was not the wind. It was purpose.
Sleek shapes rose, slicing through the dunes—fins, metallic, each the length of a man. They caught the fading sun and threw it back, brilliant as blades. Seven of them. Maybe more. Moving in a spiral, closing around the rock where PAW crouched like a black beast on a tombstone.
DeadMouth's voice came, thin with unease.
"Adam? That's not a party. That's bait."
The fins slowed, then stopped.
A hush fell, thick and electric. From beneath the sand, crimson lights blinked into being—eyes, lidless and cold. Each fin, each thing, stared as one. The dunes flickered with their gaze.
Adam's body knew before his mind. He slid from PAW, boots landing on fractured stone. The rifle in his grip responded with a pulse of energy, the scope sliding into focus, reading heat and vibration, calibrating to whatever this world called a threat.
PAW's body tensed, armor plates unfurling with a whisper of hydraulics. The transformation was quiet, deadly—legs bracing, missile pods unfolding, energy guns spinning up with a faint whine. The green scanner swept the circle, a fan of ghost-light searching for targets, or meaning.
Adam scanned the horizon through his scope, breath low and even. Every muscle ready, but his finger hovered—not squeezing, not yet. He waited for the first movement, the signal to kill or run.
DeadMouth's lens spun, voice a broken whisper.
"I don't think they're machines. Not alive, either. I think they're... watching."
The eyes in the sand did not blink. They did not advance.
They waited.
The stillness thickened, every second pressing on Adam's nerves. This wasn't a standoff. It was a ritual—ancient, precise. The world itself seemed to hold its breath, waiting for him to act.
Adam's mind sharpened, remembering every old training, every instinct honed for survival. But none of them applied here. Not on a world where even the sand watched, and the only rule was what you dared to do next.
NYX's voice cut through the tension, sudden and razor-sharp in Adam's ear.
"Captain, comms recalibrated. I have full sensor lock on the entities. They are not biological. Movement patterns suggest intelligence—collective, perhaps. Hive-mind or remote-controlled. They're not acting alone."
Adam tracked the fins through the sand, noting the way they sliced through the earth in perfect synchrony.
"Or someone's pulling the strings," he said under his breath, jaw tight.
DeadMouth hovered lower, his lens oscillating like an anxious pupil.
"Of course. Why wouldn't there be a sand-worm hive-mind cult? Maybe next we'll fight sentient tumbleweeds. I'm sure they'll be adorable."
A shiver passed through the ground. The sand no longer rippled—it rolled, undulated, pulsing in deliberate waves. The circle tightened. The fins rose higher, their metallic forms gleaming with each pass: crystalline, flawless, burning with a red too sharp to be natural.
PAW's core thrummed with energy, the growl in its throat now a low, grinding snarl. Its arsenal was primed: cannons tracking, mini-missiles locked, targeting lasers dancing along the perimeter.
Adam exhaled, slow and controlled. His hands stayed steady on the rifle.
"Hold," he said to PAW, a command more felt than heard. "Do not fire unless I say."
The circle contracted. The fins vanished beneath the sand—then, in perfect unison, erupted upward. Metal bodies followed: lean, segmented, like armored serpents. Limbs unfolded. Blades flashed. They moved not with the shambling lurch of mindless machines, but the predatory certainty of pack hunters.
They came on in silence. Not a roar, not a shriek—just the whisper of sand torn aside, the hush of engineered menace. Eyes locked on Adam. On PAW. On DeadMouth.
In that moment, Adam understood: these weren't just machines. They were messengers.
Or a warning.
PAW's warning lights strobed amber, a silent question.
Adam's pulse thundered in his ears.
"NYX, can you jam them?"
"Attempting signal disruption now," she replied, all business.
* * *
Sand burst open, savage and sudden.
What came was not natural, arachnid nightmares, steel-jointed and hate-born, skittering on razor legs. Their exoskeletons caught the dawn's bloody light. Limbs stabbed the earth, each twitch too fast, each movement wrong. Red cores pulsed at their centers. Some bounded on six legs, leaping like broken clockwork; others sliced the air, bladed limbs snapping shut as they landed.
Adam dropped behind jagged basalt, sand grinding against his palms. The AI rifle fused to his grip, familiar and alien. Sights up, breath held, missed the first. The recoil burned. Second shot. Third.
A creature collapsed, bleeding oil, limbs thrashing in sand.
DeadMouth screamed overhead, voice like panic hardwired into static:
"Three o'clock—double-blade jumper! Left flank, now!"
Adam slid, rolled, and came up firing. The world was narrow: low—shoot—move—count—reload—move. Instinct took over, muscle memory old as violence.
One drone dropped, then another, shrapnel hissing into black dunes.
PAW hit the field with a sound like a war god waking. Cannons roared, each shot a pillar of light. Rockets tracked the leapers, streaking white fire across the orange sky. Every hit threw sand and steel in violent waves.
DeadMouth circled above, lens darting.
"Twelve o'clock, leaper! Five, sneaker! I'm hacking their comms, but it's all encrypted subwave harmonics. Gimme fifteen sec..."
"You have five," Adam snapped, shifting as another blade sliced the air where his head had been. The voice was iron, emotionless. A machine with a beating heart.
He ducked under PAW's shield, watched the plasma wall catch an incoming blade, sparks fanning his face. Adam reloaded, eyes burning, sweat stinging the cuts on his brow.
Sand hissed down, smoke rising, machine shrieks splitting the world into strobe-lit agony.
From the haze, a new terror—a behemoth.
Spider-limbed, vast, a cathedral of armor. Its saw-mouth spun, its shadow crushing boulders to gravel. Twin red slits blinked alive. It moved with slow, perfect certainty—every step a verdict.
PAW emptied its arsenal. Missiles, lasers, all useless—energy vanished into the beast, drank by armor blacker than midnight.
DeadMouth's voice broke:
"This is my no-joke voice! Panic is now mandatory!"
The small drones flickered, scrambled by DeadMouth's jamming, but the giant was beyond jamming, beyond reason. It was will, not code.
It attacked.
Blades slammed down, detonating stone, flinging Adam through the air. He hit the ground, vision spinning, blood mixing with sand.
He crawled, coughing. Fired into its eyes—ricochets, nothing.
PAW's systems flashed red, plating scorched, all weapons near failure.
Adam's breath slowed. Everything fell away—the panic, the noise. Just the sound of his pulse, cold and even.
He touched his comm, voice flat as bedrock.
"Nyx. Does the Eon Veil have orbital cannons?"
A pause. Then NYX, voice unhurried, gentle as fate:
"Why, yes, Captain. It does."
Adam stood, brushing dust from his suit. Sand in his mouth, blood in his teeth, he looked up at the beast and did not blink.
Mounted PAW. Calm as prophecy.
The monster loomed, blade rising for the kill.
Adam's voice cut through the air:
"Then, light up this asshole!"
PAW leapt for the hill. The sky cracked.
A white lance of fire punched down, pure orbital fury. It hit the behemoth dead center. No explosion, no scream. Just erasure, steel peeled back, limbs vaporized, the world torn open by god's own scalpel.
A crater cooled in the wake of wrath.
The wind stilled.
DeadMouth's voice trembled:
"Okay. I'll admit it. That was sexy as hell."
Adam did not answer. He stared at the glassed earth, the silence that follows cataclysm. He spoke, almost to himself, voice iron and shadow:
"Next time, we don't wait so long to call in the big guns."
* * *
They kept riding.
Wind howled between knife-edge stone, dragging hot ash and bitter dust in its wake. The world behind was a smear of violence and silence; the world ahead, a wound of obsidian and gold. Adam felt the grit on his face, the burn in his throat, but not as pain. More like memory, sharp and cold, waking in his nerves.
His heart beat slowly. Too slow. Not the gallop of panic. Not the stutter of fear. Steady, measured, every pulse the click of a weapon chambered and cocked. He knew that rhythm. It was older than the man he was now.
He replayed the fight. Not just the bullets, the explosions, the way the sand jumped and burned. It was the way he'd moved, how his fingers slid around the rifle's grip like they'd grown up together, how his boots found the next foothold before his brain even gave the order. He'd slipped between rocks, cut new lines of fire, seen every angle like a map only he could read.
Instinct didn't cover it. Training didn't either. This was something written deeper, something designed. Each motion was a whisper from another life, another war. He hadn't survived that ambush; he'd commanded it. Called the rhythm. Controlled the field.
The truth landed, quiet but absolute, between the drone's muttering sarcasm and the purr of PAW's engines beneath him.
"I've done this before."
He didn't know where, or when, or even who with. But his body remembered, even if his mind did not. The choreography was there in his muscles, in the way his eyes swept the horizon, cataloguing threats, evaluating terrain, measuring the breath between opportunity and disaster. His voice had called the sky's wrath before—the orbital strike, the cool calculation. He'd been here. Not here, but somewhere that mattered.
He gripped PAW's handles tighter. Felt the armor respond, shifting just a hair to his grip, synced to his every move. Like it too remembered. Like it had been waiting for someone worthy to ride again.
He had no name. No past worth trusting.
But this was real.
This was his.
He was a weapon. He was a commander. A force, stripped of memory but not of meaning.
And whoever had tried to erase that had failed.
The wind carried the scent of scorched metal, the memory of ozone and oil. PAW loped forward, engines growling, sensors twitching as if catching signals only the two of them could hear.
Adam let the silence grow inside him, not emptiness, but certainty.
He didn't know who he was.
But he knew what.