"This is the first time we've used one of the Express cars to Trailblaze before..." March said, her tone teetering between nervous excitement and thinly veiled apprehension. The metallic hum of the Astral Express echoed around her as she walked beside Dan Heng and Welt toward the far end of the corridor — the rear car. It was rarely touched, almost never used. A sealed chamber reserved for drop operations that required more precision, more risk.
Outside the narrow windows lining the hallway, the broken planet loomed closer.
Thelha Ra'tha.
It wasn't a name any of them recognized — no charted history, no known civilization. Just a planetary body, cracked and leaking light like a wound in the cosmos. Massive shards of violet-black crust drifted across its broken face, suspended like jagged tectonic plates above a glowing yellow core that pulsed faintly with energy.
Lightning arced between the fractures. The entire world seemed to groan with silence — loud in its desolation.
March adjusted her grip on her camera and tried to keep her voice light. "You ever done something like this before, Mr. Yang?"[1]
Welt folded his hands behind his back, the way he always did when thinking. He walked in step with them, slow and deliberate, as if each movement weighed more in this moment. His reply was curt.
"No."
March blinked at the bluntness. "Really? You've been on, like, a hundred Trailblaze missions, right? None like this?"
He didn't respond immediately. His eyes stayed forward, locked on the reinforced bulkhead at the end of the corridor.
"…Not quite like this," he finally said. His voice was low. Distant.
Dan Heng, ever vigilant, broke the brief silence. "We're almost there."
The corridor ended at a heavy blast door — reinforced with stabilizers and containment seals. Welt reached out, pressed a control rune, and with a soft hiss, the door slid open.
The interior of the rear car was stark and bare. No ornamental paneling. No cozy lighting. Just cold metal, magnetic harnesses lining the walls, and a reinforced viewport that stared down at the bleeding world below. Teh car shuddered slightly as internal systems activated.
March walked to the window and looked out, lips parting slightly. "Whoa…"
Thelha Ra'tha filled the glass. From this range, the damage was even more visceral. It wasn't just cracked — it was torn, fractured from the inside out. Gaping wounds in the planet's crust pulsed with a soft, angry glow. Rivers of molten gold traced unnatural paths between violet ridges, and hanging above the horizon, a strange blue sun bled faint rays across the surface.
The intercom crackled.
"Rear car prepped and ready for descent," came Pom-Pom's voice, chirpy but laced with tension. "Detaching in three… two… one…"
A deep mechanical jolt rattled through the floor as the car was severed cleanly from the Express proper. A hiss of pressure equalized as secondary systems kicked in, thrusters igniting with a steady burn that nudged them into descent.
Dan Heng moved toward the forward console, eyes already scanning the readouts. "Entering upper atmosphere in 90 seconds."
From the viewport, streaks of red flame started licking the exterior hull. They were burning through the sky now — a controlled fall into something completely unknown.
March stayed by the window, gripping a support rail. "Okay. Definitely not on anyone's travel brochures. This place looks like it got punched by a god."
Welt stood beside her, arms crossed, face unreadable. "It may as well have been. If the Stellaron embedded here is as active as the readings suggest… it's been warping the planet for decades. Maybe centuries."
Another rumble passed through the car as they dropped into a denser layer of the atmosphere. Gold light and violet static danced across the hull like veins, crawling and pulsing in patterns that made March's skin crawl.
"Surface contact in 45 seconds," Dan Heng said calmly, adjusting their trajectory. "Magnetic stabilizers engaging."
March nodded, then hesitated. "Stabilizers, huh? Guess now's a bad time to admit I still get motion sick…"
Welt gave her a look.
"Just kidding," she added quickly.
Outside, the scorched earth of Thelha Ra'tha rose to meet them — cracked plains and jagged rock formations glowing faintly in the dark. Burned forests twisted in the distance, leafless and petrified, like stone skeletons. Nothing about this world looked welcoming.
Dan Heng locked eyes with the landscape. "Touchdown in ten."
Welt braced himself. "Weapons ready. Assume corruption has already spread."
With a final hiss and a deep metallic clang, the rear car slammed into the ground.
Dust blasted out in all directions. The view outside was immediately obscured by clouds of scorched debris. The vibration faded, the systems powered down, and the car's doors slowly unlocked with a heavy click.
The Nameless had landed.
March was the first to step out, crossbow raised. Her boots touched the cracked soil of Thelha Ra'tha, and the heat immediately hit her — dry, suffocating, like standing inside a forge.
Dan Heng followed next, spear in hand. Welt brought up the rear, calmly scanning the terrain.
"Everything's so… red," March murmured, staring at the molten veins in the ground. "I thought it'd be more purple, you know? From orbit it looked almost… alive."
Dan Heng spoke without looking away. "The Fragmentum corrupts both matter and perception. What we saw from space may have been a distortion layer. Anomalies tend to mask their true scope."
Then he paused. "Movement. Left ridge."
All three snapped to alert.
Emerging from a twisted outcrop, a creature loped forward. At first, it looked like a dog — low to the ground, lean, fast. But then it twitched. Its limbs bent wrong. Its flesh shimmered with unstable mist, black and violet, and glowing fissures ran across its hide like scars made of light.
March's voice dropped. "That's… a dog? No, that's not right."
"It's been consumed," Welt said, raising his hand. "Some sort of Dog... corrupted by the Fragmentum."
The creature didn't hesitate.
It charged.
But before they could act — a blur.
Steel pierced the creature mid-leap, driving it back with a bone-crushing impact that echoed across the wasteland. It slammed against a rock face, pinned like an insect, and didn't move.
Blood hissed against the heat of the stone.
March froze. "What the—?"
Dan Heng tensed, eyes sweeping the horizon. "Someone else is here."
A figure stepped from the haze — tall, broad-shouldered, dust-covered. Muscles hardened by survival, skin sun-scorched and smeared with ash. He moved like a beast that had learned to walk like a man.
Anthony Cloyne.
He stood over the body, hand still clenched around the embedded blade. His gaze flicked briefly to the corpse, then upward.
He saw them.
Strangers.
Real people.
His eyes widened — not in fear, not in aggression — but something rawer.
Hope.
"...Finally," he muttered, voice rough, dry, like it hadn't spoken in months. His shoulders trembled just slightly. His eyes didn't leave theirs. "People. At last."
March didn't lower her bow.
Dan Heng stood still, spear in hand.
Welt's fingers hovered near his side, calm but ready as he gripped the handle of his cane.
And the man before them — tall, ash-covered, weathered beyond his years — didn't move either.
He hadn't even pulled his sword free from the Pyre Dog's skull. It still hung there, embedded in blackened stone and bone. The wind was dead, the heat rising in ripples across the cracked ground.
No one spoke.
[1] I’d like to clarify something here. While the game never explicitly states how long March has been traveling with the Astral Express, it's reasonable to assume it’s been a while, perhaps close to a year. Even so, she’s still relatively new to Trailblazing. I wrote her reaction the way I did because, despite their experience, neither she nor the other Nameless have likely never encountered a planet this catastrophically destroyed before.