The dust of the dead world tasted of ash and forgotten dreams.
Li Wei wiped his mouth with a grimy sleeve, the coarse fabric useless against the gritty film coating his tongue. Above, the sky was a perpetual, sickly orange, stained by endless storms scouring the bones of the old world. Before him, the skeleton of a once-great city reached for that ugly heavens, its steel ribs picked clean by centuries of scavengers.
This was the Earthly Realm—a name he'd only seen carved on crumbling ruin walls. To him and the rest of Settlement 47, it was simply the world: a dying, breathless place.
"Find anything that isn't rust or rot?" croaked a voice from behind a pile of rubble. Old Man Huang emerged, his back bent like gnarled wood, eyes narrowed against the dust.
"Rust and rot, with a side of broken concrete," Li Wei replied, hefting his crowbar. A familiar, dull ache persisted in his muscles—the kind earned from a lifetime of hard labor and thin air. "The Scrap-Sifters cleared this sector generations ago."
"The Sifters were lazy," Huang muttered, tapping the ground with his metal rod. "They looked for big, easy prizes. The past hides its secrets deeper."
Li Wei sighed. Hope was a currency rarer than clean water, yet Huang possessed it in abundance. He was a Digger, one of the few who still believed the legends of the world-that-was, who studied fragmentary maps and spoke of "ambient spirit energy" as though it were real.
"The only secret down there is how deep the foundations go before you hit water," Li Wei said, but he followed the old man anyway. A job was a job. Digging paid better than tending the settlement's thin hydroponic algae, and the water purifier needed parts.
Huang led him to a fissure in the ground—a dark tear that seemed to swallow the weak light. "Down here. I feel it."
You feel arthritis, Li Wei thought, but held his tongue. He secured his rope and descended into the gloom.
The air below was cold and still, heavy with the scent of damp metal and age. His headlamp cut a frail beam through the darkness, revealing a cavern of reinforced walls, twisted and buckled by some unimaginable force.
"A bunker," Huang whispered, his voice echoing. "From the Great Dying. Untouched."
Li Wei's pragmatic heart beat a little faster. Untouched meant un-scavenged. They might find a working water pump relay or a sealed can of nutrients.
They moved through the silent tomb. Li Wei's light flickered over skeletons slumped at control panels, their clothes long turned to dust. A profound sadness settled over him. What had happened here? What were they trying to survive?
At the bunker's heart stood a sealed door, made of a strange, smooth metal untouched by rust. Cold to the touch, it bore a symbol at its center: a circle enclosing a single, intricate seed.
"The Earthly Realm…" Huang breathed, eyes wide with reverence. He scraped at the edges with his tools, but it didn't budge.
Impatient, Li Wei wedged his crowbar into the seam. "It's just a door, old man." With a grunt, he threw his weight into it. Metal shrieked in protest.
A hiss of equalizing pressure sounded as the door slid open a crack. A wave of air washed over them—not stale, but crisp and clean, carrying a scent Li Wei knew only from the settlement' tiny oxygen garden: the smell of green, growing things.
Inside lay a small chamber. At its center, on a pedestal, rested a single object: a large, polished acorn made of jade and bronze, glowing with a soft internal light. The same symbol from the door was etched on its surface.
Huang fell to his knees, weeping. "The stories are true…"
Compelled by an impulse he didn't understand, Li Wei reached out. This was no machine part. It was something else. His fingers brushed the cool, smooth surface.
It was warmer than he expected.
A needle-like protrusion shot from the artifact, piercing his thumb.
He yelped and tried to pull back, but it was too late. A searing heat—not of fire, but of pure, unadulterated life—raced up his arm, burning through his veins and exploding in his chest. Gasping, he collapsed beside Huang.
Visions flashed behind his eyes: a world vibrant and impossibly green; towers of light touching the stars; people soaring through energy-thick skies. Then, a great silence. A draining. A fading. The green turned to grey.
The heat condensed in his core, a burning knot below his navel. As the pain faded, it was replaced by a strange, thrumming fullness. The light in the artifact—the Seed—had died. The chamber went dark, lit only by his headlamp.
The Seed was gone. It was inside him.
"What… what did you do?" Huang whispered, his face pale with awe and terror.
Before Li Wei could answer, a new sound echoed from the tunnel behind them.
A skittering. A chittering. The dry, scraping sound of many legs on concrete.
It was a sound every scavenger feared. The native wildlife of the ruins was twisted, hardy, and vicious. They normally avoided humans—too much effort for too little meat.
Li Wei turned, his headlamp illuminating the tunnel entrance.
A dozen pairs of glowing, malevolent red eyes stared back. Giant, armored centipedes, mandibles clicking. But they weren't looking at Huang.
They were fixed on Li Wei. On the vibrant energy now burning like a beacon within him.
Old Man Huang scrambled back. "They sense it! They sense the life in you!"
The lead beast shrieked and scuttled forward, its hardened body scraping against the walls.
Li Wei's mind, reeling from the flood of memories and energy, snapped into a single, primal mode: survival.
He snatched the now-dull artifact from the pedestal, its weight solid and comforting in his hand, and turned to face the horde. The thrumming in his core pulsed, a strange new rhythm beating in time with his frantic heart.
He had found a secret deeper than rust and rot.
And now, it was going to get him killed.