Hach stood with his back to the control room door when a deep, steady voice sliced through the silence.
"You alright, Hach?"
Stepping out from the shadows came a figure carved from sun and hardship: skin burnt bronze by relentless rays, a body lean yet laced with sharply defined muscle. His cloak strained over the ridges of his frame, while beneath, layers of formal attire sat with neat precision, far more stately than the uniform of any Alteker Captain.
Hach glanced back, half-lazy, a sly grin hitching the edge of his mouth. "Ahh, Commander. No need for all that formality. You talk like you don't know me," he quipped, his tone as breezy as a seaside wind.
Commander Auger studied him for a flicker, his hand flicking with practiced ease to light a cigarette. "No. But losing nearly your entire squad… that's bound to leave some kind of scar," he pressed, punctuating the air with a trail of smoke.
Hach's grin sharpened, thin and reckless, a spark meant to burn away meaning. "Maybe so. But look," he said, giving himself a pat-down, as if counting his blessings by touch. "Still got two hands, two legs, head's screwed on tight. All present and accounted for."
"You don't have to pretend," Auger replied, gaze unblinking, words steady as iron.
"Pretend?" Hach gave a soft chuckle, light as falling ash. "I'm honestly fine. Just… hungry," he tossed back, shooting a mischievous squint toward the door. "And right now, really craving someone's head for dinner."
The line slipped out as easily as a child's marble, a flicker of humor tossed into the gloom. For a heartbeat, the thick air felt just a notch lighter, thin as cigarette smoke in a furnace. That was always his trick.
Hach turned on the stage lights, scattering a joke or two, anything to keep everyone's breaths from choking on sorrow. They needed that release. So did he, because in the hollow under his ribcage, a raw ache still twisted, slow and sharp as a rusted screw. Their names crowded his throat, threatening to spill free. So he locked them tight, stuffed deep in the same box as his laughter.
Auger's gaze pierced straight through him, as always, the commander was weighing, calculating exactly how thick a mask Hach wore tonight. Hach let him take measure. If he was destined to crumble, let it be later; after the doors were locked, the lights snuffed out, and the world stopped demanding a soldier's posture.
For now? He remained on his feet.
Auger's mouth moved, his voice rolling out with the unwavering force of a command: breathe, endure, don't collapse. But inside Hach's head, a parade of names thundered, relentless as the tide. One. Two. Three. The entire squad, laughter echoing in the mess hall, trivial chatter, playing cards abandoned in defeat, sickly-sweet coffee left cold, all of it rotting in silence now. Silence without arms to embrace.
"I'm fine," Hach managed at last. The words followed a familiar path, slipping out quicker than any hand could snatch them back.
But he wasn't truly there. The moment the explosion ripped through them, his mind spun backward: if only he'd stayed sharp, if he hadn't gotten distracted, if he hadn't turned a blind eye and let that damn rat slip free…
If only.
No one is truly unknown, Hach mused. He didn't believe in accidents. That monster hadn't clawed up from thin air, someone out there knew the east sector alarm was dead, someone counted down the heartbeat before sparks ignited. Someone had a name. And he would find it.
Commander Auger's words stabbed the gloom with icy resolve. "Tomorrow, we starts a sweep from intel up. I'll pull every access recording, telemetry log, mess hall register, even the janitorial supply orders. No one gets through, Hach."
Hach fixed his eyes on Auger, marble-bright beneath the lamp. "Why wait for tomorrow?" Within Hach's pupils, the commander's face shimmered, ghostly in low light. "Tonight."
"Protocol," Auger replied, his tone flat as stone, lighting a cigarette.
"What good is protocol—protocol doesn't even know my crew is gone." Hach shot back, voice raw as steel grating against steel.
Auger wanted to snap, to flash his badge and force the captain's obedience. But Hach's silhouette reminded him of himself, years before, with Tyan Flamino, losing everything, when the numbers on reports twisted into well-loved faces. Maybe his thoughts had been the same then, taut and vengeful, bristling with the need to do something, anything, just as Hach's did tonight.
If only.
A halo of cigarette smoke curled around Auger's lips, blooming into a storm-grey cloud, he exhaled and watched the wisps dance before wordlessly snapping, "Let's seize the moment, work needs finishing."
The control room door slid open with a faint hiss, slicing through the brittle silence. Two Alteker guards emerged, uniforms stained and panic chiseled deep into the creases of their faces.
"Commander Auger, something's wrong…" one stammered.
Auger's expression shifted in a flash, eyes narrowing, posture stiffening. He drew one last, bold drag from his cigarette, then strode forward into the heart of command.
The two Alteker approached, faces pale as moonlit salt. On the central monitor, no bigger than a desktop display, a blurred silhouette flickered. Auger leaned closer, tilting his head, searching for clarity in the foggy pixels.
There, one figure stood out: a nearly bald man, silver hair grown long only at the temples and braided tight like a monkey's tail. Round spectacles perched precariously on his nose, catching the glow from dim overhead bulbs. On the muddled screen, he argued with two gate guards, both bent forward, one hand raised defensively, while the bald man's index finger jabbed the air, lips fluttering in rapid, anxious complaint.
Hach lurched forward, voice crisp. "I'm heading down," he declared, instinct pushing him to intervene before unease became contagion.
But one of the Alteker's eyes flared wide, finger stabbing at the screen, voice broken and hoarse, "What is that?!"
From behind the bald man's back, another shape oozed into view, rising from folds of shadow like a phantom refusing the grave. The body was towering, rigid enough to angle against the ceiling itself. A black suit hugged him tightly, a pitch-fedora threw half his face into eclipse.
All breath seemed to catch as the man's hand slipped out of darkness, brandishing a brilliantly blue stone, enormous, chilling, light-streaked. Not just big, twice as tall as either guard. Its aura rippled, swallowing the lamplight and casting a dense hush over the room for three full seconds.
"What is that…" Auger's lips quivered, his gaze burning through the monitor's glass.
At the gate, panic seized the guards. Sweat beaded on their brows, every jittering movement stark in the monitor's cool gaze. But before the tension could find its escape, the bald man exploded into motion, so fast the camera only snagged shattered shards of his silhouette flinging apart. Fists clenched, breath suspended, then detonation. Not a noise, but an event a flash of raw energy erupting wide. The control room feed erupted in a volcanic burst of black and streaking static.
Chaos ignited. The operators froze in their seats, fingers curled white-knuckled on slick consoles, breaths colliding in short, sharp bursts. A keening alarm ripped through the air, dousing the room in a staccato heartbeat of danger. Auger slammed a heavy fist to the console. "Switch to another angle! Any camera, bring it up!"
The screens shuddered, jolted to a new view. After a moment of wild flicker, the image snapped clear, the colossal stone still loomed, flanked by that spectral figure and the cloaked man, both rooted before an open gate gaping like a beast's ravenous jaws.
Hach was paralyzed, eyes round enough to burst from their sockets. "That's it…" he breathed, almost doubting what pirouetted across the screen.
Auger shot him a glance, uncertainty etched hard into his face, cigarette clamped between lips. "What is that…" Auger's words slipped out.
And then the creature appeared, monstrous, towering, head jutting forward like an orca. Moon-glossed scales gleamed, damp light shimmered along each ridge: every detail brutal and unforgiving, jaws yawning, fangs slashing the darkness, wild breath rushing in and out with savage abandon.
"That monster…" Hach's voice strangled itself to near silence. Without warning, he whipped from the room like shattered glass, his body bursting through the thickened air. Commander Auger's shout trailed behind, but Hach was gone.
"All of you, out now! Stop them from coming in! Call every captain, gather at the front!" Auger bellowed. He snapped back to the monitor, jaw locked against a swirl of possible futures.
Outside, the monster hugged the blue stone, clutching it as if it were the heart of the world, then surged forward at the Alteker headquarters. It didn't smash through; instead, it hammered the stone down with earth-breaking force. Sound shattered the sky, shockwaves whipped across the gate, the boulder split open, pouring radiant light from the wound.
The white light surged through Alteker like a flood breaking its banks, seeping through door seams, bleeding across walls, devouring everything it touched in a single breath.
And then, silence.
The monster was gone, leaving nothing but the shattered remains of the great stone, fragments scattered like broken teeth across the ground.
But it wasn't only the beast that vanished. The guards who had rushed out to secure the gates dissolved into nothingness. The mess hall stood eerily empty. Those who had strayed into the toilets left behind no echo, no trace. The infirmary, silent as a grave. Even the bustling control room, once alive with shouts and fingers flying over consoles, now lay mute and hollow.
It took only an instant.
In the span of a heartbeat, Alteker was gone. The fortress, the soldiers, the laughter, the screams, every trace of life ripped away like chalk wiped clean from slate.
Not death. Not ruin.
A disappearance.
One moment it stood, the next, emptiness.
The world itself had blinked, and all the Alteker had slipped into the Dungeon.