Kael ran.
Boots hammering metal. Alarms howling behind him.
The message kept looping in his head:
"It's starting, Seer."
Over and over, like a countdown made of whispers.
He'd barely managed to purge the lab's systems before the virus spread—if it even was a virus. It felt like something older. Hungrier. Now, with the outpost's security systems glitched and automated turrets aiming at shadows, Kael had only one plan:
Get out before something ate his memories. Or worse—made him remember.
The outpost corridors were narrow and twisted, welded together from leftover tech, scrap metal, and bad intentions. Kaidora's surface quaked constantly beneath them. Another tremor hit. The floor buckled, throwing him into a wall. A spider-web of cracks splintered in the ceiling.
He kept going.
Down a stairwell. Through the storage bay. Past the cryo-pits, where half-grown clones floated in silence. He hated that room.
At the hangar, Kael punched a code into a rusted control pad. Nothing. The keypad flickered, dead.
"Come on," he growled, slamming his fist into it. "I need out. Just once—once—let something work!"
The doors stayed closed.
And then…
The lights behind him shut off one by one.
Click.
Click.
Click.
He turned, blade ready.
A shadow stood at the far end of the corridor. Tall. Shapeless. Breathing like a machine having a nightmare.
Kael braced himself. "I don't have time for cryptic death ghosts right now."
The shadow took a step forward.
And stopped.
It spoke. But not in words.
The walls around him flashed with symbols—ancient, fractured, burned into metal. A memory broadcast.
A woman's voice echoed from nowhere.
"Kael Vire. You are not alone. This world is not dead. And the moon is not hollow."
"She is watching."
The shadow vanished.
The hangar door opened.
Kael didn't question it.
He bolted inside the ship—a piece-of-junk shuttle called the Misery Ark—and slammed the hatch shut. Systems flickered on with a mechanical groan.
He sat in the pilot's seat, heart racing. Staring at the stars beyond the glass. The Hollow Moon hung above Kaidora like a skull carved from obsidian. And for a second… it blinked.
Kael whispered: "What the hell did I just wake up?"
And in the shadows behind him, something else answered:
"Hope."