Day 7 Beyond the Door
The world beyond the Door was a lie wrapped in beauty.
It was Kael who first called it that, as they stood on a ridge of violet stone overlooking the glimmering basin of trees that moved like waves in a quiet ocean. The forest shimmered under twin suns, casting golden threads of light across leaves broader than sails, colored in hues their homeworld, Kewaa, had never seen. The rivers hummed with bioluminescence, and the air smelled of crushed spice and rain. Overhead, the twin stars—one gold, one soft violet—bathed the landscape in layered brilliance. The sky above them shifted from lavender to deep teal, trailing soft ribbons of aurora.
Three moons lingered high, glowing red, silver, and green like watchful eyes. Floating crystals drifted in the atmosphere, catching the light and scattering it across the trees in prismatic arcs. The sky itself felt alive—sometimes reflecting their movements below like a mirror, sometimes humming softly as if aware.
The planet—codenamed Exorya—was breathtaking.
But they all knew it wouldn't last.
The survivors had dwindled from twenty-four to seventeen in the first six days. None had died from combat. Not yet. The land itself had claimed them—an airborne fungal bloom that liquefied lungs in hours, a predator-mimicking vine, a cliff edge that gave way beneath curious boots. But today, the world felt calm.
Too calm.
Kael adjusted his rifle strap and scanned the clearing where their temporary camp was set. "No sentries alone. Pairs only. Rul and Sorra, west perimeter. Dren and Mira, east. Stay sharp."
Sorra raised an eyebrow. "It's been quiet all morning, Commander."
Kael's eyes didn't waver. "That's what worries me."
Lior crouched by a cluster of tall purple reeds, cataloging plant structures into her wristpad. "These seem semi-reactive," she muttered. "They close when touched—could be a defensive behavior, or just photosensitive."
Next to her, Arron knelt with a scanner, silent. He logged her findings but said nothing. Lior had come to expect that from him. Arron wasn't cold, but calculating. He never joked, never relaxed. He was watching something—always.
She once asked Kael why Arron had been placed on the mission.
"Because someone has to come back," Kael had answered.
They worked until the twin suns dipped low and the sky turned to molten copper. The jungle changed with it.
Flickering lights rose from the canopy like fireflies but were warm to the touch—some sort of drifting seed, pulsing with life. Below, the forest floor glowed faintly blue in narrow cracks and moss lines, as if the land itself had veins. The air smelled sharper, charged, like something ancient had just stirred.
They made camp near the ruins of what might have once been a temple, though time had reduced it to leaning stone teeth and a broken arch.
That night, they let themselves feel like people again.
Jora roasted local root meat over a repurposed exhaust plate while Mira sketched alien fish in her notebook, comparing them to mythological beasts back home. Lior laughed at Rul's failed attempt to name a six-legged lizard with feathers—he'd called it "Snappy Joe."
"No one's letting you name anything ever again," Sorra grinned.
"You're just jealous because you wanted to name it something poetic."
"Snappy Joe? It looks like a divine weapon of death, not a street performer!"
Even Arron cracked a smile, though brief.
Kael stood at the edge of the firelight, watching the dark press against their small bubble of laughter.
"You all think this place is a storybook," he muttered to himself. "But fairy tales always hide the teeth."
Day 9
They found the first remains of intelligent life.
Mira was the one who saw it—a shattered statue half-buried in moss, unmistakably carved. It bore the features of something almost saurian, but its eyes were elongated, intelligent. And it wore armor.
Beyond that, a trail of structures slowly emerged across several kilometers: broken towers, defensive walls, what looked like bone-crafted altars. This wasn't a primitive species. This had been a civilization.
"I think they evolved from this world's apex predators," Mira whispered, scanning a clawed hand etched in stone. "Dinoid, alien, but advanced. Look at the symmetry. They honored war. Maybe survival."
"What happened to them?" Sorra asked.
"They're extinct," Arron said flatly. "Whatever came after them was worse."
Day 11
The attacks began.
It started with screams in the mist. The eastern team never checked in.
By the time Kael arrived with reinforcements, he found only the shattered remains of their gear—and one corpse. Dren. His helmet was still intact. His body was not.
"It wasn't claws," Kael muttered. "These are… heat fractures. Like plasma. But localized."
"Too clean," Arron added. "It didn't feed. It executed."
Back at camp, tension became suffocating. They reinforced their perimeter, activated drones to patrol from above. No one laughed that night.
They buried Dren beneath the alien moonlight. Three moons hovered, casting red, silver, and green hues across the soil. The stars moved slowly overhead like rivers of light.
Kael said nothing. He just placed the man's datapad into the earth with him.
Day 13
They found one of the intelligent species alive.
Barely.
It was wounded, collapsed in a grove of glowing trees. It stood two meters tall, covered in obsidian-hued scales, and wore fractured armor of bone and silver. Its language was clicks and hums, untranslatable, but its pain was clear.
Lior stepped forward first, hands up. "We're not here to hurt you."
The creature looked up at her, breathing shallowly. It pointed toward the east—with a clawed, shaking hand—and then it drew a symbol in the dirt: three lines in a triangle, then slashed through the center.
Kael frowned. "A warning?"
Arron crouched beside it, watching its final breaths. "That's not a warning. That's a grave marker."
Day 15
More died.
Jora. Taken by something they never saw.
Mira, dragged under water by a creature they'd believed to be harmless.
Rul died defending Lior, screaming as he emptied his gun into something with crystal bones.
Now only ten remained.
Kael. Arron. Lior. Sorra. Haren. Six others, some injured, some silent.
Each day, they moved deeper into the land, no longer exploring—just fleeing.
On the 17th day, they reached a cliff that overlooked what could only be called a valley of death. Bones—giant, alien, endless—stretched below like a sea of ancient giants. Some still twitched, as if life refused to leave them completely. The sky above shimmered in teal and gold, and the moons cast long, strange shadows over the field of remains.
Lior sat alone that night, writing in her journal.
"We named them. We gave them stories. We thought that would protect us from what they really were. But this place doesn't care what we call it. It remembers only that we're intruders."
Kael came to sit beside her, wordless.
She didn't speak, but her hand found his. And for a moment, they weren't soldiers, just shadows waiting for dawn.
Day 18
Only eight now.
Arron's signal vanished.
No one saw him die. He simply disappeared. As if the world had swallowed him whole.
Lior clutched the bandage he once tied around her arm. Kael stopped assigning night shifts. It didn't matter anymore.
The fire burned low.
The beasts waited.
The jungle prepared.
And in the distance, beyond the smoke and sorrow, the gods of this place opened their eyes.
To Be Continued in Chapter-7