The collar woke him before the sound did.
Kael sat up fast, heart slamming, the tent dim and empty around him. No lights, no alerts. Just his collar—glowing softly against the inside of his jaw.
Not sync-active.
Not diagnostic-red.
Just… warm.
He scanned the perimeter. Most of the squad still slept inside their frames or in sleep pods. Dane's boots were near the vent flap, unmoving. Tavi's wrist-band blinked faintly near the ration crates.
Kael moved silently. No armor, just thermal layers and cold boots. He tapped the tent's access seal and slipped outside without waking anyone.
The night outside wasn't dark. It was glowing—a blue-green haze of cloudlight drifting above the glacier, bouncing off the long ridgeline and turning every shadow into glass.
He shouldn't have been able to see.
He shouldn't have known where he was going.
But his feet moved anyway.
The drill site sat half a kilometer east. The snow there had refrozen unevenly since they left it. Crunchy patches where heat had bled out. Lines that curved in ways snow didn't.
Kael stopped at the exact point the drill probe had entered the ice.
The ground there wasn't cracked or melted. It was smooth now. Sealed over. But not perfect. There was a slight depression in the ice—an outline. A ring.
He crouched and touched it.
The world changed.
Not a quake. Not a sound. Just weight.
Sudden. Pressing. Like the sky got heavier and dragged something through his spine with it.
His breath clouded sharp in the air, then didn't. No fog. No warmth.
His collar blinked yellow.
Then—
"You are the fourth."
It wasn't a voice. Not in the air.
It pulsed behind his eyes, like memory played wrong.
He fell back on the ice. Not hard. Just fast. Like the earth pushed him down.
Images. Blurred. Nothing clear.
A machine kneeling in fire.
A woman screaming but smiling.
Snow falling upward.
A hand that was not a hand, reaching for him.
"This moment already happened."
He woke to crunching snow.
Dane stood over him , visor dimmed, half-wrapped in a thermal cloak. His voice was low.
"What the hell are you doing out here?"
Kael sat up, chest tight. "I… couldn't sleep. I might have sleepwalked here I don't know "
"That's not sleepwalking."
Kael didn't answer. His collar was still blinking.
Dane offered a hand. Kael didn't take it. Not right away.
In the distance, behind the snow and fog and silence, something far below the ice turned over—and remembered him.