The train's drone faded into memory.
8 HOURS LATER
The three stepped out into the brittle cold of Western Kazakhstan. The wind carried with it the sting of salt and iron, biting into their throats with every breath. Before them stretched the salt trench—a scar of pale earth cut deep into the ground, gleaming faintly under the dull sky. It looked wrong in its stillness, as though the land itself was holding its breath.
The sphere was gone. Only its imprint remained: a circular scorch in the salt, edges cracked and warped like burnt porcelain.
Dani crouched beside it, her fingers brushing the salt crystals. "Yep. Definitely not where we left it." Her tone was dry, almost joking, but her eyes stayed sharp, unsettled.
Around the scorch, the dirt was marred by a mess of bootprints—too many to count, pressed deep and deliberate. The tracks cut away from the trench, leading off toward the dark ridge in the distance.
"Someone moved it," Kenton said, voice steady but low. "Or... something."
Myra swallowed, her gaze tracing the footprints. "Then we follow."
Without another word, they continued their walk, the crunch of salt under their boots falling in rhythm with the trail of disturbed earth ahead.
Kenton scanned the horizon. "Not military. The spacing's wrong. It's... ritualistic."
The trail of footsteps led them to a cliff-face split by a jagged mouth of rock. A cave yawned there, its entrance marked with crude paint—symbols daubed in red and black. Dani's jaw tightened as she recognized the shape: not language, but an attempt at mimicry. Pentagrams, circles, animal motifs.
They pressed inward.
The further they went, the heavier the air became, stinking of wax, blood, and smoke. The cave opened into a cathedral-sized chamber where hooded figures stood in silence, each one wearing a crude cow mask—horns carved from wood or bone, eyeholes blackened. In the chamber's center, the missing sphere hovered inches above a chalk-smeared pentagram, tethered by chains of salt and ash. Its surface rippled like oil in water, faintly reflecting shapes that didn't belong in this world.
When Dani stepped forward, rifles ready on her back, the cultists turned. Their voices rose—not English, not Russian, not Kazakh. A guttural, broken tongue, as though human throats weren't designed to produce the sound.
One cultist stepped closer, hands raised—not hostile, but barring their way. The words spilled out fast, frantic:
"Но—но—не брать. Не брать."
Kenton tilted his head. "They're saying... no. Not to take it."
Dani's hand flexed over her weapon. "Cute. But we didn't come all this way to get told no."
Before she could move, the cultists parted. A larger figure emerged from the shadows at the chamber's far end—towering, draped in black robes, mask gilded with paint that gleamed like dried blood. The leader. His presence bent the air, and when he spoke, his voice was perfectly clear.
"You seek what is not yours." His tone was calm, almost gentle. "But the Sphere is awake now. To take it is to invite what sleeps inside to follow you."
Dani squared her shoulders. "We've handled worse."
The leader tilted his head. "Perhaps. But why take it... when you could trade for it?" His words lingered, deliberate, tempting. "We do not ask for blood. We ask for something more enduring. A story. A name. A memory you value. Leave it with us, and the Sphere will pass to you without violence. Refuse..." His masked face turned toward the pentagram. "And you will discover why we wear these faces."
The cultists' guttural chorus rose again, pressing against the chamber walls, reverberating like a second heartbeat.
Kenton's jaw tightened. Myra's hand instinctively reached for his arm, grounding herself. Dani didn't move. The offer was too clean, too loaded.
The Sphere hovered, waiting.
The Sphere's hum deepened, vibrating through the soles of their boots. The leader stepped closer, his golden mask catching the sphere's shifting light.
"We do not want your names," he said softly, almost reverently. "We want his."
The three froze.
The cultists shifted, their guttural murmur hardening into a rhythm, chanting, stamping their feet like hooves striking stone.
"Whose?" Dani spat, even though her gut already knew.
The leader's voice cut through the chamber, certain, merciless:
"Lance Mercer."
The sound of it dropped into the cave like a blade.
Dani blinked, her smirk faltering for the first time in hours. Her grip on the Refractor Blade tightened so hard her knuckles whitened. "That's not on the table," she hissed.
"You misunderstand," the leader said, tilting his head in that slow, inhuman way. "It is not a negotiation. The Sphere will only release itself in trade. Its hunger has chosen a story. His story. If you wish to carry it away, you must leave him with us. His past, his future, his meaning—all written into the soil of our design."
Kenton's throat was dry. "But Lance isn't here."
The leader's mask turned toward him. "He doesn't need to be. Memories are threads. Names are doors. You carry him in you—his mark, his weight. One of you will surrender him."
Dani's face twisted. "Over my dead—"
Myra's arm shot out, stopping her. Her jaw clenched as she stared at the cultists. This wasn't bluster. They weren't bluffing. And the Sphere, she realized with a sinking gut, wasn't just bound—it was listening.
The leader's voice lowered, heavy and certain:
"Trade him… or be unmade with him. It is the Sphere's will."
The chanting rose louder, a tide of voices battering their senses. The pentagram's chalk lines flared red, and for an instant the Sphere rippled, showing flashes—Lance's face, scarred and grim, as though it were watching him through the fabric of their memory.
Dani staggered back, color draining from her face. "They—no. They can't have him. He's—he's mine to deal with." Her voice cracked, an edge of fear bleeding through her usual bravado.
Myra swallowed hard, eyes darting between Dani and Kenton. Every instinct screamed that if they gave in here, if they surrendered even a fragment of Lance's story, it wouldn't just take him from them—it would tear Sector Delta apart. Lance was too interwoven with what they were. Too dangerous to let vanish into whatever these creatures were feeding.
ChatGPT said:
Kenton inhaled slowly, focusing on the patterns of the cultists' murmurs. Their guttural syllables bent and looped, folding in on themselves like a language that shouldn't exist but did only because someone believed it should. He shut his eyes and pressed.
The cave tilted. His mind swam at the edges. The chants warped—half of him understood them as "safeguard, sacred, don't touch," while another part interpreted the same sound as "devour, surrender, no escape."
The world resisted him. It wasn't like twisting facts back in the Archive, where doubt and memory left room to push. Here, the cow-masks themselves seemed to stare through him, and their belief in their reality was solid, nailed down with fanatic certainty.
Kenton gritted his teeth. For a heartbeat, the leader's voice shifted—English bleeding through the nonsense syllables:
"You should not…"
Then it collapsed. His perception folded in on itself, crushing his head with the weight of contradictions. He stumbled, clutching his temple, and hissed out through clenched teeth, "Too… strong. They're anchored in this."
The leader tilted his head, clearly amused by the boy's strain.
That was when Dani moved. She'd been patient—too patient—but seeing Kenton's knees buckle snapped the line. She drew the refractor blade in one motion, its edge hissing through the air as it caught on layers of reality the way a hook catches skin.
The cultists recoiled, snarling their broken-language warnings, but Dani's eyes narrowed.
"Yeah, yeah, I don't speak crazy. But I do speak 'move or bleed.'"
The tension in the cave spiked—Dani stepping forward, blade shimmering, Kenton's hand trembling against his temple, and the cult leader smiling wider, as if this escalation was exactly what he wanted.
Myra stepped between Dani and the nearest cultist, arms loose at her sides, her breathing steady despite the tension. Her gaze swept the chamber, taking in the pentagram, the Sphere, and the chanting cow-masks. She didn't speak loudly, didn't shout, didn't act like she knew the answers—just a calm presence, a grounding force that subtly absorbed the rising panic.
Dani's fists tightened around the Refractor Blade, knuckles white, and her teeth clenched so hard she could taste blood. Her eyes blazed at the cultists. "I didn't spend eight hours on a frozen train just to stand here and negotiate with a… with a joke!" Her voice shook, raw and angry. "We're putting the Sphere back where it belongs. Now!"
Kenton was pressed against the wall, trying to shake the migraine his failed attempt at recursive perception had brought on. His eyes were tight slits, jaw locked, and for a moment he seemed almost fragile. He rose slowly, still holding his head, the strain from using his powers leaving him tense and unsteady.
The cult leader, still at the center of the chamber, tilted his gilded mask slightly, the cow horns catching the flickering candlelight. His voice slithered through the chamber, calm but unsettling:
"Fire pressed against stone, yet stone remembers the shadow beneath. You clutch the one you did not name, and in the same breath, deny your own reflection. Eight hours you carried the wind, yet it whispers him before you. Do you grasp the hour, or the hour grasps you?"
Dani froze. The words cut through her like shards. Not because they made literal sense—but because she felt them, deep in the pit of her chest, like the cultist had peeled away the thin veneer she tried to hold around her feelings for Lance. Rage, frustration, and helplessness tangled with the ache of attachment she refused to admit even to herself.
She spat at the ground. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
The leader's voice flowed around the chamber, soft and teasing, curling into the cracks of her mind without breaking:
"Not the sphere, nor the path, nor the cold. The one you would shield yet fear to name carries your echo. He walks beside your fury, and yet your hand trembles where his absence lingers. To grasp the shape of him, you must first unshackle the story you write behind closed eyes."
Dani's blade hand twitched. Her chest heaved. Myra, silent, simply shifted slightly closer to her, offering the steadiness she could—but said nothing. She didn't know Lance. She didn't know the weight he carried in Dani's mind. She only held space for the chaos.
Kenton exhaled sharply, lowering his hands, trying to ground himself again. The pull at his consciousness from his power still lingered, but he was upright now, hands pressed lightly to his knees, eyes flicking toward Dani and then the Sphere, uncertain if he should act or wait.
Dani's voice trembled, fury sharpening every word.
"I don't care about riddles, I don't care about cryptic warnings, I don't care about what you think I feel—I'm not walking away. We're taking that Sphere back, all of it,no compromises!"
The cult leader's mask shifted, just a fraction, tilting toward her as if amused by her rawness.
"You march with fire, yet the frost within you remembers him before the frost remembers you. To uncoil the tempest, you must decide: do you take only what is yours, or do you claim what shadows whisper?"
The chamber's air thickened. The Sphere pulsed slightly, as though responding to the tension, while the cultists' murmuring rose again.