As the ship reached the coordinates set by Zoma, suddenly the engines went offline and red lights flared across the corridors. Alarms pulsed through the metal halls.
Youri, standing in the control room, turned to everyone and said calmly, "Don't worry. I just turned the Daitron Drive on. If there's Tarcl here, we're sure to get back to the Corridor."
Bjorn looked at him, frowning. "When we get in the Corridor, how do we get back to our time? Is there some kind of destination code we need to input into the system?"
"Don't worry, Bjorn," Youri replied with a faint grin. "Once we're inside the Corridor, the ship will send us back to our timeline automatically. It'll trace the missing force our existence left in our world — follow that path — and take us straight home."
Everyone stared at him in confusion. No one really understood what he meant, but there wasn't time to argue. Suddenly, an orange glow washed over Youri's face — the terminal pulsed. The Daitron was active. The coordinates set by Zoma were correct.
As the ship began to crack the fabric of existence itself, Youri leaned over the console and said, "Alright, everyone, get ready — and please don't haunt me if this goes wrong. I've only done this once before, so I'm just as clueless as you."
Chuckles echoed faintly through the ship, a thin shield of humor against the rising tension. Then the void in front of them began to distort — stars blinked out one by one, swallowed by a growing dark tear. A massive hole formed ahead of the Tartarusios, warping the starlight around it until the rift stabilized, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Everyone felt their breath tighten. They had traveled the Corridor once before — and it had almost destroyed them. But there was no turning back. Not if they wanted to go home.
The Tartarusios advanced slowly, engines humming back to life, and plunged into the rift.
Inside — the Corridor.
An endless expanse of drifting fog and fractured light, colors folding and unraveling in all directions. The ship's hull groaned under the strange pressure, the instruments flickering erratically. Yet through it all, they held faith in their ship — and in the longing to return.
But this time, something was different.
The ship dipped suddenly, drawn by unseen turbulence. Outside the viewing ports, a shape flickered in the mist — faint, vague, but unmistakable. Another Tartarusios.
No one spoke. Was it from another time? Another reality? The sight lingered only for a heartbeat before vanishing into the fog.
The journey continued for another twenty minutes. Then, with a sound like glass fracturing, the Corridor split open — and the Tartarusios shot out into the void once more.
They were home.
The ship emerged from a Baraka Ring — the one located in the Bermuda Galaxy. Before their displacement to 4832, Zoma had pre-set the return destination to this exact ring, closest to their base planet: Antia.
With navigation systems restored, they set course immediately. Antia was five days away — a long voyage, but after what they had survived, five days felt like a whisper.
And on the final day of their journey, just a few million kilometers out, their home came into view.
At first glance, it looked like any other barren world — another forgotten rock adrift in a quiet corner of the galaxy. But for those who had wandered too long, fought too hard, or simply had nowhere left to go, Antia was more than a planet.
It was home.
The surface stretched endless and scarred — gray-brown plains broken by black mountains and canyons so deep they devoured the light. The winds here never stopped. They carried the sound of the planet's loneliness, whispering through hollow cliffs and over the remains of rivers that hadn't seen water in centuries.
The sky was a faded copper hue, dim even in daylight. Its sun hung low, a small and tired ember. At night, twin moons rose slowly, painting the jagged landscape in pale silver light.
Settlements were rare — clusters of outposts made from rusted alloy and shipwrecks. Domes of reinforced glass dotted the plains, each housing a handful of wanderers, traders, or outlaws who had escaped somewhere and no longer cared to return. The air was thin but breathable, heavy with dust that clung to everything. Inside the domes, the constant scent of oil and recycled air lingered.
No one ruled Antia. There were no flags, no emblems, no borders — only the silent agreement that everyone kept to their own and didn't ask questions. The only law was survival, and even that was negotiable.
Near the equator lay the Basin of Trass — a colossal crater from an ancient impact, wide enough to hold a city. It was there that the Tartarusios made its base. A vast hangar carved directly into the rock served as its resting place, hidden from orbit scans by layers of mineral interference. From above, it looked like a scar; from within, it was a fortress.
Rust-red lights glowed along the tunnels as engineers and drifters moved through the base — patching hulls, trading fuel, and swapping stories of the void. Every sound echoed: footsteps, laughter, and the hiss of machinery that never truly slept.
To the crew of the Tartarusios, Antia was a sanctuary between wars — the one place where they could rest without looking over their shoulders, where no empire's reach could follow.
And though the planet was harsh and unwelcoming, there was a strange peace in its silence — a reminder that even the most broken worlds could harbor life, and even the most hunted souls could find a place to breathe.
They called it the Rock of Ghosts.Because every soul who landed there carried one.