Eclipsed Horizon — Chapter 2: The Sky Never Forgets
The simulation dome breathed like a living thing.
Panels curved into a perfect hemisphere, each surface humming with buried conduits. Thin arcs of Aether light traced the floor like veins under translucent skin. In the center, a steel platform awaited four cadets—each a reflection of Zephyr's future, or its failure.
Cael Drayen stood among them, pulse steady, gaze fixed. His reflection ghosted against the dome's glass—sharp, precise, unreadable.
Mireen Solis paced before the team, tablet in hand. "This is a controlled field evaluation," she said. "You're simulating a retrieval op in collapsed terrain. Objective markers will appear as Aether beacons. You know the rules: no lethal strikes, no manual overrides. Stay synced to your Pulsebands."
Her eyes flicked toward Cael. "And if your neural sync spikes again—pull back."
"Yes, Instructor," Cael answered. His voice was calm, clipped.
Jax gave a half-salute. "Translation: don't blow your brain up again, champ."
Sena Korr grinned behind her visor. "If he fries, I call dibs on his Pulseblade."
"You'd electrocute yourself," Jax replied.
"That's half the fun!"
Mireen sighed. "Focus." She flicked her tablet. The dome's walls dissolved into blinding light. "Begin simulation."
---
The world unfolded around them like shattered glass reassembling.
They stood in the ruins of a forgotten city—towers half-buried in cloud, streets split by roots of crystallized Aether. Static danced across the air. What had once been a skyline was now a graveyard suspended above the storm.
Cael scanned the horizon. His Pulseblade ignited with a muted whump, its core flaring azure. "Formation B," he said.
"Already on it," Sena replied, deploying drones from her pack. Tiny discs hovered, casting mapping grids.
Jax spun his gauntlets until they clicked. "If these things start shooting, I'm blaming you, tech girl."
"Not my fault you skipped calibrations."
Cael tuned out their banter. The faint rhythm of the place unnerved him—too quiet, too symmetrical. Every echo came half a second late, as if the sound itself had to cross a distance that didn't exist.
A pulse flickered in the mist ahead.
"First beacon, two hundred meters," he said.
They advanced through skeletal streets. Holographic dust drifted through light. Somewhere above, an engine rumbled—a simulated airship breaking apart, fragments dissolving before touching ground.
Sena's scanner pinged. "Energy signature's fluctuating. Feels unstable."
"Then keep your distance," Cael replied.
They reached a collapsed plaza. The beacon shone at its center—a floating shard of golden light. Cael approached carefully, lowering his blade to scan.
The shard pulsed once.
Then the simulation stuttered.
The plaza warped—walls bending, sky folding inward like a curtain drawn too tight. For a breathless instant, the world became white static.
"System lag?" Jax said, backing up.
Sena frowned at her console. "No, this—this isn't from our end."
Cael looked up.
A figure stood on the opposite side of the plaza.
The girl from the hallway.
Dark hair. Gold shimmer around her wrists. Eyes that reflected the fractured light.
She shouldn't have been here. The system couldn't render civilians.
"Lyra?" he whispered—though he didn't know why he knew the name.
The girl looked directly at him. "You remember."
Her voice was clear, unfiltered by simulation reverb.
Mireen's command channel crackled in his earpiece.
> "Drayen, respond! Your vitals are spiking—what's your status?"
He ignored it.
Lyra lifted her hand. The air rippled—reality bending like water under heat.
And then—everything collapsed.
---
Cael hit the ground hard. Static exploded through his vision.
Jax's voice cut through the distortion. "Cael! You okay?"
He tried to speak, but words dissolved into static bursts. The simulation environment was gone—replaced by a chaotic void of light and shadow, fragments of the city spinning like debris caught in a storm.
A faint hum rose from beneath. Not mechanical—organic. Like a heartbeat amplified through the sky.
Sena screamed through comms, "System's overloading! I can't shut it down—"
Then, silence.
Cael opened his eyes.
He was standing again—alone—on a beach of white sand. Twin suns hung above, bleeding light across an ocean of glass. The horizon shimmered, breaking, healing, breaking again.
And Lyra stood there.
"You shouldn't be here," he said.
"Neither should you," she answered. "But the sky remembers everything we try to forget."
He stepped closer. "What are you?"
Her expression softened. "Someone who refused to fade when the world did."
The sea cracked beneath them. Fractures spread outward like lightning across glass.
"Wake up, Cael."
The voice wasn't hers—it was Mireen's, distant, echoing through distortion.
Lyra reached for him. "Don't—forget—"
The world shattered.
---
He gasped awake on the infirmary cot, lights glaring above him again. His pulse monitor screamed.
Mireen hovered nearby, face tight with alarm. "You flatlined for twenty seconds. The simulation crashed the dome grid. What happened in there?"
Cael stared past her, unfocused. His hand trembled slightly—the faint afterglow of Aether still pulsing along his veins.
"I saw her," he said quietly.
"Who?"
He looked at her, eyes distant, voice barely above a whisper.
"The girl from my dream."
---
Outside Zephyr's hull, clouds shifted.
For the first time in years, a thin scar of light—like an eclipse drawn in reverse—cut across the sky.
And somewhere deep below the storm line, unseen by anyone above, something stirred.