Chapter One – Crash and Shadows
The stars above were silent.
However, inside the Hunter Gratzner, silence was a luxury no one could afford.
Metal screamed first — a long, tearing shriek that ripped through the spine of the ship. It was the kind of sound that told you something important had already gone wrong before you even opened your eyes. Then came the lurch, the gut-sickening drop in gravity as if the entire vessel had been grabbed and yanked by a giant hand.
Somewhere near the cockpit, a woman's voice cut through the chaos. Pilot Fry. Crisp, controlled, but already riding the thin edge between command and panic. "Brace for impact!"
Alarms bled red light into the cabin. Safety harnesses snapped open. Loose cargo clanged and spun, weightless for a heartbeat before the deck pitched violently.
Riddick sat chained in the dark. Shackled wrists, shackled ankles. Blindfold long gone. A metal muzzle covered his mouth — Johns had thought that was necessary. Wasn't wrong. His head tilted, listening to the way the bulkheads groaned. Every vibration told him something about the ship's death spiral — the angles, the speed, the violence waiting below.
The merc, Johns, was swearing somewhere close, his boots scraping the deck. He thought he was in control. Riddick could hear the edge in his breathing. He was losing that control, one second at a time.
A violent shudder slammed them all sideways. The ship was dropping hard now, atmosphere thickening around the hull. Heat roared along the outer plates. The air smelled like hot metal and ozone.
Riddick smiled behind the muzzle. Not because he liked the idea of dying — he didn't. However, because chaos like this had a rhythm, and he understood it better than anyone else did here.
The deck tilted again. Something heavy broke free and crashed across the hold. Passengers screamed. The merc's hand clamped down on Riddick's restraints as if that would stop him from vanishing when the crash came.
Through the cockpit glass, the planet rose — brown desert, knife ridges, scars of dried riverbeds. No green. No water. Just heat and emptiness.
Then the ship hit atmosphere like a fist.
Gravity slammed them down.
The lights went black.
And the Hunter Gratzner fell screaming into the shadows of a dead world.
Chapter Two – The Man in Chains
When the screaming stopped, there was only dust.
It hung in the air like fine ash, catching what little light filtered through the cracked hull. Somewhere far off, metal groaned — the dying breaths of the Hunter Gratzner.
Shazza was the first to move. She coughed hard, rubbing grit from her eyes, and then pushed herself up from a tangle of harness straps. Her hair was matted with blood from a shallow cut across her brow. She could hear someone crying nearby, soft and panicked.
"Is anyone—?" her voice cracked. She tried again. "Anyone alive?"
Fry answered from forward in the wreckage, her voice tight, raw from the impact. "We've got survivors… keep calm." She was limping, one arm braced against the wall as she pulled herself toward the rear hold.
Johns stumbled into the half-light, his face slick with sweat. He scanned the wreck like a hunter looking for something dangerous — and found it immediately.
Riddick.
The convict sat slouched against a broken cargo crate, still shackled, still muzzled, his head tilted just enough to suggest amusement. Dust clung to his dark skin and shaved scalp. Even in the dimness, his eyes caught the light — a strange, metallic gleam that didn't belong in a human face.
"You stay put," Johns growled, stepping closer. He yanked the chains, testing them. Still secure.
Riddick didn't answer. Couldn't, not with the muzzle. But his gaze moved over the survivors in silence — counting them, weighing them. Shazza, Zeke, Imam and the three boys shadowing him, Fry… and Johns, the merc who thought steel cuffs were stronger than hunger or patience.
Outside, the wind began to rise — hot, dry, pulling sand into thin, needling streams that hissed against the jagged edges of the hull.
"Alright," Fry said, forcing authority into her tone. "We move out, find shelter before the sun gets worse. This isn't a place we can wait for pickup."
Riddick's head shifted slightly at that. Sun. He already knew what kind of heat waited beyond the wreck. He could smell it in the air — scorched, bone-dry. It would burn skin in hours, strip a body in days.
Johns hesitated. "We're not moving him. He stays here till we're set up."
Riddick leaned forward just enough for the chain to go taut. For a moment, it was quiet except for the rasp of the wind. Then, slow and deliberate, he tilted his head and let the faintest chuckle escape the muzzle.
It wasn't the sound of a man afraid.
It was the sound of a predator who had already seen the night coming.
Chapter Three – The Heat
The air outside hit like a furnace door thrown open.
It was brighter than Fry had imagined — blinding even behind the cracked visor she'd scavenged from the wreck. She stepped down onto the pale ground, boots crunching over a powdery surface that was not quite sand, not quite stone. It gave just enough underfoot to whisper of ancient seas long gone dry.
Shazza shielded her face with a rag and glanced upward… then froze.
There were not one, but three suns in the sky.
One high overhead — white and pitiless.
One sliding across the east, casting sharp shadows in gold.
And a third, low and swollen on the horizon, burning a deep copper-red.
The light came from all angles, flattening perspective, leaving nothing in true shade. The heat rolled in waves that shimmered across the barren expanse, making the distant ridges appear to melt and reform with every glance.
Imam's youngest boy whimpered. "It hurts," he whispered, squinting.
Fry pulled him closer. "We just need to make it to that rise. There might be cover there."
Behind them, Johns half-dragged Riddick out into the glare, the convict's chains clinking with each step. Riddick moved with a slow, rolling gait, unbothered by the heat, his head tilted to the sky as though taking its measure.
"You feel that?" Johns muttered, sweat already streaking down his face. "Triple damn suns. Fry, we need water before—"
A low sound cut him off.
Not wind. Not metal shifting in the wreck.
It came from beneath their feet — a dull, resonant thump, followed by a faint ripple through the ground.
Shazza looked around sharply. "What was that?"
No one answered.
Riddick smiled behind the muzzle.
He'd heard it too — and unlike the others, he knew the rhythm. Not the tremor of shifting earth. Not the collapse of hollow ground.
Something alive was moving under there.
The group pressed on toward the jagged ridge. The heat thickened, heavy in their lungs. Fry's mouth was dry, her lips already cracking. Johns pulled Riddick along with unnecessary force, as if he believed manhandling him was safer than loosening his grip for a moment.
They reached the base of the ridge and found what they were looking for: a cluster of rock overhangs, casting narrow strips of shade. It wasn't much, but it was relief enough for now.
As they settled in, Fry glanced at Riddick. He was sitting against the rock, chains stretched between his wrists, head bowed. His breathing was calm. Too calm.
"What?" she asked, uneasy.
He lifted his gaze — those strange, reflective eyes catching the copper sun. When he spoke, the muzzle distorted his words into a low growl, but the meaning was unmistakable.
"It's not the suns you should be worried about."
Somewhere out in the glare, beyond the wavering horizon, the ground shifted again.
Chapter Four – The First Blood
The heat lingered, but the silence was worse.
In the thin sliver of shade beneath the ridge, the survivors spread out — some tending to blistered skin, others simply staring at the horizon as though sheer will might summon rescue. The triple suns pressed their light against every surface, making the air inside their lungs feel baked.
Zeke had wandered further than Fry liked. He'd muttered something about scavenging metal from the crash site, about using it to signal any passing craft. Fry told him to take someone with him. Zeke had laughed, saying it was just a short walk.
That was nearly twenty minutes ago.
Fry squinted across the glare, but distance here was deceptive — the heat-haze smearing the edges of everything into wavering ghosts.
Johns leaned back against the stone, one knee drawn up, and his hand hovering near the pistol at his thigh. "Probably just found something worth hauling. He'll be back."
Shazza wasn't convinced. "We don't split up out here. We don't know this place."
Imam murmured softly to his boys, telling them to drink sparingly from the dented canteen. One of the older ones glanced toward Riddick, who still sat chained, his head tipped as though listening to something beneath the conversation.
Fry caught the movement. "What is it?" she asked him.
Riddick smiled faintly, his voice low enough that only she heard.
"You ever see a sand fish eat a bird from underground?"
Fry's stomach tightened. "Meaning?"
He shifted the cuffs, the metal clinking softly. "Meaning Zeke's not coming back the way he went."
Before Fry could press him, a sound cracked across the desert — sharp and sudden. Not a gunshot. Not metal. Something organic.
Everyone froze.
Then a scream — high and ragged — cut through the shimmering air. It carried across the flats, bouncing against the ridge walls until no one could tell which direction it came from.
Johns was already moving, motioning for Fry to stay back. Shazza grabbed her tools and followed. The heat hit harder without the ridge's meager shade, sweat running instantly down their spines.
They found Zeke fifty paces from the overhangs. Or what was left of him.
His body lay half-buried in pale dust, his lower half-swallowed by a jagged hole in the ground. The edges of the opening pulsed faintly, as if the earth itself was breathing. There was no blood on the sand — it had been taken with him.
Shazza knelt, her voice trembling. "What could do that?"
No one answered.
Back at the ridge, Riddick sat alone in the strip of shadow, his chains resting loosely in the dust.
He tilted his head toward the triple suns, the faintest smile curling at the corner of his mouth.
"It's feeding time," he murmured to no one in particular.
Chapter Five – The Test
They buried Zeke in silence.
Not because they had the time — the suns were still high and merciless — but because it was easier than leaving him half-swallowed in that gaping hole.
Shazza and Fry piled stone after stone until the makeshift cairn was the only shadow that looked permanent in this wasteland.
The others lingered in the strip of shade, each face carved with new tension.
"What the hell was that thing?" Paris finally asked, voice sharp as his white suit. His hair was damp from sweat, clinging in little points to his temples.
"Something hungry," Johns said flatly. "That's all we need to know."
Riddick stood a little apart from them now, still shackled but no longer sitting. He paced slowly, like a caged predator measuring its cell. His goggles hid his eyes, but Fry could feel his gaze on every single one of them in turn.
"It's under us," Riddick said finally.
Johns turned toward him, irritation flashing in his voice. "You want to elaborate, convict?"
"Not much to say." Riddick tilted his head toward the baked ground. "They move in tunnels. Feel vibrations. Zeke didn't just wander into trouble — trouble was waiting for him to step loud enough."
"Guess that makes you an expert now?" Johns shot back.
Riddick's smile was lazy. "I'm an expert in staying alive. Big difference."
Fry cut in before Johns could escalate. "You said 'they.' How many are we talking about?"
Riddick shrugged, chains rattling. "Hard to count what you can't see. However, if there's one, there's more. And if they're staying down now, they're waiting for something."
"Waiting for what?" Imam asked quietly.
That was when the wind shifted.
Cooler. Subtle. Almost a relief against the blistering heat.
However, Riddick felt it first.
He lifted his face to the triple suns. "Ever see a planet eclipse three suns at once?"
Shazza frowned. "Is that even possible?"
Paris followed Riddick's gaze and saw it — faint, but there — the thin edge of blackness creeping across the smallest sun.
Riddick's voice was soft, but it carried.
"They're waiting for the dark."