The Northern Waste was not white. It was blue-black.
The White Raven screamed over the landscape, its engines straining against the atmospheric density. Below them, the world was a jagged ocean of obsidian ice, formed not by water freezing, but by the air itself solidifying under intense Aetheric pressure.
"Atmospheric density at 300%," Skid yelled over the rattling of the cockpit. "The air is like soup out there! The engines are choking!"
"It's the Hush," Julian said, standing behind the pilot's seat. His black iron arm hung heavy at his side, steadying him against the turbulence. "The Silent King's influence is strongest at the poles. It dampens everything. Even thrust."
"We can't reach the coordinates!" Skid warned. "If we go any further, the turbines will stall and we'll drop like a stone."
"Set us down," Julian pointed to a flat shelf of dark ice near a massive glacial ridge. "We walk from here."
"Walk?" Zephyr huddled in his coat, looking terrified. "In that? The wind does not move there. It is dead."
"Then you won't get blown away," Lyra checked her rifle's thermal seals. "Gear up. It's going to be a long hike."
The Sea of Glass
The ship touched down, its landing struts groaning as they crunched into the ice.
The ramp lowered. The cold hit them instantly. It wasn't just temperature; it was a stillness so profound it hurt the ears.
Temperature: -60°C.
They stepped out. Julian sank six inches into the ice.
"Julian," Isolde warned. "Your weight. The ice might not hold you."
"It'll hold," Julian said. He engaged the gravity dampener on his arm, lightening his own mass by 10%. It was a mental strain, but it kept him from cracking the surface.
They trekked north. The landscape was surreal. Massive spikes of ice jutted from the ground at 45-degree angles, looking like frozen explosions.
"Look at the formations," Skid pointed her scanner. "They aren't random. They're... waveforms."
"Sound waves," Julian realized. "A massive noise happened here centuries ago. And the Hush froze it instantly. We're walking through a scream."
"Don't touch the tips," Zephyr warned, walking carefully. "If you break them, the sound might escape."
The Ghost Ship
Two hours into the trek, the storm cleared.
Ahead of them, embedded in the side of a massive black glacier, was a ship.
It wasn't an Imperial Dreadnought. It was smaller, sleeker. An exploration vessel from the previous generation. Its hull was bronze and silver, preserved perfectly by the ice.
The name on the hull was visible under the frost:
I.S.V. EURYDICE.
Julian stopped. His breath hitched in his throat.
"You know this ship?" Lyra asked, seeing his expression.
"It was my father's," Julian whispered. "The Eurydice. The Emperor said it was lost in a Warp-Accident near the Asteroid Belt."
"He lied," Skid said. "He sent Arthur here. To the forbidden zone."
"Why?"
"Let's go ask him," Julian walked toward the wreck.
The Captain's Log
They climbed up the glacier and pried open the airlock. The seal broke with a hiss of ancient air.
The interior of the ship was dark and cold. Flashlights cut through the gloom. There were no bodies. No signs of battle. The ship was simply... abandoned.
They reached the Bridge.
The captain's chair was empty. A layer of dust covered the console.
"Skid, power it up."
Skid jacked her datapad into the terminal. "Emergency battery is dead. I need a jump."
Julian placed his flesh hand on the console. He placed his Anchor Arm on the power conduit.
Flow.
He drew a tiny fraction of the planetary energy from the arm and trickled it into the ship.
HUMMM.
The console flickered to life. Green text scrolled across the screen.
LAST ENTRY: DATE [REDACTED] - 20 YEARS AGO.
"Play it," Julian ordered.
A hologram flickered above the console.
It was Arthur Vane. He looked younger than Julian remembered, but his eyes were the same—tired, searching. He wore a heavy parka.
"This is Captain Arthur Vane. Final entry."
"We found it. The Signal Source. The Emperor calls it the 'Echo', but that's wrong. An echo is a reflection. This... this is a Broadcast."
Arthur turned away from the camera, looking at something off-screen.
"The Dissonance didn't attack Earth randomly. It was summoned. There is a device out there in the ice. A Lighthouse. It's been calling the monsters for a million years."
"The Emperor wants to destroy it. But I... I think I can retune it. If I can change the frequency, I can turn the 'Come Here' signal into a 'Go Away' signal. I can end the war forever."
"I'm going out there alone. If I don't come back... tell Julian... tell him the music never stops. It just changes key."
The hologram fizzled out.
The bridge was silent.
"He went to the Lighthouse," Julian whispered. "He tried to fix the machine."
"And he failed," Lyra said gently. "The war continued."
"Or maybe he didn't fail," Julian said. "Maybe he's still out there. Trying to turn the dial."
The Cryo-Phantoms
Suddenly, the ship groaned.
SCREEEE.
A high-pitched sound vibrated through the hull.
"Is that the ice shifting?" Isolde asked.
"No," Zephyr backed away from the viewport. "That is the sound of the frozen scream. It is waking up."
Outside, the jagged ice formations they had passed were cracking.
From the shattered ice, shapes emerged. They weren't flesh. They were semi-translucent, made of blue light and vibrating air.
Cryo-Phantoms.
"They're sound-constructs!" Skid yelled. "Like the Shadow in the abyss, but frozen!"
The Phantoms drifted through the hull of the ship. They looked like distorted faces, mouths open in eternal wails.
One of them lunged at Lyra.
Lyra fired. The bullet passed through.
The Phantom passed through Lyra.
Lyra screamed. She fell to her knees, clutching her chest. Frost instantly covered her armor. Her skin turned blue.
"It freezes the blood!" Isolde checked Lyra's vitals. "Hypothermia in seconds! We have to get out!"
"We can't shoot them!" Zephyr swung his staff, but the wind just fed them.
"They're vibrations," Julian said. "Frozen sound."
He looked at his Anchor Arm.
The Silent King said I am the Muzzle.
"Get behind me!" Julian roared.
He stepped between the team and the swarming Phantoms.
He raised his black iron hand.
He didn't punch. He didn't pull gravity.
He Absorbed.
He opened the dampening field of the arm. He turned himself into a black hole for sound.
The Phantoms shrieked as they were pulled toward him. They swirled around his arm, trying to freeze him. But the Anchor-Stone was denser than their frequency.
Julian gritted his teeth. The cold was agonizing. He felt the screams entering his bone, trying to shatter his mind.
Silence, Julian commanded.
He clenched his fist.
CRACK.
The Phantoms shattered into harmless snow.
Julian fell to one knee, panting. His black arm was covered in a layer of white frost.
"Move," Julian wheezed. "While the quiet holds."
The Lighthouse
They scrambled out of the ship and down the other side of the glacier.
And then they saw it.
In the center of a massive crater, rising from the ice like a needle, was the Lighthouse.
It wasn't a tower. It was a colossal Tuning Fork.
Two vertical prongs of silver metal, a mile high, humming with a low, visible vibration that distorted the air around them. Between the prongs, a sphere of violet energy hovered—a miniature Rift.
And standing at the base of the fork, tiny against the scale of the machine, was a small camp. A tent. A fire that had been burning for twenty years (fed by an Aether-battery).
And a figure sitting in the snow.
"Dad?" Julian whispered.
The figure didn't move.
Julian ran. He slid down the ice, stumbling, running toward the camp.
He reached the figure.
It was Arthur Vane.
But he wasn't flesh anymore.
He was partially Crystallized. His legs were fused with the ice. His left arm—his conducting arm—was stretched out toward the machine, frozen in mid-gesture. His skin was pale blue, preserved perfectly.
He wasn't dead.
His eyes were open. They were glowing faintly with the same violet light as the sphere.
He was caught in the Echo. Trapped between moments.
Julian fell to his knees in the snow. He reached out to touch his father's face.
"Don't touch him!" Skid yelled, sliding down behind him. "Look at the temporal readings! He's not frozen in ice. He's frozen in Time."
"The machine," Skid pointed to the massive Tuning Fork. "It's generating a localized time-loop. He's been living the same second for twenty years."
Julian looked at his father's outstretched hand. He was trying to reach a lever on the console. He was inches away.
"He's trying to turn it off," Julian realized. "He's been trying to turn it off for two decades."
Julian stood up. His black iron arm hummed.
"Then let's help him finish the job."