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Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Cold Wake
The hum of failing power systems was the first thing Riven Hale heard as consciousness clawed its way back into his body. It wasn’t a sound one forgot — low, droning, always just under the edge of hearing, like a machine whispering the countdown to its own death.
The cryochamber hissed as the seals decompressed, clouds of sterile vapor spilling into the room like ghosts eager to flee. Riven's eyes fluttered open, pupils contracting sharply as the station’s dim emergency lighting pulsed in blood-red cycles. He sat up slowly, joints creaking as if he were ancient stone stirring after a thousand years.
In many ways, he was.
His skin was pale from stasis, muscles tight and sluggish from years frozen in bio-suspension. Every breath felt like sand scraping inside his lungs. But worse was the emptiness — a yawning, cavernous blankness where his memories should have been.
He could remember his name. Riven Hale. The name felt weighted, sharp, like a blade sheathed under his skin.
He could remember war — flashes of fire, the crackle of plasma across black void, screams layered in static. But not faces. Not reasons. Not the ending.
As the chamber hissed fully open, a mechanical voice announced, "Cryo Subject 019-A: Vital status nominal. Reanimation successful. Time elapsed: 62 years, 7 months, 14 days."
Riven staggered out, his bare feet meeting cold metal. The cryo-suite was empty—half the pods cracked open, the rest flashing red in error states or sealed in death. Dust shimmered in the low light. A soft tremor rattled the walls. Somewhere in the station, systems were failing.
He wasn’t alone.
A figure emerged from the shadows of the chamber doorway — humanoid, tall, garbed in a matte-black exo-suit with gold trim worn down by time. A shimmering badge pulsed faintly on their chest: Interzone Council.
The figure removed their helmet, revealing a woman with silver-threaded hair pulled tightly back, eyes that glowed faintly blue with retinal augments, and an expression as neutral as a blank ledger.
“You're awake,” she said.
Riven’s voice came hoarse, broken. “What year is it?”
“2151 standard. Your file said you were cryo-locked just after the First Collapse.”
Riven frowned, “Why was I revived?”
The woman extended a data tablet toward him. “You’re being offered reinstatement — conditional.”
He didn’t take it.
“I don’t work for dead councils,” he muttered.
Her expression didn’t change. “The Interzone Council is very much alive — what’s left of it. We’re rebuilding order. And we need people like you.”
“I’m done taking orders.” Riven turned his back, grabbing a discarded jumpsuit and dragging it over his half-numb limbs.
“You haven’t even heard the mission.”
“I don’t care.”
She was quiet for a moment, watching him dress. Then she said, “The Veil gates are destabilizing again. Something’s coming through.”
That stopped him.
Riven turned, “The Veil’s gone, I saw it fall.”
She stepped forward. “That’s what we thought. But in the last decade, there’ve been flare events — gravimetric anomalies, data phantoms, corrupted physics zones. Some of the ancient gate systems have reactivated. We believe they’re tied to the original breach.”
Riven narrowed his eyes. “And you want me to go poking around in the wreckage?”
“We need someone who understands how the Veil worked before the Collapse. You were there. You were part of its shutdown.”
His blood ran cold. “No, I wasn’t.”
The woman tapped her tablet. “You were commander of the Warden Initiative. Final operational control. Your team initiated Protocol 0, which severed the Veil network from the galactic grid. Billions of lives were lost in the resulting blackouts.”
Riven’s hands clenched, “That wasn’t my order.”
“But it was your command.”
The weight of it pressed into his chest like a collapsing star. He didn’t remember giving the order. Hell, he didn’t even remember the mission. But if the record said he did…
He turned to the viewing port on the far wall. Outside, the stars looked tired. Distant beacons scattered across the galaxy, many now cut off or dying. A broken orbit passed just beyond the station’s perimeter — pieces of a shattered world, its core still glowing faintly. Debris from a past war. Maybe one he’d started.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked quietly.
The woman handed him the tablet again. “There’s a Veil gate remnant near the Virek Expanse. It’s emitting weak signals — coordinates that don’t exist in current star maps. We want you to investigate. Confirm whether it’s a system glitch… or a surviving fragment of the old network.”
He stared at the display. The glyphs pulsed in a language he recognized but couldn’t name.
“You’re not telling me everything,” he said.
She didn’t deny it.
“There are whispers of something else,” she admitted. “People vanishing near the old gates. Ships lost in transit. Survivors talk about seeing… things. Memories that aren’t theirs. Voices in the static.”
“Dustborn?” Riven asked.
Her eyes flickered, “We don’t use that term anymore.”
“But they’re still out there?”
“They never left.”
Of course not. The Dustborn — zealots of the Veil Collapse, radicalized by the idea that reality itself was a lie. That the Veil didn’t separate space, but perception. That once it was gone, people would see the truth.
And some had, and some had gone mad.
Riven took a long breath. “How long until I ship out?”
“Six hours, the Council’s already assigned you a vessel, and a crew.”
“Anyone I know?”
She hesitated, “Your former second-in-command, Vara Kest. She’s… not happy about your return.”
“Can’t blame her.”
The woman nodded, “There’s also an envoy joining you. Not human. One of the Syn-Soul observers.”
Riven’s eyebrow rose, “You’re putting me on a ship with an AI?”
“Not just any AI,” she said. “One who claims to have seen through the Veil — and come back.”
He wasn’t sure what to make of that. There had always been whispers that the Veil gates were more than transport systems. That some connected to places outside time. Outside thought.
Riven looked at his own reflection in the viewing port. He barely recognized the man staring back — older than his years, eyes like cracked glass.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll take the mission.”
“Why the change of heart?” she asked.
He didn’t answer at first. Then:
“Because if I really ordered the shutdown... I need to know why.”
And maybe, just maybe, find out who he was before everything fell apart.
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Latest Chapter
The Architects of Dust Chapter 14: The Architect's Shadow
The chamber’s lights dissolved into white noise. Riven’s head pounded with every beat, as if the Spiral itself had taken hold and was roaring through his skull. The last image he registered before the world went dark was the architect interface’s translucent hand pressed against his glyph—its crystalline glow pulsing in sync with his fading heartbeat.And then—nothing.He awoke to a sound like bone grinding. A slow mechanical groan echoed around him as he tried to move. His vision swam into focus to reveal curved walls of burnished metal. The room was silent—no Dustborn guards, no council enforcers. Only the hum of failing systems and the dull throb of his own pulse.He tested his limbs. They worked. He sat up, breath shallow and sharp.Soli.Riven turned his head. Light reflected off her still form a few meters away: slumped, unconscious—or worse. He reached her side, heart racing, and gently shook her shoulder.“Soli,” he whispered.Her eyelids fluttered. She groaned, lifting a hand
Last Updated : 2025-06-13
The Architects of Dust Chapter 13: Veilborn Reckoning,
The cockpit lights flickered once—then died. Riven’s heartbeat thundered in his ears as the viewport went dark, swallowing Halvex Prime’s glowing horizon like a severed pulse. Outside, the architect-craft—alive, sentient—hovered in total eclipse. All light came from its crystalline veins, which pulsed with slow, deliberate reverence.He swallowed, fear and determination tangling in his chest. The glyph on his shoulder throbbed beneath his skin, each beat a reminder that he had named and awakened something beyond human reckoning. He’d said the code aloud. He’d delivered himself to this moment—and he would not turn away.“Soli,” he whispered, voice coarse. He turned to the passenger seat—empty. She must have left the shuttle again. His heart froze.Then the airlock hissed—and she stepped back inside, helmet removed. Bruises under her eyes glimmered; her expression was fierce. “They escorted me through the outer decks. Stasis pods still active—like a prize exhibit. They know exactly what
Last Updated : 2025-06-13
The Architects of Dust Chapter 12: Silent Echoes
The cockpit lights were too dim, the silence too loud. Riven watched Sedna, the red planet of Halvex Prime, drift by like an ancient wound under fractured clouds of ash. Everything out here had been broken once—and never quite healed.He swallowed. His reflection stared back at him: hollow cheeks, eyes weighed down by memory fractures. The glyph branded on his shoulder pulsed faintly beneath his skin, as if waiting for permission to surface again.You are late.The words echoed in his skull, not as memory but as dread. He reached for the console, but his mind recoiled. The station was waiting. And it knew he was coming.“Soli.” He turned. She’d been sleeping against the seat, head tilted, still clothed in dust and dread. Bruises marked her face, hardened with fatigue. Eyes half-open, she rubbed them and touched her side where old scars still throbbed.“Good morning,” she managed, her voice strained but solid.Outside, Sedna pulsed. The planet seemed to breathe beneath the ash storms—p
Last Updated : 2025-06-12
The Architects of Dust Chapter 11: Ash Company Memory
The corridor was silent. Too silent.Riven’s heartbeat wasn’t.He stepped out of the Palimpsest’s airlock and into the half-ruined mining compound, his boots echoing on fractured metal. Behind him, Soli wiped blood from her cheek, her breath shaky. Nix remained silent and motionless—its programming apparently frozen by the Dustborn blast.But Riven’s eyes were locked on the shattered horizon.He held the empty case of the datashard in his hand. Whatever had been encoded in that fragment had burned a hole in his mind—a memory of a time he’d never lived. Standing before a living Veil gate. Younger. In full Anchor gear.The shards of his identity were fracturing. The real Riven, the displaced Ashley… who knew anymore?They walked toward the holo-comm array where they’d boarded seconds before. Soli’s hands trembled as she powered up the system. The internal display flickered, half offline. But when it came to life, Riven could see his reflection behind the glare—and the flicker of doubt i
Last Updated : 2025-06-12
The Architects of Dust Chapter 10: Dust Spiral
The surface of the planet was hissing with heat mirages and nasty splinters of rust-red stone, broken as if the planet itself had split apart in agony. They'd abandoned the wrecked freighter hours ago—its empty halls still ringing with the faint dying whisper of the logic core. Riven, Soli, and the demure AI Nix now made their way back towards The Vanta, navigating between the fossilized ridges of what once was a mining colony.The wind tasted odd here. It was not dust—it was rust, data rot, and something acrid, as if the air recalled violence.Soli led them, sweeping with a hand-held spiker relay, as Riven had his hand resting on his gun. Nix brought up the rear, its humanoid casing crackling slightly, a stuttering shine as if it wasn't designed to be on the same plane of reality."Still no sign of our tail?"Riven asked.Soli looked over her shoulder. "Nothing on the scanner, but that don't mean they ain't here.""Dustborn?""Maybe. Or maybe they were already on-world."They went an
Last Updated : 2025-05-17
The Architects of Dust Chapter 9: Breach Code
The AI fragment had said nothing since they departed the Marrowhold. But when The Palimpsest glided into low orbit around a nameless planetoid for emergency calibration, the sphere—tethered in the rear compartment—sparked to life.Riven was the first to see.He sat alone, gazing at the sleek, thrumming shell of the logic core while Soli labored at the front. The ship's steady thrum was the sole sound until the lights softened slightly and the AI core beat with an almost unfelt rhythm—three, then nothing. Three again. He thought of a heartbeat. No—a beacon.Then, the voice, not in speakers.Not in his ears.It cut through all that."ANCHOR DETECTED."The words ripped across the back of his mind like icy fingers.Riven was on his feet, attuned in an instant. "What did you say?""ANCHOR RIVEN HALE ACCEPTED."He took a step back, hand reflexively reaching for the sidearm holstered at his hip. But how do you shoot something in your head?"Define 'Anchor,'" he growled."YOU ARE THE REMNANT
Last Updated : 2025-05-17
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