2025-05-17 17:43:04The 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 another quarter klick in silence.
That's when the wind stopped.
No natural stillness. Just an abrupt, unnatural silence, as if reality had skipped a frame.
Then the whisper.
".Riven."
He whirled around, blaster at the ready. "You hear that?"
Soli frowned. "Hear what?"
".you built."
No voice. No guidance. Just a hum in his head like something pulsing from below thinking.
Then the stones altered.
It began like an illusion of light—shadows moving too quickly, casting unrecognizable shapes. Dust formed from the canyon walls. Six of them. Dustborn.
They stood in their own life suits, hastily assembled from bone-white polymer and frayed station-grade mesh. Reflected masks covered their faces, the moving glyphs etched into each of them reflecting off of them like quicksilver. They had no weapons.
They simply waited, ringed around the trio.
Nix moved forward, buzzing with defensive pulses, but Riven stayed his hand. "Wait."
One of the Dustborn stepped ahead of the others. A woman—or what might’ve once been one. Her voice crackled through an old comm filter. “Riven Hale. You’re not supposed to be awake.”
Soli bristled. “You know him?”
The Dustborn tilted her head. “He built the first key. He was the Anchor. The door was never meant to be opened.”
“I don’t remember any of that,” Riven said slowly.
"That's because they stole it from you. The Council. The Architects. You weren't meant to have gotten out of the Breach Spiral."
"Breach Spiral?" Soli repeated, but the Dustborn did not clarify.
One of them moved forward, grasping a softly luminous pale blue cube. "The pieces still vibrate. Your code remains in the Veil, in a sense, going on, altering. We uncovered pieces. Bits of memory."
Riven's gun crept an inch ahead. "What do you want from me?"
The lead Dustborn advanced. "You gave it to us already. Centuries back. Before the Collapse. Before the rewrite."
She crept ahead, and despite her face being hidden, Riven could feel the searing heat of her presence—standing too near to a sun that knew your name.
"Do you dream in binary now?" she breathed.
Then she spoke the words.
"The Architects remember what you built."
The phrase cut Riven like shattered steel. His eyesight faded, and a tide of sickness crept up his throat. At the edge of his mind—static. Code. Syllables he could not read but knew to be true. There was a hidden message in the words—a hidden beacon, like a memory fighting to reach the surface.
He didn't have a second to respond when the woman leaned forward and unbuckled her helmet.
Beneath him, her skin was no longer flesh—it was dissolving into dust, rippling, eyes burning with Veil-light.
She smiled.
And then she folded in upon herself.
The blast was silent—more of a collapse, not a bang. A vacuum-pull of air and information pulled out in an ire of tatters and twisted time for half a second. Riven was slammed against the rocks. Soli screamed. Nix's body flashed crazily and locked.
When Riven opened his eyes, the world was spinning, smoke flooding in greasy whirls, and the rest of the Dustborn were gone. All that was left was charred earth—and something pulsing where the woman had stood.
He coughed and got to his feet, then stumbled to his.
"Soli?" he bellowed.
She moaned from behind a boulder, a white band of blood along her cheek. "Still breathing."
He leaned forward to assist her, never removing his gaze from the burn scar in the earth. The pulsating thing was a datashard—still warm. Part of her.
He took it up.
[ACCESS: LEVEL 7 - MEMORY TRACE ENCODED - KEYWORD: ANCHOR]
[EXECUTE? Y/N]
He faltered.
Soli gazed at him, horror-stricken. "Don't. We have no idea what it'll do to your head."
"I think I do already," Riven growled.\
He petted Yes.
The world blinked.
And then he was out of the canyon.
He was within a room—indefinitely tall and illuminated by blue lines which coiled like a web of nerves out to the horizon. Drifting data-columns floated above a crystal floor. A Veil gate—alive—glowed in the center. And he stood before it, younger, dressed in an exosuit that sported the old Architect sigil.
".the Anchor is live," a voice echoed.
Riven saw his old self raise a hand, pressing it against a throbbing interface.
"I just want it to end," he gasped. "The recursion. The echoes. Let them lie."
Then all came apart—like the Dustborn.
Riven shook back into existence, choking. The datashard was dust in his palm.
Soli held his shoulder. "What did you see?"
"I was there… when it began. I connected the Veil myself. I anchored it. I did not merely cause the Collapse."
He glared at her, his face death's skull.
"I may have conceived it."
She did not say a word. Wind in the canyon screamed again, as if outraged they stood on two legs.
Then Nix's voice resumed, twisted and husky: "We have to go. Reinforcements are coming."
Riven looked out over the empty horizon, the words echoing in his mind.
The Architects remember what you created.
But worse than that was the nagging question at the back of his mind:
Did he?
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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
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
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
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
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
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
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