2025-05-17 17:11:24The stars ahead were bruised and quiet.
Riven sat in the dim passenger hold of Soli’s patched-together freighter—The Palimpsest—watching the Drift vanish behind them like a closing wound. The air smelled of old wiring and synthetic lemon cleaner, a cheap attempt to disguise decades of salvager sweat and oil. The hum of the ship’s outdated engines droned in the background like a half-forgotten lullaby.
Soli was at the helm, muttering curses in three languages while bypassing Council tracking codes.
“You ever flown blind through a junk veil before?” she asked, fingers flying over the interface.
“No,” Riven said flatly. “But I’ve been shot at in one.”
“That counts.”
She toggled a set of outdated thrusters, and The Palimpsest lurched into a quiet arc toward the outskirts of the Volux Drift, heading toward a derelict freighter graveyard orbiting a forgotten moon.
“You saved my life back there,” he said after a long silence.
“You’re not getting a thank you,” she replied, eyes still locked on her console. “You owe me.”
He waited. “So what’s the debt?”
She arched back and pulled a cracked tablet from under her seat. A faulty display cycled on, bathing her in the glow of an old star chart and a jumping red cursor.
"I have to find something," Soli said. "A pre-Veil logic core. Busted on a freighter that strayed into the Adra Wreck Field well over three decades back. Name's Marrowhold. Dead metal, they say. But it ain't."
Riven scowled. "What kind of logic core?
"The kind that talked to the Veil before anyone else had a clue how."
He scowled. "You think it survived?"
"I think it wasn't supposed to. And I think whatever's inside may still be functioning—encased in all that metal, waiting."
"Why me?"
"Because Council agents are after me, and you're in a mood to die."
"That's a good point," he admitted.
She threw him a rebreather mask. "Dress. We're docking the wreck in twenty minutes.
The Adra Wreck Field looked like a god had ravaged a shipyard in slow motion.".
Gigantic hulls spun in zero-gravity silence, broken spires of ancient dreadnoughts glinting like teeth in the pale light of a dying star. Some ships had rested there so long, coated with asteroid dust, that they held microscopic universes of mold and metal fungus. Others still emblazoned weakly, computer systems cycling round and round without being instructed to stop.
The Marrowhold hovered on the edge of the field, its hull arced like a crushed bug. A row of shattered hull sections stretched into the darkness, like breadcrumbs scattered in a graveyard.
They docked on what had been the forward cargo bay.
Within, a dark shell. Dust filtered through stagnant air, disturbed only by their footsteps and the occasional glimmer of residual magnetic field spikes. The lights had been dark for a long time.
Riven's visor cut ahead, mapping the shattered interior.
"Any power?" he asked.
Soli flicked a hand with a scanner in it, its green light pulsing. "Minimal, but something's still running in the central core. Low frequency. Too low for regular engines."
"A whisper or a heartbeat."
They struggled through twisted corridors and buckled gangways. Through shattered bunks and blown pressure doors. Everything was ripped—inside out.
"Whatever has gone on here," Soli growled, "it wasn't pirates."
They found the logic core hidden under layers of charred plating in what had been the nav-hub center. It was a shuttle pod-sized sphere, encased in concentric circles of alloy bearing fractal code—undeniably Architect in design.
"It's pre-Veil tech, all right," Soli whispered.
Riven followed the surface with a gloved hand. It was warm.
"This isn't a logic core," he said. "It's an artery. It was connected to something else. Something it was programmed to decipher."
"A mind?"
"Or an entrance."
Soli cracked open her tool kit, placing sensor spikes carefully along the sphere. Information streamed onto her tablet—twisted glyph-chains and recursive feedback loops in changing tongues.
"This thing's old enough to have been around before Interzone encryption," she said. "But I think I can get a handshake."
"Do that. But hurry.
The shadows on either side of them had shifted. Something was off with the ship—like it was listening.
The moment Soli moved out to do the handshake, the air got thick.".
The area vibrated—softly, then loudly, until the sound wasn't sound anymore but a ringing in their brains. Riven staggered away. His HUD randomly flashed, then died.
And in the blackness, he heard a voice.
"HE WHO LEFT IS RETURNED."
"THE TUNNEL REMEMBERS."
"YOU WERE NOT THE FIRST."
Riven gritted his teeth, fighting the scald at the back of his eyes. He could sense his nerves remembering things his mind never had. A blue corridor. A hand extending out through snow. A name he'd never heard—but knew.
Then it was finished.
The core dissipated.
Soli leaned over next to him, eyes still open. "Did it. talk to you?"
"Yes," he answered cautiously. "And it called me by name."
She quivered. "We won't be here for long. Logic core created a pulse. Long-distance. Someone is going to notice it."
"What did it say?" he inquired.
She looked down at her console. "About a 'cipher seed.' That it's already seeded. That it's waiting for the actual interface."
They continued back toward the ship—but mid-way to the docking port, Riven stopped.
Something moved in the darkness of the wreck.
A held breath in a whisper.
A burst of movement just beyond perception."Nix," he ordered, calling up his comms, "scan perimeter."
The AI responded after a moment. "Hostiles closing. Three signatures. Not Council. Unknown configuration."
"Soli, relocate."
Motion in darkness—too sudden, too silent.
Riven fired, his rounds clacking off bulkhead walls. The creatures were not human. They jumped like bugs—"glitchy," stepping between layers of reality.
One of them attacked.
He rolled sideways, fired again. This time, the shot landed—a direct hit to the torso. The creature flickered, its form momentarily collapsing into a cloud of static before vanishing into the walls.
“What the hell are they?” Soli gasped.
“I’ve seen them once before,” Riven said, teeth clenched. “During the final gate failure. They’re Veil-born.”
“Echoes?”
“Or scouts.”
They made it to The Palimpsest, slammed the airlock shut behind them, and launched seconds later.
Riven watched the Marrowhold contract behind them, still afloat, still humming with something timeless and alive.
Soli fell into her chair, gasping, in the cockpit.
"You're still not convinced the Collapse was an accident?" she asked.
"No," Riven replied. "I think now that it was a message."
She looked at him. "From whom?"
He stared out the viewport, stars unfurling like blades.
"Perhaps not whom," he replied. "Perhaps what is to come.".
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
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
You may also like
The Dark King of London
Lil Chloe2.3K viewsHis Eternite
Renglassi23.2K viewsTHE EXTINCTION AGENDA
Christopher 'Ozoya' Wrights2.4K viewsThe Max Level Hero: Strike Black
John Smith6.1K viewsAOE : Age Of Extinction
Author Bellion1.0K viewsMy Atomic System
Eric2.2K viewsTales Of Eronsvale
D. Marvel1.2K viewsCanaan Club (Progenies of Ironward #1)
Westley Dans1.9K views