Skif, Sector B. Captain Manuel's ship.
The Skif drifts through the boundless, fog-drenched void like a ghost severed from someone else's nightmare.
Beyond its thin alloy skin, silence trembles — not the absence of sound, but something heavier, more viscous, that doesn't just smother noise — it chokes thought itself.
This silence is alive. It drinks your breath, swallows footsteps, feeds on your fear.
Pietro and Maria move down the narrow corridor. The walls are scratched and dented — scars from old fights or someone else's breakdowns. The metal seems to groan softly, like the ship's own skin remembering pain.
They say nothing. But this isn't the silence of rest.
It's the silence of something waiting.
"Something's off... Too quiet. Even for this old crate with half-dead engines," Pietro thinks, jaw clenched.
Maria suddenly freezes.
Her eyes catch on a door — Jamal's cabin.
Closed.
But…
Closed wrong.
"Something's not right," she whispers. But in the echoing stillness, even a whisper strikes like a hammer on steel.
She steps closer and touches the cool panel.
He's in there. I can feel it. So why isn't he answering?
"General Jamal?" Her voice sharpens.
No response.
"Jamal, it's Pietro and Maria. Open the door!"
Nothing.
But now the silence feels different — heavier, denser, like the door itself has become a barrier between two realities.
Pietro grabs the emergency handle.
Locked. Useless.
It's like the ship itself won't let him out. Like it's holding him inside.
Maria activates her transmitter.
"Captain, where is Jamal?"
Manuel's voice crackles in her earpiece — cold, distant, mechanical.
"He's inside. I'll open it."
Clicks. Grinding.
The metal groans — resisting, as if afraid of what lies beyond.
The doors shudder, then finally part — reluctantly.
What waits behind them isn't light.
It's smoke-thick half-darkness, reeking of something sharp, sweet, and metallic — a scent that slaps like blood in your lungs.
Pietro steps inside.
Maria follows.
And they step into a nightmare.
General Jamal is slumped against the wall, wrists bound by magnetic clamps. His body hangs like a broken puppet, his face pale — as if all warmth, all life, had been drained from him.
Only the faintest rise and fall of his chest confirms he's still alive.
Maria instantly activates her scanner.
"I'll check his vitals," she says, voice stripped of emotion — her rescuer instincts taking over.
But the moment the scanner breaches the cabin's airspace… something shifts.
The air thickens — dense, gelatinous, almost boiling.
A crushing grip clamps down on her throat.
She gasps, reaching for her neck.
What is this?! I can't—breathe!
Out of the shadows — like a predator born from the darkness itself — Alex leaps. In a single brutal motion, he slams into her, pressing a cold, metallic object against her throat.
"Move, and I'll break your neck," he snarls. His breath scorches — acid-hot.
Pietro lunges forward.
They collide hard — a tangled frenzy of fists, elbows, claws and half-shouted cries. The floor shakes beneath them.
Then — another blur from the darkness.
Yulia.
Like a knife flashing in pitch black, she strikes at Maria. On reflex, Maria slams her palm against the emergency alarm.
Red light explodes on her wrist.
The siren screams.
"Emergency!" she gasps.
And then —
everything disappears
into darkness.
**
Howling echoes through the corridors.
Captain Manuel flinches, then leaps to his feet. His boots slam against the floor with a metallic thud.
Vikar and Daniel are already sprinting after him. Their movements — instinctive, honed by war.
The cabin — a battlefield.
Pietro, gasping, pulls himself upright again — bruised all over, his face dark, feral. He locks eyes with Alex — two beasts poised to strike.
And then fists collide. A dry, brutal crack.
At that moment, Manuel storms in.
One precise, predatory strike — and Yulia is hurled into the wall, crumpling to the floor with a dull thud.
Maria collapses beside her. Her eyes — glazed.
Consciousness fades, like the sun sinking beneath the horizon.
"This wasn't supposed to happen. Jamal... what did they do to you...?"
Darkness deepens. But the fight has only just begun.
In the next breath, Vikar and Daniel burst into the room. Their movements are sharp, merciless — like machines that need no second command. Alex is neutralized instantly — no mercy, no hesitation. They move as if they were parts of a single war-forged mechanism.
But Manuel doesn't relinquish control.
His fist — furious, heavy, a sentence — slams into Alex's face. Alex collapses without a sound, as if the very air had crushed the last ounce of defiance from him.
For a moment, silence reigns.
Heavy.
Like after a gunshot inside a cathedral.
Only the muffled thuds of their own heartbeats fill their ears.
Alex and Yulia hang limp, shackled to the wall by magnetic clamps — two shadows, two threats, too alive to forget, too dangerous to release.
"What happened to Jamal?" Vikar asks. His voice is hoarse — not with armor, but with humanity.
"Please don't let us be too late... Let him come back..."
"Unconscious," Pietro exhales, struggling to breathe. Synthetic blood streaks down his cheek. He wipes it with the back of his hand.
"We're losing him."
"Put him in the capsule. Now!" the captain commands.
Vikar nods and vanishes into the corridor.
"And them?" Daniel glares at Alex and Yulia, his gaze a shrapnel of rage.
"Interrogate them," Manuel snaps. His voice is hard — edged with fury and bitter disappointment.
He leans over Alex, grabbing his chin and forcing him to meet his gaze.
No pity. No mask.
Only wrath — and debts unpaid.
"What did you do to Jamal?"
Alex smirks.
His lips stretch into a grin — but it's the grin of something broken.
"He's with the god Kyros now," he breathes, slowly, each word like a needle stabbed into their minds.
"But our god is Hanaris," Manuel frowns. His voice isn't uncertain — it's a challenge.
Yulia lets out a rusted laugh, as if coughing up a nail.
"Your god," she spits. Her voice drips like poison. "We serve Kyros."
Maria, barely standing, flinches at the name — as if struck.
Lightning flashes in her eyes.
"The second amulet!" she breathes. "They found it!"
"Who gave it to you?" Her voice now — a blade that splits the silence.
"Ivor," Yulia answers, with a slow-burning malice.
Shock floods the room — visceral, electric.
Lightning in every nerve.
"You destroyed the Aspida?" Vikar whispers, barely audible, his voice fragile as porcelain.
"Of course," Alex bares his teeth in a grin — like a predator. "Our dear Prettyboy delivered the bomb straight into the station's heart. Right into the capacitor core."
"Surprise."
Silence crashes down like a slab of concrete.
"Tala..." Daniel breathes her name as if reopening a wound.
"She had it coming," Alex says coldly.
Daniel snaps.
He lunges at him, ripping out a handful of hair — nearly breaking his jaw.
Vikar yanks him back with a swift, silent force.
"Enough," he says. His voice is quiet, but laced with the poison of command. "They're the key. We interrogate them. They'll help us end this war."
Manuel strengthens the magnetic locks. Now, not even death will let them escape.
His gaze turns to Maria.
She's crouched over Jamal, knees soaked in blood, face pale as porcelain — but her eyes burn with the precision of a healer, and the fire of belief.
"What's happening to him?" he asks.
His voice shakes — not on the surface, but deep below, where a commander becomes a man.
Maria answers without looking up from the scanner.
"It's bad. His body is collapsing from the inside. It's like... his consciousness is being torn between two worlds."
Beyond the portholes, beyond the ship's thin armor, the endless void keeps whispering its secrets.
Whispering — into the dark, into the blood, into memory.
And this is only the beginning.