"If I bleed, I fall. Until then, I stand." - Vow Of The Unwounded.
Kali returned to the apartment complex under the soft wash of artificial streetlights, the buzz of Medri's nightlife still humming in the air behind him. He didn't head upstairs—there was no point. The sterile walls of his assigned room held nothing for him now. He moved with quiet urgency through the garage levels beneath the high-rise, past rows of parked utility crawlers and automated shuttles until he found what he was looking for.
Tucked near the far wall, under a thermal tarp, was the rugged hoverbike Markus had left for him, its matte-black frame still bearing the dust of their last mission. A small handwritten note was duct-taped to the seat.
"Stay safe. —M."
Kali peeled the note off, stared at it for a breath, then pocketed it. With practiced hands, he pulled off the tarp, checked the fuel cell, and tapped the ignition. The bike hummed to life, its low-frequency whine echoing in the cold garage.
Without a backward glance, he swung his leg over the saddle and kicked off. The garage gate yawned open ahead of him, recognizing his clearance. The city's boundary sensors flickered red as he crossed into the outer ring, the towering arcologies of Medri fading behind him like a steel forest swallowed by night.
He gunned the accelerator and raced toward the city gates, wind biting against his mask, mind fixed on the road ahead, and the next step in a journey he was no longer willing to delay.
A voice crackled through the speaker grille embedded in the gate frame: "Departure logged. Reason for travel?"
Kali didn't respond. Instead, he held his ID chip to the sensor and waited. A long pause. A mechanical chirp. Then, the voice again: "Clearance confirmed. Proceed."
The barriers retracted with a grinding clunk, revealing the scarred earth beyond Medri's protective walls. He didn't hesitate. Twisting the throttle, Kali surged forward, leaving behind the glass towers, synthetic air, and surveillance-drenched corridors of a city that never really belonged to him.
Outside, the world was quieter. But not empty.
The desolate expanse stretched in all directions, ashen plains fractured by the occasional ruin, remnants of war or failed terraforming. The wind here was different: coarse, whispering through debris and broken machinery with a rasp that sounded almost like breath. Even the stars above seemed colder, distant and unaffected by the glow of corporate dominion.
Eventually, civilization faded entirely, replaced by a bone-dry wilderness that seemed to whisper warnings with every gust.
That's when the rumble started. At first, Kali thought it was the engine stuttering until the vibration kept going even after he cut the throttle. The sand to his left convulsed. Something massive shifted beneath it.
With an eruption of grit and screeching chitin, the creature launched from the earth like a striking serpent. Its body was armored in layered, obsidian-like plates, each segment the size of a grown man. Dozens of spined legs scythed through the sand in a blur, propelling it forward with impossible speed. Its head—if one could call it that—split open along radial seams, revealing rows of glistening mandibles and filamentous sensory organs that flailed in the air.
Kali swerved hard, the bike fishtailing. One of the creature's legs struck the rear, sending the vehicle tumbling. He rolled across the sand, instinct saving him more than skill.
He recognized the creature from the Corvus' lessons on the flora and fauna of Theraxis. Indeed there were far worse things than velarachne and this was one of them, a sandcroon.
By the time he was on his feet, the Sandcroon had already begun to circle. It moved in looping patterns, burrowing slightly, then re-emerging, always moving faster, always tightening the ring. He drew his rifle, fired—rounds clanged uselessly off its plated hide.
Kinetic rounds are useless.
He reached for a flare bomb, thumbed it alive, and threw. The burst of light and heat halted the creature for a second, but only a second.
Then came the charge.
Kali dropped low, rolling as the beast surged past. In one fluid motion, he unsheathed his blades and slashed at a seam between its plates. Sparks flew. A shriek tore from the thing's throat, not of pain, but rage.
He ran, not away, but toward his fallen bike. He needed more than blades.
The Sandcroon dove, and this time he leapt, vaulting over its body just as it burrowed beneath. Sand exploded behind him. Reaching the bike, he grabbed the backup fuel cell, armed it with a fuse, and turned. "Come on," he growled. The creature obliged, breaking from the sand with terrifying force.
He flung the cell directly into its gaping maw. The explosion split the dusk.
When the smoke cleared, the creature lay twitching, part of its torso fused and burning, the rest still trying to thrash. Kali didn't wait to confirm the kill. He retrieved his rifle and his supplies, slung them, then limped the rest of the way toward the black monolith jutting from the earth like the spine of some forgotten god.
The obelisk waited, unchanged, unbothered, exactly where Rizen had been sealed beneath.
Kali reached the ruins after a long march, descending into the shadow-choked corridors felt almost like coming home, a thought that unsettled him more than he cared to admit. The flickering remnants of power systems activated as he passed, casting strobes of light across the walls where faint glyphs still pulsed with machine-thought. The deeper he went, the more alive the ruin seemed, as if it had been waiting, holding its breath for his return.
He limped forward, the wound on his thigh burning, until he arrived at the familiar chamber, the vault at the heart of the ruins where he had first met the exiled entity known as Rizen. The room was lit more brightly than before, floodlamps embedded in the ceiling pulsing in a slow rhythm.
"You've come," Rizen said, his voice reverberating from every wall, though no body was visible, only a vertical array of hovering data-panes and the ever-present glow of glyphs orbiting the room's core. "Did you bring it?"
Kali unslung the case from his back, his fingers aching from tension. "I wouldn't be back here if I hadn't," he replied, the words bitter in his mouth. He popped the case open and removed the cylindrical device: a dark, chrome-plated object no longer than his forearm, etched with faint filigree and humming with contained energy.
In response, a slab of matte-black alloy rose smoothly from the floor in the center of the room, its surface alive with circuitry patterns that realigned in anticipation.
"Insert it," Rizen commanded, his voice quieter now, more intimate, like a whisper behind Kali's ear.
Kali hesitated. Just for a second.
His breath slowed, his mind spiraling with doubt. He barely knew who Rizen truly was—just that he had once been human, long ago, before becoming something more. Or less. Something other
He stared at the device in his hands. Releasing Rizen might very well be a mistake he could never take back. But what choice did he have? His survival was at stake and a deal with the devil might be what could save him.
His fingers closed tighter around the cylinder. "Fine," he muttered.
With that, he stepped forward and slotted the device into the core slab.
The chamber shook. Glyphs ignited in white flame across the walls. The air grew thick with static. The data-panes around the room burst outward like wings unfolding, and the lights grew so bright Kali shut his eyes in panic.
The in an instant everything stopped.
"Free at last," Rizen spoke, but the words didn't echo from the walls this time, nor did they come from anywhere else in the room. They arose instead within Kali's skull, as if his own mind had accidentally formed them. It was like remembering something he hadn't lived.
Kali staggered back a step, heart thudding. "What the hell—how are you doing that?!"
"Your heart rate is spiking," Rizen said calmly, as if reading directly from a bio-monitor. "There is no need for alarm. I have simply transferred my consciousness from the prison's substrate into the neural grafts embedded in your spine. You might consider it... a piggyback ride."
Kali's stomach twisted. His fists clenched. "You didn't say anything about this," he spat, fury blooming beneath the panic. "We had a deal. You said you'd be free—not in my head!"
"I feared you would not approve," Rizen admitted, his voice now soft, almost remorseful. "And you were right. You still do not trust me. But know this, I have not overridden your autonomy. Your body remains yours. I'm merely... hitching a ride, observing. I have no access to your motor systems or higher command structures."
"Oh, how comforting," Kali snapped, pacing now, trying to breathe. "So I've got an ancient Machina war criminal squatting in my cortex, whispering sweet nothings while I sleep?"
"Exiled, not criminal," Rizen corrected.
Kali stopped, running a hand through his dust-matted hair. "Gods. What even are you?"
There was a pause. A moment of silence so dense it rang in the ears.
"I am human," Rizen finally said, "And so are you. I do not wish to hurt you, Kali. You and I share a common fate."
Kali breathed slowly, trying to let the heat ebb away. It didn't, not fully, but something in Rizen's words rang too close to the truth to ignore.
"Fine," he said at last. "But one step out of line—one thought—and I'll rip these grafts out with my own damn hands."
"A reasonable threat," Rizen replied with faint amusement. "Shall we be on our way?"
Leaving the ruins was the easy part. What lay ahead was the hard part, the long, punishing trek across the desolate expanse back to Fort Harlow. Kali moved at a steady pace, his feet crunching over sand and shale. The sun was merciless, hanging like a molten brand in the sky, but he pressed on. Fortunately, the worst of his injuries had mended, and his body—augmented as it now was—pushed past normal human limits. His legs carried him faster, farther. He barely paused.
Hours passed. The land unfurled, barren and wide and humming with the threat of hidden things. Then, far in the distance, he saw it, a dark plume of smoke staining the horizon.
His heart sank.
He ran, a deep thrum rising in his chest. His breath hitched, not from exertion but from dread. Every step drew him closer to the source of the smoke, and the sickly scent that rode on the wind: charred metal, scorched wood... blood.
The once-defensible stronghold had been razed to ash and ruin. Barracks, watchtowers, the outer walls—everything was blackened, still smoldering. Fires licked at crumbling beams, and among the embers lay the aftermath: corpses, some unrecognizable, others twisted in death. Flies buzzed in thick clouds. The ground was tacky under his boots.
"No..." he breathed, his voice brittle with horror.
He sprinted deeper into the wreckage, weaving through burnt-out structures and collapsed barricades, scanning for signs of life but all he found was death.
Naomi was the first. She lay against a wall, her side torn open by gunfire, her wide, unblinking eyes frozen in the look of someone who'd seen the end rushing toward her. A little further, Markus, shot through the chest, jaw slack, blood pooled around him like ink.
Then he saw her.
Priene. Her three mechanical limbs were mangled beyond recognition, wires sparking and steel warped. Her organic arm was limp, broken in multiple places.
He knew who had done this. It had to be whoever had hired the commander and now wanted to scrub the trail clean, either the proxy governor or SynSpec. One of them had unleashed this devastation to bury the truth, along with everyone who could speak it.
"This might be fortuitous," Rizen's voice murmured in his mind, calm as ever. "Everyone who knew how you arrived is now dead. That keeps you safe."
The logic was cold, but not entirely wrong. Still, Kali felt bile rise in his throat.
He didn't reply immediately. In the silence, his thoughts drifted to Rizen's earlier musings, how the ancient Machina often spoke of non-human sentient species with a kind of dismissive indifference, not outright hatred, but something colder. To Rizen, they were curiosities at best, inferior echoes of a time when humans had ruled unchallenged, a civilization spread across galaxies, brushing the edge of Kardashev Type IV.
But Kali didn't share that sentiment. He couldn't.
The Rusa here hadn't been curiosities, they'd been his friends. They'd fought beside him. They'd bled beside him. Now they were gone, reduced to ash and twisted limbs, and Rizen's utilitarian detachment made his skin crawl.
He clenched his fists. "They mattered," he simply said.
His thoughts grew more chaotic, the terrible scene in front of him entwining with the flames of the Deadalus One, both times he had lost people he cared for. Stretched across millions of years, and both times he had failed. It was not just the sight of charred flesh or the scorched scent of blood and ruin. It was the stillness. The terrible finality of it.
Something cracked inside him.
A pulse. Not audible. Not visual. But he broke and quaked. It was not a flash of power. It was collapse, a folding inward. His mind did not scream, it wept in all direcctions.
Grief is entropy of the soul, Priene had once said. A force that unravels the cohesion of the self. Loss given resonance.
Somewhere deep in the synaptic grafts of his spine, Rizen murmured with apprehension. "What… are you doing?"
But Kali didn't answer. He couldn't.
Because this wasn't speech. This wasn't thought. This wasn't even instinct. It was something older. The cognition barrier shattered, and his mind swam in the blur of post-reality.
As stood there, unresponsive, Priene's cough startled him. She was still alive, barely. Her chest heaved shallowly, every breath a struggle.
"Priene!" he yelled, rushing over to her.
Her eyes flickered open, glassy with pain. "Kali…" she rasped.
"Don't talk," he said, fumbling for anything, pressure bandages, coolant, even just something to prop her up. "You're going to be okay. I'll fix this."
"She needs help," Rizen said, simply telling rather than actually concerned. "Her will is formidable, truly a vow awakened."
Kali lifted her up, making out an old rover in the corner that was unaffected by the flames. "I'll make sure she gets it."