The nebula

**Kelly Thompson's POV**

The planet doesn’t have a name—just coordinates bleeding at the edge of the warship’s star charts. It’s a jagged sphere swathed in the nebula’s amniotic glow, its surface a tapestry of bioluminescent forests and obsidian mountains that pierce the crimson sky. We land in a valley where the air tastes like copper and the ground thrums as though alive.

Ravel scans the horizon, her rifle slung low. “No fractures. No saplings. Maybe we finally caught a break.”

Veyd’s damaged lens whirs as he adjusts it. **“The atmosphere’s saturated with chronon particles. Time here is… fluid.”**

The survivors stagger from the ship, their faces gaunt but hopeful. They don’t see the veins of liquid shadow threading the soil, or hear the whispers beneath the wind. But I do. The sigil on my chest, dormant since the Titan’s core burned out, prickles like a half-healed wound.

*This place knows me.*

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### **The Oracle’s Keep**

We find the ruins at dusk.