An Eye for Tendregulon

Ryan trudged behind Elen, his boots sinking slightly into the endless sea of golden sand. Each step felt heavier than the last, exhaustion gnawing at his limbs like a slow-burning fire. The AI moved with an unrelenting mechanical grace, its sleek form barely disturbed by the unstable terrain.

"Where are we going?" Ryan asked, his voice hoarse from the dry air.Elen's frame let out a sharp mechanical creak before responding.

"To a safer, more stable location."Safe? Ryan nearly scoffed at the word.

He cast his gaze around at the desolate wasteland—an expanse of sand dunes stretching as far as the eye could see, broken only by the rusting skeletons of forgotten structures.

The air shimmered under the relentless heat, distorting the horizon like a mirage. If there had ever been life here, it was long gone.Is this place dangerous because of the climate? Ryan wondered.

The sun—if it even was a sun—felt oppressive, its heat clawing at his exposed skin, draining the last reserves of his energy.

They had been walking for hours. Ryan's throat was parched, his clothes coated in a fine layer of dust. Every step forward felt like trudging through quicksand.

"Can we rest in the shade of one of those wreckages?" he asked, wiping sweat from his brow.Elen didn't pause.

"Destination nearby. Destination… creak… Mother Ship, Elenatia."Ryan let out a dry chuckle.

"I guess that means no, then."

Silence.

The only sounds were the rhythmic whirring of Elen's joints and the whispering wind carrying tiny grains of sand across the dunes.

Ryan clenched his jaw, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other.Then, something appeared on the horizon.

A structure—massive, half-buried beneath the shifting sands. Despite being eroded by time and swallowed by the planet, its grandeur was undeniable.

Metallic spires protruded from the surface like the ribs of a long-dead colossus, gleaming faintly under the brutal sunlight.

Even in ruin, it looked formidable."Is that where we're going?" Ryan muttered under his breath, blinking up at the sheer scale of it.

How grand…His admiration was cut short by a deep, guttural tremor beneath his feet.The sand quivered.

Then, it moved.

Ryan froze as the golden grains began to coil and shift unnaturally, like liquid being pulled by an unseen force.

A shadow stretched over him—long, unnatural, shifting with the rising mass behind him.He turned slowly.And his breath caught in his throat.

A creature.No—a nightmare.

A colossal centipede erupted from the sand, its segmented body gleaming like polished obsidian. Each plate of its exoskeleton was lined with grotesque, twisted human faces—mouths frozen mid-scream, eyes wide with eternal despair.

The thing was impossibly long, its dozens of legs clawing through the sand, mandibles snapping hungrily.

Ryan's heart slammed against his ribs.

"Haha…"A laugh—short, dry, barely a breath—escaped him before he even knew what he was doing. It wasn't humor. It was disbelief.

Elen's frame emitted a sudden burst of static."Creak!!""Danger! Greater lifeform detected!"The centipede moved.

Faster than anything that large had a right to be.With a sickening lurch, it coiled its segmented body, its plates grinding against one another like rusted gears.

Then, it struck—its arched back snapping forward with terrifying precision.

Elen barely had time to react.

Ryan watched in horror as the AI was swallowed whole.

The machine vanished into the centipede's maw, its sleek black frame crushed between rows of glistening fangs before the monstrous thing burrowed back into the dunes.

Gone.

Silence followed.

And then—Ryan was running.His instincts had taken over before his mind could process what had happened.

His feet pounded against the sand, pushing forward with reckless desperation. He didn't look back. He didn't want to.

"Where the hell am I?!—"His voice was lost to the wind as he sprinted toward the looming metallic ruin ahead, the only sanctuary in this godforsaken wasteland

.But the ground trembled again.

The centipede wasn't finished.