The Forgotten Vault
The *Last Bastion* drifted through a graveyard of dead satellites, their carcasses orbiting a nameless star gone cold. Syra's fingers hovered over the Archives' holographic interface, her remaining eye narrowed at a flickering sigil—**Kael's Mark**, a relic of the old Guardians.
"It's a distress signal," she said, her voice stripped of its former warmth. "Encrypted in First Ones' code. But it's… *old*. Centuries before the Maw Wars."
Lira leaned against the console, her Leviathan-forged prosthetic claw clicking impatiently. "Let me guess: 'Abandon hope, all ye who enter here'?"
Ignar's magma-scarred hands tightened on the helm. "Coordinates match a derelict station in the **Silent Expanse**. Kael's last known outpost."
Aeloria materialized like a shadow given form, her storm-eyes reflecting the sigil's pulse. **"A tomb, more like. The First Ones buried their failures there."**
Syra stood abruptly, her chair clattering. "We're going."
---
The station was a scar on reality—a jagged spire of black alloy, its surface etched with containment runes that glowed blood-red. As the Bastion docked, the airlock groaned like a wounded beast.
"Charming," Lira muttered, her prosthetic arm emitting a low, reactive hum. "Feels like it's *licking* me."
Inside, the walls breathed. Not metaphorically—ribbed organic metal expanded and contracted, exhaling spores that shimmered with Kael's Mark. Ignar incinerated a cluster, his magma sputtering in the damp air. "Stay sharp. This place reeks of dead gods."
Syra pressed a hand to the wall, glyphs flaring under her touch. "He was studying the Godsbane here. Before it had a name."
A hologram flickered—**Kael**, younger than the legends, his face gaunt under the weight of horrors.
*"If you're seeing this, I've failed. The artifact we recovered… it's not a weapon. It's a* ***cage***. And what's inside—*
The feed dissolved into static.
---
The deeper they ventured, the more the station resisted. Hallways inverted. Gravity died and resurrected. Lira's prosthetic arm twitched violently, its Leviathan steel bending toward something unseen.
"It's here," she hissed. "The thing Kael trapped."
They found it in the core—a **prism** of fractured light suspended over an altar of bone. The air vibrated with a frequency that made Syra's teeth bleed.
Aeloria's storm-form crackled. **"Not a cage. A* ***mirror***. It reflects the worst of what touches it."**
Ignar stepped closer, magma dripping. "Then why's it calling us?"
The prism *screamed*.
---
The station came alive. Walls peeled back, revealing membranes pulsing with trapped light. Kael's hologram reappeared, warped and frenzied.
*"You shouldn't have come! It learns, adapts—*
Lira's prosthetic lashed out, shattering the hologram. "We're not here for a history lesson!"
Syra staggered as the Archive's voice surged back, clawing through her mind. *"The prism is a failsafe. Kael tried to replicate the Godsbane—to control it. He* ***fed*** *it Guardians."*
The floor split. Below lay a pit of liquid shadow, where skeletal figures clawed at the walls—echoes of Kael's experiments, their mouths stitched shut with First Ones' runes.
Aeloria's storm-eyes narrowed. **"He didn't trap the Godsbane here. He* ***bred*** *it."**
---
The prism descended, its light fracturing into a thousand shards. Each reflected a member of the crew—not as they were, but as they *feared*:
- **Syra**, a hollow puppet of the Archive, her mind erased.
- **Ignar**, a statue of cooling magma, forever immobilized.
- **Lira**, a void-consumed abomination, throne-arm devouring her whole.
- **Aeloria**, a storm with no eye, devouring galaxies in her hunger.
The real Lira laughed, raw and jagged. "Nice try. I've seen worse in the mirror."
She slammed her prosthetic into the prism.
The station shuddered. The pit's shadows surged, binding them.
---
Kael's voice boomed, a fusion of pride and madness. *"You think you're the first to defy entropy? I wore that crown. It* ***burns***."
Syra's neural tendrils stabbed into the prism. "You're not Kael. You're his *regret*."
The prism shattered. The shadows recoiled, then imploded, dragging the station into a singularity.
The Bastion tore free, its hull screaming. In the cargo hold, the Godsbane shard glowed—now fused with prism shrapnel, its whispers harmonizing with Kael's final words:
*"You'll join me soon."*
---
The *Last Bastion* fled, its crew marked by new scars:
- **Syra** clutched a prism shard, its edges etching First Ones' truths into her palm.
- **Lira's** prosthetic arm now bore Kael's Mark, its hum a constant, taunting dirge.
- **Ignar's** magma had cooled to volcanic glass—a brittle shield.
- **Aeloria** lingered at the storm's edge, her hunger sharper, quieter.
And in the dark, the fused shard pulsed—a hybrid horror, waiting to crown its new king.
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