Kraklak stood motionless in his exo-suit. The suit's stabilizers hummed quietly beneath the stillness, anchoring him against the planet's surface.

  Kraklak's gaze drifted upward, drawn to the soft shimmer of auroras stretched thin across the sky, dancing threads born from the planet’s faint magnetic field.

  Kordar. That was the name the former inhabitants had given this world. He couldn't recall if it was in honour of a plant species or some ancient event tied to that same flora.

  So much had been erased during the purge. So many small truths were lost. Occasionally, when he studied the withered samples he'd salvaged during the war, a quiet sorrow would creep in.

  Dust whispered around his feet, stirred by the slow hiss of thermal regulators.

  Above, the shuttle that had brought him here climbed steadily into the upper atmosphere, a fading glint against the cold expanse.

  Inside his helmet, Kraklak’s thoughts seethed.

  Ankrae.

  The name burned. The Matriarch of the Etheric Assembly. Ever since their skirmish with the Nethros, she and her kin had cut themselves off from the rest of the fleet, becoming isolationists.

  He hated how easily etheric users could interfere with minds. They could see straight through him. Dismantling his composure like butchers separating flesh from bone. They measured loyalty like merchants weighing a struggling catch.

  His gauntleted fist clenched not from anger, but from the raw unease that curled in his chest.

  They made him feel weak. It didn’t matter that his exo-suit could crush them. Violence had no place in a meeting where terms had already been dictated.

  Smile, he told himself. Or whatever counts as one in their presence. Hide your fear and give them what they want.

  He exhaled, slow and steady, and stepped toward the open door of the prefab structure.

  Time to waltz with monsters.

  As he stepped into the prefab structure, the door hissed shut behind him. A sterilization cycle kicked in—fine jets washing his exo-suit and scrubbing the surrounding air with chemicals.

  A second door slid open, and water surged in, flooding the chamber. He released the suit’s restraints and slipped out, gliding forward into the warmth.

  The temperature caught him off-guard. Their kind preferred the frigid depths, not this unnatural heat. It made his scales prickle with unease.

  Guiding lights pulsed along the corridor walls, leading him past sealed chambers and exposed observation rooms. He drifted by slowly, peering into each one.

  Inside, Grithans floated or lay belly-down, staring ahead in vacant silence they were motionless, trapped in a trance.

  The further he swam, the more of them he saw in the same eerie state.

  He was unaffected, his Nullite field strapped to his chest pulsing softly. The field cut off their etheric influence, keeping his mind sealed, his thoughts his own.

  Without it, he’d be one of them. Just another open book waiting to be rewritten.

  He found their powers grotesque. Perverse. They gave off a psychic itch, a crawling sensation just behind the eyes. The longer they tapped into the etheric, the more that itch sharpened—turning to pain, then to the raw agony of exposure.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Everything that made you laid bare. And if the user was strong enough… they could rewrite you. Piece by piece. Until the person you were was lost to someone else’s design.

  The thought made him shudder.

  He moved deeper, following the lights into a final chamber. They pulsed upward—prompting him to rise.

  He broke the surface slowly.

  This room was only half-submerged, thick with a strange scent. A herbal compound? A mild hallucinogen? Whatever it was, it dulled his instincts. Made his mind too quiet. That frightened him.

  She was already there.

  Ankrae. Matriarch of the Etheric Assembly.

  She floated at the far end adrift like the others, her eyes open but unfocused, dazed and hollow, A screen pulsed beside her.

  REMAIN SILENT. FIVE MINUTES.

  The message blinked again and again.

  So he waited.

  The walls were painted in flowing shades of black, white, indigo, and purple—colours that pulsed subtly with unseen rhythms. It felt less like a room and more like a waiting throat.

  Time passed.

  Then she breathed.

  Her body slid beneath the surface, then rose again—this time with awareness returned to her eyes like a switch being thrown.

  She locked onto him.

  “Kraklak,” she said, her voice smooth, almost curious. “Head Researcher of the Fleet’s Science Division. To what do I owe this visit?”

  He stayed silent for a moment. Ankrae didn’t press him. She calmly waited—the silence was unnerving.

  “I’ve come,” he finally said, “to speak terms… terms of our survival.”

  She didn’t answer. But her gaze drilled into him, cold and unblinking. It made him feel caged like he was already being dissected.

  “And who do you speak for?” she asked. “The Fleet? The Hydrarchs? Aegirarch?”

  A pause.

  “Or is it… yourself?”

  “Myself,” he said, jaw tight. “And your people. I’ve come to ask if you would negotiate our survival—with Nethros.”

  Ankrae’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Master Dauqils was right to name it so. But survival?” She shook her head. “There will be no peace. It won’t let us leave.”

  “What matters is if we survive. That’s what I care about.”Kraklak said, his voice hard.

  She studied him again with that maddening, calculating stare. “I don’t think you understand what we face.”

  Then her tone changed.

  “Shut down your Nullite generator.”

  He flinched, pulling back instinctively. “What?”

  “I won’t ask twice. You pride yourself on logic and structure—I want you to see the logic of what you seek to negotiate with.”

  “I doubt that’s necessary,” he replied, voice brittle. “It’s already out there—slaughtering our forces.”

  “Then you may leave.”

  “Wait… wait,” he muttered, voice low. “Let’s not be hasty.”

  With a sharp breath, he brought up his V.I., his mind hesitating only a second before commanding the Nullite field offline.

  He braced for the itch—for the psychic rasping that always came first. But it didn’t come.

  Nothing did.

  Just silence.

  “Good,” she said softly. “The experience will be… strange and unpleasant. But I’ll do what I can to keep your mind intact.”

  The itch came like a sharp knife through silk—subtle at first, then tearing through him.

  It burrowed into Kraklak’s thoughts, unravelling the tightly wound coils of logic and identity that made him.

  Memories fractured, twisted into colours he couldn’t name, sensations that didn’t belong to a body. Every secret, every buried fear, laid bare under a cold, alien light.

  He was no longer in his body. He floated—adrift in an endless realm of shifting purples and blacks, where air moved like liquid and space hummed with a terrible pressure.

  The very idea of order didn’t exist here. It felt like standing inside thought itself—a realm where energy dreamed.

  All around him were others Grithan—hundreds—maybe thousands. They hung in the void, eyes wide, minds open, communicating in a static storm of psychic noise with no voices. Just intention, pouring out of them like vapour.

  He tried to close his mind, to pull back—but the itch pushed deeper.

  That’s when he saw it.

  Amid the chaos, the only thing with form: a swirling sphere of energy, spinning with impossible geometry, threads of power curling around it like predatory roots. And beyond that sphere—it.

  Nethros.

  It didn’t have a shape. It didn’t need one. A mass of shifting grey flesh, spiralling through shapes and forms—parts of it became mouths, limbs, broken wings, structures that shouldn’t move, faceless heads he recognized from its creations.

  Its multitude of black eyes blinked without rhythm, some staring inward, others at him.

  Beyond it, stretching into infinity, were its Tendrils.

  Hundreds of thousands—maybe millions of them, like umbilical cords. Each twitching mass pulsed along the same rhythm as the larger being. Some pulsed weakly, fading, forgotten. Others throbbed violently.

  Something reached for him—not a limb, not a voice. A pull. A whisper that wasn’t sound.

  Come closer.

  And Kraklak obeyed—just a fraction—before his mind screamed.

  He snapped back into his body with a choking gasp, convulsing as if surfacing from beneath ice. Thoughts swirled in broken loops. He couldn’t remember who he was. Or what he had been. His limbs were foreign. His name—half-forgotten.

  The surrounding room swam, flickering.

  Only one thing was certain, he had seen something that should not be seen.

  And it had seen him.

  “My master,” Ankrae said softly, “for all his wisdom… for all his strength who was leagues beyond me in power, in age. And even he could not barter for our species’ survival.”

  She turned her gaze fully on Kraklak. “So tell me… why do you believe you can?”

  Kraklak was silent, his thoughts still spinning like debris in a storm. The experience clung to him like radiation—warping, burning, making the experience unforgettable.

  “I don’t… I don’t even know what I saw.”

  “You saw Nethros,” she answered. “Still growing.”

  “Growing?” he echoed, disbelief cracking his voice.

  “Yes. What you saw was not its full form. It is still young. A toddler, in your terms.”

  Kraklak let out a bitter, rattled laugh. “If that was a child… I fear what kind of nightmare it becomes when it hits adolescence.”

  For the briefest moment, Ankrae’s mouth twitched into a smile—quickly buried beneath her usual mask.

  “I’ve seen it now,” he said, voice hoarse. “Felt it. But… can it even be reached? Spoken to?”

  “That’s your burden to carry,” she said. “The Assembly has chosen to watch and endure. We will not provoke it. Not again.”

  He stared past her, eyes unfocused, haunted by phantom images dancing at the edge of his vision. They would never leave him—not in sleep, not in silence.

  “… Would you come with me?” he asked. “To Imreth.”

  Ankrae blinked. The mask slipped. Only for a moment. “You want me to walk willingly into a war zone?”

  “If there’s a chance to speak with Nethros,” Kraklak said, steadying himself, “then I must try. Face to face. No more half-measures. If we are to survive… I have to stand before it.”

  She didn’t reply immediately. The silence between them stretched, thick and uneasy.

  “Then,” she said finally, “may the abyss remember your name.”