Confusion came first, and it did not come alone.
It layered over itself, thought after thought refusing to settle, each one contradicting the last until nothing felt certain. I lay on my back, staring upward, trying to understand what I was looking at and failing to connect it to where I had just been.
The cold of the ground pressed through my clothes, the wind scraped lightly across my face, and for several seconds I could not decide whether I was awake or still somewhere inside that place beneath the mine.
My breathing steadied slowly as memory forced its way back in sequence, but it did not bring clarity with it. The corridor, the darkness, the men dying too quickly to react, the chamber, the statues, and the bracelet, everything overlapped without forming a complete picture.
A more immediate thought took hold instead, simple and unsettling in a way I could not ignore:
I might have been infected.
Whatever that place was, whatever that thing had done when it latched onto me, it did not feel natural, and the idea that I had carried something back with me settled heavily in my chest.
I pushed myself up, slower than I intended, my body responding with a dull resistance that suggested I had been unconscious longer than I thought, for the second time in hopefully a day.
My right arm came into view, and I immediately focused on my wrist.
The tattoo was still there, but it was different now. The dark pattern that had once looked impossibly sharp had faded slightly into my skin, its edges less pronounced, its presence more subtle, as though it had chosen to hide rather than disappear.
When I looked closely, I could still see it shifting faintly beneath the surface, like something moving just out of sight, but from a distance it no longer stood out the way it had before.
I flexed my fingers slowly, watching for any sign of pain or resistance, but nothing obvious followed. That did not make it better. It made it worse, because it meant whatever had happened was not something I could immediately understand or control.
A sudden spike of pain cut through my head without warning, sharp enough to force my eyes shut. It felt like something pressing inward, not violently this time but insistently, as if something was trying to settle into place. I exhaled through clenched teeth, waiting for it to pass, and when it did, it left behind a dull pressure rather than the overwhelming force from before. I opened my eyes again, more carefully this time, and forced myself to focus on my surroundings.
That was when I realized something was wrong.
The air was familiar. The texture of the ground was familiar. The wind carried the same dry bite I had known for years. There was no smooth surface, no engineered structure, no unnatural silence pressing against my thoughts.
I was not inside the cavern anymore.
I was back on Skorrag, on the surface!!
The realization settled slowly, not because it was difficult to understand, but because it did not make sense. The night sky stretched above, dim and choked by dust, with only faint traces of distant stars visible through the haze. The wind moved in low currents across the surface, dragging fine particles along with it. The cold had already set in, seeping through everything without effort.
I turned my head, and the confusion deepened.
Voices surrounded me, low and uncertain, overlapping in ways that mirrored my own thoughts. I pushed myself fully upright and looked around, taking in the scene piece by piece. The members of the expedition were scattered across the area, each one reacting differently but all carrying the same underlying disorientation. Some stood still, scanning the horizon as if expecting it to shift again, while others moved in short, restless patterns, trying to anchor themselves to something real.
Heimlock stood a short distance away, his posture rigid, his expression controlled but tense, as if he was forcing himself to remain steady while everything around him refused to follow logic. The strange man was nearby as well, his stance unchanged, his attention moving carefully from one person to another, observing rather than reacting.
We had not walked out of the mine.
We had not climbed back up.
We had simply… appeared.
The word that came to mind was one I barely trusted: teleportation. I had heard of advanced travel systems used by large ships, methods of crossing vast distances through controlled means, but nothing like this. Nothing that moved people instantly from one place to another without any visible mechanism. Whatever had happened to us did not belong to anything I understood.
A voice cut through the confusion, human this time, as someone called out, asking if everyone was accounted for, but the question did not receive a clear answer. It did not need one. The absence was obvious. The men who had entered the structure with me were not here, and the silence that followed that realization settled heavily over the group.
I shifted my focus, trying to steady my thoughts, and that was when something else drew my attention. John Doe stood a short distance away, his mechanical arm hanging at his side, his posture unchanged, his expression unreadable as always. For a brief moment, something appeared above him—something I should not have been able to see.
It resembled a transparent projection, faint but precise, hovering just above his position as if anchored to him.
Human | Level 10 | Psi: 0
I blinked, and it vanished instantly.
I frowned, unsure if I had imagined it, then focused again, deliberately this time. When I looked at another man nearby, the same kind of projection appeared, smaller but just as clear.
Human | Level 3 | Psi: 0
It disappeared as soon as my focus shifted away.
I tested it again, looking from one person to another, and each time the same pattern repeated, the values changing but the format remaining consistent. The highest I saw, aside from John Doe, was 3, though I had no idea what the number represented. The consistency of it made one thing clear: this was not random.
Something had changed in how I was seeing the world.
And it was tied to me.
I became aware of movement in front of me and looked up to see Heimlock approaching, the strange man walking beside him. They stopped a short distance away, both of them studying me, though in different ways. Heimlock's expression carried urgency, while the other man's attention felt sharper, more analytical.
"Where are the others that went in with you?" Heimlock asked, his voice controlled but edged with tension.
I took a moment before answering, not because I was unsure, but because I did not know how to explain what I had seen.
"They're dead," I said finally, then added after a brief pause, "or at least I think they are."
The words did not settle well with the group, and a low murmur spread through those close enough to hear. The strange man did not react the same way. His gaze remained fixed on me, studying my face, my posture, and then briefly my hands, as if checking for something specific.
"How?" he asked.
I exhaled slowly, forcing the memory into something I could describe.
"Something inside," I said. "Something fast. I didn't see it properly."
He continued to watch me for a moment longer, then straightened slightly, as if reaching a conclusion. Without speaking further, he reached into his gear and removed a compact device, angular and clearly not something used by ordinary miners.
A beacon.
He activated it and brought it to his mouth. "Confirmed," he said. "Location secured. Extraction required." He paused, listening, then added in a lower tone, "We found something."
The wind shifted again, but this time the change did not feel natural. A low hum began to build in the distance, subtle at first but growing steadily, cutting through the usual sounds of the surface. One by one, heads turned upward as the sky above began to distort, the dust layers parting under pressure from something descending through the atmosphere.
A glow formed high above, bright enough to cut through the haze, growing larger as it approached. The shape of it became clearer as it descended, resolving into something unmistakable.
A D-class frigate.
The shape resolved with terrifying clarity as it descended through the dust-laden sky, its structure angular and deliberate, built not for elegance but for dominance and endurance. The hull was plated in layered alloys that carried a dull metallic sheen beneath the red haze, each segment interlocked with visible seams that suggested modular reinforcement rather than aesthetic design. Massive engine arrays burned at its rear, emitting a controlled, deep-toned hum that vibrated through the ground more than it echoed through the air, while smaller stabilization thrusters adjusted its descent with precise, almost surgical movements.
The scale of it was overwhelming, easily dwarfing anything constructed on Skorrag, its underside lined with recessed compartments, weapon ports, and sensor arrays that scanned the terrain below in sweeping motions. Faint strips of light ran along its body, not decorative but functional, marking access points and structural divisions, while the forward section tapered into a reinforced command structure that looked capable of withstanding both atmospheric pressure and direct combat.
This was not a transport vessel.
The military was here, somehow, on Skorrag.