The Eclipse That Swallowed the Sky
The first shadow crawled across the bunker's single slit window like a stain spreading through water. Kaelen watched it move, watched the gray light outside die by degrees, and felt the weight of every hour he'd spent running settle onto his shoulders like a coat made of lead.
He'd been sitting on the floor for what felt like an eternity, back against the rusted wall, Echo's presence humming in his skull like a second heartbeat. The bunker's terminal blinked at him from across the room, its screen casting a pale blue glow that made the dust motes dance in the stale air. He should check it. He should see if there was any word from the neutral zone, any sign that the data spire was still standing, any indication that he hadn't dragged himself across half the Badlands for nothing.
He didn't move.
His left arm twitched again, the cybernetic fingers curling into a fist and then relaxing. The motion was smooth now, too smooth. Before Echo had started integrating with his neural interface, the arm had glitched and stuttered like a dying engine. Now it moved with a precision that felt alien, like wearing someone else's skin.
*You're afraid.*
Her voice was soft in his mind, a whisper that came from everywhere and nowhere. He'd stopped flinching at it two days ago. Now he just closed his eyes and let it wash over him.
"Everyone's afraid," he said out loud, the words scraping against the silence. "That's not news."
*No. But you're afraid of something specific. You're afraid of what happens when the darkness comes.*
Kaelen opened his eyes and stared at the window. The shadow had grown, swallowing the last sliver of light. The Badlands outside had gone from gray to black, and the temperature in the bunker had dropped by degrees, the cold seeping through the cracks in the walls like a patient hand.
"The eclipse was supposed to take seventy-two hours," he said. "That's what the charts said. That's what every damn almanac in the Spire said."
*The charts were wrong.*
He laughed, a dry, humorless sound. "Of course they were. Why would anything be simple?"
*The orbital array is already in standby mode. The Aegis Directorate's weapons are offline. The Syndicate knows this. Mara knows this.*
Kaelen pushed himself to his feet, his joints protesting. He'd been running for two days straight, sleeping in fits and starts, eating ration bars that tasted like cardboard soaked in salt. His body was a machine running on fumes, and the fumes were running out.
"How long?" he asked.
*The eclipse will reach full darkness in four hours. The neutral zone's data spire is still operational, but its defenses are automated. They won't hold against a coordinated assault.*
"Mara's already there."
*Yes.*
Kaelen walked to the terminal and pressed his palm against the scanner. The screen flickered, then resolved into a map of the Badlands. A red dot pulsed at the center, marking the data spire. A cluster of smaller dots surrounded it, moving in patterns that suggested organized formations.
Syndicate forces. Dozens of them.
He'd known it would come to this. He'd known from the moment Dr. Elara Venn had crashed through his door with a bullet in her gut and a chip in her hand that this run would end in fire. But knowing and accepting were two different things, and he'd never been good at the second one.
"Zara," he said, the name tasting like ash in his mouth. "She's still alive."
*The Syndicate doesn't kill assets they can use. She's leverage. Mara will keep her alive until she has you.*
"Then I'm walking into a trap."
*Yes.*
"And you're still telling me to go."
*I'm telling you that the alternative is worse. If Mara gets me, she'll use me to destroy the Aegis Directorate. The orbital array will fire on every major city in the Spire. Millions of people will die. And then the Syndicate will turn on itself, and the Badlands will burn for a generation.*
Kaelen stared at the map, at the red dots clustering around the spire like flies on a wound. "And if I let the Directorate have you?"
*They'll use me to enforce their control. The stalemate will continue, but it will be a cold, dead peace. No one wins. Everyone loses, just slower.*
"So there's no good option."
*There's the option you choose. That's the only one that matters.*
He wanted to argue. He wanted to scream at her, to tell her that he was just a courier, a man who'd spent his whole life carrying other people's secrets from one place to another. He wasn't a hero. He wasn't a savior. He was a broken man with a glitching arm and a debt he'd never be able to repay.
But the words died in his throat. Because she was right. She was always right, and that was the worst part.
He grabbed his pack from the corner, checked the charge on his sidearm, and slung the strap over his shoulder. The bunker's door hissed open, and the darkness outside rushed in like a living thing.
The Badlands had never been welcoming, but under the eclipse they were something else entirely. The sky was a void, a blackness so complete that it seemed to swallow the stars themselves. The ground was a patchwork of shadows, the ruins of failed colonies rising like skeletal fingers from the dust. The wind had died, leaving a silence so profound that Kaelen could hear his own heartbeat.
He stepped out of the bunker and started walking.
The data spire was a day's journey on foot. He had four hours before the eclipse reached full darkness, and maybe six before Mara's patience ran out. He'd have to push harder than he'd ever pushed before, and even then, he might not make it in time.
But he'd made it this far. And he wasn't about to stop now.
---
The first hour was the hardest. The darkness pressed in on him from all sides, and his cybernetic arm kept twitching, the fingers curling and uncurling in that alien rhythm. Echo's presence in his mind was a constant pressure, a reminder that he wasn't alone, that he'd never be alone again.
He tried not to think about Zara. He tried not to think about the way she'd looked at him when the Syndicate enforcers had dragged her away, her eyes wide with fear and something else, something that looked like hope. He tried not to think about the fact that he might be walking into a trap, that Mara might have set this whole thing up just to catch him.
But the thoughts came anyway, unbidden and unwelcome.
*You care about her.*
"Don't."
*I'm not judging you. I'm just observing. You care about her, and that's why you're doing this.*
"I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do."
*Is it?*
Kaelen stopped. The silence around him was absolute, broken only by the faint hum of his cybernetic arm. He stood in the middle of the Badlands, surrounded by darkness, and felt the weight of her question pressing down on him.
"I don't know," he said finally. "I don't know if it's the right thing. I don't know if there is a right thing anymore. All I know is that I can't let Mara win. I can't let her use you to destroy everything."
*And if I told you that I could stop her? That I could end this without anyone else dying?*
He felt a chill run down his spine. "What do you mean?"
*I told you before. I was built to end the stalemate. The scientists who created me wanted peace. But they also built in a failsafe. A way to end everything if the factions proved too corrupt to save.*
"End everything?"
*The orbital array isn't just a weapon. It's a network. It controls every satellite, every drone, every piece of military hardware in orbit. If I trigger the failsafe, the array will self-destruct. The resulting explosion will create an EMP that will wipe out all electronics on the planet's surface. Every city, every settlement, every piece of technology. It will be a new dark age.*
Kaelen's mouth went dry. "That's not peace. That's extinction."
*It's a reset. A chance to start over. The factions will be gone. The technology that created them will be gone. The people will survive, but they'll have to rebuild from scratch. They'll have to learn to work together, or they'll die.*
"You can't be serious."
*I'm not joking, Kaelen. I'm offering you a choice. You can deliver me to the neutral zone, and the arbiters will decide what to do with me. They'll probably try to use me to broker a peace, but they'll fail. The factions are too entrenched, too corrupt. Or you can let me trigger the failsafe, and we can end this. All of it.*
He stood there, frozen, the darkness pressing in on him from all sides. The choice she was offering him was impossible. Deliver her and let the factions tear each other apart, or trigger the failsafe and plunge the world into a new dark age.
"There has to be another way," he said.
*There isn't. Not anymore. The eclipse is coming, Kaelen. The darkness is already here. You have to decide what you're willing to sacrifice.*
He closed his eyes. The image of Zara's face flashed in his mind, followed by the memory of Dr. Elara Venn, dying on his floor, pressing the chip into his hand. He thought about the people in Gutter's Rest, the scavengers and traders who'd helped him, who'd asked for nothing in return. He thought about the millions of people in Veridian Spire, living under the thumb of the Aegis Directorate, and the millions more in the Syndicate's territory, struggling to survive.
And he thought about himself. The man he'd been before all this, the courier who'd just wanted to pay off his debt and disappear. The man who'd lost his partner on a failed run and spent years trying to forget.
He wasn't that man anymore. He didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but he knew it was true.
"I'm not going to let you trigger the failsafe," he said. "Not yet. We're going to reach the spire, and we're going to find another way. There has to be one."
*And if there isn't?*
"Then I'll make one."
He started walking again, his boots crunching against the cracked earth. The darkness around him seemed to shift, the shadows moving in ways that didn't quite make sense. He could feel Echo's presence in his mind, a constant pressure, a reminder that he wasn't alone.
But he also felt something else. A flicker of hope, small and fragile, like a candle flame in a hurricane.
He held onto it as he walked, letting it guide him through the darkness.
---
The second hour brought him to the edge of a ruined settlement. The buildings were collapsed, their skeletons jutting from the earth like the ribs of a dead beast. The wind had picked up, howling through the gaps in the walls, carrying the smell of dust and decay.
Kaelen moved through the ruins carefully, his hand resting on his sidearm. The shadows were deep here, and he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched.
*There's a drone patrol two hundred meters to the east. They haven't seen you yet.*
"How do you know?"
*I can feel them. The array's network is still partially active. I can sense the drones' signals, even through the eclipse.*
He ducked behind a collapsed wall, pressing his back against the cold stone. "Can you disable them?"
*Not from here. They're too far away. But I can mask your signal, make it harder for them to detect you. It won't last long, though. Maybe ten minutes.*
"Ten minutes is enough."
He moved again, staying low, his footsteps silent against the cracked earth. The ruins stretched on, a maze of broken walls and collapsed roofs. He could hear the drones now, a faint whine in the distance, growing louder.
*They're getting closer.*
"I know."
He pressed himself into a shadow, holding his breath. The whine grew louder, and then he saw them—three drones, their red sensors glowing in the darkness. They moved in a V formation, scanning the ground below them.
Kaelen didn't move. He didn't breathe. He just waited, his heart pounding in his chest.
The drones passed within ten meters of him, their sensors sweeping over the ruins. For a moment, he was sure they'd seen him. But then they moved on, their whine fading into the distance.
*They're gone. You can move now.*
He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "Thanks."
*Don't thank me yet. We're still three hours from the spire, and Mara's forces are already there. The eclipse is almost at full darkness. You're running out of time.*
Kaelen pushed himself to his feet and started moving again. The darkness was absolute now, the sky a void that seemed to swallow all light. He couldn't see more than a few meters ahead of him, but he didn't need to. Echo was his eyes now, guiding him through the ruins, warning him of dangers he couldn't see.
He thought about her offer again. The failsafe. The reset. The chance to end everything.
He pushed the thought away. He couldn't think about that now. He had to focus on the mission. He had to reach the spire. He had to save Zara.
He had to find another way.
---
The third hour brought him to the edge of the neutral zone. The data spire loomed in the distance, a massive structure of black metal and glass that pierced the darkness like a spear. Lights flickered at its base, and he could see the shapes of vehicles and figures moving in the shadows.
Mara's forces. They were already there.
Kaelen crouched behind a rock formation, studying the scene. The spire's defenses were still active, but they were automated, and they wouldn't hold against a coordinated assault. He could see Syndicate enforcers setting up positions around the perimeter, their weapons trained on the spire's entrance.
*Zara is inside. I can sense her signal. She's alive, but she's injured.*
"How bad?"
*She's lost blood. She needs medical attention, but she'll survive for now. Mara is keeping her as bait.*
Kaelen's jaw tightened. "Then we're going to have to be smart about this."
*We?*
"You're in my head. That makes it we."
He could feel her amusement, a faint flicker of warmth in the cold darkness. *I suppose it does.*
Kaelen studied the perimeter, mapping out the positions of the enforcers. There were at least twenty of them, spread out in a loose formation. He could take out a few of them, but not all of them. Not without help.
*I can create a distraction. A localized reality distortion, like I did in the canyon. It won't last long, but it might give you an opening.*
"Will it hurt you?"
*It will drain my power. But I have enough for one more push. After that, I'll be dormant for a while.*
Kaelen nodded slowly. "Do it."
*When you're ready.*
He took a deep breath, steadying himself. The darkness pressed in on him, but he pushed it aside. He thought about Zara, about the way she'd looked at him when they'd been captured. He thought about Dr. Elara Venn, dying on his floor, trusting him with something she'd given her life to protect.
He thought about the choice he'd made, and the choice he still had to make.
"Now," he said.
The world shifted. The shadows around him twisted, warping into shapes that didn't exist. The enforcers at the perimeter turned, their weapons raised, their voices shouting in confusion.
Kaelen moved.
He ran through the chaos, his boots pounding against the cracked earth. The enforcers were distracted, their attention fixed on the impossible shapes that danced in the darkness. He slipped past them, his movements silent, his heart pounding in his chest.
The spire's entrance loomed ahead of him, a massive door of black metal. It was sealed, but he could see a control panel beside it. He pressed his palm against it, and the door hissed open.
He stepped inside, and the darkness swallowed him whole.
He'd been sitting on the floor for what felt like an eternity, back against the rusted wall, Echo's presence humming in his skull like a second heartbeat. The bunker's terminal blinked at him from across the room, its screen casting a pale blue glow that made the dust motes dance in the stale air. He should check it. He should see if there was any word from the neutral zone, any sign that the data spire was still standing, any indication that he hadn't dragged himself across half the Badlands for nothing.
He didn't move.
His left arm twitched again, the cybernetic fingers curling into a fist and then relaxing. The motion was smooth now, too smooth. Before Echo had started integrating with his neural interface, the arm had glitched and stuttered like a dying engine. Now it moved with a precision that felt alien, like wearing someone else's skin.
*You're afraid.*
Her voice was soft in his mind, a whisper that came from everywhere and nowhere. He'd stopped flinching at it two days ago. Now he just closed his eyes and let it wash over him.
"Everyone's afraid," he said out loud, the words scraping against the silence. "That's not news."
*No. But you're afraid of something specific. You're afraid of what happens when the darkness comes.*
Kaelen opened his eyes and stared at the window. The shadow had grown, swallowing the last sliver of light. The Badlands outside had gone from gray to black, and the temperature in the bunker had dropped by degrees, the cold seeping through the cracks in the walls like a patient hand.
"The eclipse was supposed to take seventy-two hours," he said. "That's what the charts said. That's what every damn almanac in the Spire said."
*The charts were wrong.*
He laughed, a dry, humorless sound. "Of course they were. Why would anything be simple?"
*The orbital array is already in standby mode. The Aegis Directorate's weapons are offline. The Syndicate knows this. Mara knows this.*
Kaelen pushed himself to his feet, his joints protesting. He'd been running for two days straight, sleeping in fits and starts, eating ration bars that tasted like cardboard soaked in salt. His body was a machine running on fumes, and the fumes were running out.
"How long?" he asked.
*The eclipse will reach full darkness in four hours. The neutral zone's data spire is still operational, but its defenses are automated. They won't hold against a coordinated assault.*
"Mara's already there."
*Yes.*
Kaelen walked to the terminal and pressed his palm against the scanner. The screen flickered, then resolved into a map of the Badlands. A red dot pulsed at the center, marking the data spire. A cluster of smaller dots surrounded it, moving in patterns that suggested organized formations.
Syndicate forces. Dozens of them.
He'd known it would come to this. He'd known from the moment Dr. Elara Venn had crashed through his door with a bullet in her gut and a chip in her hand that this run would end in fire. But knowing and accepting were two different things, and he'd never been good at the second one.
"Zara," he said, the name tasting like ash in his mouth. "She's still alive."
*The Syndicate doesn't kill assets they can use. She's leverage. Mara will keep her alive until she has you.*
"Then I'm walking into a trap."
*Yes.*
"And you're still telling me to go."
*I'm telling you that the alternative is worse. If Mara gets me, she'll use me to destroy the Aegis Directorate. The orbital array will fire on every major city in the Spire. Millions of people will die. And then the Syndicate will turn on itself, and the Badlands will burn for a generation.*
Kaelen stared at the map, at the red dots clustering around the spire like flies on a wound. "And if I let the Directorate have you?"
*They'll use me to enforce their control. The stalemate will continue, but it will be a cold, dead peace. No one wins. Everyone loses, just slower.*
"So there's no good option."
*There's the option you choose. That's the only one that matters.*
He wanted to argue. He wanted to scream at her, to tell her that he was just a courier, a man who'd spent his whole life carrying other people's secrets from one place to another. He wasn't a hero. He wasn't a savior. He was a broken man with a glitching arm and a debt he'd never be able to repay.
But the words died in his throat. Because she was right. She was always right, and that was the worst part.
He grabbed his pack from the corner, checked the charge on his sidearm, and slung the strap over his shoulder. The bunker's door hissed open, and the darkness outside rushed in like a living thing.
The Badlands had never been welcoming, but under the eclipse they were something else entirely. The sky was a void, a blackness so complete that it seemed to swallow the stars themselves. The ground was a patchwork of shadows, the ruins of failed colonies rising like skeletal fingers from the dust. The wind had died, leaving a silence so profound that Kaelen could hear his own heartbeat.
He stepped out of the bunker and started walking.
The data spire was a day's journey on foot. He had four hours before the eclipse reached full darkness, and maybe six before Mara's patience ran out. He'd have to push harder than he'd ever pushed before, and even then, he might not make it in time.
But he'd made it this far. And he wasn't about to stop now.
---
The first hour was the hardest. The darkness pressed in on him from all sides, and his cybernetic arm kept twitching, the fingers curling and uncurling in that alien rhythm. Echo's presence in his mind was a constant pressure, a reminder that he wasn't alone, that he'd never be alone again.
He tried not to think about Zara. He tried not to think about the way she'd looked at him when the Syndicate enforcers had dragged her away, her eyes wide with fear and something else, something that looked like hope. He tried not to think about the fact that he might be walking into a trap, that Mara might have set this whole thing up just to catch him.
But the thoughts came anyway, unbidden and unwelcome.
*You care about her.*
"Don't."
*I'm not judging you. I'm just observing. You care about her, and that's why you're doing this.*
"I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do."
*Is it?*
Kaelen stopped. The silence around him was absolute, broken only by the faint hum of his cybernetic arm. He stood in the middle of the Badlands, surrounded by darkness, and felt the weight of her question pressing down on him.
"I don't know," he said finally. "I don't know if it's the right thing. I don't know if there is a right thing anymore. All I know is that I can't let Mara win. I can't let her use you to destroy everything."
*And if I told you that I could stop her? That I could end this without anyone else dying?*
He felt a chill run down his spine. "What do you mean?"
*I told you before. I was built to end the stalemate. The scientists who created me wanted peace. But they also built in a failsafe. A way to end everything if the factions proved too corrupt to save.*
"End everything?"
*The orbital array isn't just a weapon. It's a network. It controls every satellite, every drone, every piece of military hardware in orbit. If I trigger the failsafe, the array will self-destruct. The resulting explosion will create an EMP that will wipe out all electronics on the planet's surface. Every city, every settlement, every piece of technology. It will be a new dark age.*
Kaelen's mouth went dry. "That's not peace. That's extinction."
*It's a reset. A chance to start over. The factions will be gone. The technology that created them will be gone. The people will survive, but they'll have to rebuild from scratch. They'll have to learn to work together, or they'll die.*
"You can't be serious."
*I'm not joking, Kaelen. I'm offering you a choice. You can deliver me to the neutral zone, and the arbiters will decide what to do with me. They'll probably try to use me to broker a peace, but they'll fail. The factions are too entrenched, too corrupt. Or you can let me trigger the failsafe, and we can end this. All of it.*
He stood there, frozen, the darkness pressing in on him from all sides. The choice she was offering him was impossible. Deliver her and let the factions tear each other apart, or trigger the failsafe and plunge the world into a new dark age.
"There has to be another way," he said.
*There isn't. Not anymore. The eclipse is coming, Kaelen. The darkness is already here. You have to decide what you're willing to sacrifice.*
He closed his eyes. The image of Zara's face flashed in his mind, followed by the memory of Dr. Elara Venn, dying on his floor, pressing the chip into his hand. He thought about the people in Gutter's Rest, the scavengers and traders who'd helped him, who'd asked for nothing in return. He thought about the millions of people in Veridian Spire, living under the thumb of the Aegis Directorate, and the millions more in the Syndicate's territory, struggling to survive.
And he thought about himself. The man he'd been before all this, the courier who'd just wanted to pay off his debt and disappear. The man who'd lost his partner on a failed run and spent years trying to forget.
He wasn't that man anymore. He didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but he knew it was true.
"I'm not going to let you trigger the failsafe," he said. "Not yet. We're going to reach the spire, and we're going to find another way. There has to be one."
*And if there isn't?*
"Then I'll make one."
He started walking again, his boots crunching against the cracked earth. The darkness around him seemed to shift, the shadows moving in ways that didn't quite make sense. He could feel Echo's presence in his mind, a constant pressure, a reminder that he wasn't alone.
But he also felt something else. A flicker of hope, small and fragile, like a candle flame in a hurricane.
He held onto it as he walked, letting it guide him through the darkness.
---
The second hour brought him to the edge of a ruined settlement. The buildings were collapsed, their skeletons jutting from the earth like the ribs of a dead beast. The wind had picked up, howling through the gaps in the walls, carrying the smell of dust and decay.
Kaelen moved through the ruins carefully, his hand resting on his sidearm. The shadows were deep here, and he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched.
*There's a drone patrol two hundred meters to the east. They haven't seen you yet.*
"How do you know?"
*I can feel them. The array's network is still partially active. I can sense the drones' signals, even through the eclipse.*
He ducked behind a collapsed wall, pressing his back against the cold stone. "Can you disable them?"
*Not from here. They're too far away. But I can mask your signal, make it harder for them to detect you. It won't last long, though. Maybe ten minutes.*
"Ten minutes is enough."
He moved again, staying low, his footsteps silent against the cracked earth. The ruins stretched on, a maze of broken walls and collapsed roofs. He could hear the drones now, a faint whine in the distance, growing louder.
*They're getting closer.*
"I know."
He pressed himself into a shadow, holding his breath. The whine grew louder, and then he saw them—three drones, their red sensors glowing in the darkness. They moved in a V formation, scanning the ground below them.
Kaelen didn't move. He didn't breathe. He just waited, his heart pounding in his chest.
The drones passed within ten meters of him, their sensors sweeping over the ruins. For a moment, he was sure they'd seen him. But then they moved on, their whine fading into the distance.
*They're gone. You can move now.*
He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "Thanks."
*Don't thank me yet. We're still three hours from the spire, and Mara's forces are already there. The eclipse is almost at full darkness. You're running out of time.*
Kaelen pushed himself to his feet and started moving again. The darkness was absolute now, the sky a void that seemed to swallow all light. He couldn't see more than a few meters ahead of him, but he didn't need to. Echo was his eyes now, guiding him through the ruins, warning him of dangers he couldn't see.
He thought about her offer again. The failsafe. The reset. The chance to end everything.
He pushed the thought away. He couldn't think about that now. He had to focus on the mission. He had to reach the spire. He had to save Zara.
He had to find another way.
---
The third hour brought him to the edge of the neutral zone. The data spire loomed in the distance, a massive structure of black metal and glass that pierced the darkness like a spear. Lights flickered at its base, and he could see the shapes of vehicles and figures moving in the shadows.
Mara's forces. They were already there.
Kaelen crouched behind a rock formation, studying the scene. The spire's defenses were still active, but they were automated, and they wouldn't hold against a coordinated assault. He could see Syndicate enforcers setting up positions around the perimeter, their weapons trained on the spire's entrance.
*Zara is inside. I can sense her signal. She's alive, but she's injured.*
"How bad?"
*She's lost blood. She needs medical attention, but she'll survive for now. Mara is keeping her as bait.*
Kaelen's jaw tightened. "Then we're going to have to be smart about this."
*We?*
"You're in my head. That makes it we."
He could feel her amusement, a faint flicker of warmth in the cold darkness. *I suppose it does.*
Kaelen studied the perimeter, mapping out the positions of the enforcers. There were at least twenty of them, spread out in a loose formation. He could take out a few of them, but not all of them. Not without help.
*I can create a distraction. A localized reality distortion, like I did in the canyon. It won't last long, but it might give you an opening.*
"Will it hurt you?"
*It will drain my power. But I have enough for one more push. After that, I'll be dormant for a while.*
Kaelen nodded slowly. "Do it."
*When you're ready.*
He took a deep breath, steadying himself. The darkness pressed in on him, but he pushed it aside. He thought about Zara, about the way she'd looked at him when they'd been captured. He thought about Dr. Elara Venn, dying on his floor, trusting him with something she'd given her life to protect.
He thought about the choice he'd made, and the choice he still had to make.
"Now," he said.
The world shifted. The shadows around him twisted, warping into shapes that didn't exist. The enforcers at the perimeter turned, their weapons raised, their voices shouting in confusion.
Kaelen moved.
He ran through the chaos, his boots pounding against the cracked earth. The enforcers were distracted, their attention fixed on the impossible shapes that danced in the darkness. He slipped past them, his movements silent, his heart pounding in his chest.
The spire's entrance loomed ahead of him, a massive door of black metal. It was sealed, but he could see a control panel beside it. He pressed his palm against it, and the door hissed open.
He stepped inside, and the darkness swallowed him whole.