"When the sky broke, we did not rise, we were hurled upward. The land cracked open and spilled its flesh into the clouds, and the gods of iron whispered in static tongues. We clung to their words, built our homes atop their backs, and called the storm a cradle. But nothing that is birthed from agony ever truly loves its child." - Scroll of Drifted Flame, 3rd Sigil Cycle

  There was no motion in the chamber but the slow blink of a failing light. Metal groaned above the silence, creaking with age or pressure. A thin haze of vapor drifted near the floor, rising from split coolant lines and a dozen unidentifiable fluids pooling on the grated floor. Pipes hissed, somewhere far off. Wires hung from a nearby metal giant like veins torn from the body of something long past its prime. The mech bay should've been loud, the emergency lights were flashing. Instead, it looked like a gruesome murder scene filled with the blood of man and machine alike, and in the middle of it, Riven Holt lay still.

  His back was soaked through, pressed to the slats of a maintenance hatch. His coat, heavy with liquid, some of it blood, clung to him like second skin. The rest of it seeped down from his ribs, his arm, the edge of his scalp where something sharp had grazed. A smear trailed down toward his boot. Above him like a knight swearing fealty his mech loomed above him.

  Portem was silent, slumped in a half-kneel in the corner of the bay, eight meters of shining silver colored steel dimmed to a cold slate. His tracer lines, normally lit with steady blue pulse, were faint, glowing just enough to outline his frame against the dark.

  Riven began to stir, at first a breath. Then another. His fingers twitched against the floor, scraped against dried blood and some kind of rubberized grit. A low grunt escaped his throat as he rolled to his side, then froze. Pain flared through his lower back, bright and biting, like a wrench driven straight through the spine.

  “—nnh. Shit!” He coughed once. His throat dry, the tang of iron in the back of his mouth. He spit, winced, and tried again. One palm braced on the floor, the other against his side.

  "Where in the churn forsaken sky am I?" His voice came out hoarse and rough. No answer. Just the hum of a ship in idle. No fresh air cycling, no comms chirping, and most importantly, no crew.

  He sat up slowly, every part of him complaining. His left knee cracked. Shoulder popped. The pain in his temple pulsed like a low-frequency alarm. It took a minute for his eyes to adjust. The lighting was dim, mostly originating from Portem’s dimmed frame, and the overhead fixtures that stuttered irregularly, casting fractured shadows across the deck.

  He turned his head. Looked for context. Markings. Something. Nothing familiar. The walls were old, but well-built. Layered steel paneling with some kind of embossed etching running the length of the support beams. Script he didn’t recognize, maybe pre-Crown, maybe not. The hangar was wide, circular, probably designed for one or two large frames, with foldout cranes and heavy-rig support arms tucked away in the ceiling. A proper mech bay, not some bolt-on extension.

  He blinked. Swallowed. Breathed in again, and regretted it. The air smelled like seared flesh and oil. “You better not be dead,” he muttered, glancing up at Portem’s darkened helm. “I swear, if you left me here alone to rot on some rustbucket, I’m welding you into a broom closet.”

  A moment frighteningly quiet moment passed. Then— "Negative."

  Portem’s voice came through the large mech, low, grainy, and jagged with static, but unmistakably his. "I am… c-c-compromised. Not dead. F-f-functionality at fourteen percent. Vision li-limited. Internal systems, fragmented. Core-Core memory partially corrupted. Attempting Re-reboot." Portem paused for a beat. "Reboot successful. Welcome back, Riven."

  Riven exhaled slowly, pressure bleeding from his chest. “Good,” he said, wiping at his brow with the back of his wrist. “Was about to start crying and I’d never hear the end of it.” He pulled himself up the rest of the way and sat back against one of the gantries. His coat made a wet sound against the metal. Most of the blood wasn't his. That was a relief. The rest of the gunk stuck to him smelled pungently of chemical, reactor coolant, probably. Or hydraulic fluid. He’d worked around enough busted walkers to know the difference by taste alone.

  “You said… corrupted?” he asked, resting his head against the wall behind him.

  “Core records for the last three days are unreadable. Multiple sectors damaged. I… cannot confirm how we got here.”

  Riven squinted at the floor, trying to wring something out of his own memory. Nothing came. Just the pounding ache and a blur of white light, maybe a skybridge? Maybe a crash? The harder he tried to think about it, the worse the pressure got. Not nausea. Not fear. Something else.

  He winced and let it go. “Same here. Trying to remember feels like getting kicked in the skull. Over and over.”

  He hauled himself to his feet and braced against a steel strut. Legs held. That was something. No broken ribs either, just bruised. A blessing, considering the state of everything else. “Portem, where is here?”

  There was a delay. A flicker of light across the hangar walls. Then a soft chime. A voice, not Portem’s, cut through the stillness. It came from the overhead speakers. Crisp, mechanical, and distinctly feminine. Older synthware. Polite.

  "Welcome back, Captain Holt."

  Riven froze. Blinked once. “…What?”

  "This vessel is classified under archive code WKSN-077. Common designation: Wakesong. Command line transferred to Riven Holt, verified via genetic and neural match. Current flight status: docked. Outer zone: Crown Territory. Signal beacon deployed."

  Riven stared at the wall for a long moment. Then he ran a hand down his face.

  “Wakesong?” He looked up at Portem. “Do you know a Wakesong?”

  “No registry match in memory. No prior bonding record.”

  “Well,” he muttered, “that makes two of us.”

  He turned, scanning the rest of the chamber now with slightly clearer vision. This wasn’t a civilian ship. The design was too old, too specific. Utility-based, but clean in design. Purpose-built. No tags, no scrapborn markings, no guild emblems. Everything reinforced. Everything custom. The kind of ship you find in forgotten vaults, not a floating derelict. Not to mention, the ship that had just called him captain, had clearly been in a fight, and neither he nor his mech had the faintest idea how they'd arrived.

  “Great,” he said aloud. “I’ve been kidnapped by a dead ship with amnesia. Fantastic start to the day.”

  Portem’s voice came through again, quieter now.

  “The system indicates it is midday, Riven. Additionally, coordinates indicate Ashen Crown territory. Recommend diagnostics and immediate exfiltration. Crown territory… is unwise.”

  Riven nodded, jaw tightening. “Yeah. Agreed. But first, I need to figure out what this place is.”

  I started to move. Slowly at first. The worst of the pain had faded to a steady background hum, bruises blooming under the skin, tendons stretched too far, but nothing critical. Just enough to slow me down. I limped across the bay toward Portem, keeping one hand on the railing as I went.

  The air still smelled wrong. Not just blood and coolant. Something electrical, too, probably burnt circuitry or a discharged core. Old and sharp. Bad news if it originated from Portem. Speaking of, I glanced over at him and approached, pressing a hand against the plating just under the collar ridge. It was warm, barely. The tracer lines running through his arms and back were still flickering like dying nerves. He was hunched forward like a fighter after too many rounds. Gashes ran across his left thigh and shoulder. One of the intake vents was half-crushed.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  "You're a mess," I muttered.

  No response.

  I reached for the core port at the base of his spine, flipped open the panel, and linked my gauntlet cable in. A faint, weak chime answered. Sync successful, if just barely. System readout came in with a half-second delay, all jumbled. Fragmented personality threads, scrambled subroutines. Portem’s primary consciousness was still intact, but he was running under heavy load. Minimal power, partial vision, motor functions locked out.

  "Alright, at the very least your chassis isn't dead. But it is not in good shape either." I tapped through the boot sequence on my gauntlet. “Gonna see if I can feed you enough juice to get you vertical.”

  “Suggest caution,” Portem rasped in my ear. “Left leg actuator… misaligned. Risk of core shear on forced movement.”

  "Yeah, well, I'm not exactly thrilled with the alternatives either."

  I backed off a step and scanned the bay. The Wakesong, still hard to believe that was its name, was quiet, but the bones were strong. No external damage in sight. Whoever designed it knew their way around structural reinforcement. But there were no signs of active crew. No movement. Just one damaged mech, one half-dead pilot, and a mech bay full of blood and coolant.

  I turned toward the wall panel beneath the gantry stairs. It looked like a primary terminal, manual access port, sealed touchglass. A bit scratched up, but it still held charge. Worth a shot. "Ship," I said, raising my voice slightly. "Do you have a functioning Vox Anima?"

  There was a pause. Then the same feminine voice replied, clipped and sterile. “Present. Minimal runtime protocols enabled. Query format required.”

  I rolled my eyes. “So that’s a yes.”

  “Affirmative, Captain.”

  "Great. And what exactly can you do?"

  “Primary capabilities: diagnostic output, route charting, sector warnings, low-level ship function relay. Long-range communication currently inactive. Tertiary modules disabled.”

  “Can you open anything?”

  “Please specify target system.”

  I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “You're worse than the console I built out of furnace parts and stolen drone scraps.”

  No response. Figures. Some ships had rudimentary spirits, basic Vox Anima burned into hardware, no real cognition or emotional mapping. Just voice layers and triggered responses. This one wasn't rogue, at least. Wasn’t particularly useful, either.

  I keyed into the terminal and started navigating the local system. No joy on full schematics, but I could see power relays to the bay. I rerouted what little charge I could spare to Portem’s stand cradle. The ship gave a faint groan as the system pulsed once. Tracer lines across Portem’s frame brightened, just slightly. Better than nothing.

  “Can you ping Beta?” I asked, switching focus.

  “Unit recognized. Power status: forty-eight percent. Charge stable. Suppressed link.”

  I nodded. That tracked. Portem-Beta was his split-form, a second consciousness fragment he could offload into my long-range rifle. Not full personality, but enough for independent recon or support. It was rare for Vox Anima to split cleanly, but Portem had always been… unusual.

  “Suppress the link for now,” I said. “I need him stable, not twitching.”

  “Confirmed.”

  I stepped away from the terminal and circled around Portem’s right flank. The side where Beta was sheath was mounted, snug, sealed, and intact and stored in the leg. I keyed the latch open and slid the rifle out.

  Heavy. Smooth. Sleek black casing with dim blue tracer lines that matched his main body. Still warm. Still alive.

  "Hey, Beta," I said under my breath, "you're holding up better than the two of us. But don't get cocky." The rifle, of course, didn’t respond. Not unless I unsuppressed the thread and let the personality wake up. He wasn't Portem in full, more like a focused shard. Direct, methodical. No wit. No heart. But in a pinch, he'd saved my ass more than once. I cradled him in my arms for a second, checked the ammo coil, then slotted him back into place.

  "Okay," I said, mostly to myself. "Next question, why in Virenna's name is a ship I’ve never seen, with a spirit that barely functions, parked in Crown territory with me inside it?”

  Silence again. Not that I expected an answer. I looked back at the terminal. Thought about pressing deeper. Thought about asking for a log or timestamp, or flight history, or… anything.

  But I already knew what the response would probably be. Pain flared in my skull again, same as before. Throbbing. Pressure behind the eyes. Like my own memory was rigged to blow if I looked at it too hard.

  “Alright,” I muttered. “No easy answers.” I turned back to Portem. He still hadn’t moved, but the glow along his arms had stabilized. Power was holding steady, if low. A few more minutes of rerouted feed and he’d be able to speak more clearly. Maybe even move a limb.

  “Portem,” I said, brushing dust off the edge of his knee plating, “you got any idea what kind of ship this is?”

  “…Negative.”

  “You sure? You don’t usually forget ships.”

  “This model… is not in my library.”

  I frowned. If Portem didn’t recognize it, that meant it either didn’t exist on any public registry, or it had been buried. Deep. Someone had gone out of their way to keep this thing off the books. I stood there for a long minute, eyes scanning the ceiling, watching the lights blink on and off in slow, useless rhythm.

  “Iox curse me, this day keeps getting better and better.”

  I didn't head for the exit right away. First thing I did was pull Portem-Beta from his sheath again and cycle him into compact mode. The core whined once, dim and familiar, as the barrel segments untwisted themselves and the stabilizing arm folded flush against the stock, ejecting a pistol into my hand. He wasn’t meant for close-quarters, but I wasn’t dragging a full sniper rig through tight corridors with arms this wrecked. Besides, the pistol configuration would do fine, short burst coil fire, decent kick, enough to melt through steel at ten paces if I dialed it high.

  I took a slow breath and tested my grip. My fingers ached. Muscles screamed when I raised the weapon past shoulder height. I lowered it again and let out a breath. “Alright,” I muttered. “Guess we’re going to have to do this the quiet way.”

  I slung the rifle, missing its core, across my back and kept the pistol form in-hand, muzzle low, finger off the trigger. Then I looked at the blood. The pool I’d woken in hadn’t quite dried yet. Still tacky underfoot. Still dark. Too much of it to be mine. And no bodies.

  No broken gear, no shell casings, no scorch marks on the walls. Just a streak across the deck like someone had been dragged, or tried to crawl. It started under me and toward one of the bay exits. Someone had been here with me. Close enough to bleed on me. Then gone.

  I tapped my gauntlet, pulling up a local map feed onto the screen of the touchglass. Of course, cursing my rotten luck nothing loads.

  "Ship," I said. "Give me guidance to the helm."

  A chime. Then the voice came again, flat as ever. “Route marked. Lights engaged. Proceed to primary corridor, follow blue pathing.”

  Along the floor, a faint line of pale blue light ignited and traced toward the same hatch the blood streak came from.

  "Try not to get me killed," I said. "I'd hate to haunt you."

  I approached the door slowly, stepping around a coil of cabling that looked partially melted. The panel beside the hatch lit up when I got close. No security lock, just a proximity sensor and a hiss of pistons as the door slid halfway open. Inside was a narrow corridor. Dark. Quiet. I took one last glance back at Portem, still dim but stable in his cradle.

  “I’ll be back,” I said under my breath. “Don’t go uploading yourself into a toaster while I’m gone.”

  “Toasters… do not possess class-B combat protocols.”

  “And I hope it stays that way."

  I turned and stepped into the hall. The Wakesong’s interior was… unfamiliar, but not disorganized. Every panel looked was almost seamlessly inlaid. The metal was old but solid, built for durability over comfort. Narrow support struts ran along the ceiling, and embedded consoles blinked faint diagnostics at regular intervals. There were no personal touches. No signs of habitation. Just cold efficiency.

  The path lighting clicked on one segment at a time as I moved. Each step echoed underfoot, too loud. I kept my back near the wall and let my eyes sweep corners before crossing them. Old habit. One I hadn’t had to use in a while. But something about this place gave me the creeps. Dead quiet, lots of blood, and no bodies? Someone had cleaned up, or maybe some nasty beast had eaten whoever else was on the ship. Grimacing at the thought I gripped Portem-Beta tighter and kept moving.

  The blue path wound through three access corridors, past sealed engine bulkheads and one long maintenance shaft that hummed with a low, pulsing tone. The ship felt old, deeply old. Not in a broken-down way, but in the way ancient tech sometimes does, like a ghost that forgot it should have moved on.

  I passed a sealed door with faded lettering. The text was in Old Crown script, half-legible compared to the script from earlier, enough for me to recognize the symbol etched above it: the old Archive Flame. That gave a location, this ship wasn’t built in the Concord. It wasn't a war vessel either. No weapons mounted. No external hatches scarred from battle.

  If I had to guess, it was some kind of… scout? A research model, maybe. The kind of thing built to go deep into hostile zones and bring something back. I didn’t like that thought.

  “Ship,” I said. “How many lifeforms onboard?”

  There was a pause. Then:

  “Unable to verify. Internal sensors degraded.”

  Of course they were. I kept my weapon up and followed the path another hundred meters before the corridor widened into a long chamber. Circular. Control panels lining both sides, most of them dormant. Ahead, a split stair led up to a domed glass enclosure, the helm. The lights flickered as I stepped inside, and a chill crawled up my spine. Blood again.

  This time, not pooled, but smeared. A handprint, dragged across the wall to my left. Not mine, and slightly more fresh than the congealed mess in the mech bay. I raised Portem-Beta, took a step, and scanned the room again. No bodies, but evidently someone had bled here. A lot. Enough to trail through the corridor, through the same path I'd just walked, and disappear without leaving anything else behind.

  Someone had been close, and were most likely still nearby.