The ramp hissed open. Sand met sky in a wound of color and silence.

  The ndscape yawned before them: bck dunes, stretched like burned skin under a sky the color of bleeding rust. The air moved, not with wind, but with intent. The clouds pulsed, slow and serpentine, slithering through shades of orange and deep crimson. Every breath Adam took felt wrong. Thick. Heavy. Like the pnet didn’t want lungs here.

  DeadMouth hovered beside him, unusually quiet.

  PAW unfolded with a mechanical growl, legs adjusting to the jagged terrain as it crouched, waiting. Its matte-bck frame shimmered in the alien light—an iron beast with cws and guns, ready to sprint or kill on command.

  NYX’s voice echoed in the comms, smooth but distant.

  “Atmosphere stable, but votile. No known lifeforms detected… yet. Recommend caution, Captain.”

  Adam climbed onto PAW, one leg over, fingers gripping the side rail. DeadMouth drifted up beside him, lens slowly scanning the horizon.

  “Well,” the drone muttered, “at least it’s not raining blood. Yet.”

  Ahead of them, beyond dunes that seemed to whisper, a structure flickered in the heat haze. It shimmered like metal, but bent the light around it like gss. Not a building—more like a reflection that forgot what it was supposed to be. A beacon? A mirage?

  Whatever it was, it was calling.

  PAW surged forward, cws slicing into sand. The vehicle moved like a predator—elegant, brutal, fast.

  The ndscape blurred. Jagged rock formations jutted like the ribs of a buried giant, casting long shadows that moved against the wind. Every mile deepened the unease, like they were riding into the belly of something sacred… and wrong.

  Then they saw them.

  Statues.

  Dozens of them, scattered like forgotten gods across the pin. Each towering at least thirty meters tall—some broken, some bowed, some half-buried in bck sand. Their features were not human. Not entirely. Elongated skulls. Eyes too many or too deep. Mouths stitched or wide open in eternal song. They wore robes made of stone. Some held weapons that glowed faintly, as if still warm from battle.

  And as they passed the first one…

  Its head moved.

  Just a flicker. A shift of the head. Grinding stone. Its eyeless face turned toward Adam.

  He felt it, not saw it, felt it in his spine, in the marrow of his memory. A pressure. A whisper. A name he didn’t know, but mourned.

  PAW stuttered, its gait faltering for the first time.

  DeadMouth’s voice broke the silence, soft:

  “Did that just…? Nope. Nope nope nope. I do not like this.”

  Adam swallowed hard.

  “NYX. What are these things?”

  Static. Then her voice, slower now. Quieter.

  “I have no data.”

  “These were not meant to be seen.”

  They reached the rocky terrain. The dunes gave way to jagged stone teeth, jutting from the ground like the shattered bones of some ancient leviathan. PAW adjusted instantly—its stance narrowed, weight redistributed.

  Then it leapt. Not lumbering. Not mechanical. Graceful. Feline. Predatory.

  It jumped from rock to rock with silent precision, a panther in warpaint. Every movement felt alive. Calcuted. Almost… joyous.

  DeadMouth groaned through the comms.

  “Show off. Next thing you know, it’s going to ask for a treat and belly rubs.”

  Adam tightened his grip on the side rail, watching the shimmer of the strange structure grow rger ahead.

  “Nyx,” he said, “we’re heading toward that reflection we picked up. Anything waiting for me there? A welcoming party I didn’t RSVP to?”

  Static crackled. A dey.

  Then NYX’s voice filtered through, quieter than before. Distorted, as if farther somehow.

  “Nothing on the surface… yet. But I detect… subterranean vibrations.”

  Another pause.

  “Be on guard, Captain.”

  The tone was different now. Not just concern. Not just protocol.

  It was… reverence.

  And maybe a hint of fear.

  Adam felt it too. The way the rocks vibrated under PAW’s feet. The way the sky seemed to lean in, listening.

  Something wasn’t buried here. Something was hiding, waiting.

  Suddenly, the sand around them stirred.

  Not wind. Movement.

  Sleek shapes began to rise from the bck dunes, fins, curved like a shark’s but far rger. Polished chrome glinted against the red-orange sky. Metallic, smooth, alien. They cut through the sand like knives through flesh.

  One. Two. Five. Seven.

  They emerged in a slow, deliberate spiral, circling the rocky hill PAW now stood upon, each fin weaving in and out of view, dancing like a silent hunting ritual.

  DeadMouth’s lens spun erratically.

  “Uhh… Adam? That’s not a party. That’s bait.”

  The fins stopped. And then—the red glow. Each one blinked. Lights ignited beneath the surface of the sand. Eyes.

  They turned as one. Staring. Waiting.

  Adam felt the silent message coming from PAW, even if no words were spoken. He dismounted slowly, boots crunching against rock, dust whispering around him. Grabbed his rifle, locked and loaded, looking through the scope at the spectacle happening in the sand, waiting for a movement or sign of hostility, finger on the trigger. The rifle activated with a low hum, like it recognized its master, tuning itself for maximum lethality.

  PAW twitched.

  Its smooth frame shivered, ptes shifting and realigning, clicking into new formation. The sleek predator unfolded—limbs locking, stabilizers deploying. Its legs dug in. The body widened, armored ptes stacking outward like a blooming death blossom.

  Then came the weapons.

  Turrets rotated into pce. Mini-missile pods unfolded like wasp hives. Laser arrays along the shoulders whirred and snapped into position. A high-pitched hum began to grow, pulsing with suppressed power.

  PAW’s eye—once passive blue—now glowed green, projecting a wide fan of scanning light. A soft whirr filled the air as the sentry began its sweep.

  Inch by inch.

  The beam followed the fins.

  One by one.

  Searching for weakness. Or intent.

  DeadMouth, quieter now: “I… don’t think they’re machines. I don’t think they’re alive either. I think they’re... watching.”

  Adam didn’t answer. His eyes were locked ahead, breath held.

  NYX's voice came through, clearer now—sharp, clinical.

  "Captain, I’ve recalibrated our comms. You should hear me better now. The entities emerging from the sand are not biological. I detect coordinated movement—indicating intelligence. Possibly a hive mind. Or they’re being controlled by something.”

  Adam’s gaze followed the eerie motion. Metallic fins danced in and out of the bck sand, sleek and predatory. “Or someone,” he muttered.

  DeadMouth chimed in from behind, his tone soaked in sardonic dread: “Suuure! Why not? Evil killer sand sharks controlled by some dark puppet master. Totally normal. Why even bother being surprised anymore?”

  The sand quivered. Then again. It shifted in waves now, rhythmic, circling. Fins turned. Eyes flickered open, mechanical, crystalline, refracting red light like a predator’s lens.

  PAW let out a mechanical growl. Its body flexed. Weapons online, ser pointers moving along with the fins.

  Then they came.

  Sand erupted in violent spurts. Creatures, once submerged, burst forth—not sharks, but arachnid horrors. Metallic exoskeletons. Needle-thin limbs with bde edges. Their movement was impossibly fast, twitching and skittering like broken time. Red cores glowed at their centers. Some ran on six legs, others leapt—legs folding inward like traps, then snapping open to pounce.

  Adam dove behind a jagged rock, rifle up. The AI hummed in his hands, syncing. He aimed—hesitated—missed the first shot. The recoil bit into his shoulder.

  DeadMouth overhead:

  "Three o’clock! Incoming double bde-jumper!"

  Adam rolled, came up to one knee. His body remembered. Low—shoot—up—reposition—low—shoot—one-two-three—move.

  One fell. Then another.

  A spray of sparks, a hiss of severed hydraulics. Sand turned bck with oil.

  PAW roared.

  Cannons fired with a thunderous rhythm. Each shot lit up the field, sending chunks of sand and metal flying. Rockets hissed through the air, slicing streaks of white against the bleeding orange sky.

  DeadMouth ascended, his small body circling above like a vulture with WiFi.

  “Twelve o’clock—leaper! Five o’clock—sneaker! I’m trying to intercept their signal. Looks encrypted in harmonic subwave pulses, working on jamming it now!”

  Adam spun, bsted the leaper midair. The impact shredded the thing apart in a rain of shrapnel.

  Another charged, legs piston-driven, razor arms wide.

  PAW rotated mid-fire, redirected twin beams of psma across its path. The thing colpsed in sizzling agony.

  DeadMouth, triumphant:

  "Frequency spike detected! They're talking to each other, coordinating. If I crack their comms, we get a silent disco of death instead. Give me 15 seconds!"

  "You’ve got five!" Adam barked, ducking as another fin sliced just inches from his face.

  He leapt up, double-tapped two more, rolled under PAW’s shield screen as it projected a wall of light, deflecting incoming bdes. Behind the barrier, Adam reloaded.

  Sand rained down like hail.

  Smoke, light, and the scream of AI war machines made the desert feel alive.

  The killer machines shrieked in frequencies not meant for ears. Their lights fshed like strobe pulses. A new one emerged—taller, spider-legged with a gaping, rotating saw where a head should be.

  Adam and PAW faced it down, side by side.

  DeadMouth overhead, grin somehow audible:

  "Oh great, boss. You got the mini-boss attention. Don’t die now, I just got the signal cracked."

  The behemoth rose.

  Not fast. Not aggressive. Just… inevitable. Towering above the rocks, pted like an armored cathedral on legs, each footfall crushed boulders into gravel. Twin red slits blinked into life where a face might’ve been. Somewhere inside, gears groaned like ancient tombs opening.

  PAW unloaded everything. Cannons thundered, missiles shrieked, sers carved molten arcs.

  Nothing.

  The creature’s armor drank it all, shrugging off destruction like a god ignoring prayers.

  DeadMouth, spiraling overhead, screamed through static:

  “Uhhh, I’m officially out of sarcasm! This is my no-joke voice! THIS IS MY PANIC VOICE!”

  The smaller drones were twitching now, scattered and blind thanks to DM’s signal interference. But the behemoth wasn't wired. It was willed.

  It lunged.

  Adam dove, rolled, fired point-bnk at the eyes, ricochet.

  “Dammit! DeadMouth, can you drop a moon on it or something?!”

  They tried everything.

  Adam’s rifle sang its thunder, shell after shell hammering the behemoth’s joints, eyes, exposed vents, if it even had any. PAW’s sleek body shifted formations mid-battle, unching cluster missiles that should’ve torn mountains apart. DeadMouth screamed frequency war into the sky, jamming every lesser drone into stuttering corpses.

  But the behemoth didn’t stop.

  It advanced.

  With each lumbering step, it adjusted. It learned. Bdes snapped out from its sides. One smmed into a rock just behind Adam, detonating the ground like a grenade. The shockwave flung him into the dust, ears ringing, blood in his mouth.

  He gasped. Crawled. Fired again.

  Nothing.

  Even PAW, for all its firepower, was burning hot and blinking red. Systems strained.

  “I have no more tricks, Adam!” DeadMouth wailed from above. “I threw everything at this metal demon short of my personality. Nothing’s working!”

  Adam’s breath was shallow. Sand in his teeth. Cuts across his face.

  Then, crity. Not rage. Not panic. A simple question.

  He tapped his comm, voice steady, eyes locked on the monster rising above him.

  “Nyx… does the Eon Veil have orbital cannons?”

  A pause. Then that voice—serene as ever:

  “Why yes, Captain. It does.”

  He stood. Calmly. Brushed dust from his coat. PAW twitched and shifted back into feline form, crouched low, growling softly, waiting.

  Adam climbed on.

  And as the behemoth raised one final bde to finish it all, Adam looked over his shoulder.

  “Then light up this asshole.”

  PAW leapt, cws slicing across rocks, bounding up the jagged hill and into the open. Adam didn’t look back again. He didn’t need to.

  The sky answered.

  A crack. A hum. Then fury.

  Light fell—not from above, but from beyond. A nce of cosmic fire punched through the clouds, a concentrated sor spear birthed from the Eon Veil’s wrath. It struck the behemoth mid-roar, mid-lunge.

  Boom.

  No scream. No explosion. Just obliteration.

  Metal peeled like paper. Systems colpsed. The ground where it stood was gone, vaporized, scorched, fused into gss.

  Silence.

  The storm of sand slowly settled.

  DeadMouth broke it, voice trembling:

  “Okay. I’ll admit it. That was sexy as hell.”

  Adam didn’t speak. Just stared at the glowing crater behind them, the memory of death echoing like thunder.

  Then: “Next time,” he muttered, “we don’t wait so long to call in the big guns.”

  They kept riding. The wind howled through jagged stone, dragging ash and heat behind them, but Adam didn’t feel it.

  Not really.

  His heart was steady now. Too steady. That wasn’t adrenaline. That wasn’t luck. That was something older.

  He repyed the fight in his head, the way his fingers found the rifle’s grip like an old friend. The way he moved, not consciously, but correctly. Sliding between rocks, catching angles, reacting without thinking.

  He didn’t survive that ambush. He commanded it.

  It hit him then, in the silence between DeadMouth’s muttered quips and the humming of PAW’s engines beneath him:

  “I’ve done this before.”

  He didn’t remember where. Didn’t remember when. But his body had danced that choreography before. His eyes had scanned for threats like that before. His voice had called the shot from the sky like that before.

  It wasn’t just instinct. It was design.

  He clenched his fists around PAW’s handle grips. The armor flexed with him, not resisting, but syncing—like it, too, remembered the rhythm.

  This was something he could hold on to. No name. No past.

  But this?

  This was real. This was his.

  He was a weapon. A commander. A force.

  And whoever had tried to erase that part of him…

  Had failed.