The ship hums around me. A steady, low vibration, subtle enough that most wouldn’t notice. But I do. I always do.

  The Praedyth isn’t just a ship. It’s aware.

  It doesn’t speak, not like the twisted constructs people whisper about in dark corners of the Mechanists’ enclaves. No synthetic voices, no sterile commands. But it listens. I’ve felt it adjust course before I gave the order. I’ve seen it respond to things I never said aloud.

  And sometimes, like now, when I sit in the quiet and let myself breathe… I wonder if it’s watching me too.

  I roll my shoulder, feeling the dull stiffness beneath the layers of bandages. The drone did what it could—tissue regeneration, clot-sealant, pain suppressants. It’s not enough. My ribs still ache. My muscles are tight, bruises layered deep where the armor didn’t hold. I’ve had worse.

  I exhale, stretching out slowly against the reinforced cot in my quarters. This is the first real rest I’ve taken in awhile.

  The cabin lights are dimmed to a deep amber glow. No distractions. No movement. The Praedyth keeps the temperature regulated, the oxygen clean, the noise levels minimal. Perfect for sleep.

  And yet, I don’t close my eyes.

  Because the moment I do, I see it.

  That thing in the case.

  Small. Frail. Suspended in cold light.

  Not human. Not anymore.

  I press a hand against my forehead, dragging my claws slowly through my fur. It’s done. I made my decision. I locked the case. Sealed it. Contained it. The Guild got their trade. I got paid.

  It shouldn’t bother me.

  It does.

  I shift, propping myself up against the wall. The ship adjusts the lighting slightly in response. It knows I’m awake.

  Two cycles. That’s how long I have before I meet the Mechanists. Two cycles before I descend into the ruins beneath Driftmourne and uncover whatever it is they’re after.

  The thought doesn’t sit well with me.

  I don’t like working with the Mechanists. Too eager. Too obsessed. The ones on Driftmourne aren’t like their Imperial counterparts. No red-robed priests chanting binary hymns, no dogmatic rituals of machine-worship. These ones are different. Explorers. Technologists. Scavengers. They want something.

  And now, they want me.

  I tap a finger idly against the cot’s frame. They helped me. Erased the Hollowed Legion’s pursuit. Altered records. Shifted blame. It was a favor. And I don’t like favors.

  Favors mean expectations.

  I owe them.

  That’s the problem.

  run my claws lightly over the coin in my palm. The Guild’s mark. I should have known the moment I took it. No such thing as simple work on Driftmourne.

  The coin is warm. Not from the air. From me.

  I spin it between my fingers, watching the way the ship’s dim light catches its surface. The sigil stamped into the metal is old. Worn. Not just a token. A brand.

  The broker said that job was meant for me. That the moment I took the contract, the pieces started moving. Someone placed me here.

  But who?

  And more importantly…

  Why?

  I exhale slowly, setting the coin down beside me.

  It doesn’t matter. Not yet.

  Two cycles. Then I deal with the Mechanists.

  Then I leave.

  Because I can feel it—just beneath the surface. The weight of something shifting.

  Driftmourne is a dying station, but its ghosts still move.

  And soon, I’ll have to move too.

  For now, I’ll let myself rest.

  I try to sleep.

  Even though I already know I won’t.

  The Praedyth drifted in silence. Outside, Driftmourne’s artificial night cycle cast deep shadows across the lower tiers, neon glows flickering like dying stars in the abyss of the station’s industrial underbelly.

  Inside, Servius was moving.

  His quarters were dimly lit, but his vision adjusted easily. He knew his ship by feel. The placement of every weapon rack, every reinforced compartment. His movements were practiced, efficient, each motion deliberate.

  The mission was set. The meeting at Vault Pier Six would be soon. But first—preparation.

  Servius set his weapons out methodically, each piece laid atop a smooth, reinforced surface.

  Twin Bolt Pistols – Sleek, well-maintained. Magazines checked, chambered, and secured. Eight full mags remaining.

  Power Knife – The blade thrummed faintly with energy as he tested its weight. Still deadly. Still sharp.

  Sniper Rifle – He opened the compartment, counting the ammunition. Fourteen usable rounds. Eight more could be modified, but not now.

  Explosives – One frag grenade, one krak. Minimal, but enough.

  Servius rolled his shoulder, flexing his claws absently as he eyed the layout. Sufficient firepower. The Mechanists would have their own security, but he didn’t trust them to be competent under pressure. If things went wrong, he would have to clean up their mess.

  And things always went wrong.

  The docking sector was a place of quiet, controlled decay. Not abandoned—nothing on Driftmourne ever truly was—but forgotten. The kind of place used for old projects, smuggled shipments, and dealings that didn’t need scrutiny.

  Servius arrived early. Always early. He moved through the station’s dim corridors with calculated ease, his coat drawn close, his steps near-silent on the grated walkways. The air smelled of rust, machine oil, and stale filtration—a mix of old industry and lingering secrets.

  Ahead, Vault Pier Six loomed. Massive, reinforced blast doors sealed the entrance. A Mechanist stood before them, robed in deep crimson, their multi-jointed limbs folded in that eerie, deliberate stillness Servius had grown accustomed to.

  The thin Mechanist.

  The one who had erased his tracks.

  As Servius approached, the figure inclined their head slightly, augmetic lenses adjusting as they scanned him.

  “You are early,” the Mechanist noted. Their voice was smooth, devoid of true inflection.

  Servius folded his arms, his tail flicking once behind him. “And you’re wasting time. Is the team inside, or are we standing around for no reason?”

  A slight pause. Then—a metallic click. The massive vault doors shuddered, ancient mechanisms groaning as they began to unlock.

  “The others have already descended,” the Mechanist murmured. “You are the last.”

  Servius exhaled slowly through his nose. Good. He preferred to arrive on his own terms.

  The doors parted.

  Beyond them?

  Darkness.

  The descent had begun.

  The air inside Vault Pier Six was still. Not empty—nothing in Driftmourne was ever truly empty—but still. Stale, controlled, waiting.

  Servius stepped through the massive blast doors, feeling the weight of the sealed vault behind him. The chamber ahead was wide, utilitarian, cut from ancient stone and reinforced with industrial plating. Massive support struts stretched overhead, half-lit by dim lumen-strips flickering against the walls.

  The Mechanist who had summoned him—Arohk-7—walked beside him now, their movements smooth, calculated.

  Servius glanced at them. “How deep is this place?”

  Arohk-7 did not turn their head. They didn’t need to.

  “The surface structure extends downward for several kilometers. The entry point to the ruins themselves lies beyond the lower excavation chamber.”

  Servius exhaled through his nose. Figures. If something was buried this deep beneath Driftmourne, it was either worthless—or it was dangerous.

  He let his keen eyes scan the area ahead. More Mechanists were here—six in total—their robes shifting in the dim light, their augmetics humming softly. Some moved between consoles, monitoring auspex readings, while others stood still, their multiple lenses adjusting as they took in the sealed passage at the far end of the chamber.

  That was the problem.

  A reinforced archway, vast and ancient, sealed with a complex interlocking mechanism. A door without a key.

  One of the Mechanists turned as they approached. Their voice was filtered, mechanical.

  “The interface does not respond.”

  Arohk-7 turned their head slightly. “As expected.”

  Servius tilted his head. “You brought me here knowing the door wouldn’t open?”

  Arohk-7’s lenses clicked softly. “We brought you here because you might be able to.”

  Silence.

  Servius’s tail flicked once, sharp irritation rolling beneath his skin. They were testing him again.

  Fine.

  He stepped forward, adjusting his coat, exhaling slowly. His hand flicked toward his concealed vox-link.

  A simple command. Silent. Subtle.

  “Praedyth?”

  No reply. Not in words. But the ship had heard.

  At first, nothing happened.

  Then—a low, resonant hum.

  The air shifted. Faint motes of dust stirred along the chamber floor as the massive reinforced door vibrated, its old, corroded mechanisms suddenly alive. Lumen-strips flickered. Data-feeds spiked.

  The Mechanists watched in silence.

  A grinding of locks. A sudden release of pressure.

  And then, with a deep, metallic groan, the gateway began to open.

  A vast, yawning darkness stretched beyond.

  Servius remained still, his expression neutral, giving nothing away. He had felt it—the pulse of the Praedyth’s influence threading through the ancient machine, something vast and unseen unlocking the seals.

  But the Mechanists didn’t know that.

  Arohk-7 turned toward him, their augmetic lenses adjusting, scanning.

  “You activated it.”

  Servius exhaled slowly through his nose. “So it seems.”

  The other Mechanists exchanged subtle glances, the faint shifting of robes betraying their calculations.

  One of them stepped forward, their voice modulated, flat. “We observed no standard interface attempt. No physical link.”

  Another added, “Yet the system responded.”

  Servius rolled his shoulder slightly, feeling the ache in his ribs. He hated being examined.

  Arohk-7 tilted their head slightly. “Explain.”

  Servius let the silence stretch.

  Then—a simple shrug. “You tell me. It opened, didn’t it?”

  Another pause. Then, a flicker of something in Arohk-7’s lenses. Not quite frustration. Not quite satisfaction.

  Interest.

  “The anomaly continues.”

  Servius didn’t like that wording.

  “Move,” he muttered, nodding toward the open passage. “Or are we waiting for something else to wake up?”

  The Mechanists hesitated a moment longer. Then, one by one, they stepped forward, entering the darkness beyond.

  Servius followed.

  The corridor was vast, stretching downward into the ruin’s depths. It was not Imperial architecture. Not entirely. Too smooth, too precise—too old. Lumen-drones floated ahead, casting pale light against metal plating that gleamed despite the weight of ages.

  Servius moved with steady steps, his sharp green eyes scanning. His tail flicked slightly behind him, silent tension coiled beneath his skin.

  Something was wrong here.

  Not in the obvious way. Not in the "this is a forgotten tomb buried beneath a station of cutthroats" way.

  He glanced toward Arohk-7. “Which way?”

  The Mechanist studied the readouts flickering on their data-slate. “The central path. Our auspex indicate the main chamber lies below.”

  Servius exhaled slowly. Of course it did.

  The air thickened as they advanced.

  Not physically. The pressure around them remained stable, the oxygen mix unchanged. But the feeling of the place—it was wrong.

  The light from the lumens didn’t reach as far as it should. Shadows stretched unnaturally, seeming to coil and linger where the beams cut through the dark.

  The Mechanists were silent. Calculating. Observing.

  Servius moved with even steps, his dimly glowing green eyes scanning. He had been in places like this before—ruins, derelict ships, forgotten vaults. Places that should have been empty but weren’t.

  He exhaled slowly through his nose. He had seen far too many fools meet their ends because they assumed a ruin was just that

  The central corridor began to slope downward more sharply. The walls, once smooth, became etched—not with carvings, but with something else.

  At first, it was subtle. Small indentations. Thin, almost circuit-like grooves running along the plating.

  Then—more distinct.

  Engraved pathways, like the inner workings of a machine, tracing across the metal surface in intricate, winding lines.

  The Mechanists noticed.

  Arohk-7 lifted a hand, their servo-limbs twitching in slow, calculated movements as they scanned the etchings. Their lenses adjusted.

  “This was not mere infrastructure,” they murmured. “This was function.”

  Servius slowed, his gaze flicking over the symbols. The patterns weren’t like anything he had seen before—too complex, too deliberate.

  Then, he saw it.

  A section of the wall that pulsed.

  Not light. Not movement.

  But something beneath it—something alive in the circuits.

  His claws flexed slightly. Damn it.

  The corridor widened into a small chamber. A place that had once been a control station.

  Shattered terminals lined the walls, dead interfaces hanging from exposed conduits. Something had been ripped from the core of this place, long ago.

  Yet—the walls still hummed.

  A faint, rhythmic pulse.

  Servius’s tail flicked sharply. He could hear it, like a heartbeat trapped in steel.

  The Mechanists fanned out. Silent. Efficient. Cautious.

  One of them reached toward a fractured console. Too slow. Too confident.

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  Servius’s ears flicked. Idiot.

  Then—

  The interface pulsed.

  A sharp flicker of something—Code.

  The Mechanist jerked back as the ruined terminal spat out a burst of corrupted data.

  The lumen-drones flickered. The air crackled.

  And then—the sound.

  A low, mechanical whisper.

  Arohk-7 turned toward Servius, their lenses flickering. “Did you hear that?”

  Servius exhaled slowly.

  Oh, he had heard it.

  He just really wished he hadn’t.

  The air felt heavy.

  Servius exhaled slowly, adjusting his grip on his belt. He had enough experience to know when staying in one place was a bad idea.

  This was one of those times.

  “We keep moving,” he muttered.

  Arohk-7’s lenses flickered again. Then, they nodded.

  “Confirm.”

  Servius turned, stepping forward. The Mechanists followed, their robes whispering against the metal as they moved.

  They descended deeper into the dark.

  And behind them—The ruined console hummed.

  Pulsed. Watched.

  The walls were shifting.

  Not in a way that could be explained by structural decay or the slow collapse of ancient architecture. No, the changes were subtle, deliberate. A corridor that had sloped downward in a straight path now bore a faint, unnatural curve. The seamless panels that had lined the walls before were now etched with strange, shifting grooves, as if they had always been there.

  Servius slowed his pace. His green eyes flicked to the edges of the corridor, scanning.

  Arohk-7, walking a half-step behind him, adjusted their data-slate, their mechanical fingers twitching against the interface. “Structural layout does not match initial scans.” Their modulated voice remained clinical, unshaken. “We are still on course. No deviations detected.”

  Servius exhaled slowly. He resisted the urge to bare his teeth.

  “That so?”

  He turned his head slightly, looking back toward the way they had come.

  The passage behind them was wrong.

  Tighter. More enclosed. The lumens hovering at the rear of the group flickered against surfaces that hadn’t been there before. The hall had changed—but they hadn’t moved.

  His tail flicked once, sharp and irritated. “Tell me, Arohk—do you trust your scans more than your own eyes?”

  Arohk-7 paused. Their mechanical lenses clicked as they adjusted, taking in the corridor. For the first time, Servius noticed the slight hesitation in their movements.

  “No,” Arohk admitted after a moment. “But I trust the data.”

  Servius let out a short, humorless breath. Typical.

  He turned forward again, his fingers resting lightly on the grip of one of his bolt pistols.

  Whatever this place had been before, it was changing around them now.

  And something was watching.

  The air felt different.

  Not in a way that could be measured. The pressure remained stable. The oxygen mix was unchanged. But there was something else, something that prickled at Servius’s instincts like the faint scent of decay before a storm.

  He had been in places like this before—derelict voidstations, ghost ships, ruins long abandoned. He had seen entire squads slaughtered because they assumed a dead place was just that.

  This wasn’t dead.

  Not anymore.

  A sound drifted through the corridor.

  Soft. Faint.

  A whisper.

  Not in words, but in distortion.

  A scraping, just at the edge of hearing.

  Servius turned his head slightly, ears angling toward the source. The sensation of movement, just beyond the lumen glow.

  Something that shouldn’t be there.

  Arohk-7 caught the shift in his stance. “What do you hear?”

  Servius didn’t answer immediately. He let the silence stretch, let his instincts work through what his ears were telling him.

  There was nothing there.

  No figures. No movement.

  Just an empty corridor.

  Servius adjusted his stance, moving with even, measured steps. His twin bolt pistols remained loose in his grip, not raised—but not holstered, either.

  The Mechanists fanned out, their servo-limbs whirring faintly as they scanned the walls, their auspex devices flickering with shifting readouts.

  They passed another ruined console. One of the Mechanists paused, reaching toward it with a scanning limb.

  Servius kept walking.

  His instincts were screaming now.

  Something was behind them.

  Watching.

  Waiting.

  Then—a flicker.

  Not light. Not sound.

  Just—absence.

  The Mechanist at the rear of the group was gone.

  Not a scream. Not a struggle.

  One moment, they had been there.

  The next—only empty space.

  Arohk-7 stopped mid-step. Their servo-limbs twitched, lenses flickering. “Where is—”

  Another flicker.

  Another Mechanist, gone.

  The lumen-drones flickered violently. A burst of static ripped through the air, a warbling distortion that grated against Servius’s skull like the fractured echoes of a broken vox-transmission.

  Servius moved.

  No hesitation. No thought—only instinct.

  His hand shot forward, gripping Arohk-7’s shoulder.

  Then—

  Something slammed into the space where they had been standing.

  Not a machine. Not a figure.

  Just—force.

  A pressure in the air, crushing, consuming—

  Then, as suddenly as it came—it was gone.

  Arohk-7 staggered slightly, regaining balance. Their servo-limbs flexed. “What was—”

  Servius raised a hand.

  “Silence.”

  He listened.

  Nothing.

  The corridor remained still. The air was cold. The lumen-drone’s glow was steady.

  Except now—there were only two of them left.

  Servius exhaled slowly through his nose. His fingers flexed against his pistols.

  “We’re not alone,” he murmured.

  Arohk-7’s head tilted slightly. Their voice remained controlled, but Servius heard it now.

  A trace of something beneath the static. Unease.

  “Clarify.”

  Servius’s tail flicked sharply, agitated.

  “There’s something here,” he muttered. “And it’s picking us off.”

  Arohk-7 turned slowly, scanning the shadows. Their fingers hovered over the control panel at their wrist.

  “Recalibrating auspex—”

  The lights failed.

  A single pulse of pure darkness.

  Then—

  A lumen-drone flared violently. Sparks spat from its casing, its glow sputtering.

  A sound followed.

  Low. Mechanical. Wrong.

  The same whispering distortion from before.

  But closer.

  Arohk-7 stepped back. Servius held his stance.

  Then—

  A shadow stretched unnaturally.

  Not a trick of the lumen-glow. Not a hallucination.

  Something was in it.

  Something moving.

  It reached—

  Servius moved.

  His pistols kicked in his hands.

  The bolts ripped through the dark. Their muzzle flashes cut the corridor, illuminating something twisting, writhing—

  Something shrieked.

  Not a human sound. Not a machine.

  Something between the two.

  The distortion warped, recoiled. The shadows contracted.

  The air snapped back.

  And just like that—

  It was gone.

  Silence.

  The lumen-drone stabilized.

  Arohk-7 exhaled, a modulated click of static filtering through their voice-box. “Status?”

  Servius kept his pistols raised, sweeping the space ahead.

  “Still breathing.”

  Arohk-7’s lenses adjusted. “The others are gone.”

  Servius exhaled slowly. He turned his gaze forward, toward the passage ahead.

  “We’re the only ones left.”

  A pause.

  Then—an agreement.

  “Yes.”

  Something was inside.

  Something watching.

  The Mechanists had come seeking knowledge.

  Instead, they had awakened something ancient.

  And Servius—

  He wasn’t sure it could be stopped.

  The silence stretched between them.

  Servius exhaled slowly, keeping his pistols raised, his stance controlled. Arohk-7 stood beside him, their mechanical fingers twitching slightly at their side.

  The air still felt wrong. Stagnant. Waiting.

  Servius’s tail flicked once, sharply. His green eyes cut sideways toward Arohk-7. “You still trust your data?”

  Arohk-7’s lenses whirred, adjusting. They tilted their head, scanning the ruined corridor around them. Their modulated voice came slow, measured.

  “…Data has proven inconsistent.”

  Servius let out a quiet snort, flicking a speck of dust from his coat sleeve. “That’s one way to put it.”

  Arohk-7 hesitated, then turned their gaze toward him fully. Their servos clicked softly.

  “What did you see?”

  Servius considered that. He didn’t know.

  The flickers, the distortions, the presence—it hadn’t been a thing. It had been… a force.

  Something unraveling the space around them.

  He exhaled through his nose. “Nothing. No shapes. No figures.” A pause. His claws flexed slightly against the grip of his pistol. “But something moved. And it wasn’t us.”

  Arohk-7’s augmetic eyes gleamed faintly. Their mechanical hands flexed once before stilling.

  “…Confirmed.”

  Neither of them spoke for a moment.

  The ruins stretched ahead.

  Still waiting.

  Servius’s voice came quieter now, sharper. “We keep moving. Keep our backs to the walls. No sudden stops.”

  Arohk-7 nodded. Their voice was the same—calm, clinical. But there was something else beneath it now.

  A hesitation.

  A lingering question.

  “Do you believe it is still watching us?”

  Servius’s ears flicked slightly. He turned his gaze toward the shifting corridor ahead, the darkened edges where the lumen-drone glow couldn’t quite reach.

  His tail curled slightly at his back.

  His voice was low.

  “Of course it is.”

  They pressed on.

  The corridor widened, sloping downward at an unnatural incline. The deeper they went, the more the metal changed.

  At first, it had been faint—etched lines, strange circuits embedded in the plating. But now?

  The walls pulsed.

  Not in a literal sense—there was no movement, no shift in material. But something beneath the surface, something ancient, was awake.

  Servius could feel it.

  The way the air thickened. The way his skin prickled.

  The way the shadows stretched just a little too far.

  The Mechanists wouldn’t see it. They saw the world in readouts and data-streams. But Servius?

  He trusted his instincts.

  And his instincts were snarling.

  The corridor ended abruptly.

  Not with a door. Not with a vault.

  Just—an opening.

  A vast, circular chamber yawned before them, stretching into the dark.

  It was not empty.

  Massive, curved machinery lined the walls—great, half-buried structures that hummed with a faint, rhythmic energy. A series of towering pillars jutted from the floor, lined with cables and data-feeds that still flickered with fragmented life.

  And at the center—

  A terminal.

  Ancient. Corrupted.

  A massive construct of cables, data-banks, and pulsing conduits, its surface stitched together from overlapping plates of mismatched alloys. A terminal that should have died long ago.

  And yet, it still functioned.

  Faint screens flickered, displaying lines of code twisting in ways code was never meant to move. Fragments of an intelligence fractured, rewritten, twisted by something beyond comprehension.

  Servius’s breath slowed.

  His tail stilled.

  He knew what this was.

  Not fully. Not yet.

  But he had seen corruption before.

  He had seen machines turned into something else.

  This was not a machine anymore.

  Arohk-7 stepped forward, their servo-limbs extending, scanning the ancient terminal.

  "This structure," they murmured, adjusting their lenses. "This... configuration. It resembles an archive. Or a command relay."

  They hesitated, their fingers twitching against their data-slate as it processed fractured readings.

  "Something is still active," they continued, their voice modulated but holding a note of uncertainty. "Not functional. But... aware."

  Servius didn't move yet. His claws flexed against his weapons.

  He could feel it too.

  Not a presence. Not in the way of the Warp. But something was lurking within these circuits—something tangled in the old data-feeds, whispering beneath the flickering screens.

  This wasn’t just a ruin.

  It was a corpse that hadn’t realized it was dead.

  The cables stretching across the floor, the rusted machinery still humming faintly—they weren’t just old. They had been rewritten.

  Changed.

  Servius’s tail flicked sharply. “Can you access it?”

  Arohk-7 hesitated for only a fraction of a second before adjusting their stance. “Attempting now.”

  Their servo-limbs moved quickly, interfacing with the corroded control panel.

  A faint, electrical pulse ran through the air.

  The lumen-drones flickered—just for a moment.

  Arohk-7's lenses adjusted. “This system was meant to control something. But its functions have been… altered. The data pathways are erratic.”

  Servius exhaled through his nose. “You’re saying it’s broken?”

  Arohk-7’s fingers stilled against their data-slate.

  “…No. I am saying it was tampered with.”

  The words carried weight.

  Servius’s ears flicked slightly, but he gave no outward reaction.

  The terminal pulsed.

  A surge of corrupted energy rippled across the chamber. The consoles, once dead and silent, flared to life in stuttering, erratic bursts.

  Text crawled across the screens in jagged, malformed symbols—some resembling Gothic script, others warping mid-display.

  The shadows thickened.

  Then, for the first time in centuries—

  The machine spoke.

  "UNAUTHORIZED PRESENCE DETECTED."

  Arohk-7’s servo-limbs twitched. “It still recognizes commands.”

  Servius’s instincts screamed.

  "PURGE INITIATED."

  A grinding shudder ran through the floor.

  The cables moved.

  Not like disconnected wires sparking to life—but like tendons. Like nerves.

  The air crackled as an unseen force shifted, unraveled, and then reformed.

  Then, from the walls—

  Something peeled itself free.

  Servius moved first.

  His pistols kicked in his hands, bolts slamming into the first figure before it had even fully emerged.

  It jerked violently, twisting mid-motion—but it did not fall.

  Servius narrowed his eyes.

  It wasn't really a figure. Not fully.

  Its form was wrong—plates of metal and stitched components woven into something grotesquely efficient. A skeletal structure of steel, with veins of pulsing data conduits and something darker winding through its limbs.

  They did not rise like men, nor unfold like machines. Their skeletal limbs jerked in fragmented, unnatural motions, responding to commands not meant for them.

  The glow from its fractured optics flickered uncertainly, a faint, erratic pulse—as if it were struggling to remember how to see.

  Arohk-7 stepped back. “This was—”

  Another lurched forward.

  Then another.

  More bodies began to shift from the walls, pulling themselves from the cables, tearing free from embedded machinery.

  Servius fired again—a bolt round ripping through the nearest construct’s head. The thing shuddered but did not stop.

  Arohk-7’s servo-limbs snapped into a defensive posture, their lenses adjusting rapidly. “They were part of the system. Embedded within it.”

  Servius reloaded without looking away. “Then they’re not stopping.”

  The lights flickered violently.

  The ruined machine continued to pulse.

  "PURGE INCOMPLETE. RESTRUCTURING."

  Massive walls rose from the ground, growing like healing flesh to cover the central mechanism core. The surface shifted as it constructed a labyrinth of reused metal and wires that pulsed like veins.

  The constructs surged forward.

  And Servius met them head-on.