"LIBRARY"

The black ash fields stretched before us like a cursed plain, swallowing sound and light alike. Each step crunched as though we marched on brittle bones. The air was a bit cold, but it was not the kind of cold that cleansed—it was the kind that lingered in the marrow, as if the land itself resented our presence. Ahead, the mining city loomed like a scar on the world, its jagged spires clawing upward, its walls lined with smoke and strange light.

The makeshift briefing room smelled faintly of dust and mildew, the air stagnant from years of abandonment. The chalkboards were cracked, their surfaces still bearing faint ghostly marks of equations scrawled by long-gone teachers. Broken desks lined the corners, and faded motivational posters clung to the walls by sheer will, their colors dulled to sepia. A projector hung from the ceiling by a single bolt, swaying slightly every time the wind rattled through the broken windo

In the fertile lands of Brimwald, morning sunlight stretched golden across rolling plains. The wheat swayed in a steady rhythm, tall stalks shimmering like rivers of amber under the sun. Irrigation canals cut neat lines through the farmland, their waters glinting in the light, and the distant silhouettes of grain silos loomed like quiet guardians over the colony.

Valrra’s voice came across the ship’s intercom, calm but unmistakably edged with intent. It was short, clipped, a command rather than a request: she wanted Emily and me in the training room. No explanation, no softened tone, just the weight she always carried when something gnawed at her mind.

After the battle with the Demons, the air over Draca still hummed with the aftertaste of war — the faint acrid tang of burnt demon ichor mingled with the fresh, crisp winds that rolled off Draca’s emerald hills. The streets bore scars of the conflict — shattered cobblestones, scorch marks burned deep into timber walls, and the blackened smears where Wraith-born creatures had dissolved under the purging bite of Shungite weaponry.

Stepping back through the gate felt like piercing the surface after drowning too long in the shadows. The heavy static charge of the Labyrinth evaporated behind us, replaced by the steady pulse of a temple alive with sunlight and water. The transition was jarring—the hush of endless tunnels and humming data towers giving way to open air, sound, and warmth.

The battlefield still smoldered behind us, the faint hiss of hydrofluoric tanks bubbling like cauldrons in the distance as the last traces of Jackal Heads were erased from existence. The air hung heavy with smoke, scorched metal, and the bitter tang of ozone. My boots pressed into the scorched soil as I turned toward my companions—Emily, Valrra, Serenity, Deathskull, Kyle, and Nicholas—all of them standing in the fading crimson glow of the battlefield.

At the heart of the galaxy, Skaalandr emerged as the new anchor of Vikingnar civilization. Once a quiet, uninhabited world of deep oceans and sprawling tundra, its surface was now alive with the hum of construction. Across its frost-bitten valleys, Guardian Angel Droids stood like golden sentinels, their skeletal forms etched with runes, their Viking-style armor fused seamlessly with their mechanical frames. They worked tirelessly to raise the foundations of the capital.

We all made our way out of the cave—our footsteps clanging against the scorched stone as we emerged into the open, exhausted but alert. A low wind whipped across the plains, stirring the tall crimson grass that sprouted in patches across the dry terrain. The sky was bruised with late afternoon light—clouds swirling overhead, tinged with the greenish hue of this ancient planet’s atmosphere.

The bridge was quiet—too quiet—except for the intermittent blinking of dead controls and Emily’s frustrated breaths. She hovered over the command console like a lioness watching over a wounded cub, rapidly pressing buttons in sequence, palms smacking glass. Holograms flickered in and out like dying ghosts...

As Emily and I climbed back up the hidden stairwell into the main hall of Jericho’s twisted cathedral, our boots echoed on the stone steps, still wet with condensation and the lingering scent of death. The desecrated altar sat like a monument to false divinity, its fractured slabs casting long shadows under the flickering red lights above. The cathedral's silence was no longer peaceful—it was tense, like a drum skin pulled too tight. We were no longer explorers here. We were

The black-and-gold pyramid loomed against Cybrawl’s eternally darkened sky—an angular colossus of obsidian steel and humming plasma veins, its silhouette glowing faintly under flickering red lights that had recently become standard across the droid empire’s infrastructure. The air shimmered with electromagnetic tension, as if the very atmosphere was waiting to collapse under the pressure of coming war.