The sonic pulse hit the swarm like a physical blow. Anastasya watched as the glistening black mass of Corrosive Myxoids blocking the doorway recoiled, a wave of silent, synchronized revulsion. The air, thick with the acrid smell of decay, was now split by a high-frequency hum that scraped at the inside of her skull. Mikhail Kuznetsov, the guilt-ridden engineer, slumped against the rusted console he had coaxed back to life, his fur damp with sweat.
— It will not hold for long, — he gasped, his voice thin. — The barrier is unstable.
— It doesn’t need to, — Anastasya said, her own voice a flat command that cut through the noise. — Move.
They plunged through the cleared archway into a vast, circular chamber. This was the archive. Metal shelves, eaten through with rust, climbed the curved walls into darkness. Flickering emergency lights cast long, dancing shadows. And in the center of the room, four ceiling-mounted turrets swiveled to face them, their crystal lenses glowing with a malevolent red.
The first volley of crystal shards screamed past Anastasya’s head, shattering against a far wall. The automated defenses were faster here, their firing solutions near-perfect. They were pinned down behind a row of overturned consoles, the air filling with the sharp tang of ozone and pulverized metal.
— They have us bracketed, — Anastasya stated, analyzing the impact patterns. The turrets were creating an overlapping field of fire. There was no clear path.
Lauri Vatanen knelt beside her, his breathing shallow. He had been quiet since they entered the Cradle, the terrible stillness he’d found in the Ashen Tracts wrapped around him like a shroud. He looked at the chaos of ricocheting shards not with a soldier’s eye, but with a warden’s focus, as if listening for a pattern in the noise.
— I can feel their logic, — he whispered, the words meant only for her. — The targeting systems. They are linked.
He closed his eyes. The strain was immediately visible. A fine tremor returned to his hands, and the muscles in his jaw tightened. He was using his biotic sense as a sonar, not to feel for life, but to map the cold, dead flows of precursor energy. It was a perversion of his gift, and Anastasya could see the price it was exacting. His energy was a finite resource, and he was spending it freely.
— On my mark, — Lauri said, his voice tight with concentration. — Two steps right, then forward. Do not hesitate.
Anastasya looked at the warden, then at the storm of crystal death filling the chamber. Her training screamed that this was suicide. Her doctrine demanded a tactical solution based on observable data, not the feelings of a Silvanus mystic. But her trust in him, forged in the fog and fire of their journey, was now absolute. It was the only weapon she had left.
— Jukka, Mikhail! On me! — she commanded.
A turret fired, chewing up the floor where they had been a second before.
— Now! — Lauri yelled.
Anastasya moved. She did not think; she simply obeyed. Two steps right. Forward. A volley of shards passed so close she felt the displaced air on her cheek. Lauri shouted another direction, a sharp, clipped command. She relayed it, her team moving with her in perfect, desperate synchronicity. They were a single organism, his senses and her discipline fused into one. They flowed through the kill zone like water, the storm of crystal breaking around them but never touching them. Zero damage taken.
They reached the far side of the chamber, collapsing behind a massive, silent data terminal. The turrets fell silent, their targeting cycle unable to acquire them. Anastasya’s heart hammered against her ribs. She looked at Lauri, who was leaning against the terminal, his eyes closed, sweat plastering the grey fur to his brow. Her respect for him was no longer grudging. It was total.
— Get it open, — she said to the two men huddled with them.
Jukka Anttila, the old shaman, placed a gnarled paw on the terminal’s surface, humming a low, discordant note—a fragment of the lullaby. Mikhail, the engineer, worked beside him, his data-slate connected to an exposed port, rerouting power with frantic precision. The shaman’s ancient lore and the engineer’s technical skill, two opposing worlds, worked in concert.
— The machine-spirit is angry, — Jukka rasped. — Its patterns are frayed.
— I can bypass the corrupted memory blocks, — Mikhail countered, his fingers flying across his slate. — But I need you to keep the core resonance stable.
The terminal screen, dark for a thousand years, flickered to life. It showed not text, but a holographic recording. A figure materialized in the air before them, its form wavering and indistinct. It was one of the precursors, the skeletal creatures from the legends. Gaunt, hairless, and clad in a simple, strange tunic, the being looked distraught, its face a mask of anguish. A ghost in the machine.
— Log entry… cycle failure imminent, — the holographic researcher said, its voice a tinny, distorted echo. — The resonance cascade is out of control. The terraforming matrix… it’s unstable.
The figure gestured wildly at a schematic that appeared beside it, a diagram of the Sunken Song.
— We thought it would only promote symbiosis, — the ghost whispered, its voice breaking. — We never predicted the entropic feedback. It doesn’t just encourage life; it accelerates the decay of anything not perfectly within the resonance field. The Withering… it’s not a plague. It’s a shadow. Our shadow.
The revelation hit Anastasya with the force of a physical blow. The Withering was not a natural disaster. It was an industrial accident. The Sunken Song, their last desperate hope, was the very engine that had broken the world. The cure was the poison.
The knowledge was a cold weight in her gut. Their mission had been based on a lie wrapped in a legend. They were not here to activate a simple cure. They were trying to tame a flawed, world-breaking power, to use the architect’s faulty blueprint to fix a house that was already collapsing. The stakes had just been raised from healing the land to gambling with its very existence.
The hologram flickered and died, leaving them in the dim, red glow of the emergency lights. The silence in the chamber was absolute.
Jukka sagged against the terminal. — The song that builds is also the song that breaks.
Anastasya looked at Lauri. He had heard it all. His face was grim, but the clarity in his eyes did not waver. He had already passed through the crucible of despair. This new, terrible truth was just another weight to carry.
The air was still, thick with the dust of a dead civilization. The low hum of the facility’s failing heart seemed to mock them.
She pushed herself to her feet and checked the charge on her rifle.
