Ella cleared her throat, clearly trying to steer us back to safer ground. She tapped the holomap floating above her wrist unit. “We’re heading for the ancient plateau region, roughly where the modern Black Sea and Mediterranean will one day meet, but two and a half million years ago it was a vast, elevated highland. Fertile river valleys, natural defensive ridges, fresh water, and the perfect crossroads for early migration routes. If Ashera seeded her people anywhere, it wasthere. The cradle. The single most likely center from which her descendants first spread outward across the continents before the Sythari harvestingforced them to scatter and hide. Every myth we have—Atlantis echoes, golden ages, sky-descended teachers—points back to a place exactly like this.”
Nadine leaned forward, eyes bright. “And the resonance scans light up like a beacon. If there’s anything left of the original civilization, any artifact, any echo of Ashera’s work… it’s going to be right under our feet.”
Ashley nodded. “We hit the ground running. Grid search, layered scans, the works. This could be the find of the millennium.”
I felt the shuttle begin its final descent, the vibration shifting as we pierced the lower atmosphere. The nagging whisper in the back of my mind flickered again—something about the resonance, something that didn’t quite fit—but the bone-deeprightnessof standing on this world drowned it out. This was home. Whatever waited on that lost plateau, I was going to face it with my crew, these strange new allies, and the infuriating, magnetic male whose presence I could feel like a second heartbeat.
The landing struts touched down with a soft jolt.
My boots would be the first Sythari-descended feet to touch this ground in two and a half million years. I took a slow, steady breath.
“Gear up,” I ordered in a steady voice despite the storm inside me. “We’re going to find out what our ancestors really left behind.”
The shuttle ramp hissed open, and the first true breath of Earth filled my lungs. It tasted like wild grass, salty air, and something ancient I couldn’t name. My boots hit the dirt, and the resonance slammed into me so hard my knees nearly buckled. This wasn’t just ground. It wasbloodmemory. Every cell in my body recognized the spin of the planet, the exact pullof its gravity, the way the air moved across my skin like it had been waiting for me for two and a half million years.
Home.
The word rang through me like a struck bell. But right behind it, that same nagging whisper returned: something isoff, something that didn’t quite fit the harmony. I shoved it down again. Not now.
“Fan out,” Xandros ordered. “Perimeter first. Full sensor net.”
Half a dozen Pandraxian soldiers in matte-black combat armor poured down the ramp behind him, hands hovering near the blasters by their sides. They moved like they expected the ground itself to attack. Ashley fell in beside Xandros instantly, the two of them already syncing like they’d trained together for years.
“Overlay the resonance grid from the ship,” Ashley directed, tapping commands into her wrist unit. “Layer it with thermal, magnetic, and quantum echo scans. I want every anomaly flagged in real time.”
Xandros gave her a sharp, approving nod. “You heard the Commander. Triangulate on the beacon flare. Weapons hot but with safeties on, we’re not here to start a war with the dirt.”
The soldiers spread out in precise formation, planting small silver drones that rose into the air and began sweeping low over the plateau in overlapping arcs. Blue holographic grids flickered to life across the grass and stone, painting the ground in shifting layers of data.
I was wondering what enemy they expected. From all their accounts, the Cryons were long gone, and the Pandraxians were the liberators of Earth. But I bit the question back, just nodded at my men to be extra vigilant and ready. Maybe there was some wildlife out here that could turn hostile.
Ella was already kneeling a few yards ahead, completely lost in her element. She had a palm-sized Pandraxian probe in one hand—a sleek obsidian cylinder etched with glowing runes—and was dragging it slowly across the soil. “Ground-penetrating resonance probe active,” she murmured reverently. “I’m reading layered sedimentary anomalies at twenty meters… forty… good grief, the density signatures are off the charts. This wasn’t natural erosion. Something wasbuilthere.”
She tapped the probe, and a waist-high holographic column sprang up beside her, rotating slowly. Inside it, ghostly outlines of what looked like massive foundation stones and curving walls shimmered into view, buried deep beneath centuries of sediment.
Nadine stood over her shoulder, her eyes flickering between Ella’s display and her own data pad. “Cross-referencing with the ship’s orbital array. The quantum echo is strongest in a thirty-mile radius around Ella’s position. Whatever Ashera left, it’s stillsinging.”
Thyros moved to my side without a word. Too close again. The golden thread between us pulled taut, and I felt the echo of his earlier touch like a brand against my skin, that treacherous heat still lingering low in my belly. I refused to look at him.
Rylan, Jax, and Marek stayed near the shuttle ramp, weapons drawn but silent after my warning. Smart of them.
Xandros and Ashley kept circling the perimeter together, heads bent over a shared tactical holo. “Got a subsurface cavity at bearing zero-four-seven,” Xandros announced. “Too symmetrical to be natural. Could be a chamber.”
Ashley’s grin was fierce. “Then we start digging, carefully. Ella, you lead the probe team. My squad provides cover. We need to be ready for anything down here, hostiles, traps, or even the Harrowed One itself deciding to show up for the party.”
Ella didn’t even look up, too deep in her scan. “If there are traps, they’re two and a half million years old. I’m reading residual energy patterns that match Arkhevari seeding signatures. This placeremembersthe Arkhevari.”
I stepped forward, and my boots sank slightly into the soft earth. The resonance in my bones grew stronger with every step, pulling me toward the exact spot where Ella’s probe was lighting up like a star. My fingers itched to touch the ground, to press my palm to whatever waited beneath.
But that nagging whisper refused to die.Something is wrong.
I could almost taste it now, a faint discord beneath the harmony, like a single wrong note in a perfect symphony. The planet felt like home… and yet it didn’t. Not completely.
I shook my head. Later. Right now, the only thing that mattered was the glowing data hovering in the air and the way every member of this strange alliance was leaning forward, breath held, waiting for the first real discovery.
Thyros’ low voice brushed my ear again. “Your blood is calling to it, little rebel. I can feel it through the bond.”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because he was right. And whatever answered back from beneath the earth might change everything.
