Lucen forced his breathing to level out, actively pushing the terrifying thought aside.
“Let’s try another question.” “Proceed.” “Am I the only one who can hear you?” “Affirmative.” “So did you fix my body?” “Affirmative.
Partial reconstruction complete.” His eyes widened.
“You did?
What else can you do?” “Anything that you want and is biologically possible.” A brief, heavy pause hung in the air.
“Of course…
you can.” Looking up at the broken roof of the chamber, he gestured to the floating debris.
His vision briefly traced back to the flooded streets of Sector 135.
He remembered Kai, bleeding out and almost crushed beneath the Mawlord just to buy them time.
His jaw tightened.
“Can you help me become stronger?” He waited.
“Yes.
That is why I was made.” “So how do I get stronger?” “Complete the Workshop.” “And how do I do that?” “The Origin Workshop is incomplete,” Bio-Net stated plainly.
“Core components are missing.” Crossing his arms, Lucen glanced around the ruined space.
“I noticed the giant holes in the walls.
Where are the missing pieces?” “Scattered across the universe.” He dragged a hand through his hair, exhaling a frustrated breath.
“Can you at least locate them?” “Affirmative.” Straightening up, his eyes sharpened with renewed focus.
“From right here?” “Negative.
Range limitations.” He nodded slowly, piecing the puzzle together.
“So you need a connection point.
A signal booster.
Does Orrak have one of these missing components?” “Negative.” His eyes narrowed.
“Does Earth?” “Affirmative.” Lucen stopped cold.
“Earth has a Workshop component?” “Yes.” A spark of genuine hope ignited in his chest.
A pathway home.
A reason to get stronger.
If he could find a way to link back to that component.
“So what about my soul being consumed by producing the origin energy?” “The vassal is incomplete and weak, so the energy is being made by the soul, if the vassal gets stronger then the bridge between the origin energy and the soul become weaker.” bio net stated flatly.
“So I have to complete the workshop, and make my body stronger.” “Exaclty” “What if I fail to do so?” “The vassal will hollow out and die.” bio net stated coldly.
“So I am on the clock now, huh.” Another blue message flashed aggressively across his vision, glowing bright crimson at the edges.
[WARNING.
DO NOT COMPROMISE HOST MENTAL STABILITY.] Frowning, he swatted at the air as if he could wave the text box away.
“What does that mean?
What happens if I do?” Bio-Net didn’t answer.
Instead, something shifted in the deep distance.
Far beyond the floating ruins.
Far beyond the edge of the glowing branches.
Something flashed.
A tiny, piercing red point appeared in the infinite, pitch-black void.
Tilting his head, he squinted into the dark.
“What is that?” The red point pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
The darkness around it trembled.
A heavy rumble rolled through the workshop, vibrating up through the soles of his feet.
It sounded like thunder rolling across a dead world.
He didn’t dare move a muscle.
“Bio-Net?” Silence.
His expression hardened.
The hair on his arms stood straight up.
Primal instinct screamed at him to run.
“What is that?” Nothing.
The red point pulsed a third time.
Much brighter.
He suddenly understood.
It wasn’t a light.
It was an eye.
Something out there in the dark looked back at him.
A presence so impossibly vast and ancient that simply being perceived by it felt like being crushed under the ocean floor.
His Origin Energy flared violently, a silent, desperate warning.
Taking a slow, terrified step backward, he swallowed hard.
“That’s…
not good.” The world around him collapsed.
The Workshop faded into smoke.
The glowing branches dissolved into ash.
The single red eye burned in the dark for one final second, searing itself into his memory.
Lucen’s eyes snapped open.
He was back inside the cold stone cell on Orrak.
His breathing came in harsh, heavy gasps.
He lay flat on his back on the dirt floor.
But the shadows weren’t empty anymore.
A crimson mass hovered directly over his face.
The red Veyr, Korr straddled him.
He crouched impossibly close in the dim light.
It’s glowing blue core hummed a rapid, highly curious rhythm.
Korr’s sharp, crystalline front limbs actively searched Lucen’s body.
They prodded his ribcage.
They tapped his newly healed collarbone.
Then they moved lower.
The alien was completely clueless.
He poked at the fabric of Lucen’s pants with innocent, profound confusion.
“What is the structural purpose of this soft, dangling appendage?” Korr’s translated voice buzzed with pure, academic curiosity directly into Lucen’s mind.
“It possesses no external mineral armor.
It offers no balance for traversing the ash.
Why is it kept outside the primary chassis?” Lucen’s brain short-circuited.
Pure, instinctual panic flooded his veins.
In a blind shock, Lucen threw his hands up.
A blinding blast of white Origin Energy erupted from his palms completely by accident.
The concussive force hit Korr point-blank.
The red alien lifted entirely off the ground.
He flew backward.
He crashed violently into the stone wall with a heavy, grinding crunch.
Lucen scrambled backward against the opposite wall.
His heart hammered in his throat.
He pulled his knees tightly to his chest.
“Who the hell are you?” The red veyr slowly peeled himself off the wall.
He shook his crystalline head.
His core pulsed with a dizzy, bewildered rhythm.
“Your defense mechanisms.” red vibrated softly.
He tilted his faceless head in utter fascination.
“Are as illogical as your anatomy.” Lucen put took a fighting stance.
“I asked you, Who are you?” “I am korr.” The alien’s deep crimson mineral plates overlapped like sheets of volcanic glass.
They shifted with a dry, metallic rattle that sounded like grinding pebbles.
Beneath those plates, a glowing blue core pulsed in a slow, hypnotic rhythm.
Unlike the other grey rock-creatures Lucen had glimpsed on the plains, It possessed six limbs.
His red armor was heavily scarred.
Chipped and fractured at the edges, the marks painted an undeniable picture of a creature living entirely on the fringes of its own kind.
“You were speaking,” the translated voice rasped inside Lucen’s mind.
Bio-Net forced the jagged, cold echo through his auditory nerves.
“While your eyes were closed.
You spoke to the empty air.
You spoke of missing pieces…
and of Workshop or something.” Lucen slowly let go of his knees.
He pressed his bare palms against the cold, porous basalt of the wall behind him.
His legs felt tense, ready to spring.
He forced his face into a casual, harmless grin anyway.
“I talk in my sleep,” The heavy, dry air made his voice sound raspy and thin.
“It’s a human thing.
Back home, my sister used to throw old shoes at me to make me shut up.” Korr’s crystalline head tilted slightly.
His front limbs tapped a slow, rhythmic pattern against the stone floor.
“What is…
shoes?” the translation hummed.
“Is it a weapon?” A dry laugh escaped Lucen’s lips, quickly turning into a cough.
“No.
It’s…
leather you wear on your feet so you don’t cut them on rocks.
Though, looking at you, I guess you skipped that evolutionary step.” “Veyr do not require dead skin to walk upon the Mother Stone,” Korr vibrated.
His core flared slightly.
“We are the stone.” “The veyr is experiencing high cognitive curiosity mixed with minor territorial agitation.” Bio-Net’s flat, mechanical voice chimed in Lucen’s mind.
Shut up, Bio-Net, Lucen thought back.
He kept his eyes locked on the crimson alien.
“I’m trying not to get squashed here.” “Why are you in my cell?” Lucen asked.
He dropped the humor.
His gaze drifted to the dark, empty corridor visible behind the Veyr.
Korr’s plates flared.
They slid outward into a slightly more streamlined, sharp alignment.
It was a subtle shift, but Lucen’s mind immediately mapped the danger.
The edges of the crimson stone looked sharp enough to slice through steel.
“The Elders debate,” Korr clicked.
The translation arrived with a faint static buzz.
“They say you are a Rift-walker.
A harbinger of the Void.” Lucen swallowed the lump in his throat.
“A harbinger?” “They remember the stories of the burning skies and the faceless shadow,” Korr continued.
The slow hum of his core shifted to a cooler shade of blue.
“They look at my red shell and call me a curse.
But they look at your soft skin and see the end of the world.” “And what do you think?” Lucen asked quietly.
“I think you are small,” Korr vibrated.
A low, rumbling hum carried a strange hint of dry amusement.
“You have no mineral armor.
Your skin is soft, like the liquid mud of the low valleys.
If I press my claw here…” He pointed a razor-sharp, crystalline digit toward Lucen’s ribs.
“…you will pop like a steam-vent bladder.” “But,” Korr continued, his core shifting to a deeper, warmer shade of blue.
“You carry the white threads.
I saw you fall from the cosmic tear.
Your flesh was shattered.
Your bones were dust.
Yet, the white light stitched you back together.
It is…
the weavers’ light.” Lucen looked down at his chest.
His ribs ached with the memory of Origin Energy boiling like hot acid before cooling into a steady, calm flow.
“The Rock-weavers,” Lucen murmured.
“They fixed me.” “They stabilized the meat,” Korr corrected dryly.
“But the spark is yours.
How does a creature so fragile command the deep light?” Lucen let out a slow breath.
He slid down the basalt wall until he was sitting on the dirt floor again.
“Where I come from, everything is fragile,” Lucen said.
He rested his forearms on his knees.
“My planet is called Earth.
We don’t have rock armor.
We don’t have glowing cores.
We just have skin and bones.
And a whole lot of really big, really ugly things are trying to eat us.” Korr’s front limbs stopped tapping.
The alien settled into a crouch, mimicking Lucen’s posture.
“You fight the Void-spawn?” Korr asked.
“We call them Riftborn,” Lucen replied.
“And yeah.
We fight them.
We usually lose.
But we fight anyway.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” The crimson Veyr tilted its faceless head.
“Why fight if you break so easily?” “Because if we don’t, we die.” Lucen held the creature’s gaze.
“It is what it is.
We figured out a long time ago that rolling over doesn’t buy you any favors.
It just gets you killed faster.” Korr processed the translation.
The faint grinding of his internal plates sounded like a machine trying to calculate an impossible math problem.
“But more importantly, how do you understand what I am saying?” Kor tilted its head, “you speak the stone, that’s why.” “What?” The blue screen flicked in front of his eyes, “you were talking in the stone dialect from the start, I made it so you can talk without interruption.” “…” “Right…Right.” “Your world sounds…
exhausting,” Korr finally hummed.
Lucen actually cracked a genuine smile.
“You have no idea.
But hey, I spent my whole life trapped in a damp basement because my body was too weak to even walk.
Then I get sucked through a cosmic portal, nearly die, and suddenly my legs work.” He tapped his knee.
“Better than ever.” “You could not walk?” “Nope.
Dead weight.” “And the white threads repaired this flaw.” Korr’s blue core pulsed with a steady, rhythmic curiosity.
“The Elders believe the light will call the destruction.
They wish to extinguish it before the Scourge finds us.” Lucen’s newly working legs tensed.
“Wait, extinguish?
As in…
kill me?” “That is their debate,” Korr replied.
“They don’t understand you either,” Lucen said, gesturing to Korr’s red plating.
“The others are grey.
They have four limbs.
You’re a six-legged red tank sitting out on the plains all by yourself.” “The Mother Stone shapes us,” Korr vibrated, the translation feeling heavier.
“Grey is the quiet stone.
Red is the active vent.
The violent eruption.” “So they threw you out.” “They put me at the edge,” Korr said, looking down at his heavy hands.
“They use me to fight the beasts.
But when the fighting is done, they do not let me sleep near them.
They say my red shell will burn them.
I told them I wouldn’t, but they don’t listen.” Lucen let out a dry laugh, leaning his head back against the cold rock.
“The universe has a sick sense of humor.
I spent my whole life wishing I was strong so I could fight.
You’re born a walking weapon, and they outcast you for it.
I guess that makes the two of us stuck on the outside.” “A couple of freaks, Well, honestly, I don’t want to bring any doom to your people.
I just want to find my way back to Earth.
My brother is probably tearing our city apart looking for me.” “Your blood-kin?” “Yeah.
Kai.” Lucen’s chest tightened.
“I left him in a really bad spot.
I need to know he’s okay.” “But your path is closed.” Korr vibrated softly.
“The Rift collapsed.
And the Elders will not let you leave this cell.” “I’ll figure something out,” Lucen muttered.
He inspected his hands.
The faint white glow still lingered just beneath the surface of his skin.
“If I learn how to use this energy properly.
I”ll find the way home, no matter what.” Korr’s plates shifted.
The sound was softer this time, less aggressive.
“You are strangely calm for a creature marked for extinction.” They sat in silence for a few minutes.
Two outcasts from completely different corners of the universe, resting on the dirt floor of a volcanic prison.
The tension that had suffocated the room earlier slowly evaporated.
They were just two people trying to understand the terrible hand the universe had dealt them.
“So,” Lucen eventually asked.
“Are you going to let them kill me?” “I am a guard,” Korr replied smoothly.
“My duty is to the colony.” “But you’re sitting in my cell having a philosophical debate with a soft-meat alien.
You don’t strike me as the blindly obedient type.” Before Korr could formulate a response, the stone floor beneath their feet suddenly groaned.
It wasn’t a slow, geological shift.
It was a violent, high-frequency vibration that rattled the loose gravel on the dirt floor.
Deep within the stone walls, a sound began to echo.
It started as a low murmur and rapidly escalated into a chaotic, rapid chiming of hundreds of crystal plates scraping together in absolute panic.
KRRRMMMM—TK—KRRRMMMM—TK!
Korr’s smooth, faceless head snapped toward the corridor.
His core flared a violent, warning violet.
He stood up instantly, his six limbs locking into a wide, braced stance.
“What is that?” Lucen demanded.
His hand instinctively reached for his empty belt where his plasma baton used to live.
“Warning,” Bio-Net’s voice cut through his rising panic with chilling clarity.
“High-energy kinetic signatures detected in the lower caverns.
Multiple seismic impacts.
The colony’s defensive perimeter has been breached.” Lucen scrambled to his feet.
The ground shook so hard he nearly lost his balance.
“The Ashen Veyr,” Korr clicked.
His translated voice lost all trace of dry humor.
It was replaced by a cold, resonant hiss.
“They have bypassed the magma gates.
They are here for the Rift-walker.” “For me?” “Why?” The crimson Veyr didn’t retreat into the corridor.
He didn’t lock the heavy iron door.
Instead, Korr’s deep red plates slid into a tight, interlocking defensive shield.
He stepped directly in front of the open doorway, completely turning his back on his own Elders’ decrees.
Lucen watched the massive outcast turn himself into a living barricade.
He let out a long, exhausted breath as the white light flared to life in his bare palms.
“I guess we’re doing this the hard way.”