The presence didn’t respond in words. It wasn’t capable of words, not in any way he could understand. But there was a sensation of… acknowledgment. Recognition. As if the planet itself was greeting a long-lost child.
Rhyx closed his eyes and let himself sink deeper into the connection. It was like nothing he had ever experienced—or nothing he could remember experiencing—but it felt right in away he couldn’t explain. The rock beneath him, the air around him, the roots of the mountain stretching down into darkness—all of it was connected. All of it was alive, in a way that transcended simple biology.
And he was part of it.
Images flickered through his mind, rapid and disjointed. He saw the planet as it had been—green and blue and vibrant with life, its surface covered in forests and oceans and cities of impossible beauty. He saw the slow catastrophe of the atmospheric collapse, the desperate attempts to reverse the damage, the final desperate gamble of the seed ships and the stasis pods. He saw the long, cold silence that followed, the planet retreating into dormancy as it waited for conditions to change.
And he saw the present—the thin atmosphere, the barren surface, the tiny enclave of life hidden deep within the mountain. The cavern where he had been born, sustained by systems that had operated without interruption for millions of years. A pocket of the old world, preserved against all odds.
Waiting, he understood. Waiting for someone to wake up. Waiting for someone to carry on.
The connection pulsed with something that might have been hope. Or urgency. Or both.
There is work to be done, the planet seemed to say. The healing has begun, but it is not complete. The atmosphere still bleeds. The surface still burns. Without intervention, without care, everything we preserved will eventually fail.
Rhyx opened his eyes. The bioluminescent glow of the cavern seemed brighter now, more purposeful. The vines that had seemed decorative suddenly looked like what they trulywere—oxygen generators, atmospheric scrubbers, the living infrastructure of a long-term terraforming project.
This place isn’t just a shelter, he realized. It’s a seed. A starting point. The beginning of something that was meant to spread across the entire planet.
The weight of that understanding settled onto his shoulders, heavy but not unwelcome. He had been asking himself what his purpose was, why he had been created, what he was meant to do. Now he had his answer.
He was a gardener. A caretaker. The last steward of a dying world, given the impossible task of bringing it back to life.
And he wasn’t going to do it alone.
Alina’s face flickered through his mind—her warm brown eyes, her nervous smile, the way she bit her lip when she was thinking hard about something. She was a scientist. A researcher. Someone who had dedicated her life to understanding this planet and its secrets.
She can help, he thought. Together, we can?—
The thought stuttered and stalled as reality crashed back in. Alina was gone. She was back among her people, surrounded by others who didn’t know about this place, who would destroy everything if they learned the truth. The three days he had promised her suddenly felt like an unbearable eternity.
I should go to her.
The impulse was overwhelming, almost physical in its intensity. Every instinct screamed at him to leave the cavern, to track her scent across the barren landscape, to find her and protect her and bring her back where she belonged.
But he had promised.
Rhyx unclenched his fists and forced himself to breathe. The connection to the planet pulsed steadily beneath him, offering a kind of grounding that helped him contain the worst of his anxiety. Alina was strong. She was clever. She knew how to navigate the dangers of her own people in ways that he did not.
Trust her,he told himself.She said she would return. She will.
And when she did, he would have something to show her. Something that might change everything.
He rose to his feet and began to walk deeper into the cavern, following the pull of the planetary connection like a thread through a maze. There were more memories waiting for him in the darkness. More secrets hidden in the stone. More pieces of the puzzle that would help him understand what he was meant to be.
Three days. He could survive three days.
He had to.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Where. Were. You.”
Martin’s voice cut through the air like a knife. He stood in the doorway of the lab, once more immaculate, his pale eyes fixed on Alina with an intensity that made her skin crawl.
She straightened from where she’d been leaning against Cass’s desk, and gave him an icy look.
“We went through this yesterday. I got caught in the storm.” She kept her voice flat, professional. “Found shelter. Waited it out.”
