Around us, the women kept talking, voices rising in excitement over hidden bloodlines and latent gifts, then ebbing as they discussed possible sites, but I barely heard them. My entire focus had narrowed to the fierce, glowing female who had just accidentally handed me the first real thread of her past. A thread I was going to follow straight into the heart of whatever storm she carried.
I felt the pull again, sharper this time. Not just physical. Something deeper. This female carried the living echo of a goddess who had once helped shape worlds, and she wielded that legacy like a blade.
Xandros’ voice cut in, measured. “Six hundred years of resistance against an interstellar harvesting operation. That is no small feat for any species.”
Zapharos’ golden aura pulsed once in agreement. Dravok simply watched restlessly from the shadows.
Naeris stood taller under their scrutiny, unyielding, beautiful in her defiance. The Aelyth bond coiled tighter in my chest, heat and hunger and something perilously close to respect twisted together. She was going to ruin me.
I knew it, still, some reckless part of me—the part born in the Abyss and starved for light—was already leaning toward the flame.
The room thrummed with energy now, the kind that made even an Arkhevari born in the Abyss sit up and take notice. Nadine’s voice rose above the rest. “If they had a central civilization—a true hub, not scattered villages—it would have been in the most defensible, resource-rich area possible on that ancient map. High ground, fresh water, fertile soil, natural barriers.”
Ashley leaned in, Marine instincts firing. “Exactly. And when the sky gods started harvesting, the survivors wouldn’t have run toward open plains. They’d have pulled back into the most inaccessible terrain they could find while still staying close enough to maintain some kind of organized resistance.”
Ella’s fingers flew over the palmtop controls, rotating the dual-layered globe again. “So we’re looking for a plateau or mountain system that existed 2.5 million years ago, one that later got buried or flooded or tectonically shifted just enough to hide it from modern eyes.”
Naeris stepped closer to the holovid.
She reached out and tapped a command. The ancient Earth overlay zoomed in on a vast, elevated landmass that no longer existed in the same form, a broad, fertile plateau nestledbetween what would one day become the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, according to the names I read off the modern Earth duplicate. Rivers that no longer flowed carved deep, protective valleys. Natural ridges formed natural fortresses. The overlay shimmered as the modern Earth ghosted over it, showing how rising seas and later ice ages had drowned and buried most of it under sediment and volcanic ash.
“There,” Naeris said quietly. “My blood knows this place. The pull… it’s strongest here.”
The women exploded into motion.
Ella’s voice rose with pure archaeologist glee. “That plateau aligns with every myth we have: sky-descended beings, lost golden ages, cataclysmic floods. And look, the Pandraxian scanners can overlay residual energy signatures right now.” She glanced at Xandros. “You have the tech for deep planetary resonance scans, right? The kind that can detect life echoes even through millions of years of geological noise?”
Xandros’ grin was sharp and predatory. “We do. Quantum resonance array. It reads the imprint left by any life matter.”
Nadine was already linking the palmtop to the ship’s systems, her fingers a blur. “Cross-referencing with known gravitational anomalies and magnetic anomalies that have never been fully explained. If there’s even a trace of non-terrestrial tech down there…”
Ashley cut in, eyes gleaming with tactical hunger. “We scan in overlapping grids. Start narrow on the highest plateau remnants, widen if we get ghost readings. Military precision. No wasted time.”
The holovid pulsed once as the Pandraxian array came online. A new layer of shimmering blue lines swept across the ancient map like living veins of light. The room held its breath.
Then: a single, brilliant flare.
Right at the heart of the plateau Naeris had indicated. The women gasped in unison.
Ella’s voice cracked with excitement. “That’s a match. The resonance signature is off the charts, it’s singing the same frequency as Zapharos’ aura, as Thyros’, as every Arkhevari we’ve ever scanned.”
Nadine laughed, a short, stunned sound. “It’s possible. It’s actually possible. The hidden cradle of Ashera’s civilization, buried under two and a half million years of Earth trying to forget… and the planet never quite managed it.”
Ashley slapped the table. “Let's go.”
Naeris’ fingers tightened on the palmtop. She didn’t speak, but I felt the pull through the bond again, stronger this time, like a golden cord yanking us both toward that glowing point on the map. Her eyes met mine across the room, and for once, there was no glare, no warning. Only the same raw anticipation burning in both of us. Whatever waited on that lost plateau, it was calling her. And because the Aelyth bond refused to be ignored, it was calling me right along with her.
I pushed off the wall. “Then we stop talking and start moving. The Abyss has waited long enough.”
The females turned as one, faces alive with the kind of fierce, hopeful fire that could rewrite galaxies. And for the first time since the Dark had spat me out into this universe, I felt something dangerously close to hope myself.
Hope that my life was meant for something different than to feed the Harrowed One's curiosity and hunger.
The small shuttlesliced through Earth’s atmosphere, its viewport filled with a swirling blue-and-white marble that grew larger and more impossibly real with every heartbeat. I stood near the front, one hand braced on the overhead rail, the other clenched at my side. My crew—Rylan, Jax, and Marek—sat strapped in behind me; their presence gave me a small, familiar anchor in all this strangeness.
Ella, Nadine, and Ashley were practically vibrating with anticipation. Ella kept pressing her palms to the cool viewport glass like she could reach through and touch the planet already. “We’re going home,” she whispered, half-laughing, half-reverent. “After everything… we’re actually going home.”
Nadine’s voice was softer but no less charged. “It's so surreal. I never thought I'd come back.”
