A chill crept up my spine from the cold steel floor.
No, this wasn't a chill.
It was a dread that began to crystallize deep within my bones.
I couldn't open my eyes.
Because I knew that if I did, everything would disappear.
*
Before me, The Star Garden of Arkelos unfolded.
Beyond the transparent crystal dome, a swarm of Star-Cluster Jellyfish flowed through the night sky in place of the Milky Way.
The air was sweet and crisp as hundreds of millions of tiny, self-luminescent creatures rained down blue Aether Spores.
I reached out and caught a shimmering spore. A tiny, prickling sensation as it burst on my palm.
Mom held my hand and whispered.
"Look, Jayn. They never lose their way. They follow each other's light."
Dad took a bite of the 'Stardust Jelly' sold only at the festival, then laughed as he placed the other half in my mouth.
His hands always smelled of warm engine oil.
The melody of a crystal harp, Mom's favorite, echoed throughout the garden, and people sang, waving the Lanterns of Light in their hands.
Dad lifted me onto his shoulders and shouted, "My daughter's lantern is flying the highest! Those stars are protecting us, and the whole world!"
Happiness. Yes, that was the name of this feeling. A distant, alien sensation I had forgotten for ten years.
That's when it happened.
A sound tore through the harp's melody—the chillingly methodical rhythm of mechanical footsteps.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The blue light of the Star-Cluster Jellyfish began to flicker as if in terror. The people's singing faded, and everyone looked up uneasily at a single point in the sky.
In the darkness, a single, giant red eye was looking down on us.
"No..."
My whisper never became a scream.
The next moment, the sky tore apart.
A rain of red flashes poured down. The beautiful crystal dome cracked like a giant spiderweb and collapsed. The blue Star-Cluster Jellyfish burst like red blood.
The screams of people, the roar of collapsing buildings—every sound became a single, horrific symphony that tore at my eardrums.
I desperately searched for Mom and Dad.
And in the flames and smoke that filled my vision, I saw them.
Cold steel dolls made of platinum and white alloy.
Their single red eyes scanned the burning city without emotion. They were the same ones I had seen at The Clatter Market yesterday.
Aegis Guardians.
They trampled Mom's harp. They burned Dad's workshop. They erased my world.
"Jayn!"
Mom's desperate voice.
From beneath a collapsing crystal pillar, she threw a small crystal shard toward me.
"Don't forget... the truth."
That was the last thing.
Then, a massive red flash swallowed everything.
*
"No!!!"
I screamed, bolting upright.
Ragged breaths tore through my lungs. My whole body was drenched in a cold sweat, and my heart hammered against my ribs as if to break them.
A familiar scene.
The cold metal walls of my sanctuary, 'the Nest,' pressed in on me from all sides. An old shipping container. The only fortress that had protected me for the past ten years.
But at this moment, it was no fortress.
It felt like a coffin, crushing me inside. A sealed coffin of steel.
The shadows of the tools on the wall flickered like the silhouettes of Aegis Guardians.
I couldn't breathe. Claustrophobia washed over me like a wave. My vision narrowed into a tunnel, a coldness spreading from my fingertips.
It felt as if countless red eyes were watching me from the darkness.
Like a madwoman, I threw open the hatch and scrambled outside.
I didn't even have time to grab my Sky Hammer, my other self.
I stumbled across the rusty steel structure on trembling legs. The cold dawn wind brushed against my sweat-soaked skin, but the shaking wouldn't stop.
I have to go. To that place.
My feet were moving instinctively toward one destination.
The deepest, highest point in Rust Haven. The giant scrap mountain everyone avoided. 'The Ship's Graveyard.'
Toward the 'Cursed Ship' that slumbered there.
* * *
The dawn in Rust Haven is always gray.
The scrap mountains block the sun, and the murky air swallows the light. Only the intermittent flashes of welding torches clawed at my retinas like the red flashes from my nightmare.
I staggered like a ghost through the maze-like alleys. The sound of mechanical footsteps still echoed in my head.
A fine metallic dust, 'Rustfall,' settled in the air, making my throat raw.
I passed through a narrow, claustrophobic canyon and precariously climbed down 'The Weeping Wall,' where rust and grease dripped and flowed together.
The faint, cool blue light from the Aether Mycelium growing in the crevices of the wall felt like a vile parody of the living light that once filled my home.
I was passing old Barney's junk shop.
The old man, who was just starting to push up the shop's heavy iron door, spotted me and frowned.
"You there, where are you off to at this hour, looking like you've lost your soul?"
Normally, I would have shot back a witty remark, but I didn't have the energy. I tried to walk past him without a word.
Then, the sound of him clicking his tongue hit my back.
"It's obvious where you're headed. That damned 'Ship's Graveyard' again? Tsk, tsk, you don't listen to an old man's advice at all. You'll end up just like Steel-Tooth Jack, I tell you."
My feet stopped dead in their tracks.
Steel-Tooth Jack. A name from an old legend, used to scare the children of Rust Haven.
As if he knew he had caught my attention, old Barney cleared his throat and lit his old pipe. His nagging always started this way.
"You're too young to know, but about twenty years ago, there was this madman. Ran around claiming he could talk to that ship at the top of the Ship's Graveyard. Said it was a living creature, that it had chosen him, or some nonsense."
A living creature. The words struck my heart. It was a sensation I had vaguely felt myself. Those elegant, soft curves, so different from the angular ships of the Empire. That form, like the skeleton of a great whale.
"Everyone laughed at him, of course. But that fool, whether he was truly mad or not, one night he hauled all his tools up the mountain, saying he was going to wake the ship. And... that was the last of him. A few days later, one of his tools, a steel saw, was found at the bottom of the mountain, covered in blood. People started whispering that the ship had chewed him up and swallowed him whole. That's how he got the name 'Steel-Tooth Jack.' You get it? That place is dangerous!"
The old man raised his voice, trying to scare me.
But his story didn't fill me with fear. Instead, it planted a strange conviction within me.
That ship... it wasn't alone.
So I wasn't the only one. There was someone else who tried to hear its whisper.
Without a word, I started walking again.
"Hmph, that stubborn mule!"
I heard the old man grumbling behind me, but it didn't matter anymore.
The remnants of the nightmare that had clouded my mind began to fade, replaced by an unbearable craving for the colossal mystery.
* * *
By the time I finally reached the entrance to the Ship's Graveyard, I was completely exhausted.
My breath came in ragged gasps, and my legs felt like lead.
I collapsed, leaning my back against the wreckage of a giant steel hull.
This place was on a different scale from the other scrap heaps of Rust Haven.
Not a hill of miscellaneous junk, but a cemetery where the giants of the pre-Cataclysm era slumbered.
Whenever the wind passed between the torn hulls, an eerie shriek, like the groans of dead giants, drifted through the perpetual twilight.
And up there, in the heart of the scrap mountain range that had piled up for hundreds of years, was that ship.
It wasn't whole.
Most of it was entangled with the wreckage of other ships, looking like part of the colossal scrap heap itself.
As if a mythical steel whale had died and sediment had piled on its carcass for hundreds of years, only a part of its massive body was barely visible.
In the gray twilight, the elegant curve of its keel, soaring through the sharp wreckage of other shattered ships, was like the spine of a giant, and its skeletal inner frame resembled its ribs.
Its surface was entirely covered in dark red rust and gray dust, and scrap fragments that had fallen from above over the long years were embedded in it or had melted onto it, encasing its original form like a thick stone shell.
Most Junkers saw it as just another massive lump of scrap, but I could see it.
If the Imperial warships around it were dead armor, sharp and linear like blades, this ship held an incredibly soft, living, creature-like curve beneath its thick rust.
I stared up at it, mesmerized.
Why? Why couldn't I stop coming here, every day for ten years, just to look up at this giant lump of scrap?
When I came here, the noisy world faded away, and the anger inside me subsided, if only for a moment. A strange sense of peace, as if... I had come home.
That's when it happened.
I felt a faint warmth from within my pocket.
I unconsciously reached in and pulled it out.
Mom's last memento. The 'Arkelos crystal shard' that had been pressed into my hand on that day, ten years ago.
The crystal, which was always cold, was now pulsing in my palm with a faint blue light, like a heart.
And as if in response to that pulse, something incredible happened.
Vvvvvvvmmmm—
The entire scrap mountain, no, the giant ship slumbering at its heart, began to hum.
It wasn't the mechanical sound of metal clashing.
It was like the breath of a great creature, exhaled in a deep sleep.
A low, sad song, filled with hundreds of years of solitude and longing.
The vibration wasn't just a sound; it was a wave of emotion that penetrated to my very bones.
The crystal shard in my hand began to glow brighter, and the ship's cry became clearer.
The air around the shard shimmered like a blue haze, and tiny scrap particles began to float delicately around my hand.
A sensation as if I, the crystal, and that giant ship were connected by a single thread.
For a moment, the clear sound of the crystal harp Mom used to play flashed through my mind.
And the weight of the nightmare that had been crushing me vanished as if it were a lie.
The red flashes, the sound of mechanical footsteps—nothing held power before this immense resonance.
For the first time in ten years, I felt perfect calm.
I rose to my feet. I was no longer running. I wasn't stumbling.
My eyes were fixed on a single goal.
That ship is not just scrap. It's not a cursed ghost ship.
It is... a legacy of Arkelos, just like me. It is my past, and perhaps, the only key to my future.
I made a decision. I would no longer just watch from a distance.
"Tomorrow..."
My voice, low and firm, echoed in the dawn's silence.
"I will touch that ship myself."