Weightless.
Soundless.
Then—impact.
Stone. Dust. Heat.
Rafa coughed and rolled over, his rifle cracked but still intact. The air smelled wrong—metallic, sharp, like electricity and rain.
He looked up.
The sky wasn't a sky. It was a ceiling of fractured glass, each shard showing a different world—oceans, deserts, stars, faces.
He could see Earth among them, glowing faintly through the cracks.
A hiss behind him.
The Alpha stood a few meters away, limping but alive. Its weapon flickered with dying energy.
They stared at each other—two predators far from home.
Rafa reloaded, chambered the last round, and muttered,
> "Guess round two's off the books."a thought past his mind where are we?
They had fallen into a tomb—massive, circular, lined with pillars carved in symbols that shimmered between languages he didn't recognize with shimmering gold
At the center stood a raised platform, and on it… a throne.
A man sat there.
Or what was left of one.
His body was almost skeletal, flesh dried into shadow, yet his robes glowed with threads of gold. A crown of tarnished metal rested on his brow. When Rafa's flashlight beam swept across him, the light bent—like it didn't want to touch him.
The Alpha turned, snarling, ready to strike again—but then stopped. Its entire posture changed, muscles locking.
Rafa froze too, sensing it. The air had weight now. Pressure.
Something was awake.
The corpse on the throne moved.
Not much. Just a twitch of the fingers. But every torch in the chamber flared to life, spilling golden fire down the walls.
A whisper rippled through the room, layered with a thousand voices.
> "Another cycle begins…"
Silence pressed in from all sides.
The golden fire that lit the tomb dimmed to a heartbeat's glow, pulsing across cracked marble like the breath of something vast and ancient. Dust swirled lazily through the air, catching light that had no source.
Rafa's chest heaved as he reloaded his last magazine. The Alpha crouched across the room, snarling, spear dragging sparks along the floor. For a second, both predators only stared, waiting for the other to move first.
Then the air shifted.
It wasn't wind. It was command.
The figure on the throne raised one decayed hand.
Rafa's body slammed to the ground before he could blink. His muscles locked; his knees hit marble hard enough to bruise. Across from him, the Alpha roared—but the sound died halfway through. It, too, was forced down, trembling against the unseen weight.
Rafa's vision blurred—then sharpened.
The figure was no longer on the throne.
It stood before them.
Closer than breath.
The golden robes trailed through the dust, whispering like silk over bones. Up close, Rafa saw that the man's face wasn't fully decayed—half regal, half ruin—eyes burning like molten suns.
The Alpha tried to rise, claws digging into the stone. The figure simply touched its head.
A sound like a collapsing star filled the tomb.
The Alpha convulsed—then began to crumble from within, its green armor melting into ash that streamed upward into the figure's hand like liquid shadow. It screamed until it had no throat left, until even the echo was devoured.
When it was done, only silence remained.
The figure turned its gaze toward Rafa.
A smile—thin, knowing, ancient.
> "Interesting…"
It stepped closer. The light dimmed further, swallowed by shadow that clung to every edge of the tomb. Rafa's heart hammered, but his body refused to move.
> "Then you shall be my knight."
A single finger pressed to Rafa's forehead.
Blackness exploded behind his eyes.
The world folded.
His last sight before the void claimed him was the faint smirk on that golden corpse's lips—half triumph, half sorrow.