Eris froze where he stood, his palm still tingling from the spire's pulse. The words had been unmistakable—not imagined, not hallucinated, but placed in his mind with a weight that pressed against every thought.
You have come at last.
He tried to answer, but his throat was dry. The others were staring at him—Mara with her rifle half-raised, Jonas with eyes narrowed in suspicion, and Liora trembling as though she, too, had heard something.
"Eris?" Mara barked. "What the hell just happened?"
He shook his head slowly. "It… spoke."
Liora's breath hitched. "To you?"
"Not… exactly." His gaze flicked back to the glowing core. "Through me."
The guardians shifted again, crystalline figures glinting in the spire's light. They did not advance, but their stillness carried pressure, as though the forest itself was waiting for his next move.
Eris drew a steadying breath and stepped closer to the crystal. As his hand returned to the surface, light flared from the cracks and spread outward like a wave across the basin. The ground shook. The air thickened.
And then the world fell away.
---
He was standing on a vast plain of red sand under a sky not his own. Mars—but not the Mars he knew. Oceans shimmered at the horizon. Towers of crystal stretched high into the clouds. The air was alive with winged creatures, and the soil thrummed with energy.
It was a world not barren, not dead—a world alive.
At the center of the plain stood a figure. Cloaked, faceless, much like the remnant that had guided them here. But larger, grander, pulsing with the same light as the spire.
You touch the heart of Mars, the voice boomed—not in the air, but through the marrow of his bones. And Mars remembers.
Eris's lips parted. "What are you?"
The figure spread its arms, and the sands behind it shifted, forming visions: civilizations long gone, cities of light swallowed by storms, forests that glowed before turning to stone. A history etched in grief.
I am what remains. I am the memory, the keeper, the last breath of a world undone.
The images sharpened—beings of crystal walking among humans, guiding, watching. And then the collapse. Fire in the sky. Shattered towers. The core retreating deep into the soil to survive.
And now… you are here. Descendant of a world not mine, yet bound to the same fate.
Eris staggered back as the vision pressed harder, almost breaking his mind with the sheer weight of it.
"Why me?" he whispered.
The figure's light pulsed once, blinding.
Because the crystal chose you.
---
Back in the basin, Eris collapsed to one knee, gasping. The spire still glowed beneath his hand, and the guardians had all lowered their heads, as if acknowledging something only they understood.
Mara's voice broke the silence, sharp and unsettled. "Eris… what did it show you?"
His eyes lifted slowly, still filled with the afterglow of that impossible vision.
"Not what Mars is," he said hoarsely. "What Mars was."