The Silent Sands lived up to their name.
Beyond the paved reach of the Amber Road, past the patrol routes of the Sector Sheriff, there was only the deep, endless ocean of silica. Here, the dunes were the size of mountains, shifting with the wind like slow-motion waves.
Julian Vane rode his hover-bike, the Rusty Bucket, over the crest of a massive dune.
He was alone. No Rivet. No Lyra. No Surv. Just him, a canteen of water, and a backpack containing a heavy piece of metal.
It was the anniversary. Two years since the detonation. Two years since the Sovereign's Will dove into the throat of the Dissonance Mother. Two years since his brother, Marcus, became the spark that cleared the sky.
Julian killed the engine.
The bike settled onto the sand. The silence was absolute. No birds. No insects. Just the wind hissing over the grains.
He checked his compass. The needle spun lazily—magnetic interference from the crash site was still strong—but he didn't need it. He felt the pull in his left arm. The Anchor Stone remembered where the heavy things fell.
"Let's go for a walk," Julian muttered.
He dismounted and began to climb the final ridge.
The Glass Forest
He crested the dune and looked down into the impact crater.
He expected to see a black scar. He expected radiation, slag, and the skeletal remains of the bio-moon.
He stopped.
The crater was glittering.
The immense heat of the Warp-Core detonation, combined with the White Noise resonance Arthur had released, had not just destroyed the enemy. It had transformed the battlefield.
The sand had fused into Glass.
Miles of twisted, translucent spires rose from the crater floor. They looked like frozen lightning, or a forest of crystal trees. The sunlight refracted through them, painting the crater in rainbows of prism-light.
"The Glass Forest," Julian whispered, adjusting his goggles against the glare.
He slid down the slope, his boots crunching on the crystallized sand.
It was beautiful. And haunting.
As he walked through the maze of glass spires, he saw reflections of himself in every surface. A thousand Julians. A thousand black iron arms.
He reached the center.
Here, the glass was different. It wasn't jagged. It was smooth, forming a perfect, concave bowl where the core of the ship had exploded.
And in the center of the glass bowl, growing out of a crack in the crystal, was a Tree.
It wasn't a normal tree. Its bark was metallic grey, like ironwood. Its leaves were silver. It was feeding on the residual Aether trapped in the glass.
"Life finds a way," Julian said, running his hand over the rough bark. "Even here."
The Leviathan
RUMBLE.
The ground shook. Not a tectonic tremor. A biological one.
Julian turned.
Emerging from the sand at the edge of the glass forest was a massive shape.
It looked like a whale, but armored in chitin plates the color of the desert. It swam through the sand as if it were water, its massive fins paddling the dunes.
A Sand-Leviathan.
These creatures were legends. Rare, deep-desert fauna that usually stayed miles underground.
The beast surfaced, blowing a fountain of dust from its blowhole. It was magnificent. Sixty feet long, ancient, and scarred.
But it was stuck.
It had swum into the crater, but the glass floor was too hard for it to burrow back down. It was beached on the crystal.
It thrashed, its tail slamming against the glass spires, shattering them with wind-chime sounds. It let out a low, mournful groan.
Julian watched it.
In the old days, he would have calculated its threat level. He would have checked his ammo.
Now, he just felt empathy.
"You took a wrong turn, didn't you?" Julian walked toward the beast.
The Leviathan saw him. It froze, its massive obsidian eye tracking him. It hissed, a sound like a steam vent.
"Easy," Julian raised his hands. "I'm not a hunter."
He walked up to the creature's flank. The heat radiating from it was intense. It was exhausted, dehydrating in the sun.
"You need to go down," Julian said. "Back to the deep."
He looked at the glass floor beneath the creature. It was ten feet thick.
Julian took a deep breath. He gripped his Obsidian Baton.
He placed his black iron hand on the glass.
Focus.
He didn't use gravity to crush. He used it to Resonate.
He found the frequency of the glass. He tapped it with the baton.
Ding.
He increased the amplitude.
HUMMMMM.
The glass beneath the Leviathan began to vibrate. It turned from solid to granular. Julian was unshackling the molecular bonds, turning the glass back into sand.
"Go," Julian commanded.
The floor liquefied.
The Leviathan sensed the softness. It didn't hesitate. It arched its back and dove.
With a massive splash of sand, the beast disappeared beneath the surface, returning to the cool dark below.
A moment later, a low, booming sound echoed from deep underground. A thank you.
Julian smiled, wiping sweat from his forehead.
"Safe travels," he whispered.
The Burial
Julian returned to the silver tree in the center.
He took off his backpack.
He pulled out the Control Yoke of the Sovereign's Will. The scorched piece of metal Marcus had used to steer the ship into the dark.
He also pulled out his father's Spectacles.
He knelt at the base of the tree.
"I didn't bring flowers," Julian said to the empty air. "You guys hated flowers. You liked metal."
He dug a small hole in the sand-filled crack at the tree's roots. He placed the yoke and the glasses inside.
He covered them up.
"The city is good," Julian said. "Elias is running it straight. Isolde is keeping it weird. Rivet... Rivet is going to be better than all of us."
He sat back, resting against the tree trunk.
"I'm tired, Marcus," Julian admitted. "The arm... it's heavy. Some days I just want to put it down."
He looked at his black iron hand.
"But then I see a kid fixing a droid. Or a whale stuck in the glass. And I remember why we carried it."
The wind picked up, singing through the glass spires. It sounded like a flute.
The music never stops, Arthur's voice echoed in his memory. It just changes key.
"Yeah," Julian closed his eyes, listening to the desert wind. "It's a major key now."
The Discovery
As Julian stood to leave, something glinted in the branches of the silver tree.
He looked up.
Tangling in the metallic leaves was something that didn't belong.
It was a Dog Tag.
Not an Imperial tag. A simple, hand-stamped piece of brass on a chain. It must have been blown here by the wind, caught in the only tree for a hundred miles.
Julian reached up and untangled it.
He read the inscription.
NAME: UNKNOWN.
UNIT: SECTOR 4 ORPHANAGE.
NOTE: I WANT TO BE A PILOT.
It was a child's wish, stamped on scrap metal.
Julian rubbed his thumb over the letters.
"A pilot," Julian smiled.
He put the tag in his pocket.
"I know a flight school."
The Return Trip
Julian climbed out of the crater.
He mounted the Rusty Bucket. The engine roared to life.
He looked back at the Glass Forest one last time. It wasn't a scar anymore. It was a monument. A prism that turned the harsh white sun into a spectrum of color.
He turned the bike around.
The ride back was faster. The wind was at his back.
He wasn't just riding away from the past. He was riding toward a specific future.
He had a shop to run. A student to teach. A Sheriff to cook dinner for.
And now, he had a new mission. Find the kid who lost that tag.
Because in a world built on rust, nothing was ever truly lost. It was just waiting to be found and polished.
Julian twisted the throttle. The bike shot forward, leaving a trail of dust that lingered in the air like a long, triumphant note.