John and Lewis trudged through the burnt, brown ash, leaving long, dusty trails behind them. Their shadows, stretched long by Rosana's low sun, glided ahead like dark guides. Underfoot, small shards crunched constantly, resembling precious stones that shimmered with a rainbow iridescence in the sunlight, like mother-of-pearl. The planet Rosana sprawled around them in its hostile beauty: scorched plains painted in orange and red hues by the crimson light of the small, furious sun, scarred by deep channels with straight walls—ancient traces of a forgotten civilization. The low gravity allowed for easy, almost bouncing steps, but the thin air forced them to breathe faster, and the daytime heat was already beginning to subside, hinting at the approaching cold of night.
John stopped and picked up one such shard. It felt warm to the touch.
Strange, he thought, but pocketed the find. Lewis, walking ahead, didn't even turn around—his gaze was fixed on the horizon line, where dark, jagged silhouettes were beginning to emerge from the haze. As a war correspondent who had traveled hot zones from Afghanistan to Syria, Lewis Harris was accustomed to spotting dangers first, trusting his intuition.
The plain before the fortress was crisscrossed by channels. Deep, with walls as straight as if drawn by a ruler, receding into the distance in perfect parallels. They approached the edge of one such trench. It was about five meters deep. At the bottom, beneath a layer of drifted sand, the outlines of grid-like slabs could be discerned, overgrown with orange, blistered lichen. The wind howled through this stone gorge, producing a low, wailing sound. These channels were likely part of an ancient irrigation system or transport routes—technologies that once supported life on this planet but now lay in ruins, overgrown with local flora.
"Should we jump it?" Lewis asked, gauging the distance. In the low gravity, it wouldn't be difficult.
"Wait," John descended the crumbling slope. Near the trench wall, almost completely buried, protruded the frame of some machine. Curved, blackened beams made it impossible to study the structure in detail. Lewis jumped down beside him. He touched one beam—its ribbed surface was covered in faded red stripes.
Inside the shattered machine, still strapped to the seat by belts made of dark, cracked material, sat a skeleton. The spine was unnaturally arched, as if from a final convulsive effort. On its skull, near the temples, two curved metal brackets were attached.
"A pilot," Lewis said simply.
John nodded silently. He wasn't looking at the skeleton, but through the empty cockpit frame, towards where the pilot had been looking in his final moment—at the trench wall, at the blue sky above. He died without managing to escape. After examining the structure and finding nothing noteworthy, the friends decided to move on.
The forest began abruptly, as if someone had drawn a line. Dense shadow closed over their heads, and the air grew heavy, smelling of rotten wood and damp soil. The silence was absolute. Rosana's forest was dense, with gray trunks standing close together, devoid of foliage in the usual sense—rather, they were fleshy structures adapted to cold nights with two moons in the sky, which alternated with hot, stuffy days.
The trees stood so close their trunks almost fused together. But for the most part, they were gray and featureless. And on each, at chest height, a small dark glass panel was embedded. John approached one, wiped away a layer of dust and moss with his palm. The panel remained cloudy and opaque, but under his fingers, he felt a faint vibration, as if from a mechanism working deep within. It could be a remnant of an energy network—a technology that once powered the entire planet but now barely flickered.
Between the trunks, almost invisible in the semi-darkness, hung thin metal ribbons. Lewis, clearing the path, didn't notice one, and it dug into his forearm over his jacket. He flinched more from surprise than pain—the ribbon only tightened, not harming him. He carefully pulled it—it didn't tear but stretched out like a sinew, ringing clearly. He had to carefully remove it from his sleeve, as if disengaging a trap. The ribbon was covered in tiny, sharp teeth. After studying it for a long time and failing to guess its purpose, they decided to continue.
Lewis, already quite tired and irritated, kicked a clump of rotted leaves accumulated at the roots of a tree. From it, with a dry rustle, a skull rolled out.
It was elongated, with a heavy lower jaw.
John took the skull from his hands and turned it over. On the back of the head, fused into the bone, was a round indentation surrounded by concentric circles of some polymer.
After walking another hundred meters, they emerged into a clearing. And here, at the base of a tree with a broken panel, they stumbled upon a metal disc protruding from the soil. It was grown into the foundation of a low, stone-lined well. The disc resembled a stylized flower: three thick, rounded petals converged at the center, where a complex, polygonal socket gaped. The metal felt cold and smooth to the touch.
Nearby, in the mud, lay a massive handle with three short, thick prongs at the end. John picked it up, feeling its pleasant weight in his hand. Without a word, he inserted the prongs into the socket. No click, no hum. Nothing. The mechanism, if there ever was one, had died forever.
"It doesn't work," John said disappointedly, throwing the heavy handle back into the mud.
The forest ended as sharply as it had begun. And before them, beyond the last strip of stunted bushes, walls appeared, built from blocks of black-red stone. Each block was the size of a small car. And they were fitted with such incredible precision that the seams between them were thinner than a hair, almost invisible to the eye.
The landscape of Rosana, after the scorched desert and then the humid forest, here transitioned into the ruins of defensive walls, once part of a great fortress, now disfigured by time and catastrophe.
But the walls were destroyed and mutilated. In many places, gaps yawned as if from powerful explosions.
And the edges of these gaps... They were melted. Not uneven, not jagged, but smooth, like polished glass, forming almost perfect circles. From some gaps, long, vertical grooves ran down to the very base—as if a white-hot god had drawn a finger along the wall, cutting through the stone like butter.
Lewis approached and cautiously, with his fingertips, touched the edge of such a groove.
"The walls are blown apart, John, look," said Lewis. "There was clearly a war or a catastrophe here."
Protruding from the gaps were the innards of the wall—thick, hollow frame beams. On one of them, a piece of cladding still clung—a matte black sheet, crisscrossed with a network of the finest silvery veins, resembling electrical cables.
Movement on the pile of debris at the foot of the wall was barely noticeable. Just a flicker of shadow. But Lewis, with peripheral vision honed over years in places where a flickering shadow often meant death, reacted before he realized it. His hand automatically reached for his holster.
A spider the size of a large dog leapt from under a stone. Its brown-striped body moved with frightening speed, its eight legs kicking up plumes of dust. Lewis fired almost without aiming, from one knee. The sound of the shot, alien and deafening in this age-old silence, echoed and rolled across the plain. The creature jerked, flipped onto its back, and froze, its thin legs trembling helplessly in the air.
From around the corner, attracted by the sound, a second monster immediately crawled out. It was larger, with an abdomen shimmering bright blue, which immediately got caught in the remnants of a metal net stretched between the stones, similar to the one they had already encountered in the forest. The net contracted like a living thing, its taut strands singing sharply. The spider thrashed in its embrace, and its dying hiss merged with the scraping of claws on stone.
"These creatures... They're everywhere," Lewis reloaded his pistol, his movements precise and quick.
John only nodded, not taking his eyes off the second spider slowly dying entangled in the net.
They carefully circled the wall along the outer perimeter until they found a spot where a collapse had created a kind of sloping ramp. Climbing the ramp, they surveyed the inner courtyard that opened before them.
It was enormous. Paths paved with slabs radiated like rays from the central gates, and the slabs themselves, though cracked with time, lay in perfect order. And all around, in a neat circle like a palisade, convex metal discs protruded from the ground. Each was the height of a man and resembled a shield, with a round, dark indentation gaping at its center.
Lewis jumped down and approached the nearest disc. Gripping it with his hands, he tried to move it. But despite Lewis's considerable strength, the disc didn't budge a millimeter, as if it were one with the planet, grown into its flesh.
John descended after him but didn't waste energy on Lewis's clearly pointless attempt to lift the disc. He simply ran a finger over the disc's smooth, cold surface, wiping away centuries of dust. Beneath it, engraved lines and patterns began to emerge. He spat on the disc and rubbed the saliva with his sleeve. And suddenly, for a moment—for one brief moment—the lines flashed faintly with a dim, blue, cold light and went out.
"Looks like the bases of a protective field. And it fell first," John said, wiping his hand.
Having understood the purpose of the strange discs, they decided to continue their inspection. They climbed over a pile of stones that had once been the ceremonial gates and found themselves in the main courtyard. It led to the fortress-house. The very one they had seen from afar for a long time.
Up close, it appeared even taller and more massive. The walls, built from the same black-red stone, narrowed upwards, creating an illusion of even greater height. Narrow, deep arrow-slit windows stared at them like blind eyes. A massive door, clad in black metal, was shattered. The metal cladding was blackened and shriveled, revealing charred innards. Thick planks were split along the grain, as if struck by lightning. Deep, wound-like cracks ran along the stone doorjambs, from the threshold to the arch.
Lewis pushed the surviving part of the door with his shoulder. With a drawn-out, grating groan, it gave way, letting them inside.
The building's vestibule was drowned in gloom and silence. Dust hung in the air like such a thick veil that light from breaches at the far end of the hall pierced through in thick, slanted columns. They stood on the threshold, letting their eyes adjust after the bright outside light.
Gradually, from the semi-darkness, the outlines of a hall under a high dome emerged. The dome also had gaping holes, and through them poured the same crimson light, highlighting bizarre details from the darkness: overturned chairs with high, almost Gothic backs, upholstered in leather, now decayed to a state of cobweb. Shards of crystal or glass glimmered on the stone floor. And in the center, blocking their path to the distant arches, was a pile of metal. A shattered, flattened machine representing a tangle of fused discs, spheres, and torn metal mesh. Its purpose was unclear.
A wide, man-height strip of mosaic encircled the hall. It ran along the entire perimeter, and light from the gaps fell upon it, making the colored stones—resembling cinnabar, lapis lazuli, or malachite—smolder from within like embers.
John slowly approached the wall. On a yellowish background, a whole story unfolded. Yellow-skinned giants in armor adorned with intricate engraving clashed in battle with slender, swift red-skinned warriors. Ships with billowing, wing-like sails plied seas of blue glass. And in the sky, above a city with countless arches and towers, hovered a winged figure, holding in its hands something like a spear or perhaps a beam of light.
"Hmm... interesting," John's voice was quiet. He climbed onto one of the overturned chairs to better see the upper tiers of the mosaic. "Look at the giants' shields. On each shield—the same female face."
But Lewis was interested in something else. His gaze slid along the walls, searching for inconsistencies, hidden contours. And he found one. An almost imperceptible vertical crack in the stonework, in the shadow of a massive column. Approaching closer, he pressed with his palm—and part of the wall slid inward with a dull creak, revealing itself to be a narrow, tall door.
Behind it opened a vaulted corridor. Almost no light penetrated here, only faint reflections danced on the walls from somewhere above, from narrow windows under the very ceiling. The air was still and smelled of old dust and oxidized metal.
On both sides, on pedestals, stood statues of warriors in helmets with crests, women with mysterious, seemingly knowing smiles, and fantastical beasts with too many joints. All were carved from dark, almost black stone, and details—whether a belt buckle, a pattern on a cloak, or the pupil of an eye—were accentuated with inlays of dull, verdigrised metal. Between the statues, in deep niches, lay shards of utensils—broken vase fragments with patterns surprisingly reminiscent of Greek meanders and Cretan waves.
Carefully entering, he peered into the first side door. The room was small, with an empty pool lined with small blue tiles, now cracked and falling off. At the bottom of the pool lay a dried, curled-up spider, its chitin shining like black glass.
The second room turned out to be a dressing room. An entire wall had once been a mirror—now it was cracked into thousands of shards but hadn't yet crumbled, and in each shard, as in a bad dream, Lewis's distorted, multiplied face was reflected. The floor was littered with a pile of decayed rags, which had apparently once been clothing.
The third room was a bedroom. Low, carpeted with rugs faded to gray. A bed stood under a high light well, from which bright daylight once streamed. And on this bed, atop decayed bedding, lay a skeleton. The bones were thin, delicate, adapted to this world's weak gravity. In the corner of the room lay a second skeleton, and all the space between them was strewn with small, dark fragments—obvious traces of a struggle. Lewis bent down. Among the debris, two things gleamed: a small vial made of a transparent, absolutely pure material resembling rock crystal, and two dark, heavy, faceted stones connected by a thin silver chain. He picked up the chain—the stones were cold and incredibly dense. An ornament? Or perhaps currency? Deciding to figure it out later, he pocketed the find.
Meanwhile, John had been standing for a long time in the corridor before one of the statues. It was a woman. Nude, with powerful hips and sharp, jutting breasts. Her stone hair was disheveled as if in a whirlwind, and her face was distorted by inhuman fury. But what struck him most was the headdress. A thin, bright circlet wound around her forehead, and from it extended a curved, parabolic spoke, at the ends of which two spheres were attached: one the color of clotted blood, the other dull brick-red.
Nearby, in a separate niche closed by a broken wrought-iron grate, on a pillow turned to dust, lay a mask. It was carved from a single piece of black stone, polished to a mirror shine. The mask had closed, almond-shaped eyes and a crescent-shaped, slightly parted mouth. And on the forehead protruded a strange relief—regular hexagons arranged in a pattern resembling a honeycomb.
John turned on his flashlight. The orange light danced on the statue's face, animating its fury for a moment. Then it illuminated the mask. In its black, profound surface, the living flame of the flashlight reflected, and for a second, just a second, it seemed to him that its stone lips trembled in a semblance of a smile. He quickly turned off the flashlight, feeling goosebumps run down his spine.
Further down the corridor was another door. It led into a long, spacious room with high ceilings and a gallery running along one wall. It was obviously a library.
The air here smelled completely different—not of dust, but of old leather and sweetish mold. Shelves from floor to ceiling were filled with books. Thousands of volumes in tarnished bindings, with embossed symbols on the spines that meant nothing to John.
He took the first book he came across. The binding was hard and sturdy. The pages were made of a dense, parchment-like material of a strange greenish hue. On them, in even, geometric lines, lay angular, unfamiliar script. And between the text were diagrams. Clear, detailed images of machines: cranes with pulley systems, some kind of moving machines with gears. Renaissance-level technology, captured on material that piqued his interest, and he stuffed the book into his backpack.
On other shelves stood not books, but metal cylinders resembling coffee cans, only heavier and sturdier. John opened one. Inside, on an axle, was a smooth, dark roller made of some alloy. There were no grooves like on a record, no tracks like on magnetic tape, no transistors or traces of electrical circuits. Just a smooth cylinder. A device for reading information? Or the medium itself? But without a key or knowledge of its working principles, it was just a piece of metal to him.
But one book, standing apart on a small lectern, immediately captured his attention. It was bound in a strange, shimmering bluish shade. Its pages didn't turn but were folded like an accordion. And on them were neither letters nor diagrams. Only patterns. Colored triangles, circles nested within each other, spirals radiating from a center. The patterns seemed hypnotic. John ran his eyes over one page... and then in his head, quietly, as if from somewhere deep within his skull, a sound echoed. Thin, pure, sorrowful. Like the sound of raindrops hitting glass. He blinked and closed his eyes—the sound faded. Then looked again—and again, but more faintly, the same tone echoed in his head. This wasn't his imagination. The book was singing. John quickly, almost throwing it, closed the book. His body trembled from a strange, vibrational echo stuck deep within his soul.
"John! Get over here, quick!"
Lewis's voice, rough and agitated, broke through the library's silence, rolled under the vaults, and died. John flinched, emerging from that world of spirals and sorrowful chimes, and hurried towards the call.
Lewis stood in a small, completely dark room without windows. One entire wall was occupied by a matte, silvery surface, resembling a huge, dead screen. Before it, on thin cords hanging from the ceiling, dangled shiny, perfectly polished discs.
"Look," said Lewis and tugged one of the discs.
The screen before them flashed to life, and a soft, white light flooded its entire surface. And on it, first murky like shadows, then clearer and clearer, outlines began to appear.
First towers, bridges, then increasingly clear windows reflecting Rosana's crimson setting sun. It was an entire city. Alive, intact, and most importantly, unharmed. Along a wide street far below moved tiny but distinct figures. And in the sky, the shadow of something large and winged flashed by. And although the image was static, like a photograph, it radiated such life, such a hum of an unseen crowd, that both men froze, holding their breath.
And then the image flickered. Then the screen flickered and flared with a bright point right in the middle. A dry, sharp crackle cut through the room's silence, coming from under the floor. The smell of something burnt wafted, and the screen went dark. Darkness reigned in the room again, now seeming even more absolute.
Lewis cursed under his breath, lowering his hands.
"Just like back home during a short circuit. The movie's over. The electricity's gone," his voice held disappointment bordering on irony. So many mysteries, and finally, a living picture of the planet's past, disappearing before their eyes.
John said nothing. He just stared at the dark, dead screen. Behind that instantaneous flash, behind that window into the past, hid an entire world. Life, civilization, perhaps even greatness. They hadn't just found an abandoned fortress. They had found the tomb of an entire era. And they had only managed to touch its lid, not open it.
"Alright, we need to go," Lewis reminded, already turning towards the exit. "Night is coming."
John nodded, casting a final glance around the room with the dead screen. Night was coming. And what it would bring in this dead city where huge spiders crawled over stones and ghostly songs hid in books, they did not know.