Captain Lyra moved through the skeletal shadows of the Xylos mining outpost like a wraith spun from smoke and silence. The air here was thin, laced with the metallic tang of excavated ore and the ozone bite of overworked scrubbers. The outpost clung to the flank of a desolate mountain range, a scar of industry on a continent otherwise left to wind-scoured silence. Commander Roric's orders had been terse, delivered through encrypted channels: Observe. Record. Do not engage. Sovereign Velarian suspects the anomaly has… teeth.
Her Kinetic Sensor Gauntlets, sleek obsidian sheaths covering her hands and forearms, hummed with a barely perceptible vibration. Faint violet circuitry etched into their surface glimmered as she focused. These weren't weapons in the traditional sense; they were extensions of her senses, attuned to the subtle currents of energy, emotion, and ambient force that flowed beneath the surface of reality. Standard scanners saw rock and machinery. Lyra felt the pulse of a place.
The foreman's report replayed in her mind: Dizziness. Nausea. Whispers. Rocks floating. She reached the coordinates Roric provided – a section of the quarry wall where deep scans had caught the impossible ripple. The rock face was sheer, brutally scarred by plasma cutters. Nothing looked out of place. Yet, the air here felt… thick. Oppressive. Like walking through chilled oil.
She activated the gauntlets' passive scan to its highest sensitivity. The visual overlay in her retinal implant bloomed with data streams – standard thermal signatures, mineral density readings… and then, something else. A faint, sickly yellow resonance clinging to the rock like psychic mold. It matched the frequency profile Vaeron had provided – the Tremor signature. It was weak, residual, but undeniably present. And it felt… cold. Not physically, but in a way that seeped into her awareness, a low thrum of wrongness.
"Pressure inside their heads…" The foreman's words echoed.
Lyra extended a gauntleted hand, not touching the rock, but hovering centimeters away. She closed her crimson eyes, filtering out the mundane sensory noise, focusing solely on the gauntlets' feed. Beneath the Tremor's cold thrum, she sensed something else: echoes of fear, confusion, a sharp spike of disorientation. Like psychic fingerprints left in panic. The whispers weren't sound; they were residue of violated minds.
"Captain?" A hesitant voice broke her focus. Jax, a young Power lineage technician assigned as her liaison, stood a few meters back, his face pale beneath his environment suit's visor. "Find anything? This place gives me the creeps."
Lyra lowered her hand, the violet circuitry dimming. "Residual energy signature. Matches the anomaly." Her voice was low, calm, but carried an edge that brooked no argument. "Tell me about the crew who were here."
Jax swallowed. "Mostly okay now. But Old Man Hren… he's been jumpy. Keeps saying he hears scratching at night. Inside the rock. Says it sounds like… words trying to form."
Words trying to form. Lyra's gaze sharpened. "Take me to Hren."
Hren's quarters were cramped, smelling of synth-caf and stale sweat. The miner sat hunched on his bunk, hands trembling around a lukewarm mug. His eyes, usually sharp with decades of rock-sense, were bloodshot and darting.
"Captain Lyra, sir," Jax introduced nervously. "She's here about… the thing."
Hren flinched, his mug clattering. "Told the foreman already! Rocks floated! Felt sick! Heard noises!"
Lyra knelt before him, her movements deliberate, non-threatening. Her gauntlets remained passive, but her crimson eyes held his. "Hren. What did the noises sound like? Describe them."
Hren shuddered, looking past her, towards the wall. "Not… not sounds. Not really. More like… pressure. Inside here." He tapped his temple. "Like something was… pushing. Trying to shove thoughts out and shove its own in. And then… scratching. Like claws on stone. From the inside of the wall." His voice dropped to a terrified whisper. "And sometimes… syllables. Broken. Like 'Un…' 'Make…' 'Re… turn…' Nonsense! But it felt… hungry."
Unmake. Return. The words echoed the cold imperative Lyra sensed in the Tremor resonance. A shiver traced her spine, unrelated to the room's temperature.
Suddenly, her gauntlets flared a sharp, warning violet. The ambient Tremor resonance, previously a low hum, spiked. It felt like a cold hand closing around her mind. Simultaneously, the wall Hren had been staring at… shimmered. Not like heat haze, but like reality itself was momentarily losing cohesion. A section of rock the size of her fist seemed to soften, ripple, and for a fraction of a second, she saw… darkness. Not empty space, but a profound, chaotic void that seemed to suck at the light. And within it, for a fleeting instant, something moved – a shapeless coil of deeper shadow, pulsing with the same sickly yellow resonance.
Then it was gone. The wall was solid rock. The pressure in her head receded, leaving a throbbing ache. Hren whimpered, curling into a ball.
Lyra was on her feet instantly, gauntlets active, scanning the wall. The intense spike was fading back to the residual level, but the point where the void had appeared radiated a chilling cold spot in her sensory overlay. It felt… raw. Like a wound in reality.
"Report," Roric's voice crackled in her encrypted earpiece, tension audible even through the static.
"Anomaly is active," Lyra reported, her voice tight, her gaze fixed on the cold spot. "Brief localized reality distortion observed. Manifestation suggests a… breach point. Tremor resonance displays sentient characteristics – attempted communication or influence. Subject Hren confirms psychological assault pattern. Recommend immediate quarantine of this sector and psychological evaluation for all exposed personnel. This isn't geological. It's predatory."
She looked down at Hren, trembling on his bunk. The pinnacle of Origin's civilization felt very far away. The Tremor didn't just echo. It fed.