The smell of the marsh was thick and cloying, a mixture of rotting peat and the metallic tang of cooling Star-Iron that felt heavy in the lungs. Inside the tilted bridge of the Vanguard-01, the air-circulators were wheezing, struggling to filter out the humidity of the swamp. I sat at the primary terminal, my fingers flying over a keyboard that was half-melted and sticky with hydraulic fluid. Every few seconds, the obsidian pattern on my arm would pulse a sharp, warning indigo, mirroring the erratic heartbeat of the ship's internal logic.
"They're closing the loop, Armand," Gareth said, his voice dropping an octave as he peered through a crack in the buckled hull-plating. He was gripping his piston-hammer so tight his knuckles were white. "I count at least six heavy crawlers. They've got salvage-harpoons and mana-nets. These aren't just swamp-rats; they're geared for high-tier reclamation. Someone saw the Archive fall and decided to play the lottery."
