I stood at the facility egress, one hand on the door frame, staring into white.
Not snow. Not sky. Just white.
The blizzard had arrived in full force while I'd slept. Wind howled through the doorway, carrying ice crystals that stung exposed skin like tiny blades. The cold hit me like a physical force, deeper than anything I'd felt before. The kind of cold that didn't just chill. It killed.
Five meters of visibility. Maybe. Beyond that, the world simply ceased to exist.
340 kilometers through this, to an outpost I'd never seen, on a planet that had tried to kill me from the moment I'd arrived. At least I rested and prepared for this.
"AXIOM," I said. "Please tell me you have navigation data."
>"Overlaying now."
My vision blurred, then sharpened. A compass appeared at the bottom of my field of view, hovering just above my nose. North-Northeast. The direction I needed to go. In the center of my vision: a small red dot, glowing faintly.
I took a step forward. The dot pulsed brighter.
Another step. Another pulse.
"That's... Actually really useful," I said. "Thanks."
>"You're welcome. We are heading 340 kilometers northeast to the Stellar Imperium outpost designated Frosthold. Estimated travel time at standard human pace: 85 hours. At enhanced pace with mana supplementation: 50-60 hours."
I did the math. Fifty hours of walking. Through a blizzard. On a planet where the ambient temperature didn't rise above -40 Celsius even on a good day.
And now? With the wind? Had to be pushing -60 at least.
No human could survive this.
But I wasn't entirely human anymore, was I?
I stepped fully outside and let the door grind shut behind me. The wind immediately tried to knock me sideways. I braced, leaned into it, and kept moving forward.
The cold bit through my thermal gear within seconds. Heavy-duty cold weather equipment, rated for extreme environments, and it felt like tissue paper against this.
I focused inward, reaching for my mana cores. All three responded immediately, pulsing in sequence, the familiar rhythm I'd built into my body revving to life.
I pulled mana through the pathways and pushed it outward, flooding my limbs with warmth. Heat radiated from my chest, spreading through my arms and legs. The cold retreated quite a bit. Not completely, as I could still feel it press against the barrier of mana, but enough.
Enough to survive.
I walked forward, following the red dot. Each step made it pulse brighter, confirming my heading. The facility disappeared behind me within thirty seconds, swallowed by white.
I was alone now.
>"Mana consumption rate: approximately 8% per hour at current output," AXIOM noted." At this rate, you'll deplete your reserves in 12 hours."
"That's a problem."
>"Yes."
I kept walking, mind working through the issue. Eight percent per hour was unsustainable. I was generating heat constantly, brute forcing the problem. Pouring mana in to my body to counteract the cold.
Inefficient. Wasteful. The kind of solution I would've made back when I was a junior dev, and didn't know any better.
But I could do better.
>"AXIOM, I need to optimize this. What's the actual problem I'm solving?"
>"Heat loss. Your body generates thermal energy naturally. The environment is stripping it away faster than you can produce it."
"So I don't need to generate more heat. Only prevent the loss."
>"Correct."
I slowed my pace, focusing on the mana flowing through me. Right now it was active heating, constant energy expenditure. Like running a space heater at full blast.
I just need better insulation.
I pulled the mana inward, condensing it around my skin. A thin barrier. Not generating heat but now reflecting it back at me. Keeping my body's natural warmth trapped inside instead of radiating outward.
The change was immediate. The constant draining lessened. The cores stopped screaming for more output. I was finally warm again.
>"Mana consumption: 3% per hour. Much better."
I grinned.
"Upgrades people, upgrades." Old movie quote. Felt appropriate.
I went to glance back one last time.
CL-7731 was invisible now. Somewhere behind me in the white. The facility had been hell. But it had also been home.
I turned forward. Fixed my eyes on the red dot.
"Let's go, AXIOM."
>"Agreed. Try to maintain a steady pace. And Mr. Kang?"
"Yeah?"
>"Welcome to the rest of your life."
I kept walking, one foot in front of the other. Now heading mainly north. The blizzard was intensifying over the past couple of hours and I now couldn't see more than 3 meters ahead of me. The snow was coating everything on my and the only thing keeping me warm at this point was the thin barrier of mana surrounding me, mere centimeters away from my skin.
>"40 meters down. Only 339,960 to go."
"Only?" I laughed bitterly. "That's basically the circumference of this planet."
>"Mr. Kang. I am detecting structural anomalies. 2.3 kilometers northeast."
"The facility had outposts?"
>"Negative. These readings predate human colonization. Possibly by millennia."
"Well it is only a slight deviation. Would I make it if I were to continue forward to the Stellar outpost?"
>"Mana reserves: 71%. Unlikely unless you lower the mana output to 1.23% per hour."
I decided to start heading to the 'structural anomaly'. I hope there is some shelter so that I can rest. This cold has eaten away at any semblance of vitality that was there when I left.
The dot shifted in my vision, now looking to the right instead of where it was before.
I started the trek.
After what seemed like 45 minutes of walking, I started to see it.
There were some large shapes emerging from the white, not natural formations at all. They were too geometric. These formation looked like a pyramid with some obelisks surrounding it.
As I got closer to it, I saw exactly what I was looking at. A large mound of snow, a 5 meter tall, triangular door was half covered in snow. There were no seams, and it looked pristine, as if there hasn't been any weathering, despite it being completely exposed.
Impossibly efficient.
The massive crystalline obelisks surrounding the main looked deliberate. Placed in an array surrounding the door and more. I have no clue why but after stepping through the formation, I felt like something connecting to me in my cores.
>"Mr. Kang there is something unknown taking your mana. I can't forcibly stop it."
There were glyphs on each of the obelisks, which were now faintly glowing. The glyphs surrounding the door were now glowing more vibrantly, melting the snow that had accumulated on them before.
Each of the obelisks weren't red like the rest of the crystals on this planet. They were black, dark and emanating a faint purple glow.
"AXIOM, What is this?"
>"Unknown. No match in any human database."
Nothing? AXIOM, something that had access to the entire wealth of human knowledge, didn't know what we were looking at?
>"This is possibly work of the Precursors. There have been multiple accounts of similar ruins, but nothing quite like this."
"Precursors? What do you mean?"
>"An ancient civilization that spanned the entire known universe. Current scouts are continuing to find ruins and traces of them in the farthest reaches that we have observed."
"Is there a way to make it inside?"
>"Usually there is a riddle, requiring a mage to connect to each access point, and supply a very specific amount of mana. This mana usually correlates to either directions, or a 'gut feeling' reported at the time."
"Alright, and I assume that the unknown mana tap that attached to me earlier is one such access point?"
>"Probably. You need to connect to the other 3 obelisks, and adjust the power output of your mana accordingly. I don't have any data on how to access them or even how to read the Precursor language."
"Well, it's something."
I looked at the faint string of mana that connected me to the obelisk that is directly to my right. The glyphs in it glowing with each pulse of mana that I sent forth.
I sent three more strings to the other obelisks. Each one connected, glowing at different rates. The pulses were... wrong. Uneven. The glyphs flickered erratically.
"It's not working. They're not syncing."
>"Try matching the pulse rates. Look for a pattern."
I focused on the glow patterns. The first obelisk pulsed every two seconds. The second, every three. The third... four? No, five.
A sequence. Primes? No. Fibonacci.
I adjusted my mana output to each obelisk, synchronizing the pulses: 2, 3, 5, 8.
The glyphs stabilized. Locked into harmony.
>"Good. Now look for the connection beneath."
It seemed like each node had something more underneath them connecting them to each other and the door. I tried to send my mana through each obelisk to try and connect them in a full loop. The strings of mana kept diving under the ground, going deep within the ground below me.
Then I found it, a passage where a grid of mana pathways opened up. My 4 strings of mana now flowing underground and mapping out each and every pathway until they could find each other and they connected in a hexagram symbol underneath the ground below me. As soon as I pushed more mana into the symbol, every pillar and the door lit up like a Christmas tree.
The door in front of me started to slide down and open into a corridor that descended downwards.
"Bingo!"
The strings of mana that I had been using were immediately terminated from the pillars as I started to walk forward.
I stepped through the doorway, and I felt something strange.
I was warm?
Now it wasn't 72 and sunny in here, but it was comfortable. The wind stopped at the door and looking further inside, there wasn't any ice. This couldn't have been heated by technology, I don't hear any generators, much less saw any. Maybe geothermal?
Either way, I started walking inside. The corridor was descending gradually and It was getting darker by the step.
I placed my hand on the wall as I was descending to steady myself and as I did both walls lit up immediately. It looked technological in nature but I saw mana particles flowing into and out of it. Some of the particles disappearing and re-appearing in other places instantly.
"Can you decipher any of this?"
>"It looks foreign to me. Maybe there's more to learn inside."
I descended the stairs and finally hit the landing. The blue light from the glyphs on the walls helped me to stay safe on my way down. What I saw in-front of me when I finally landed was awe-inspiring.
A massive space, 50 meters across, and perfectly spherical. There was a cat-walk stretching in front of me, fully suspended in the middle of the room. There was technology at the end of the walk. The walls were dark, the only illumination was the hand rails stretching out into the middle of the sphere.
>"This is the first time I have seen anything like this. I wonder what this was used for."
"There's only one way to find out."
I walked on the suspended platform, and noticed that there wasn't suspending this above the small expanse below. Reaching what I assumed to be a command center at the end of the walk, I could see a couple of distinct features protruding.
This command center looked like a desk made of a silver metal. It only had a surface that was suspended above the walk way. It was large enough to have two people comfortably stand side by side while using it. Looking at the desk, there were some objects on top of it.
First there was a large triangular pyramid on the left, sat inside of a holster of sorts. On the right, there was an orb, suspended 20 centimeters above the level surface, still spinning counter clock-wise. There was also a hexagonal shape in the center of the desk on the edge closest to me.
I was curious about what any of this would do, so I touched the sphere.
Mana poured out of me. I got light-headed and almost passed out. My vision went hazy and I could see stars. My legs wobbled beneath me, as I heard AXIOM call out:
>"Mr. Kang, are you alright? You've lost another 20% of your mana. What happened?"
"I'm alrig-"
The walls displayed hundreds of coordinates scattered across the galaxy. Maybe thousands. Each one a glowing point in the darkness.
"AXIOM... are these all Precursor sites?"
>"If they are, humanity has only discovered a fraction of one percent."
The scale was staggering.
I decided to touch the pyramid, maybe I could control this somehow.
The murals shifted. Figures creating doorways—pocket dimensions. Wars fought across realities. And at the end:
All the figures were bowing before something massive. An octahedron, eight triangular faces surrounded by eight concentric rings. Each ring carried geometric structures, diamonds or stations or something I couldn't identify.
"They worshipped... what? A planet? A construct?"
>"Unknown. But Mr. Kang, look at the doors. The dimensional architecture. It's similar to your demi-plane spell."
They'd built an empire over this. This... architecture.
"Then I need to understand how they did it."
I willed more mana into the pyramid.
That's when it grabbed me.
I was still holding the pyramid in my hands, and decided to try and will my mana to take a deeper look at it when the whole room started to generate a hum.
Like generators finally kicking on, I could feel my mana being drained even more, even at a slower pace. But this time, there was something entering me, something foreign and rigid.
I tried to pull away but the pyramid had stuck my hand to it, forcing me to continually grip it with all my strength. The pain of the substance entering was like glass flowing through my veins.
Biting my lip to stay awake I saw something on the desk start to materialize. On the hexagonal symbol close to me there was a black pillar starting to appear from the bottom up.
After what felt like hours, yet was only 20 seconds, the pillar stopped at a point. Mimicking the obelisks outside now but smaller. I pulled away as I was finally released from the grip that had shackled me to the desk.
"What... the fuck... was that?" I said in between labored breathing.
>"What happened? I was cut off from you momentarily. My readings are showing another 15% of your mana reserves gone and something new is flowing alongside your mana."
I looked up at the black pillar that was now on the table.
"I don't know. I grabbed the pyramid and when I tried to will my mana into their god mural, I couldn't let go. Something was taken and something was given. It hurt like hell but that's about all I know."
>"I'm getting a heavy magical reading from that artifact, Mr. Kang. It might help us decipher what went on here. There is a connection between you and that object. It is probably due to what just transpired."
"Probably. What do you think it is?"
>"As a wise administrator once said: 'Only one way to find out.'"
I went to reach out to the object. My nerves screaming not to and my body protesting, fearful of the repercussions of trying to touch another thing I didn't understand. Yet I still reached out and picked it up.
When I picked it up, the glass substance in my veins responded. Not painfully this time... more like recognition. Like the artifact and whatever was now inside me were two halves of something larger.
I did notice that below it, was now a smaller white object. still in the same hexagonal shape that was extruded upwards, but had no point and was on the bottom of the black pillar.
>"Wait, I can interface with this second object. Preliminary scans show that there is a mathematical language similar to the mana lattice notation that you use. This could answer our questions."
"How are we going to decipher it?"
>"Put it in the demi-plane and I can do the rest from there."
I tried to open the demi-plane. Reached for the anchor in my solar plexus core. Pushed mana into the visualization.
Nothing.
I tried again. The spell formation was correct. The mana flow was stable. But the dimensional fabric refused to part. Like something was holding it closed.
>"Mr. Kang, I'm detecting interference. Strong dimensional magics in this chamber. It's suppressing external dimensional manipulation."
"They built a dimensional lock?"
>"Apparently. You'll need to leave the chamber to access your demi-plane."
I walked out to the stairs to try and cast the lock. Leaving the room felt like a fog lifted on my head, like defrosting a windshield.
I cast the spell to open my door to the demi-plane and placed the object inside, closing it and turning back into the main chamber, I asked AXIOM:
"What's the news?"
>"There's too much here to decipher. This is going to take hours to decipher and make any real sense of. I suggest you get some rest here while I take care of this and I'll let you know when it's done."
I mean, I've lost most of my mana, and I can't really make it the rest of the way to the outpost in this condition.
It's not the worst place I've slept.
I walked over to the central part of the chamber and laid down. The ground was stones, still suspended in mid-air, but somehow still emanating warmth.
Tomorrow will bring answers. I hope.