Michael sat still in the cockpit for several long seconds after the ship finished its descent.
The silence felt heavier than the vacuum outside should have allowed. No alarms. No warnings. Just a low hum that seemed to come from everywhere at once, vibrating through the hull and into his bones.
He released the restraints and stood slowly.
The ship's systems were still online, but unresponsive to manual input. Whatever had brought him here had complete control. Fighting it now would be pointless.
Michael moved to the hatch.
As the door slid open, he braced himself out of habit.
Nothing happened.
No rush of air. No pressure change. No violent pull into the void.
Instead, he inhaled.
Air filled his lungs, clean and cool. It tasted neutral, almost sterile, but undeniably real. Michael froze halfway through the breath, then exhaled slowly.
"That's not possible," he muttered.
They were in space. He knew that. He had seen the stars outside the cockpit moments ago. And yet here he was, standing on solid ground, breathing as easily as if he were planetside.
He stepped down the ramp.
The surface beneath his boots was metalic, smooth and warm. It stretched outward in every direction, curving gently, as if the city itself was alive and breathing.
Michael looked up.
Above him, there was no sky.
Instead, there was structure. Vast layers of metal and light arched overhead, forming a shell so immense his eyes struggled to follow it. Faint patterns pulsed along the surfaces, like veins carrying energy.
"How?" he asked aloud. "How does any of this work?"
The answer did not come immediately.
Something shimmered in front of him.
The air distorted, rippling like heat haze. A shape emerged from nothing, resolving into a floating construct. It was sleek and angular, its surface shifting between solid and translucent. Lights flickered along its body in controlled patterns.
A probe.
Michael recognised the design instantly. Not identical, but close enough to trigger memory. Halo. The forerunner technology. Or something inspired by it.
The probe hovered silently, then rotated slightly, as if examining him.
"Well," Michael said, keeping his voice steady, "at least I'm not imagining things."
The probe emitted a brief pulse of light, then turned and began moving away.
It stopped a short distance ahead and hovered, waiting.
Michael hesitated.
"Let me guess," he said. "Follow you or stay here forever."
The probe did not respond.
Michael sighed and stepped forward.
"I'm coming," he said. "No need to rush."
The probe resumed movement, gliding smoothly across the surface. Michael followed, boots echoing faintly with each step.
As they moved, he noticed details he had missed before. The ground beneath him shifted subtly, panels rearranging themselves without seams or sound. Structures in the distance folded and unfolded, reshaping slowly, as if responding to unseen instructions.
This place was not abandoned.
It was alive.
Michael walked for what felt like hours.
Time behaved strangely here. There were no shadows to mark passing hours, no sense of direction beyond forward and back. The probe maintained a steady pace, never slowing, never accelerating.
Michael tried speaking again.
"You're sentient, aren't you?" he asked. "Or at least semi-autonomous."
No response.
"I know some of your kind were designed to think," he continued. "To observe. To judge."
Silence.
Michael frowned.
"If this is some kind of test, you could at least explain the rules."
The probe glided on, unbothered.
Eventually, the structures ahead changed.
The endless metal plains gave way to a colossal wall, rising higher than anything Michael had seen before. Its surface was smooth and dark, marked by faint lines that glowed softly.
They stopped.
The probe hovered in place as the wall began to shift.
A seam appeared, then widened. Massive sections of the structure folded inward, revealing an opening that flooded the area with blinding white light.
Michael shielded his eyes instinctively.
The probe moved forward into the opening.
Michael hesitated only a moment before following.
As he crossed the threshold, the light faded.
He found himself standing at the centre of the planet.
The space was impossibly vast. A hollow sphere stretched around him, its inner surface lined with layers of metal and energy conduits. At the very centre of it all floated three massive stellar bodies.
Three suns.
One burned blue, its surface calm but dense, radiating steady energy. Another glowed red, unstable and violent, flares snapping outward before being drawn back in. The third shimmered purple, its light strange and shifting, expanding and contracting in slow pulses.
They rotated around one another in perfect balance.
Michael stared.
No words came to him at first. His mind struggled to reconcile what his eyes were seeing. Stars did not behave like this. Physics did not allow it.
And yet here they were.
"This is…" He stopped, unable to finish the thought.
The probe drifted to his side and powered down, its lights dimming.
Then the voice spoke.
It echoed through the chamber, not from a single direction, but from everywhere at once. It was calm, controlled, and precise. Artificial, but layered with something else.
Awareness.
"Michael Ashcroft," the voice said.
Michael stiffened.
"You know my name," he said.
"We know many things," the voice replied. "You stand within Maethrillian. You have been brought to the core."
Michael slowly turned, searching for a source.
"There is no physical form required," the voice continued. "We are present."
Michael swallowed.
"Why am I here?" he asked. "I didn't ask for this."
"You were selected," the voice replied. "When our masters died out. We searched the universe to find anything. Anyone. And we found you."
Michael shook his head slightly.
"What do you mean?" he said.
"During our searching, we were approached," the voice replied.
Michael clenched his fists.
"By who?" he asked. "What is your goal?"
There was a pause.
Then, almost something like amusement.
"We are a custodian intelligence," the voice said. "We cannot say who approached us, but we can say that we were given something. A mission, so to say."
Michael's heart pounded.
"And the stars?" he asked.
"Power sources," the voice replied. "Containment fields. Memory anchors."
Michael laughed once, short and breathless.
"So this is my reward?" he said. "A dead civilisation's heart?"
"So to say yes, a reward," the voice replied. "We are to serve you till these stars or this universe burns itself out."
Michael looked back at the three suns, their light reflecting in his eyes.
"So you're mine," he said quietly.
"Yes", the voice replied, "You are our eternal leader."
The chamber fell silent again, the stars continuing their endless dance.
Michael realised then that whatever path he had chosen, whatever mistakes he had made, there was no turning back.
He had stepped into the heart of something ancient.
And it had been waiting for him.