Planet Varagos.
A lone titan drifting in the void. The only planet in its solar system.
Though only half the size of its sun, its scale was staggering—too large to feel real, too ancient to be understood. It lood like a sleeping colossus in the dark, its gravity stretching far beyond its atmosphere. Two moons circled the vast world: one veiled in an eerie crimson glow, the other glinting with the golden blaze of the sun. It light painted the surface in a haunting, ethereal sheen.
But the beauty of Varagos was a mask.
Half of the planet was missing. Not in the physical sense—land still stretched beneath the sky—but nothing could be seen past the towering fog that swallowed the horizon. It was not mist, not vapor, not a trick of the atmosphere. It was sothing else. Sothing that didn't belong.
At the edges, the fog coiled in dense, shifting walls—an unbroken boundary between the known and the lost. But sotis, just for a breath, shapes flickered in the depths—towering spires, ruined cities, landscapes that felt both ancient and unreal. As if the land within existed outside of ti, trapped in a mory that refused to fade.
The fog had weight. Purpose.
It wasn't a storm to be weathered—it was a barrier. A prison. Whether it was ant to keep sothing in or to stop the outside world from reaching inside, no one knew.
They only knew one thing.
Anything that entered ever returned.
Ships that dared approach the mist were swallowed whole. No signals. No debris. No screams. Just silence. The kind that buried itself in the bones, leaving only whispers of horror in its wake.
But Varagos was not a dead world.
Beyond the fog, life endured.
Human cities stood tall beneath the open sky, their towers built from dark stone and reinforced steel, strong enough to withstand the harsh storms that swept across the land. Roads of tal and light carved paths through endless plains, connecting settlents that had long learned to survive under a sky that could shift in an instant.
At the heart of the inhabited lands lay the Frozen Expanse.
A wasteland of ice and storms, stretching farther than the eye could see. It was no ordinary tundra. The glaciers here were ancient, layered over sothing far older. Beneath the surface, strange ruins slumbered in the depths—structures of a forgotten age, their purpose lost to ti. So believed them to be remnants of a civilization before the fog. Others whispered of sothing more.
The Expanse was a graveyard of secrets. And yet, despite its dangers, it remained untouched by the mist. As if the two forces refused to et.
Varagos was a world of division.
Half a planet lost to an unseen force. Half a land struggling to endure.
And at the center of it all, a question that had haunted its people for generations.
What lies beyond the fog?
————
The ship tore through the clouds, its hull wrapped in fla.
Fire crawled along the broken fra, eating through tal in long, glowing strips. Chunks peeled off, trailing smoke as they vanished into the storm below. The asteroid fragnt broke loose, spinning fast, swallowed by the thick sky in seconds.
Max's jaw tightened.
"There goes the asteroid."
Kael knelt by the wall, one hand gripping a support beam. He didn't look.
"Forget it. Focus on not crashing."
Ash pressed against the fra, boots skidding as the floor lurched. Wind scread through open gashes in the ship's side, pulling at wires, ripping across scorched panels. Sparks spat from the ceiling. Every jolt felt sharper, louder. The ground was rising to et them.
"This thing won't hold," Ash said, voice cutting through the noise.
Max didn't answer. His hands flew over the controls, but the ship gave no response. Red lights flashed. A pulse beat deep in the walls—fast, uneven, final. The fra groaned like it knew what was coming.
They weren't landing. They were crashing.
His eyes darted to the others. Kael's suit was scorched, edges still glowing from the fire he'd thrown. He crouched steady, weight balanced, ready. Ash stood near the breach, face set, body wound tight like a coiled spring. His fingers twitched with instinct, as if trying to grab control from a world already lost.
Max pulled a breath through his teeth.
"We jump."
Kael moved first. He grabbed Ash's arm and launched forward, Max followed. Wind slamd into them the mont they hit open air, a wall of force that punched straight through.
Ash narrowed his eyes against the wind, trying to make sense of what lay ahead.
Nothing.
No towers. No lights. Just a broken land—dry earth split into jagged scars, dunes shifting like they were alive. No sign of people. No sign of life.
The ground rushed closer.
"Kael!"
Max's shout cut through the wind.
Kael didn't hesitate. He grabbed both of them, fire flaring at his feet. The blast pushed them upward, away from the falling wreck.
The ship hit a heartbeat later.
The crash lit up the dry land.
Flas burst outward, tearing across the land in a wave of heat and wreckage. The ground shuddered. A blast of dust and fire rolled across the sand. Smoke climbed into the sky, thick and black, casting a long shadow over the horizon.
Kael hovered above it all, a grin tugging at his face.
"Feels good to be back on land."
Max didn't smile. His eyes stayed locked on the lifeless world below, the wide stretch of nothing.
"We're not on land yet, Take us down."
Kael let out a short breath, then dropped, fire trailing from his boots.
They landed hard. The ground was scorched, still warm under their feet. Smoke curled around them, turning the air heavy and hard to breathe. The remains of their ship sat in a twisted heap—burnt tal bent into shapes that barely looked like anything human-made. Wires sparked in the wreckage, curling in slow twitches. Pieces of the hull stuck from the ground like broken teeth.
Ash stepped closer. His eyes moved over the destruction. The scent of fuel burned in his nose, mixed with dust and sothing sharper—sothing fried and wrong.
'That was too close. If Kael wasn't here, things would have gone bad.'
Max's fists clenched.
"Damn it. We lost the asteroid. Now we'll never know why Apex wanted it so badly."
Ash kept his eyes on the wreck. The mory of the energy still burned in the back of his mind.
"That thing wasn't just so asteroid. It healed your arm, Max. Whatever it was, it was important."
Kael's eyes tracked Max's movents. His arms crossed, voice sharp.
"Speaking of that—what's up with your arm? And your leg? Your clothes are ripped there, did sothing happen. You said you lost your arm. Why am I still seeing it?"
Max didn't answer right away. His jaw locked and his shoulders tight.
A soft sigh escaped his lips.
"It's more than that."
His voice dropped.
"The AI told that I died."
Everything stilled.
Then, two voices ca at once.
"You what?!"
Max didn't et their eyes.
"Not just . You guys too. Everyone caught in the blast... we all died."
Kael let out a short laugh, shaking his head.
"Yeah, right. If we died, how the hell are we standing here?"
Ash didn't laugh. His gaze stayed on Max, steady.
"The asteroid. It did sothing to us."
Max nodded.
"Exactly. My arm and leg didn't just heal—they grew back. And Kael, your firepower's stronger. It's like sothing changed. Did you advance to the next stage?"
Kael's brow pulled together.
"No, I didn't advance. I'm still at Master Veinflow. My Vein energy feels the sa. And I rember Dad saying breaking into the next stage needs an emotional trigger, not just the normal requirent."
Max's stare sharpened.
"Then it wasn't advancent. It was amplification."
No one replied.
But the idea hung there. Heavy.
Max looked out over the land. The sky stretched wide, empty. The wind kicked up dust. Nothing moved.
"We're stranded, If we find a settlent, I might be able to get a signal out."
Ash shifted his grip on the Blade strapped to his side. His eyes swept the horizon.
"Then we move. Sitting here just makes us easier to find."
He barely finished before the sound hit.
The sky ripped open.
A low, grinding roar rolled across the sand. Cold and chanical. Too clean to be natural. It pressed against their chests, rattled through the ground.
Max's breath caught.
They didn't need to look.
Apex had found them.
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