The storm hadn’t reached me yet.

  I risked a glance over my shoulder, expecting distance, some reassurance that I still had time. Instead, my stomach dropped.

  It was closer than I thought.

  A massive wall of snow and ice surged over the ridge, swallowing the landscape in its wake. The sky behind it was a swirling, violent blur, thick with shifting white and shadows that moved too fast to track. The wind howled past me, clawing at my back..

  My boots pounded against the frozen slope, slipping on hidden patches of ice as I pushed toward the cave ahead. Each breath stabbed my lungs, and every second felt like it was closing the gap between me and a slow, frozen death.

  Vesper hovered just ahead, his glow flickering wildly against the rising white.

  “There!” he called, his voice barely cutting through the wind. “Just ahead!”

  The cave mouth appeared like a miracle. I didn’t hesitate. I threw myself forward and stumbled inside, quickly retreating from the open air.

  I made my way deeper into the cave, trying to get away from any trace of the outside world. I knew the storm would soon devour it. I kept going until I found a small pocket in the ice that looked like it could offer some real cover.

  I collapsed into it. My breath came in short bursts, fogging up in the cold air. For the first time since I started running, I let myself slow down, just for a moment.

  The cave groaned around me as the wind outside picked up. A low, guttural howl echoed through the entrance, funneled and amplified by the ice walls. Snow and ice pelted the opening of the cave I now relied on for shelter.

  I sat there, letting my pulse come back down, staring at the soft glow Vesper cast on the frozen walls. My hands were still trembling, though whether it was from the cold or the adrenaline wearing off, I wasn’t sure.

  Eventually, I reached for my pack.

  Once my breathing steadied, I sat down and started unpacking my backpack. I pulled out the things I’d scavenged from the camp. The small portable stove and its fuel canisters and a can.

  Then I paused.

  “Hey, Vesper?” I called out.

  “Yes?” my only light source replied.

  “How do I light this thing? You mentioned something about fire. Solis, right? Can I just...”

  I held my fingers to where the flame would normally ignite and snapped.

  Nothing.

  “I see what you mean. You should be able to. Focus on the outcome, feel for the bond or an energy inside you,” Vesper tried explaining.

  I sat in silence. Searching. Was there something different inside me? I needed a flame. Just a spark. Just something.

  I snapped over and over until something clicked, and sparks jumped from my fingertips.

  “Oh shit! I did it!” I said out loud, surprised I got anything to happen.

  “Oh shit! Nice!” Vesper replied, equally surprised.

  We sat there for a second, both just staring at my hand like it might catch fire on its own.

  I flexed my fingers, half-expecting the sparks to return, but nothing happened. No residual heat. No sign I had actually done anything.

  “That felt... weird,” I muttered, still processing.

  “Weird how?” Vesper asked.

  I wasn’t even sure. It hadn’t hurt, but something had shifted. “Like a muscle I didn’t know I had just twitched for the first time,” I replied

  I let out a breath and shook my hand out. No use sitting here overthinking it. There were better things to test.

  “By the way, how long did it take you to find me?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. A few years of drifting in space, and a few hours once I was in range of this planet.”

  Oh. Well, damn. Vesper really hasn’t seen much of the universe.

  Silence fell. Not total, but close. The storm was getting louder. Announcing its presence to anyone stupid enough to be near. The cave swallowed most of it, but even still, it wasn't quiet.

  Goes to show how fucked I would’ve been if I got caught by it.

  “All right. Can I do it again?” I snapped my fingers. A tiny tingling feeling from my chest pulsed its way down my arm, to my fingers, and out the second I snapped. The room glowed for a brief second as the sparks escaped my fingertips once more.

  “Any idea what Fundamental I have?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. Granted, this doesn’t necessarily mean your Fundamental is Solis. Even if your Fundamental is Glacies, you can still create a flame. Like a sprinter can swim, though just not as well as they can run,” Vesper informed me.

  “I gotcha. Well, at least I can eat warm food now. For the first time in my new life,” I replied jokingly.

  But to be honest... this was about as much as I had done since coming back to life. It was like I got put in someone else's shoes with no knowledge of what was going on. It was an odd sensation.

  I turned the stove on, hearing the hiss of gas escaping the canister, and snapped my fingers. It lit. It almost felt surreal, but now the room glowed with the flickering of flame. I grabbed the can I pulled from my pack and wedged the tip of my ice pick under the lid. With a sharp twist, the metal gave way with a rough snap. Not clean, but good enough. I set the can on the small camping stove and let it start heating.

  Looked like an old soup. It didn’t smell off and didn’t look bad, so I guess it was safe to eat. And if worse comes to worse-

  “Hey, Vesper, you can heal poisoning, right?” I asked with a half-chuckle.

  Vesper drifted near the heating can. “I mean, I think so. But it looks safe enough.” That was all the confirmation I needed.

  “Why do I need to eat? I mean, obviously I can, but do I need it?”

  “From my understanding, if you were to die of hunger and I revived you, I’m not sure how satiated you would be,” Vesper replied. After a few seconds of silence, he spoke up again. “I would guess it would be like keeling over from pain, only to be resurrected and feel how you did an hour before you died. I imagine the gnawing feeling of hunger persisting after being resurrected.”

  “Oh... that is way worse than I was expecting. Good thing we shouldn’t need to worry about that for a while,” I said, now slightly more conscious about my food supply.

  I sat back down with the hot can in my gloved hands, the steam rising in gentle wisps that disappeared into the frigid air. The first sip wasn’t good. It was warm, vaguely metallic, and whatever meat was in it had the consistency of wet paper. But it was food. Actual food. And with each mouthful, I could feel a warmth returning that went deeper than skin.

  My stomach growled like it hadn’t had a reason to before. I hadn’t even noticed how hollow I felt until that moment, like I had been running on fumes since waking up. Now, every bite seemed to patch something inside me. It was as if my body finally realized it was alive again.

  When I finished, I sat there a second longer, holding the empty can between my hands for the heat. My chest didn’t feel so tight. My limbs didn’t ache quite as much. Even my thoughts felt clearer, less foggy. The cold still crept in around the edges, but something about having eaten, however awful that soup was, made it easier to hold onto myself.

  Yeah, food was a necessity.

  “Damn,” I muttered, letting out a huge sigh of satisfaction as I packed up all my gear again. “That really helped.”

  Vesper didn’t say anything, but his glow pulsed gently nearby, like he was watching.

  I stretched, letting out a sigh. “Alright, I’m bored. Let’s see how far this cave goes. Not like we’ve got anything better to do with the storm raging outside.”

  Vesper flickered slightly. “I mean… sure. But maybe let’s not forget that deep, dark caves tend to have deep, dark things in them.”

  I clenched my fist around the only real weapon I had, adjusted my pack, and wandered deeper into the cave.

  The smooth ice gave way to more jagged formations, and the cave became smaller and smaller. Not enough to completely inhibit my ability to move through it, but enough for me to feel it.

  After a few more minutes of traversing the cave system, the ice abruptly gave way to metal. Scrap rusted metal lined the walls, roof, and floor of this cave-turned-corridor. It was as if someone had ripped up every bit of valuable material from the area. I kept pushing forward, using Vesper as my only light source as he drifted in front of me.

  Suddenly, I was greeted with a message carved into the wall.

  BURNED CLEAN

  “What the hell is this?” I muttered, keeping my voice lower than usual.

  “It seems like a marker of some kind. My guess is that someone, or some group, wanted to let others know this place has been picked clean,” Vesper replied, lowering his voice too.

  “So, in that case, we shouldn’t find much else. But I don’t see a reason to stop looking. Maybe we can still find something,” I said.

  Vesper gave his version of a nod, and I kept walking down the hallway past the words. The place eventually expanded into a larger complex. It might’ve been grand once, but now this place only holds its skeleton. Nothing useful was left. Any identifiable markers must have been taken too, because there was no way to tell what anything had originally been.

  I kept wandering the halls, careful not to go down too many corridors and get lost. Some hallways ended in dead ends, others twisted off into darkness. Every so often, I passed shattered metal beams, long-forgotten crates, or rusted piping embedded into the walls like the skeletal remains of some old machine. A few doors stood half-open. Others were frozen shut. Most led nowhere. Just more silence.

  While I was wandering these forgotten halls, I kept thinking about the tiny spark I made. I kept snapping my fingers, getting a feel for that surge. That something rushing from my chest to my arm to my fingertips and then out as a spark. Over time, while walking, I got it to resemble something closer to a candle flame. I couldn’t hold it for long, but it was progress.

  I tried to keep turns to a minimum, glancing back often to memorize the path. Vesper floated ahead, occasionally pausing as if listening to the quiet. We didn’t speak much. There wasn’t much to say. I figured I’d keep going until something changed… or until I ran out of hallway.

  Eventually, we hit a dead end and started turning back. That was when, down a corridor I had passed, something caught my eye. It seemed to glow faintly in the dark.

  “Do you see that glow?” I asked, pointing in the direction I was looking.

  “No, I don’t see- oh. Over there,” Vesper said, after a second. “Yeah. What is that?”

  “That’s my question.”

  I walked through the doorway between me and the glow, only to find, in the corner of the room, a tiny plant that looked to be made of ice. The room itself wasn’t large by any means, but with the majority of the floor and supports having been ripped out, it still felt wide open. I sat on a rusted I-beam nearby and got a better look at the plant.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  It looked like a crystalline sculpture that glowed faintly. I touched it, and it felt like a gem, but it moved the way I’d expect a plant to move. Looking closer, I saw a tiny orb about the size of a blueberry growing from one of the branches. The plant had leaves, but they looked more like tiny, round platforms than anything traditional. The berry was growing under one of them.

  “Any way for you to figure out what this is, and if I could pick it?” I asked Vesper.

  “Give me a minute,” he said, and I saw his glow shifting rapidly as he got closer to the fruit. He basically shoved his being right up to it, studying it like it was the last mystery in the universe.

  A few minutes went by like that. I decided to let Vesper do his thing and found a spot to lie down.

  My backpack made for a decent pillow in times like these.

  After what felt like an hour, I couldn’t be sure, Vesper spoke up.

  “From everything I can gather, it just seems like a plant growing in the depths of the ice on this planet. It should be harmless. In fact, it might be quite the opposite. It might be very beneficial for you. Obviously, I’m not equipped to fully test it, and I don’t want to harm the plant... but it seems safe. Might be quite valuable too, based on its chemical composition.”

  “You got all that just by staring at it?” I asked. “I mean, thank you, but that’s surprising.”

  “Yeah. All I had to do was inspect the microstructure of the outer husk. Run a spectral breakdown of its ionic resonance. The fruit’s stable. Doesn’t degrade under normal atmospheric exposure either. Pretty wild, honestly.”

  “Okay, I definitely understood all of that,” I said, dryly. “Either way, thanks.”

  I bent down to the plant, feeling its solid leaves, and plucked the small fruit. It stayed intact, and I tucked it safely into my backpack.

  Maybe I’ll find a good use for it later. I bet I can find out how valuable this is if, hopefully, I find other people or civilization. Once the storm clears up, I'll head in the direction I saw that movement earlier. A problem for a future self.

  Vesper hovered nearby, his light steady but dim. If he had any lingering thoughts about the plant, he kept them to himself.

  "Alright," I exhaled, adjusting my pack. "Let’s see how far this place goes."

  Vesper bobbed slightly in what I took as agreement, and I turned away from the strange little frozen plant, heading deeper into the corridors of rust and ice.

  At first, the path was familiar. The same frozen walls, the same old wreckage embedded in the ice. More half-rusted pipes. More signs that this place had been picked clean long before I ever set foot in it.

  I kept track of my turns as best I could. A left, then another left, then a straight hallway that felt longer than it should have. No signs of life. No markings.

  The temperature fluctuated the deeper I went. It wasn’t unbearable, but it was noticeable, like stepping into a pocket of dead air.

  “How deep do you think this goes?” I asked, breaking the silence.

  Vesper floated ahead, his glow pulsing faintly as he scanned the tunnel. “Hard to say. Given the metal structures, this was built to last. Could have an entire buried complex under the ice.”

  I considered that thought. Whatever this place used to be, it sure as hell wasn’t that anymore.

  I then noticed something new.

  The corridors weren’t just changing structurally. They were narrowing.

  The walls, once smooth and overtaken by ice, were showing a bit more metal plating. Old, cracked panels that had warped over time. Some were bent inward, like an impact had forced them that way. I ran my fingers over one, feeling the grooves where something had dug deep into the material.

  A fight? Or just time, tearing things apart?

  I kept moving.

  After what felt like half an hour of weaving through increasingly compressed hallways, I reached a 4 way intersection.

  To my left, a collapsed passage. Twisted beams and fallen supports.

  To my right, a narrowing corridor, the walls warped and buckling under the crushing weight of the ice.

  Straight ahead held a longer hallway, better maintained than the rest I have been walking through.

  That was new.

  I stepped forward, drawn toward the anomaly, but something caught my eye on the wall beside me.

  Scratched into the metal, deep and jagged

  GUARDDOG AHEAD

  Beneath it, messier and more uneven

  LET SLEEPING JUNK DIE

  I stopped.

  Vesper hovered closer, his glow flickering slightly.

  “That’s not ominous…” he said with dry sarcasm.

  I stared at the message, running my fingers over the rough etching. The scratches had torn into the metal, leaving deep gouges. Someone had written this with something sharp and angry.

  "Let sleeping junk die," I muttered under my breath. "Sounds like something lives down here and they didn't want to deal with it."

  Vesper didn’t respond right away. He hovered beside me, quieter than usual.

  “This doesn’t feel like a trap,” he said slowly. “More like a warning.”

  “Or maybe they just wanted to scare people off. No way to know unless we check.” I replied. I’m very curious as to why this area seems more intact.

  I took a few hesitant steps forward. Past the scratched-in warning. Everything here was super old, plus I've found a cool frozen plant in the more run-down area, what's to say I can’t find more useful things in the less run-down area?

  How old is that warning anyway? No way anything’s still alive down here.

  I walked on more confidently.

  The corridor stretched ahead, more open than the others I had passed through. The walls weren’t as torn up, the ceiling hadn’t caved in, and the ice hadn’t fully claimed it yet. It felt old rather than gutted like the earlier part.

  Why was this part still standing?

  Vesper floated a little closer, his glow casting long shadows over the floor. He hadn’t spoken since I brushed off his concern. I could still feel the weight of his words lingering between us.

  ‘More like a warning.’

  I kept moving.

  Each step felt too loud.

  I made sure to keep scanning my surroundings. The metal walls were smoother, less warped, but streaked with old soot and scorch marks. Whatever happened down here, it wasn’t just time that did the damage.

  The ground beneath me shifted slightly, just a shallow crunch of frost breaking under my boot. I stopped, listening.

  Nothing.

  Not the wind. Not the groan of shifting ice.

  Just dead silence.

  Vesper whispered behind me. “I don’t like this.”

  I adjusted my grip on my ice pick. “Yeah. Me neither. But you know what they say, curiosity and the cat.”

  At the end of a hallway, we found a room. As we walked up to the room, we found a figure slumped over and half-frozen to the floor.

  My breath stilled for a second, my body going tense before my brain fully processed what I was looking at. At first glance, it just seemed like another pile of scrap. But something about it was off.

  I took a cautious step closer.

  The ice coating it was thick, but I could make out the details now.

  It looked like some wreckage of a humanoid machine. Its plating was rusted to the point of eating holes in it, and one of its arms was missing below the elbow. Its head was slumped forward, thick cables running from the base of its neck into the floor.

  Behind it seemed to have a desk… or a computer? I couldn't tell. Was it hooked into the wall?

  It sat there, kneeling on the floor.

  “Looks like the sleeping junk in question,” I whispered

  Vesper hovered behind me, his glow dimming. “Is it dead?”

  “It certainly doesn't look alive,” I said, eyes still locked on the thing.

  It wasn’t moving. No flickering lights. No hum of old circuits.

  There’s no way it’s still functional. And if it wasn’t functional, was there anything inside I could nab?

  The air around me was still. Quite contrary to my racing pulse, which felt like it was loud enough that Vesper could hear it.

  I didn’t move right away. My grip on my ice pick was firm as I studied it. Watching for the slightest twitch.

  Nothing.

  The ice had fused to its back and legs, locking it in place. Frost coated its joints like a thick second skin.

  My fingers twitched toward my ice pick. Not because I expected it to move, but because a weapon in my hand always felt better than nothing.

  A step closer.

  The dead air parted ways before me.

  Another step.

  A faint creak echoed through the metal beneath me.

  I stopped in front of it.

  Up close, I could see the faint engraving on its rusted chest plate, barely legible under layers of frost:

  V-92 SENTINEL, Eidolon Systems.

  I exhaled, some of the tension slipping from my shoulders. I leaned forward slightly to get a better look at the cabling running into the floor. It looked severed. The damage didn’t seem recent.

  “You think it’s-”

  BOOM

  The world snapped sideways before I even registered what happened.

  I found the wall rapidly approaching me as I slammed into it with a loud groan, the metal bending inward under my body before I collapsed onto the floor in a heap.

  Pain flaring in my chest. Definitely a broken rib.

  Dazed, I turned my head, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

  The machine’s only remaining arm was still extended. Right where I had been standing.

  “Fuck,” I coughed, feeling the dull, grinding ache in my lungs.

  Vesper’s glow pulsed erratically. “You need to MOVE!” His voice was sharp and panicked, “Get up, NOW!”

  A deep, splintering crack echoed through the room.

  I turned back just in time to see the machine slowly rising from the floor. Ice fractured and slid from its rusted frame as its joints unlocked, one by one.

  Vesper hovered at the doorway, waiting for me to meet up with him and escape, his glow flashing wildly. “It’s still moving! Get up! GET UP!” he shouted.

  I sucked in a shaky breath, trying to push myself up.

  A deep, splintering crack echoed through the chamber.

  I turned back just in time to see the Sentinel rising from the floor. Ice fractured and slid off its rusted frame as its joints unlocked, one by one. A low, grinding whirr filled the air, like ancient servos fighting against time.

  It stood up, hunched over, its only good arm shifting into place. Clawed fingers slowly unfurled from the fist it had used to slam me into the wall.

  Then its head twitched toward me.

  A single, dim light in its eye flickered on.

  Oh shit.

  I shoved myself to my feet, ignoring the way my ribs screamed in protest. There’s no way it’s gonna let me leave, and it’s definitely faster than me.

  I dropped my pack and tightened my grip on my ice pick. It would only slow me down.

  The Sentinel moved.

  The sound of dry, grinding joints screeched through the room.

  It stalked forward, head locked onto me like a predator, its clawed arm raised to strike.

  Fuck it. It’s an old machine.

  I screamed and ran straight at it.

  The Sentinel didn’t hesitate.

  It lunged faster than something that broken had any right to be.

  I barely got my ice pick up in time as sparks flashed, metal meeting metal. My arms jolted from the force, the ice pick nearly ripped from my grip

  I stumbled, but kept moving

  Swinging wide. The pick slammed into rusted plating, slicing deep-

  Not deep enough.

  Dragging my weapon out, it twisted, bringing its clawed hand around in a vicious backhanded swipe.

  I saw it coming.

  I just couldn’t stop it.

  The blow caught me across the side, and the world spun. The ground slammed into me. My ribs screamed.

  I barely had time to roll aside as its clawed hand slammed down, tearing into the ground where my head had been..

  Too fast. Too strong.

  I forced myself back and upright, gasping, vision swimming. My grip on my ice pick held strong.

  The Sentinel reeled back, its head twitching violently. Then it made a sound.

  A warped, ear-splitting screech tore through the chamber, like a broken speaker ripping itself apart trying to form words. A mix of static, metal grinding, and something that almost sounded like speech, but too garbled to understand.

  I barely had time to register the fact that it lunged at me due to the noise.

  I threw myself to the side as its clawed hand came down, slamming into the ground where I had been a second ago. The floor exploded outward, shards of metal pelting my face as I stumbled back.

  I didn’t stop moving.

  Before it could recover, I shouted a war cry and swung, bringing my ice pick down in an overhead strike.

  The tip sank deep into the machine’s neck, embedding itself in the corroded metal and exposed wiring. A violent surge of sparks burst from the impact, the Sentinel’s body jerking violently as something inside short-circuited.

  I tried to rip the weapon free.

  It didn’t budge.

  Shit.

  I yanked again, harder this time, desperate. But nothing happened, the ice pick was jammed too deep, lodged in the tangled mess of metal and frozen joints.

  Then the Sentinel snapped its head toward me. Its eye flared bright as it lashed out.

  I barely had time to move.

  Its clawed hand swung in a vicious arc. I tried to dodge, but I wasn’t fast enough. The blow raked across my side, exposing my insides to the outside, sending me staggering away. Pain flaring.

  I gasped, but there was no time to process the pain. My only weapon was stuck in its neck, and I needed to do something, or else I was going to die here.

  No time for thought, only action.

  The Sentinel didn’t stop.

  It sped towards me and I tried to anticipate its next attack and dodge, but I wasn't fast enough.

  Everything exploded.

  A single, devastating blow crashed into my torso like a battering ram. My ribs caved. The impact ripped me off my feet, throwing me like a ragdoll.

  For a second, I was weightless.

  Then my back slammed into the wall.

  CRACK.

  The force shattered the wall behind me. I crumpled to the ground, pain roaring through every nerve. My vision flickered, and my limbs refused to move.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  I barely felt my limbs.

  Somewhere, distantly, I heard Vesper shouting.

  The Sentinel didn’t even look at me.

  It simply stepped back, as if the fight was already over.

  It was.

  The edges of my vision collapsed inward.

  Darkness.