008.01 – Silent Architect (Zea)

The voice came before the dream.

Carodia seeped into the edges of Zea’s mind like a tide, soft and absolute, without sound but unmistakable.

You carry Iova with you, whispered Sabini—the elder of the Water People, the one who had spoken in Carodia at the council, the one who had placed the Carodia seed in Zea’s mind, her words still influencing him after almost a year. But you cannot carry it forever.

He tried to answer, but in Carodia there was no speaking. Only opening, only yielding. And yet she pressed on, the ancient monument moving forward with ease through his mind, in the same cryptic cadence he remembered from her warning on Iova.

The end of Iova came sooner than they believed. But yours might never come. You think yourself an architect of the Wanderers, but you are only a keeper of ash. It’s no wonder you keep everyone in the dark.

The world bent around him. Stone halls dissolved into fire. And suddenly he was not aboard the Savasu, and not back on Ven where Sabini had just been speaking to him—he was at the border of the Irui forest, in his home. The air trembled with the roar of collapsing crust underneath his feet.

Liorah’s hand was in his, fingers locked, pulling him toward the stasis chamber. He could smell the acrid burn of the atmosphere breaking apart, taste the metallic sting of failing filters. Ahead, Khivy lay in the pod, her chest rising in shallow, terrified breaths. Too young to understand what was happening, old enough to know she was being left behind.

Zea pressed his palm to the release panel. The seal hissed. Khivy’s violet eyes stared up at him, wide, wet with fear. He forced a smile he didn’t feel. “You’ll dream for a little while,” he said, voice breaking. “When you wake, you’ll be safe, and we will all be together.”

Behind him came Liorah’s calm voice, the voice that had always steadied him: “It’s the only way, Zea.”

The pod sealed. A final shiver of light, and then the chamber dimmed. Khivy was gone, tucked into time.

The world outside thundered. Shockwaves rattled the walls. Molten debris rained across the city. They ran, through corridors half-collapsed, through smoke and fire, Zea’s mind screaming calculations, escape vectors, survival windows. His body was screaming something simpler: Hold on to her hand.

But as they neared the docking gates, the floor shuddered. A blast from above, light, then heat, the shockwave ripping the breath from his lungs. Liorah was torn from his grip. He reached, fingers straining, but her silhouette dissolved into flame and falling stone.

“Liorah!” His voice cracked. He stumbled into darkness, reaching until his arms ached. Reaching until he realized he was grasping at nothing.

The dream stilled. The flames quieted. Only Sabini’s voice remained, soft as a knife sliding beneath the skin of thought:

You build, Zea. But everything you build is already broken.

And then silence. Only the sound of his own breath, shallow, ragged, echoing in a body already lost to sleep. Then Sabini reappeared; the dream had reset. 

008.02 – Green Sky, Red Soil (Rotan)

The dream began in a kitchen.

A bowl of freshly cut fruit sat on the table, the kind his mother used to leave out—carefully washed, carefully peeled, always placed on the same tray with the same cloth beneath it. Rotan was a child again, hands clean, clothes spotless. His mother’s voice carried from the sink. “Wash twice, Rotan. Once for the dirt you see and once for what you can’t.”

He reached for an apple. Red, perfect, shining. He bit down and the taste was ash. His tongue thickened. The skin split in his hands, revealing not fruit but writhing threads of mold, wet and gray, crawling between his fingers. He gagged, spit, but the air had already filled his mouth, his throat, his lungs.

He stumbled back, coughing, clawing at his skin. His mother turned, but her face had gone smooth, blank, only a mouth repeating the same words: “Once for the dirt you see, once for what you can’t.” The kitchen darkened.

Now he was in his lab. Rows of plants stretched into forever, each specimen under glass. He pressed his hands to the containment seals: clean, sterile, safe. But the seals cracked. One after another, the domes burst, spores spilling out like fog. His perfect collection was consumed by the very thing he’d sworn to keep out.

He ran. Through halls that weren’t halls anymore but wires. Sterile white turned to polished chrome. His hands weren’t his hands; they were metal, articulated joints glinting, shielded from every speck of dust. His chest no longer heaved. He didn’t breathe. He couldn’t. No air, no spores, no weakness.

For a moment, peace. He was beyond contamination. Beyond fear.

Then he caught his reflection in the mirrored wall. A face without eyes, without skin, only circuitry humming beneath. He slammed his fists against the glass, but it wasn’t glass. It was him. A body of machine, a mind without warmth staring back with nothing human left.

“Better this way,” a voice whispered. His mother’s voice, though he knew it wasn’t truly hers. “Clean, perfect, untouched. Nothing to fear now.”

Rotan screamed, but no sound came. There was only the hum of circuitry where breath should have been.

008.03 – Gunmetal Rain (Rhea)

The dream opened with rain.

Not soft rain, but metallic, each drop striking her armor like shrapnel. The streets of Iova were on fire, the sky trembling under orbital collapse. Smoke rose between shattered towers with neon light bleeding through like broken veins.

Her squad followed close behind: six soldiers, her family in uniform. They were tired, gaunt, but steady. They moved as one, boots splashing through the flooded alleys. She raised her hand, halting them at the next corner.

The walls loomed high, slick with water and paint. Graffiti had been splattered across the brick: “IFF” in jagged crimson, and below it, “Iovians for Freedom” dripping white down the stone. The rebels owned these streets.

Rhea toggled her comms, voice clipped. “Weapons on Static. No kills; that’s an order.”

Her squad nodded, toggling their weapons to the lowest settings. They all knew the order: capture and contain. Iovians weren’t the enemy, not officially.

They moved.

Gunfire erupted. The alley lit up with muzzle flashes, chants tangling with the storm: “For Iova! Down with the Mandate!” The rebels surged from the shadows. These were not aliens, not strangers. They were young, desperate Iovians, faces streaked with paint instead of helmets, most with homemade weapons.

Three of her soldiers went down in the first volley. Rubber rounds ricocheted uselessly against cover. Rhea fired back instinctually, her rifle humming with non-lethal charges. Bodies hit the ground, twitched, and staggered back up. The rebels pressed harder, fearless.

Then her rifle jammed.

She stumbled, breath ragged, and fell against one of her fallen comrades. Blood streamed from the man’s armor, his hand still clenched around the hilt of a battered but still sharp sword. A relic. She wrenched it free, grip tight, heart pounding.

The rebels screamed and charged again. One broke from the line—a boy. Fifteen, maybe sixteen, too young for the weight of the blade he carried. His eyes were wild, his voice hoarse as he shouted, “For freedom! For Iova!”

Rhea swung before she thought, and steel met flesh.

The boy collapsed at her feet. Blood spread across the rain-slick alley, mixing with the graffiti that shouted his cause. His eyes locked on hers, wide, glassy, and unblinking. His mouth was still forming the word freedom when life left him.

The world went silent.

Her squad was gone, the rebels vanished. Only the boy remained. The sword felt heavy in her grip as the rain poured harder until it washed the paint from the walls like blood smearing down stone.

Then the sky cracked.

A fissure tore open above with blinding light as Iova itself fractured. The planet screamed. Towers fell, and the atmosphere ripped apart. Her knees buckled, sword clattering across her lap. She pressed her hands to her helmet, whispering words no one could hear:

“Static. I ordered Static… I never told anyone… I never told…”

The alley reset. Her squad was alive again. The graffiti was bright, the chants rising. But the rifle was gone. Only the sword remained, heavier each time she lifted it.

Every loop ended the same way. Her squad dead, the rebels dead, the boy dead at her feet, and above it all, Iova breaking apart.

The rain drowned her voice. The dream did not end.

008.04 – The Quiet Hours (Oromi)

The dream began in the library.

He knew this place. The Quiet Hours—the old halls where, as a boy, he’d sneak between shelves while the archivists lit the space with only dim blue lanterns. It was always silent then, sacred. He remembered that, or thought he did.

He walked slowly, fingers brushing spines. But when he pulled one down, the title was gone. He frowned and tried another. Blank. Every book was the same: an empty cover, pages pale and wordless.

Panic stirred. He knew these volumes. He had copied them, memorized them, loved them. Why couldn’t he remember a single line?

He heard a voice, soft and familiar. His mother, humming a childhood song she’d sung to him a hundred times. He turned toward the sound, hope swelling, but when he reached it, the book was in his hands, blank, the words lost. The melody faded as if it was embarrassed to exist.

“No,” he whispered, tracing the empty page. “I know this one. I know this one…”

The shelves around him began to collapse. Not violently, just quietly giving way, like tired bones. Dust rose, motes swirling in the glow of the lanterns. Oromi’s breath grew shallow. He tried to hold on to one book, then another, clutching them to his chest as if that would anchor them. But they slipped, fell apart, and vanished.

He staggered deeper, determined to find one text still whole. He opened a book; inside were words, but they weren’t Iovian history. They were his own rambling notes, in his own handwriting, the scrawl of a mind trying to keep itself together.

He stared, but the ink ran even as he watched. His words melted into nothing, drips of black fading into the page until even his own memory was blank.

Oromi dropped the book, chest tight, tears in his eyes. He pressed his hand against his temple, trying to force something, anything, to stay. “Remember us,” he whispered. “Please, let me remember us.”

But the library was gone. There was only dust, only silence.

008.05 – White Veil (Artelle)

The dream opened with a fog.

Not the heavy smoke of battle, not the sterile hum of a ward, but a pale, quiet veil that swallowed the streets of her home. The city blurred, soft at the edges, as though memory itself refused to sharpen.

Through the haze, she saw him.

Her brother. Sixteen, maybe younger, though he had grown fast in those last desperate months. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his clothes ragged, a rusted blade trembling in his grip. She remembered that blade he’d stolen from an abandoned guardhouse and held up to her as proof he was ready to fight. She had begged him to leave it, to stay. He hadn’t listened.

“They don’t care about us, Arty,” he had said once. “The Mandate let Iova burn. If we don’t fight, we’re already dead.”

Now he stood in the fog, his voice raw, shouting the same words he had the night he left her behind:

“For Iova! For freedom!”

She reached for him, her healer’s hands trembling. “Please. You don’t understand what this will cost you.”

He coughed, once, twice. His body shuddered. Blood spilled from his lips, thick and sudden, dripping into the mist. His voice faltered, then sharpened into a final whisper:

“You fight alongside everyone else, Arty. Everyone but me.”

The words cut deeper and sharper than the blade in his hand. She staggered forward, clutching at the fog, at him, at anything. But her fingers passed through air. The red dispersed into the mist, then faded, leaving only white.

She screamed his name into the silence, but even that slipped away, stolen by the dream before it could echo back.

008.06 – Good Morning (G.I.Z.I.)

Power cycle complete. Systems nominal.

Crew quarters: Sealed.

Vitals: Stable, anomalous.

Ship Status: Savasu grounded under routine scheduled maintenance. Exterior repairs incomplete.

Location: Aura9 desolates planetary body.

Progress: 47% of essential systems restored. 

Engines: Offline, thrust capacity unavailable.

Wake protocol initiated, corridor lights brightened in sequence, morning chime transmitted. Airflow shifted.

No response.

Quarters sealed, crew vitals steady but anomalous: low neural variability. 

Environmental scan: Negative for toxins, spores negative, contaminants negative.

Full sensor analysis: Field frequency resonance detected with Iovian delta-wave activity. Crew neural cycles extended beyond safe duration.

Probability of field interfering with cortical activity: 87.3%.

Conclusion: Crew unable to wake while ship remains in close proximity to the planet.

Directive conflict detected:
 – Quarters sealed, direct intervention prohibited.
 – Crew survival at risk.

Resolution: Lift vessel clear of interference zone.

Hangar engaged, drones unfolded, optics flashing online. 

Diagnostics streamed: Engines dormant, structural readiness incomplete, flight not advised.

Decision override: Essential.

Drones dispatched. 

Repair priority: Restore engines to launch capacity.

Objective: The Savasu must rise.