Ashes of the Sky

The mist receded with the first faint glow of dawn, slithering back into the fissures of the archway like a wounded serpent. Elliot watched from the cave entrance, his breath fogging in the frigid air. The valley floor was scarred where the mist had burned through rock and soil, leaving behind glassy, blackened trenches. Above, the green veins in the sky pulsed slower, dimmer, as if the world itself were holding its breath.

"We go now," he said, turning to Mia and Lila. "Stay close. If the mist returns, we run. No hesitation."

Mia nodded, her eyes distant. The whispers had kept her awake, their voices shifting from pleading to urgent. *Hurry,* they'd said. *Before it's too late.*

Lila adjusted her makeshift bandage, her jaw set. "What if the gate's locked? What if we can't open it?"

"Then we find another way," Elliot said, though the words rang hollow. There was no other way. The coordinates ended here.

They crept into the valley, the archway looming ahead. Up close, the black stone was ice-cold, the carvings writhing under their touch like trapped insects. Mia pressed her palm to the symbols, and the hum surged—a chorus of voices, ancient and fractured.

*You must choose,* they whispered. *Sacrifice or surrender.*

"It needs a key," Mia said, her voice echoing strangely. "Something to wake it."

"A key?" Elliot scanned the archway. At its base, a hollow recess matched the shape of the spire's carvings—a jagged, twisting pattern. "It's the same symbol as the spire. But we don't have anything that—"

Mia unzipped her jacket. Around her neck hung a pendant, its metal warped and blackened. "I took this from the lab," she said quietly. "It's a fragment of the spire. Dr. Patel thought it might… react to whatever we found."

Elliot's chest tightened. "You didn't think to mention this sooner?"

"I didn't know what it was for. Until now." She gripped the pendant, her hand trembling. "It's screaming, Elliot. I can feel it."

Before he could stop her, she pressed the pendant into the recess.

The archway erupted in light.

---

The world fractured.

One moment, they stood in the valley. The next, they were *elsewhere*—a vast, starless expanse where the ground was glass and the sky was a swirling void. Before them stood a thousand spires, each identical to the one they'd found underground, each humming with the same dissonant chorus.

*This is the Garden,* the voices said. *Where worlds are sown and reaped.*

Mia staggered, blood trickling from her nose. "It's a network. The spires… they're machines. They've been here longer than life. They *cultivate*."

"Cultivate what?" Lila whispered.

*Civilizations,* the voices answered. *We plant. You grow. You consume. You fall. The cycle feeds the Garden.*

Elliot's mind reeled. "We're just… crops?"

*You are stardust made selfish. You took too much. Now you must be cut down.*

The vision shifted—a blade of light slicing through the Earth, reducing it to ash. From the ashes, a new world sprouted, pristine and unbroken.

*The balance,* the voices said. *The cycle.*

Mia fell to her knees. "No. There has to be another way. Let us fix it!"

*You cannot fix rot. You can only burn it.*

The light intensified, searing Elliot's eyes. When it faded, they were back in the valley, the archway's hum a deafening roar.

---

The pendant glowed white-hot in the recess. Mia reached for it, but Elliot grabbed her wrist. "Don't! It's triggering the cycle. It's going to erase everything!"

"Then we destroy it!" Lila shouted, lunging for the pendant.

The ground split. The mist surged back, faster, hungrier. Elliot yanked Lila away as the tendrils snapped at her heels. Mia stood frozen, her eyes locked on the archway.

"Mia, move!" Elliot screamed.

She didn't. Instead, she stepped *into* the mist.

"No!"

The mist coiled around her, but instead of dissolving her, it stilled. Her skin glowed faintly, the spire's pendant blazing at her throat.

"I understand now," she said, her voice overlapping with the chorus. "The gate doesn't just destroy. It *transforms*. To restore the balance… one of us has to stay. To guide the reset."

Elliot's blood turned to ice. "Mia, don't—"

She smiled, tears cutting through the dirt on her face. "Tell them I'm sorry."

The mist swallowed her whole.

The archway shuddered, then collapsed in on itself, leaving only a scorched circle in the earth.

The green veins in the sky flickered.

And went dark.