Chaos' Heir

Khan hovered through the air, seemingly aimlessly. His eyes and senses couldn't find an end to Chuwei's desert, but he wasn't looking for one. He chased the call in his nape, letting it guide his subconscious.

Storms got in Khan's way more often than not, hindering his senses and attempting to grind him into a gory corpse. However, nothing ever touched him. Even the worst weather was nothing more than an afterthought for an existence as powerful as him.

The day turned into night, but that darkness also eventually ended. Still, Khan never stopped flying, ignoring hunger, thirst, and heat. He lost himself in the call only he could hear, waiting for it to lead him toward his target.
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However, no matter how much Khan traveled and for how long, Chuwei kept hiding its secrets.

By the third day of uninterrupted travel, Khan decided to stop. He had hoped the call would have experienced some changes, but Chuwei's desert didn't seem to have what he sought. Something similar had happened on Milia 222, so Khan knew he had to opt for a different approach.

Luckily, Chuwei lacked Milia 222's complex and intricate structure. It only had one possible hiding place. The desert looked clear, so whatever the planet concealed had to be under it.

Digging through a desert that stretched through an entire planet wasn't a simple or quick task. Ordinary soldiers would need specialized equipment and months of work to get anything done.

Khan could summon all that with a single phone call, but nothing was ordinary about him. He had quicker and more efficient methods at his disposal. He only needed to concentrate to unleash them.

A sandstorm raged in Khan's surroundings, trying to break into the safe area his destructive presence created. His aura condensed when he closed his eyes, shrinking that protected zone, but the invisible shockwave he released reverted that process.

The sand in the air and on the ground shattered. Its grains broke into nothingness, releasing energy into the symphony and clearing the area. Yet, Khan reopened his eyes to a leveled landscape that resembled the previous.

Khan had made sure only to target the sand with the spell inherited from the Nak, but the desert was deep. He couldn't sense how deeply it stretched, and that random search had its limits. Still, the Nak's call and some perseverance could bring results.

Khan was nothing but a highly driven man, so he persevered, flowing with the symphony and occasionally stopping to release his destructive spell. Chuwei's storms always covered the traces of his passage, but the symphony carried his lingering presence, preventing him from getting lost.

Time lost any meaning. Khan also stopped noticing the rotation between day and night. His entire existence focused on a single goal, showcasing the insane concentration level he could achieve when nothing else existed in his life.

Nevertheless, that new approach seemed to fail, too. Khan progressed quickly, flying from zone to zone to unleash his destructive spell and uncover hidden layers of the desert, but only sand came out.

Khan didn't let that lack of results demoralize him. He kept going, exploring more of the endless desert as time passed. Even his incredible body began to tire under that constant flight and unbearable heat, but he persevered, becoming nothing more than a mindless machine serving a single purpose.

At some point, Khan unleashed his destructive spell near a relatively tall dune, uncovering more sand. The scene had become so common that he barely inspected the area, but an unexpected twinkle attracted his attention before he could divert his eyes.

Khan's brain suddenly resumed working, allowing thoughts and other sensations. He teleported on the leveled dune, releasing another wave of destructive energy. More sand vanished, but one item survived, falling on the newly uncovered layer.

Chuwei's star shone high in the clear sky, quickly pushing the newly uncovered sand to its boiling point. Khan's feet began to hurt, burning under the heat, but his mind barely noticed it as he crouched toward the twinkling item.

The destroyed dune contained an uncharacteristic piece of black metal that seemed unaffected by the heat. Khan also felt its firmness when he picked it up and studied it in his hand. The alloy was extraordinarily sturdy and clearly man-made.

The piece of metal was barely as big as Khan's palm, but he could uncover much from its many details. The sandstorms had smoothened its surfaces and edges, but its cracks and twists probably preceded them. Chuwei's weather might have worsened them but not caused them.

Something in the piece of metal also felt familiar, so Khan stored it in his pocket before rereleasing the destructive shockwave. Nothing came out, but Khan repeated the process until something interesting appeared.

It took multiple executions, and Khan found himself at the bottom of a vast hole by then, surrounded by sandy waterfalls. Yet, his efforts succeeded in uncovering a second piece of that out-of-place black metal, this time almost twice as big as the previous.

Of course, two pieces weren't enough to provide answers. The two didn't match, either, but Khan kept digging, expanding his area of interest. Luckily, no storms raged during his search, so Chuwei didn't experience his wrath.

After a few hours, the area had turned into a flowing mess of gorges of different sizes. The sand on the surface was also strangely leveled, and Khan stood feet-deep into it, studying the results of his search.

The two metal pieces had multiplied. Khan now had more than fifteen of those in his collection, but they were all different, with only a few sharing apparent connections.

Nevertheless, the more Khan looked at the retrieved metal, the more he felt he was recognizing something. His mind filled those immense gaps, reimagining the out-of-place alloy as part of a bigger, familiar structure. His nape stayed silent, but his hunches spoke to him, summoning memories directly from his nightmares.

'Could something like this have truly survived for so long?' Khan wondered, uncertain. Still, his mind kept pushing him toward those conclusions, almost forcing its ideas upon reality.

As impossible as it sounded, Khan felt he had found the remains of a Nak's ship.