The air was thick with dust. Not in any way Malan was used to, like when climbing out of a spacesuit after a long scrub-shift and the movement kicks debris into the air making him cough and splutter. This was dense and cloying, like breathing cobwebs and bonedust. After a few moments, his tongue and throat was coated in it.

It would help if he could see. Instead, he was reduced to pawing around in the pitch dark, running fingers across cold stone, desperately feeling for some kind of directional hint or clue. He tried to think why he was here, or even where here was, but gathering his thoughts felt like moving through treacle. Malan couldn’t gather them no matter how hard he tried, so instead he settled for crawling across the rough stone, fingers grasping for any change.

Time didn’t seem to exist here—wherever that was. Had he crawled for minutes? Or hours? His fingers traced around the outline of yet another identical stone block, its edges and corners worn and rounded by time. Where the hell was he?

After what felt like an eternity, his hand reached something. More stone, angular and carved, jutting from the ground. He felt his way up the column-like structure, and at his touch, a flame arose from behind it. Or, at least, it looked like a flame. There was flickering amber light that sent shadows dancing across an unlimited void that stretched out all around him.

To his right, another light blazed into life, and he finally got a good look at the structure he’d felt. A chair, or perhaps a throne, given its gaudy carving. From its back, a pair of great stone wings rose up and outward, and at the peak of the throne’s back, a pair of serpentine heads with wicked, curved fangs faced away from eachother.

In the direction of the other light, lay a second throne. This one bore a great snake wound around it, its head breathing fire that seemed to roil and dance beneath the flickering light. Curiously, its body had great ruffs of feathers, that despite their grey stone appearance, spoke to him of vibrant reds and yellows and greens.

Malan licked dry lips, and saw in beyond these two chairs lay another two, each seeming to line the stone pathway he stood upon like guards. Hesitantly, he edged forward. He was almost positive he was dreaming now, but something about this place made his instincts scream at him in a way no dream ever had before.

He walked between the thrones for some time, marvelling at the shapes he saw carved upon them. Some lit up upon approach, but others, far more, in fact, did not. A winged lion glared down at him from one, and from another, a five-headed lizard-like creature had been carved to roar toward the skies. Both were lit, but in the darkness between them, he could make out something akin to a horse with the scales of a fish.

The thrones went on and on, and Malan was having trouble keeping the images of beasts straight in his mind. They were important somehow, along with which were lit and which were not.

Eventually, he noticed the path begin to widen, until he found himself standing in the centre of an enormous plaza of black stone. Directly in front of him, nine thrones sat in a curved row facing him, gargantuan in size, dwarfing anything he’d seen before. Nausea swept across him as he caught a vile taste through the ancient dust, and movement caught his eye.

The second and seventh thrones along lay wreathed in oily black that dripped and pooled at its feet, and glistening, fleshy appendages burst out from cracked stone. They didn’t respond to his presence, but Malan could see the gentle rise and fall of breath on each sopping limb. The thrones were swallowed almost entirely by the vile growth that bathed the room in its foul taint.

Malan couldn’t help the step back he took. He was now acutely aware he was not wearing his groundsuit in this place, nor could he feel the bond with Tanwen. However, before he turned to run, something on the fourth throne caught his eye. A subtle flickering of light on its seat, just out of sight.

It called to him. Something in his very core burned in sync with the light, pushing him to go to it. He took a step, and the whole world trembled.

THE NINE LAY EMPTY.

TWO ARE LOST, NEVER TO BE REBORN.

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THE FOURTH HAS BEEN BORN ANEW.

A FLEDGLING OF THE DAWN.

The voice rattled the very stone beneath his feet, leaving no inch untouched by its booming call. The force of it had Malan staggering back, clutching at bleeding ears as it held the final sound in ‘dawn’. The voice began to shift and warp, and even the tentacles on two of the thrones writhed and crawled in on themselves in a fruitless attempt to escape.

ALONE AND WEAK.

WEAK AND ALONE.

TOO LATE. TOO WEAK. TOO ALONE.

THE COVENANT IS BROKEN.

The voice broke off, booming confidence descending into a haze of hacking laughter and broken cries. The shaking reached a fever pitch, and the stones beneath him began to split and crack, and he was thrown back onto the floor. He tried to hold out his hands to break the floor but hissed as a cracked stone shaving sliced a vicious gap into his palm.

BORN ALONE TO DIE ALONE.

VULTURES ABOVE AND VULTURES BELOW.

WEAKLING.

ALONE.

WEAK.

ALONE.

WEAK. ALONE. WEAK.

THE COVENANT IS—

Malan gasped, sitting bolt upright in his bed as the first light of dawn on Mykeser filtered through the cracks in his room’s blinds. His heart hammered against his chest, and he brought a shaking hand up to his chest and felt for the crystal that lay there. He allowed his hand to rest there for a few moments, feeling the gentle roll of celestial energy that flowed between he and it.

That had been quite unlike any dream he’d ever had, to the point where he was half-convinced it wasn’t one. He could still taste the air of that place on his tongue, and his head still thrummed from the pain of that voice. Alone. Weak. The words rolled around in his head until he slapped at his cheeks with his palms to try and clear it.

Finally, his eyes landed upon the drawer he’d slid the note inside before going to sleep that night and dragged himself out of bed. It was still early, and it took him longer than usual to shower and get himself ready to leave his room, and when he found his way through the empty corridors of the Citadel to Elena’s door clad in his groundsuit, he was half convinced she would still be asleep.

“Come in,” came Elena’s slightly strained voice. “It’s open.”

Malan quirked an eyebrow but opened the door with only a little hesitation. What met him was Elena in loose-fitting workout clothes hoisted up on some kind of bar contraption he’d never seen before, performing perfectly controlled pull-ups. He glanced around the room. Her personal effects were meticulously arranged on the side table, and clothes perfectly folded on the end of a bed that was pristinely made.

She rattled off another set of ten, before allowing herself to drop to the floor and press a button that collapsed the pull up bar to the size of a small pole that would fit in a bag. For a moment, his mind wondered about how they’d made the bar so sturdy, despite being so lightweight and compactible. Isolde could probably have made one to show him.

“You tidied and worked out already?” He blurted out, keen to draw his brain away from thoughts of his sister. “I guess old military habits die hard.”

Elena smirked, and opened her mouth to quip back, but for some reason it died on her tongue, and her smile faded. “Is that why you think I do this? Out of habit?”

Malan blinked, suddenly off-kilter. “I—I’m sorry, I hadn’t meant to offend—”

She snorted, and waved at him dismissively. “I don’t think you’d capable of offending me no matter how hard you tried, Mal. That’s not why I ask. All of this,” she said, gesturing to the room and the sheen of sweat covering her face. “Do you honestly believe this is just habit.”

“Well—no. But I assumed that was where you had carried it on from. I get why all of this is a good thing to do, and that probably comes into it, too…”

She raised an eyebrow. “But do you, though? Because if you do, why haven’t you started?”

He frowned, trying to bite back the impulse to react as though he were being personally attacked that tended to come with criticism of you as a person. Even he could see this was coming from a place of kindness, it was just that knowing that did nothing to numb the sting.

“I don’t know. I guess when it comes to the perfectly clean room and stuff, I always felt like I had better things to be doing before the Jauda. After, I just didn’t care.”

“And the fitness?”

He shrugged. “I always did okay in fitness tests—it wasn’t like I didn’t eat right or anything. I guess it just wasn’t a priority given I was training to be a starship pilot.”

She nodded and flashed him a small grin. “I thought as much. I probably wasn’t too different when I was young and stupid, too. Anyway, I presume you’re here at the crack of dawn for a reason?”

He rolled his eyes at the dig, but handed her the note he’d found in his room the night before.

“Starbound—I hope they’re right about you. I have nowhere else to turn. They have my—” Elena paused, eyes widening, and muttered a curse. “Children. If there is any good in you, please help. They’ve attached coordinates. Fuck. This just got a whole lot more complicated.”