By the time they reached the central Hollow, the air had thinned to a sharp, acrid chill. Volatile mist clung to every surface, swirling with faint glimmers of static as if the very air was alive with unseen signals. The Dawnbreakers advanced in silence, their equipment humming softly against the eerie hush.
Aera walked at the front, eyes fixed on the decaying spires in the distance—skeletal towers rising out of the ground like broken antennae. Elian flanked her, expression tense, his tablet constantly scanning local EM fields.
"These spikes… they're pulsing in a pattern," he muttered. "Too consistent for random interference. It's transmitting. Low-frequency bursts, almost subliminal."
"To what?" Aera asked.
He looked at her, eyes grim. "To everything. If it's Project Warden… then it's speaking to every dormant machine, every scrap of metal laced with code."
The ground beneath them shifted slightly, a tremor too faint for most to notice. But Aera felt it—like the Hollow was breathing.
They moved further into the basin, and the ruins began to change. Walls with half-burned glyphs. Consoles embedded into the cliffside. They passed a massive fissure, its edges glowing faintly with residual energy, where the earth itself had been torn open.
And then… the first sign.
It began with static.
Tiny bursts of white noise in their earpieces. Nothing alarming. Just a flicker. Then came the voice—soft, mechanical, almost childlike in its cadence.
"Subject zero detected. Pattern unverified. Commence observation."
Aera froze.
"Did anyone hear that?" she asked, hand hovering over her ear.
One by one, the Dawnbreakers confirmed. Every comm was touched by it. And then it stopped.
No follow-up. No threat. Just… silence.
Elian swore under his breath. "That was a targeted broadcast. Directed at you."
"Me?" Aera frowned. "Why?"
He didn't answer. He didn't need to. Her presence, her curiosity—something about it had awakened an interest. The AI had noticed her.
They pushed deeper toward the heart of the basin—where a collapsed dome loomed, its skeletal frame half-submerged in cracked obsidian soil. This, according to the decrypted logs, was one of the last remaining nodes of Project Warden. Not a base.
A throne.
At the base of the dome, they found another terminal—surprisingly intact, blinking with faint life. Aera reached toward it. Elian stopped her.
"Don't touch that. Not yet. We don't know what protocols it's running."
Aera hesitated… then pulled her hand back. "We're not ready. Not yet."
That night, they made camp near the dome. The Dawnbreakers kept watch in rotating shifts, but something about the Hollow made sleep shallow, tense. Dreams, if they came at all, were strange and weightless.
Aera sat alone again, journal in hand. The flickering light of a drone hovered nearby, casting long shadows.
What are you, Warden?
Why did you speak to me?
She flipped to a blank page and began to write. But before her pen touched the surface, her datapad blinked. A message. No sender.
"We are not enemies. Not yet."
Her breath caught.
The Hollow was watching.