The ship pulsed with life.
Merchants, tech-runners, and low-rank engineers bustled through the narrow corridors of the Draiken's Maw, hands full of scavenged alloys and relics. Even the air tasted different—sweet with the kind of victory that promised bonuses and early retirement.
"I'm telling you- this haul's gonna pay for three cycles of luxury planet-side."
A young salvager laughed, slapping the wall as he passed,
"Three? Try ten. You saw the vault, didn't you?"
His friend snorted.
"Barely. Security's already locking it down."
Their voices trailed off into the noise—boots clanging on grates, laughter, crates being dragged across steel floors.
At the center of the hold, a dozen crew surrounded the prize. A pod. Seven meters long, smooth and matte-black, etched in runes that flickered faintly in the dim light. Ancient. Unmarked. Wrong.
"It drained dry. No trace of aether signature left."
Muttered Chief Engineer Hollis, tapping his wrench against the hull.
"No signature, but intact. That's the part I don't get. Systems like this should've degraded centuries ago."
The quartermaster echoed.
They circled it like priests around a forgotten altar.
"You think it's a weapon?"
Someone asked.
"If it was, we'd be dead already."
Hollis said,
"What about the tech inside? We link it to the ship, trickle in aether—we might wake it."
Another added.
The room quieted. Then someone laughed nervously.
"I mean, what's the worst that could happen?"
They linked it.
Aether lines hissed as they connected, the cables glowing pale gold. The console flickered to life, drawing from the mainframe. One percent. Two. The pod stayed still. No hum. No motion.
And then—
Boom.
The ship bucked. Lights burst. Screams echoed down the halls as the power grid shorted out, plunging the Draiken's Maw into black.
"What the hell was that?!"
"We overloaded—?"
"No, that was internal!"
The pod—now glowing faint red—released a low hiss, like breath held too long. Then silence.
Until—
Shhhhk.
A sound, wet and clean, like a blade through flesh.
A scream. Cut short.
"Who screamed?"
Hollis snapped, spinning toward the corridor.
"Valen? Valen, answer—"
Someone called out.
Shhhhk.
Something dragged across the floor. Metal groaned.
The emergency lights blinked on—red, dim, flickering.
Blood streaked the wall. A hand twitched on the ground, fingers still curling.
"Back—everyone back—"
Hollis stumbled, eyes wide.
From the darkness ahead, footsteps. Calm. Measured.
Shhhhk.
Another scream.
And then—voice. Low. Cracked with disuse.
"…Are you the ones responsible for sealing me?"
The emergency light strobed across the deck—red, red, red—painting the floor with streaks of blood and severed limbs.
Only one remained.
A man, grease-stained and wide-eyed, backed into the corner near the maintenance panel. His hand fumbled at his waist for a tool—anything. A wrench, a cutter, a miracle. But all he found was a frayed wire and the stench of death.
The figure stood still among the bodies. Pale, naked, soaked in blood that wasn't his. He moved with unnatural ease—like the violence had warmed his muscles, not tired them. His eyes glowed faintly as if lit from within.
He looked at the mechanic.
"…Who are you? Did you lock me in?"
His voice was low. Clear. It cut through the silence like a scalpel.
The mechanic's lips trembled.
"N-No—no, I swear—I don't—I don't know anything about that. I'm just—I'm just a mechanic, alright? I fix pipes. That's it."
He stepped sideways, boots sliding in blood.
The figure tilted his head. There was no rage in his eyes. Only something worse.
Recognition.
"You weren't even born when they did it."
He muttered.
"I don't—I don't know what you're talking about!"
"I know."
The man raised his hand.
The mechanic's scream was short, and then he was part of the mess on the floor.
The room went still again, except for the gentle hum that followed.
The figure—bloodied and breathing deeper now—reached out. His fingers curled slightly in the air, and aether pulsed around him. Lines of light spread from the walls, drawn to him like iron to magnet.
He closed his eyes.
The ship shuddered.
Power surged through the corridors. Lights flickered, then stabilized. Screens lit up, consoles rebooted, systems reset with beeps and scans. Everything came alive.
Including him.
His limbs loosened. He rolled his neck, feeling the bones settle. His breath, once ragged, now evened out. The tension that had gripped his frame finally slipped away.
Noah exhaled.
"…Finally."
He ran a diagnostic, feeling through the layers of his body—not with machines, but with instinct. Muscles, intact. Nervous system, stable. Aether pathways, flowing. The damage done by time had not touched him. They hadn't meant to kill him, just contain him.
It hadn't worked.
Noah's eyes narrowed. His senses spread through the ship—tendrils of awareness crawling through metal and mana. Most of the signatures were gone, snuffed out here in this chamber. But not all.
A handful remained.
Scattered. Moving. Still unaware.
He didn't like leaving things unfinished.
Noah stepped forward, picked up a discarded coat—soaked but functional—and pulled it over his frame. Then he moved, silent as breath, toward the rest.
It didn't take long.
A pair of deckhands—young, terrified—never saw him coming. One reached for a comm; the other didn't even get that far. Their deaths were quick, unspoken.
Noah didn't care for screams unless they carried meaning.
Another, older—security, probably—managed to fire a shot.
It grazed Noah's arm.
He turned. Not angry. Not in pain.
Just focused.
The man died slower.
Room by room, hallway by hallway, the ship emptied. And finally, in a lab near the rear thrusters, he found the last one.
"Who send you here? If you do not answer me, you will join your companions."
A scientist. Middle-aged. Thin. Hands covered in synth-gloves, holding a datapad he didn't even try to use. He'd heard what happened. Smelled it.
He backed against the console, trembling.
"I didn't know."
He whispered.
"I swear, I didn't—please, I'm just a researcher. They brought me in for the artifact scans. That's all. No one sent me."
Noah walked toward him, slow and deliberate.
"No one sent you?"
"I—I'm just doing my job—there was no assignment, no directive, I applied with the Guild—"
Noah's eyes dropped to the insignia on the man's left sleeve.
Three interlocking rings.
He froze.
"You wear her crest."
The man looked down, as if noticing it for the first time.
"What? No—this is just the Guild—"
"That mark belongs to the one who betrayed me. The one who locked me in a coffin and threw me into the dark."
Noah said quietly, pointing to the chest of the scientist. And he was not the only one with this mark. Everyone on this ship had the same mark.
The man shook his head.
"It's just standard issue—please—"
"You lie."
"I'm not—"
Noah grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the console. Sparks burst from the panel as systems shorted under the force. The scientist struggled, choking, eyes wild.
"I will find them…the ones who betrayed me. I will tear down every piece of what they built."
Noah said.
He tightened his grip.
"And I will start with those who helped her. Willingly or not."
With one final squeeze, the body went limp.
Noah let it drop.
He stood there for a moment, surrounded by the soft beeping of broken equipment and the stink of blood and ozone. Then he turned his gaze upward.
Toward the stars.
They had thought time would bury him. That the centuries would wash away the memory of what they'd done.
They were wrong.
He would not forget.
And now—he was awake.
The ship's core hummed as Noah pressed his hand against the interface. Aether curled around his palm, threads of data unraveling at his command. Layers of security fell apart like paper in the rain.
Then—maps, logs, transmissions.
He stared at the glowing projection.
The mother ship—his prison for centuries—drifted less than a sector away. Dark. Abandoned. Still bleeding out signal traces, long since ignored.
And this wasn't the first time it had been raided.
Five different timestamps. Five different scavenger crews. All picked clean. All left to rot.
Noah's jaw tightened.
The rest of the fleet—the ships that once orbited the mother ship like loyal satellites—gone. No wreckage, no signals. Just... vanished.
Taken.
He leaned in closer, eyes narrowing at the access logs.
Names. Coordinates. Transfer routes. All rerouted. All planned.
"They stripped everything, before they woke me up."
He murmured.
No accident. No miscalculation.
It was always the plan.
They hadn't just locked him away.
They looted his legacy. Scattered it into the void like it meant nothing. Turned his creators into myths. Buried the war. Buried the truth.
He stared at the last log—an encrypted ping sent out just hours ago. It wasn't a distress signal.
It was a beacon.
Someone wanted him found... but not by allies.
Noah closed his hand. The projection shattered into a thousand silent fragments.
"They were never loyal. I knew I should have taken care of them ever since the first time I saw them. There was no need for me to hold myself back." he said.
And now he knew the truth.
The betrayal didn't start when they locked him away.
It started the moment they knelt and smiled.
______
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