The thrill kept me on the edge of my seat as we went toward Edenfall. The journey. The power. The sights. The experience. I didn’t know how to feel, as the stars blurred, and Earth became a tiny marble behind us.

  “Forgive my rudeness, Arata, but we’ll have to land with haste,” Oruun said.

  The Sanctum’s cabin light turned the bulkheads the colour of surgical steel. From a distance, the city planet unreal, a forest of narrow towers rising from a pale, fractured plain. The ground split into sheer cliffs that funnelled toward the skyline. Above it all, massive planets hung low in a violet-black sky, their light washing the buildings in cold hues. The city was towering, like it had been built to be seen from very far away.

  “Sixty seconds,” Oruun said, not looking at me. The descent burned white for a full minute before we landed. The Sanctum’s hull shook, dramatically, almost throwing me to the ground.

  Below, there was a man-made pod, white stone rim and perfectly circular pond arranged with the careful precision of something designed to feel peaceful rather than to be lived in. Two figures stood at the edge.

  The first was dressed wrong for the place. Dark coat, broad-brimmed hat pulled low, posture loose like he had all the time in the world. Rain slid off him without sticking. Even from this height I could tell he was smiling, not at anything, just comfortably amused. A fishing rod rested across his knees.

  The other stood beside him, pale and still. White hair cut bluntly at the jaw. She hadn’t moved since the camera picked them up.

  The Sanctum’s external audio crackled as it adjusted.

  A voice drifted up through the interference. “You don’t eat,” the seated man said, conversationally, like he was pointing out the weather.

  “I do not require intake,” the other replied.

  “That’s tragic,” he said. “Half the fun’s in the anticipation.”

  There was a precise tilt of her head. “Clarify.”

  “The waiting,” he said. I could hear the smile in it. “If you remove the wait, it’s just consumption.”

  “The Eldros are recycled,” the pale one said, pointing to fish. They weren’t like Eldros I had seen.

  “I know.”

  “There is no loss.”

  “I know,” he replied again, gently patient, like she was catching up to a joke he’d already finished telling himself.

  “Then why perform this action?”

  He gave the rod a lazy tug. “Because it still feels like fishing.”

  My stomach tightened. “Oruun,” I said. “There are people down there.”

  Oruun glanced at the viewport. One look. His expression didn’t change. “They’re not people,” he said.

  Below us, the man finally looked up. For a heartbeat our eyes met through layers of glass and distance. His face was open. Curious. Not afraid. If anything, he looked entertained by the shape of the shadow swallowing the pond. He raised his free hand in a small, casual wave.

  “Oruun,” I said again. “Move...!”

  His fingers adjusted the controls. The Sanctum aligned perfectly. The craft touched down. Both figures flattened instantly. The man’s smile had vanished mid-expression, crushed out of him along with the rest. Nanites burst outward in a wet, glittering spray. Black and silver particulate misted the pond and the surrounding stone, coming apart rather than spilling, unravelling into fragments of form and function that scattered and sank. The water rippled once.

  I couldn’t breathe. “That was a person,” I said. My voice sounded far away. “That was two people.”

  Oruun unstrapped. The buckle clicked softly. “If they were,” he said, “this place would have reacted.”

  He gestured toward the viewport. There was no alarm. No sign that anything unusual had occurred; even the pool recovered the damage and begun to take the bodies like quicksand.

  “They’re drones,” he continued. “Nuxx uses them everywhere. Bodies. Interfaces.”

  “So, it doesn’t count, does it?”

  Oruun paused at the hatch. “Does it count for them,” he said, “when they fish and torment Eldros?”

  Cold air rushed in as the door opened. I ran out, staring at the perfect circle of water where a smiling man had been seconds ago.

  Edenfall was made of machines, like them. A perfect sphere of brushed steel and artificial cloud, its continents folded into hexagonal grids. Rivers of light moved through the panels like veins in a living diagram. Nothing natural lived there, besides strange fish. Everything natural had been replaced. The entire world seemed to glow with a harsh, ambient light, casting long, silvery shadows. Before us, a forest of towering, metallic trees reached skyward. Millions of crowded trees emitted an otherworldly luminescence from green glowing leaves and a metallic sheen adorning their trunks.

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  “I’ve never seen anything like it… so this is your home, Oruun,” I said.

  “Correct,” Oruun replied. “You can see my house, right over there.” I assumed he was joking, because there were no houses at all, only metal trees.

  The Sanctum’s undercarriage kissed the platform with no bounce. The airlock hissed. A clean mechanical smell entered. Antiseptic, metallic, and sweet in the way factories sometimes smell like orchards. Thankfully, we didn’t need the weird suits. I felt a warm, an artificial heat from the ground. Outside, Edenfall stretched forever. No wind, no bugs, no smell of earth. Just the faint hum of maintenance drones. It had all the charm of a sanitized hospital.

  “It’s, um… really nice, it’s kind of charming, to be honest.” I said.

  “You’re a poor liar, Arata. My wife would rather live in Finland than here.” Oruun said. For the first time, his voice trailed with warmth, a faint romance upon mentioning his wife. I get it. He’s in love, he didn’t need to show off.

  His face didn’t move when the lift engaged. Whole neighbourhoods rotated slightly on precision bearings. The people, who looked exactly like Oruun but with grey turtlenecks, moved in files, silent, gliding on the wind. More aliens exited from the trees, where doorways would open from the stumps for them.

  “I wonder what these buildings are for,” I said.

  “Oh, those? They’re houses,” Oruun explained.

  “Houses? They all seem… quite small… so… where do they sleep, eat, or…?”

  “The Nuxxani do not have space to recline, they sleep standing up. Which is why I joined the Kal Dem, a remnant engineer-council that built the nanites and Edenfall. That bought me freedom.”

  “Nuxxani life doesn’t sound comfortable at all. If our future is gonna be like this, I’m… kind of scared, aha.” He didn’t laugh; I forced mine.

  “Well, what they don’t know can’t hurt them. Living this way means there can be more homes. More Nuxxani. More efficiency”

  “Do you think that’s a good thing?”

  “I’m not paid to ponder such questions. It’s not in my job description, Arata.”

  “Oruun… you, or we… should try to help everyone here. It’s possible now… with this Star Dragon armour, isn’t it? That’s why you brought me here, r-right?”

  “If it helps, I sleep comfortably in my space pod. At least one Nuxxani is doing well.”

  “And that’s great, Oruun, but it doesn’t make me feel much better.”

  “I can’t help everyone. This is a severe socio-economic issue, too big for me. I simply want you to destroy Nuxx. If you obey, with that armour, perhaps… you can save some others on the way, Arata.” Nuxx. He said that name as if he tried to spit it. It was unlike Oruun. It felt almost blasphemous.

  Something about him was unsettling me. My hands were turning clammy and sweat dripped off my brow.

  We stepped out into a corridor too wide for comfort. The walls were smooth steel; the lights adjusted to our skin tones like an apology. My footsteps didn’t echo. I wanted them to. Every so often, a symbol pulsed along the corridor floor, something between a rune and a barcode, then faded. The rhythm was like breathing, but not biological.

  “Hey! Who are you? What are you doing here?” An alien figure with a grey, striped turtleneck called out from a small window on the second story of a shimmering tree. The figure was tall and emaciated, with long, silver hair and a black robe. He looked frail and distressed.

  “Don’t engage, Arata,” Oruun said, raising his hand. “Keep a clear mind.”

  I hated the way he said that. Like we were in a zoo, and beneath us.

  “Hey! We’re on a mission to see Nuxx.” I said, waving. They seemed nice.

  “See Nuxx!? Have you lost your mind?” the Nuxxani shouted, leaning further out of the window, halfway up the metal tree.

  “Don’t get involved. Just close your window and go back to sleep. We’ll be gone before you know it,” Oruun said firmly.

  The alien began to shout, his eyes wide with fear. “You’re all going to get seriously hurt! You’ve brought a dragon to Edenfall, to Nuxx’s mansion!?”

  “Keep walking,” Oruun hissed, his stride snapping into a near-run.

  “Why?” I stopped, digging my heels in. “We just got here.”

  “Listen to me,” Oruun said, spinning around, his black eyes wide and void-like. “Nuxx is not a person. He is a swarm. He is the floor you stand on and the air you breathe. If he decides you are clutter—”

  A sound like a breaking bone, magnified a thousand times, tore through the air.

  The metal ground jumped under our feet.

  “Too late,” Oruun spat.

  Above us, the ‘tree’, the stack of living pods, convulsed. A seamless line of silver light appeared around the alien’s apartment. With a shriek of tearing metal, the entire room detached from the trunk.

  It didn’t fall. It shot upward, gravity reversing in a violent, localized column, launching the pod toward the violet sky.

  I saw the alien inside, pressed against the porthole, mouth open in a silent scream.

  “Help me!” the faint cry leaked through the glass.

  I didn’t think. I just reacted. “I’ve got you!”

  I thrust my hand out. My skin burned as the magic took its toll, sucking moisture from my blood to fuel the growth. A vine erupted from my wrist, not a lush, green thing, but a dry, thorny cable, desperate and thin.

  It lashed out, smashing through the pod’s glass.

  I didn’t have the skill for a gentle lasso. I clenched my fist, and the vine knotted blindly around the alien’s waist.

  “Get out!” I roared and yanked back with everything I had.

  It wasn’t graceful. It was brutal.

  The alien was ripped through the shattered window, flailing wildly. I hauled him down, the vine contracting violently, dragging him out of the gravity well just as the pod accelerated.

  Ping.

  The pod vanished into the upper atmosphere; a silver bullet fired into the dark.

  The alien hit the metal street with a sickening crunch. He rolled, skin scraping against the alloy, and came to a stop at my feet, gasping for air. The vine withered and turned to dust instantly, leaving a ring of bruises around his midsection.

  Above us, the gap in the tree didn’t stay open. The metal groaned and slid shut, the building resealing itself as if the room, and the life inside it, had never existed. I stood there, chest heaving, throat dry as sandpaper.

  The alien scrambled to its knees. It didn’t thank me. It slammed its forehead against the floor, prostrating itself, trembling so hard its teeth chattered. It wasn’t praying to me. It was apologizing to the floor.

  Oruun grabbed my shoulder, his grip like a vice. “Do not look back,” he whispered, his voice trembling with suppressed rage. “Do not wait for a thank you. Walk.”

  “Does this place ever stop?” I whispered, staring at the empty spot in the sky.

  “No,” Oruun said. “It only reloads.”

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