Celestial Nexus

The frame stepped into his path, claws raised, red core burning like an exposed wound.

Ardea didn’t fire.

The cave was too quiet for gunshots.

The frame lunged.

He dropped flat and slid beneath it, ironhide claws slicing the air above his visor with a shriek that made his teeth ache. Sparks cascaded down around him. He twisted, drove his elbow into the back of its leg joint, and rolled through the narrow gap between its limbs.

For a split second, he was underneath it—close enough to see the faint pulsing veins of red light inside its torso. Close enough to hear something else beneath the mechanical hum.

A low vibration.

Like a heartbeat.

He came up behind it and pressed himself against the cavern wall, matching its posture. The frame straightened, head tilting. Its circular eye brightened, projecting a thin cone of red across the stone.

Ardea held still.

His suit bled heat. His pulse thundered in his ears.

The cone passed over him.

Paused.

Then moved on.

The frame resumed walking.

Ardea followed.

Two steps behind. Close enough that if it stopped suddenly, he would collide with it. Far enough that its peripheral sensors wouldn’t register the faint distortion of his silhouette.

They crossed into the cave together.

Inside, the air felt wrong.

Not just warm—dense. Charged. It crawled across his skin like static waiting to discharge. Rails cut across the chamber floor. Energy pylons climbed the walls, arcing red currents into suspended platforms where half-formed frames hung like carcasses in a slaughterhouse.

None of them made noise.

No chatter. No commands. Only synchronized movement. Frames carried components in perfect silence, claws clicking softly against ironhide.

Ardea stayed in the shadow of the one in front of him.

And then he saw it.

At the center of the chamber stood something taller, broader—its torso layered in thicker plates etched with shifting patterns that seemed to writhe when he looked at them too long. Where a head should have been hovered a rotating ring structure, three red apertures orbiting slowly, independently.

They weren’t scanning the room.

They were listening to it.

The commander did not move like the others.

It barely moved at all.

But when one of the pylons flickered, the ring adjusted by a fraction—and every frame in the chamber corrected its stride simultaneously.

It wasn’t issuing commands.

It was thinking for them.

Ardea’s stomach tightened.

He edged sideways as the frame in front of him halted. It turned slightly, claws flexing. He crouched behind a pylon, using the thick iron conduit to mask his outline.

From here he could see what they were building.

Ironhide plates the size of doors lay arranged in curved arcs. Limb assemblies thicker than tree trunks rested in mechanical cradles. Four cannon housings pulsed faintly as they siphoned power.

A bull.

Incomplete—but breathing.

The red cores embedded within its chest cavity flickered irregularly, as if impatient.

Ardea felt the vibration again.

Stronger now.

It wasn’t mechanical.

It was rhythmic.

The frame he had slipped past earlier stepped into view, only meters away. Its head rotated slowly—not in jerks, but in smooth, deliberate increments.

Searching.

Across the chamber, the commander’s rotating ring began to slow.

One aperture dimmed.

Another brightened.

The third stopped entirely—facing directly toward Ardea’s position.

The air pressure changed.

Subtle.

But wrong.

The frames throughout the chamber froze mid-motion. Claws hung suspended. Rails stopped humming. Even the energy arcs between pylons softened to a dull glow.

Silence swallowed the cave.

Not empty silence.

Listening silence.

Ardea became acutely aware of his own breathing. The faint whir of his suit’s filtration system. The microscopic shift of his boot against stone.

The frame near him tilted its head.

Its red eye narrowed.

The commander’s central aperture flared—no longer scanning outward, but focusing inward.

On him.

Ardea felt it then—not sight, not sound, but pressure. Like fingers brushing the inside of his skull. Cold. Curious.

Hunter.

The word didn’t echo.

It settled.

The incomplete bull on the assembly platform twitched. One massive hand flexed once, metal grinding softly.

Ardea did not move.

If he ran, they would know.

If he fired, they would wake.

The commander’s ring resumed rotating—slowly.

Deliberately.

All three apertures aligning.

And every frame in the chamber turned their heads at the same time.