Echoes of the Void

The silence was deafening.

Dr. Elias Carter awoke to the harsh glare of a foreign sun filtering through the cracked canopy of his shattered escape pod. His body ached, muscles stiff from the impact, but he was alive. For now.

“Status report.” His voice was hoarse, dry as the air around him. The onboard AI remained stubbornly silent, its circuitry fried beyond repair. Elias gritted his teeth, pushing himself upright. His suit’s oxygen levels were critical, flashing warnings across his visor.

The planet’s surface stretched before him like an endless wasteland of twisted metal and jagged stone. Crimson sands danced in the air, stirred by an unseen force that hummed just below the threshold of hearing. The distress beacon he’d activated during the crash was his only hope, but he couldn’t afford to wait. Not when the air itself felt hostile.

With every strained step, Elias scavenged what little equipment had survived the descent. A rusted utility knife, a half-charged plasma torch, and a handheld scanner. Hardly ideal, but it would have to do.

He walked for hours, guided only by the faint signal of something ancient and powerful. The artifact. The reason his crew had ventured this far into the uncharted void. But Elias was the only one left now. The others were lost to the explosion that tore their vessel apart.

It was dusk when he found it.

A massive structure, partially buried in the crimson sand, its surface covered in markings that pulsed with a soft, rhythmic glow. Elias’s breath caught in his throat. He reached out, fingers trembling as they traced the cool, alien metal.

The scanner’s readings were indecipherable, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the energy emanating from the artifact. But one thing was clear: this was no mere relic. It was a gateway.

Elias felt a pull, an instinctive urge to activate it. His hands moved on their own, guided by some primal understanding. As his fingers danced over the etched symbols, the air around him thickened, vibrating with a low, resonant hum.

The ground trembled. And then—

He was somewhere else.

The landscape before him was both familiar and alien, a warped mirror of the planet he had just left. Structures rose like twisted spires from the ground, their designs impossible yet beautiful. And everywhere, echoes of voices—whispering, pleading, warning.

“Who... Who are you?” Elias shouted, his voice swallowed by the void.

But there was no response. Only the realization that the artifact was more than a gateway. It was a prison.

And he was not alone.