The landing craft approaches the sphere of Hanaris.
The drone of the engines — steady, insistent — fills everything.
But in the cockpit, there is only dead silence.
As if even the air is afraid to stir.
Each breath is muffled, restrained —
like a step on thin ice,
where under every inch lies a bottomless fracture.
Through the viewports — only it.
The black sphere.
Smooth as a mirror, yet reflecting nothing.
Not light. Not time. Not meaning.
It is too perfect,
too alien
to belong to this universe.
No seams.
No hatches.
No fracture in the fabric of reality.
Only smoothness — absolute.
Pulling at them like the abyss.
---
"Why aren't they opening the airlock?" Ragnar rasps.
He doesn't take his eyes from the sphere.
The tremor in his voice isn't fear.
It's worse.
It's the dawning awareness of losing control —
the sense they've already been rewritten,
made part of another will.
"Control isn't responding," says the android at the panel.
His movements are precise to the edge of soullessness,
but his voice…
his voice carries something rare.
Uncertainty.
Dangerous.
"All systems are locked. We can't change course.
We're being… taken."
"Goddamn it…" someone whispers from the back.
"They're leading us to slaughter."
So this is how legends die?
Not in battle.
But in silence, in a foreign ritual.
Without resistance.
Ragnar's hands crush the armrests.
His eyes burn — not with anger,
but with powerlessness.
The craft hurtles toward the sphere's surface
like a stone into the mouth of a god.
"Impact in… three… two…"
The craft freezes.
"…one—"
FLASH.
Blinding white light —
but it's not outside.
It pours inward,
into bone, into nerves,
into the soul itself.
No pain.
No movement.
Only light.
Not light — knowledge.
For a moment everything vanishes:
walls, floor, bodies —
all lose their form.
They fall into nothingness,
and surface in silence.
---
Return.
The craft lands softly,
but no one feels the touch.
Around them — a hangar,
vast as a dreamt cathedral.
Walls of gold and light
flow upward
as if this place doesn't know gravity.
The air is warm.
It has no scent — it sings.
From the shadows emerge drones.
Graceful. Soundless.
They don't walk — they glide,
like thoughts before they become words.
Their bodies are not metal.
More like light
caught in the act of sleeping.
They encircle the craft.
Scanning.
And then — a voice.
It does not sound.
It simply appears inside them.
"You may disembark."
Not a command.
Not a threat.
Simply a fact —
like gravity, like death.
---
Ragnar moves first.
He steps onto the floor — and the surface seems to respond.
To recognize.
To understand.
Veronica follows.
The rest trail behind.
They walk slowly.
Here, each step feels like a decision with no road back.
The drones turn without looking back.
They are not to be escorted — they are to be followed.
Like a prophet.
---
The corridors are not corridors.
They are veins.
Light flows through them.
The air trembles.
The space listens.
They are led into a hall.
A dome.
An arena.
A ceremony.
The walls vanish upward into height.
On the terraces — Them.
Tall.
Transparent as morning dew.
Eyes like liquid silver.
No one speaks.
But they all applaud.
Silently. In perfect unison.
It is not a greeting.
It is a rite of recognition.
Or… a farewell.
---
"They… are they happy to see us?" Veronica whispers.
"Are we being welcomed as heroes… or as a sacrifice?"
From the center, He emerges.
A figure. Sliding.
Space itself pulls back before him.
Eyes — a depth without light.
He does not smile.
He does not threaten.
He waits.
"Welcome," the voice blooms in their minds.
"I am Ferand.
We come at the call of Hanaris —
Light, Harmony, Order."
Ragnar takes a step forward.
His voice is hoarse, but steady.
"I am Admiral Ragnar.
We are free androids from Mercury.
What do you want?"
Ferand inclines his head.
The air tightens.
"We have come to stop Kairus.
You already know his power.
He is hunger — consuming worlds.
We fought him… and lost.
But now we are here.
Allies.
Brothers.
We are united by faith."
Ragnar smiles for the first time — truly, without mask.
"If you're a brother… what's our plan?"
"For now — rest.
You are exhausted.
Follow me."
---
They walk.
The corridors breathe.
Light answers their emotions.
The walls sing without sound.
Before each of them — a door.
The quarters are like the dreams of gods.
Furniture that listens to thought.
Light that is soft as breath.
Music born from the air itself.
Ragnar and Veronica share a doorway.
A pause.
A glance.
We made it.
Together.
After everything.
They step inside.
The silence is warm.
Alive.
The bed — a cloud.
The light — the morning of childhood.
Veronica lies down.
There's a tremor on her lips that isn't from fatigue.
"We're… in paradise," she whispers.
Ragnar sits beside her.
His hands tremble.
The pain leaves him.
"Better than the Martian cells…
Veronica, I'm glad you're here.
That you survived."
She embraces him.
Her lips brush his neck.
"And I'm glad we're together.
At last.
No orders.
No war."
She kisses him.
Not as a soldier.
Not as a commander.
As a woman who has walked through hell.
In the heart of an alien civilization,
in the middle of a great war,
two survivors find something
that no algorithm can define.
Peace.
Or perhaps — a pause.
Before the storm…
that can already hear their breathing.