The sky above the nameless planet was a canopy of lightning-shaped cracks. Each branch of the scar flashed and crackled as it crawled across the dome of night.

No stars. No distant, glittering lights. Now, there was nothing above, but the scar.

Down in the gate walker, Khadam was hammering the shell of another light vessel into place. The vessel - a simple drone with an array for capturing light - was her third iteration.

This one was huge. It was shaped like an enormous lantern, if that lantern was also wearing several layers of armored “scales.” Each scale was made to ablate – if any one of them was touched by the light, it would crumple and fall away from the body, before the change could spread.

Hopefully.

If Khadam was lucky, that would give the rest of the vessel time to collect the light from the scar.

Again, hopefully.

This was her least favorite kind of plan: a plan that relied on luck. And so far, Khadam was not lucky. Her previous two vessels had made it up to the atmosphere. Both had opened and started gathering that otherworldly energy. And both had been overloaded almost instantly.

But there was no time to panic, no time to sit back and dream up a new design. Poire - no, the Herald - had not spoken to her in hours.

She had told him everything, and this time he went silent. You just had to ask. You just had to tell him what you knew, didn’t you? Why couldn’t your questions have waited at least until he let you through, you idiot-

Stop.

No point in getting angry.

Khadam had tried to find out what she was up against, and it had cost her. Every action has an equal...

So, all she could do was keep hammering. Keep working. Keep-

An alarm shrieked suddenly in her ear, which made her squeeze the trigger of the air chisel too hard. The pinpoint blast of air from the tool punctured one of the vessel’s scales. It collapsed and dinged another scale as it fell, making that one crumple, too.

She was about to curse, when the words she had written appeared in her head: Planetary atmosphere, contaminated. She pulled up the camera feeds from her remaining hedrons.

How could it be contaminated? The branches of the scar were still dozens of miles above the planet.

Then, she saw them.

Hundreds of slender threads of silken light, so faint she could barely see them, were hanging down from the canopy of frozen lightning above. Each thread, hundreds of miles long. They dragged against the planet, leaving huge veins of black, glittering matter in their wake. And the air around the threads was spewing ash and a dusty, black smoke into the sky.

*So. *

This is the end.

Stop! She told herself as she returned to her vessel. If you’re alive, there is time. That’s all you need to know. But the shrieking alarm wouldn’t let her ignore it. It screamed at the black, crumbling disease that was spreading across the dunes. How long until it found the gate walker? An hour? Less?

The change fed on the planet’s matter, all the sand and the regolith. All the structures she had hollowed out in the center of the planet… becoming something else. The dunes were sinking in on themselves, and those thin spirals of glistening smoke grew thicker, even as she watched. Great black clouds of degenerated molecules, slowly rising into the sky. Rising up towards the scar.

And this fucking machine isn’t cooperating. She kicked at the vessel, and two crumpled scales became three. And when she bent down to slot in new ones, another shifted out of place and when she tried to slot it back in, she pressed too hard and-

Khadam threw the hammer down with a scream.

“I can’t do it!” she shouted at the ceiling. “I’m sorry!”

There was no answer. Only another alarm, blaring from across the cargo hold. Then, the floor of the cargo ship bucked and began to slide under her feet. It stopped as soon as it started, but the hull let out a low, metallic groan.

Another alarm chimed, calling for her attention. What now? She thought. What new crisis could this possibly-

There was a message. Waiting for her.

From him.

Khadam glared at the terminal. The notification was a tiny number one, wrapped in a red circle. So innocent. It looked like every other message she had ever received. Her hand almost tapped it automatically.

She pulled back.

What could he possibly want?

Who knows? Maybe he wants you to kill him. She snorted at the thought. When was anything ever that easy?

The ship groaned again, and this time she almost lost her footing as the ground beneath her feet shook. Somewhere deep below the planet’s crust, one of her stabilizing columns had collapsed into the mantle, which sent shockwaves rolling around the planet. There was a monsoon of magma underneath the ship.

Even if by some mad miracle the scar stopped its clawing advance, the planet would not hold.

Khadam opened the notification.

“Khadam?” a voice said. Small. Not quite a child’s voice, but certainly too young to be an adult with any kind of responsibility.

Funny. Could anyone have guessed that the Herald himself would sound like … that?

“Khadam, I wanted to ask you something. Can you hear me?”

What is he doing? What kind of trap is this?

Does he know how close I am to death? Does he know how close the scar is to ending this world?

Her heart was hammering in her chest, and the air was too thin to fill her lungs. What choice did she have?

There was no time. There were no more chances. To go into Finder’s gate would be a fate worse than death.

But to die here?

Everything. Literally every thing, both living and dead and everything else depended on her staying alive.

“Khadam?”

“I’m here. Ask.”

“Were you sent to kill anyone else?”

“What…” she stammered. “What do you mean?”

“Just answer the question. You want to kill me. Fine. But what about everyone else?”

She furrowed her brow. Still not understanding. “Everyone else is dead. All humanity.”

“And what about the rest of them?”

What was he talking about, ‘the rest of them?’ The plants? The animals?

But she wasn’t going to mess this up twice. She would tell him anything he wanted to hear, because if he was just a child, if he was this naive… then maybe luck was on her side, for once.

And if he is a child? Will you still be able to do it?

Khadam clenched her jaw. Her mouth was suddenly dry. It took her another moment to form the words, “Only you, Poire. I’m only here for you.”

There was no reason to tell him about what she had already done. About the nomads, and their Queen.

“Good,” he said. And he started to say something else, but she couldn’t hear it over the tremors shaking the ground. The gate walker started to tilt. Khadam reached out instinctively, grabbing hold of the terminal, almost ripping it off the wall. Seas of trash and debris and broken hedrons began to slide across the rubber floors of the walker. The walls of printers tipped and crashed to the floor, and the huge, metal crates that lined the cargo hold started to lean dangerously. It dropped back down with a thunderous crunch. Part of the hull was shorn off and light crashed through jagged gaps in the ceiling above.

One cargo crate tipped back too fast, and collapsed to the floor of the gate walker, vomiting out its scrap metal contents. If she had been on the other side of the ship, she would have been crushed.

But she was here, and she was talking to the Herald of All Ruin, and his voice crackled through the speakers as he spoke to her one last time.

“I’m going to open the gate,” the Herald said. His voice was shaking. He sounded like he was only just keeping himself together. “I’ll… I’ll be waiting for you, here.”

You must.

You have to do it.

Only you.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Yes,” Khadam lied. Clutching the chisel gun to her chest. “I’m ready.”

***

The arms of the gate sang as they warped the air around her. The metal disc froze her feet in place, even as it rumbled and the rest of the world rumbled with it.

Khadam tried to picture him. A child, on that world. What had he called it? Thrass?

The arms of the gate were spinning so rapidly now, she could not see them. Nearly weightless in their clutch. A flash of light.

A shift.

And the arms were ringing, as they screeched against the air. Slowing. Becoming a blur. Becoming two heavy, metal semicircles.

The sun was brighter here, than she imagined. And the world smelled… sweet?

There were buildings, all around her. Seastone and lime and white basalt, all shining bright in the sun. Half of them looked like they had been demolished by some recent disaster. There was scaffolding everywhere.

Where is the Heart? She blinked against the brightness of the sun. Towering kapok trees lined winding cobblestone avenues. Green leafed vines climbed up terraced rowhouses and buildings that were five- and six-stories tall. She was standing on a gate, yes, but nowhere could she see the machinery of the grid.

Where is he? Where is the Herald?

There were far too many people here. Wearing clothes from another time. They were rolling carts, or hawking wares. One was riding a large beast with black-and-white striped fur. There were a dozen or so with what looked like gunpowder rifles, aimed at her chest.

They stared at her. She stared back.

Their mouths - their beaks - hung open in terrified, reverent awe.