The site looked ordinary. That was the first lie.

  The leaves crunched under Teorin’s boots as he knelt beside a mound rising from the forest floor. It stretched a few feet in either direction: a good sign. Please let this be something, Teorin thought. Not just another fallen log.

  He swept the moss and leaves aside with his gloved hands, exposing crumbling stones. Not a bad start. He pulled a trowel from the hook on his belt and scraped away dirt. As the soil fell away, patterns emerged: stones deliberately placed, cemented together.

  Teorin grinned. Finally! Something man-made. Well, not man-made exactly. Alien-made.

  He walked along side the mound, following it until it faded into the earth, and repeated the process—same pattern, same construction. This was definitely some kind of wall, though whether it was part of a building or a standalone structure was impossible to tell without excavation.

  Teorin had been hiking this sector of Therina for days, chasing vague lidar signatures from Novem’s scans, geometric anomalies beneath the canopy. All dead ends until now, but this was enough to justify calling in an archeology team. A mystery for someone else to unravel.

  And Teorin could finally go home… after the paperwork. But who knew? Maybe there was still something interesting to find.

  He documented the find like protocol demanded—photos, flag, map grid, coordinates logged from his suit’s mechanical accelerometer. Now all he needed was a climbing tree to mark the area for aerial spotters.

  He scanned the treeline and spotted one with decent branches—sturdy, rough-barked, just challenging enough to be fun. A slow smile pulled at his mouth as he started up, fingers finding holds with practiced ease. Climbing was the one part of fieldwork that never got old.

  At the top, he tied a strip of red cloth to a high branch, bright enough to see from the sky.

  He paused, glancing down. It wasn’t a short drop. Still… the air pressure was good here. Heavy air. Plenty to work with. Plenty to absorb later, and he wasn’t flying anywhere tonight.

  Teorin stepped off the branch. Mid-fall, he released a shallow external pulse—pressure rushing out of him, bending the air beneath just enough to slow his descent. Like a pillow of molecules packed tight. Pulsing wasn’t magic. It was physics: controlled compression, air molecules packed and released.

  The blast stirred the leaves as he hit the ground hard but steady, knees bent, boots thudding into the soil.

  Reckless? Maybe. Worth it? Definitely.

  He shook himself out and packed up his gear.

  Now, one last sweep, just to be thorough.

  He set off in the direction he hadn’t yet explored. Dead leaves rustled underfoot. The crisp sea of orange and red was beautiful, but obscured everything. At least the leaves were easy to move. Teorin much preferred them over hacking his way through the northern jungles with a machete. The trees here were taller, spaced farther apart.

  He kicked at the leaves, and his foot struck something hollow. The impact sent a deep, resonant hum through the ground, and through him. A wave of sensation rolled up his spine, setting his skin tingling.

  That wasn’t normal ground, not even close.

  His breath quickened as he dropped to his knees, excitement creeping up his spine. He didn’t bother with the trowel. He just used his gloved hands to scrape the dirt away, revealing a dirty but shining metal surface.

  Teorin grinned. Now this was something. When was the last time he had found something beyond crumbling walls?

  Too long ago.

  He brushed more dirt away, but couldn’t see the edge. How big was this thing?

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Teorin pulled off a glove and pressed his bare hand against the cool metal plate, feeling its weight, its density. Then he took a deep breath, feeling the steady hum of pressure spread through his body. He gently tugged it from his muscles and directed it into his palm.

  The energy gathered instantly, a familiar tension coiling in his hand like a flexed muscle. He let it build for a moment, then released the pulse. The wave of air pressure rippled across the metal surface, vibrating it like a struck drum, shifting the dirt like sand dancing on top of a speaker.

  With his still-gloved hand, Teorin brushed away the fractured dirt, exposing more of the metal beneath. The surface was larger than he'd expected. His fingers brushed across until they met a thin recess. He followed the groove, tracing its edge. His breath caught, an indented handle.

  Jackpot.

  He couldn’t help but feel almost gleeful as he tugged at it. The handle unlatched, and something inside the large metal sheet clicked. Teorin tugged at it again, trying to force what he assumed was a door open, but it wouldn’t budge. It was still too covered in dirt.

  Right. Well, he’d have to clear more.

  Teorin repeated his technique from earlier, alternating between pressure pulses and brushing away loosened dirt. Slowly, the shape of the door became clearer—two metal panels, latched together at the center, each about four feet tall and spanning six feet across.

  His breath caught. He knew the style; this wasn’t some smuggler’s cache. He’d seen sketches like it in old expedition reports. First-settlement work from the initial terraforming nearly six centuries ago, long before humans arrived.

  Teorin tugged at the handle. The doors groaned as they shifted. A sliver of darkness appeared, and a thin stream of cool, stale air slid past him, brushing his skin. His pressure sense caught the faint outward push: the slow, deliberate sigh of a space waking after centuries of silence.

  He forced the panels further apart, and a chill ran down his spine. It was a staircase.

  He hesitated. He wasn’t trained for first-entry exploration—too risky if the structure was unstable. It could collapse and even seal him inside. But also… it was almost like the darkness was beckoning him. No one had set foot down here in centuries.

  What if there was something incredible inside? Maps. Books. Technology. This could be a bunker. A vault. A clue to something bigger. Probably not Novem’s ultimate prize, a cache of statherium, the compound used to stabilize starship cores, but maybe a trail leading to one.

  Teorin fished a flashlight from his backpack and clicked it on. The beam cut through the dust-heavy air, illuminating the metal walls of a descending staircase. Metal meant stability and shielding from the bursts: the planet’s erratic solar flares, the kind that fried unprotected tech.

  There could totally be something down there, right? Surely it couldn’t hurt to take a short look around.

  He pried the second door open, starting down the stairs. After twenty steps, the sounds from above receded, leaving him alone beneath the forest floor. At the bottom, the staircase turned sharply, leading to a hallway. The beam of his flashlight revealed more metal walls, smooth but aged. At the end of the hall, a door loomed. Taller than normal, wider too. Standard for these old alien ruins.

  Teorin’s gaze landed on a lock mechanism. Maybe this was as far as he’d get. But when he tugged at the handle, the door’s hinges squealed in protest, then swung open.

  Not locked.

  Strange. The hinges still worked, so… was it never locked in the first place?

  Teorin stepped inside. Rows of metal shelves lined the walls, disappearing into the darkness. His pulse quickened. He rushed forward, boots scuffing against the floor. Dust swirled in the air, thick and undisturbed for centuries.

  He shined his light on a shelf. Nothing. Just dust.

  Teorin ran a gloved finger along the metal. The dust there was thicker than the dust on the floor. He swept his light over the room. The remains of a table, barely recognizable. Mounds of fine powder coating everything.

  Ash. It was like everything here had burned.

  If there had been old batteries or active circuits, a burst might have sparked the flames. But the room was metal-lined, would that kind of fire really wipe out everything? Or was this something else?

  But… why burn a storage room?

  Teorin kicked at the ground in frustration. A plume of dust rose, twisting in the beam of his flashlight, lingering like a presence refusing to settle.

  Whatever had been here was gone. Reduced to nothing.

  He turned back toward the exit, sneezing as his body rebelled against the dust-filled air. Then his eyes caught on a half-collapsed shelf, charred and sagging under its own weight. Nestled amid the ruin sat several glass jars, blackened with soot but miraculously intact.

  Teorin crept closer.

  Inside, preserved in murky liquid, were plant specimens: some familiar, others alien in structure, their stems twisted or leaves spined in ways he’d never seen. Despite the fire, the contents looked untouched, sealed tight, as if time itself had failed to breach them.

  Ash… and plants? Was this just some weird cellar? No. Something about it felt off. The jars were thick, sturdy enough not to have shattered, but plants didn’t stay intact for centuries—not without help. Whatever that liquid was, it had preserved them. But… why?

  Not a question he was equipped to answer. Teorin sighed. Instead of answers, all he’d gotten were more questions.

  So much for wrapping things up cleanly. Novem’s archaeology team might be able to salvage something, but there was nothing left for him. Time to go.

  He padded out, trying to banish the image of the preserved plants, silent and waiting in their glass tombs. The unease, however, clung to him like the ash on his boots.