As the inner doors hissed shut, the colony shuddered under a fresh assault. Dust settled on Kaelen’s visor. He leaned against the wall, his heart drumming a rhythm to match the thunder outside. "Did it hold?" Mara asked, her face pale.
"Five minutes, Stitch," a voice crackled through his helmet. It was Mara, the bridge commander. "The Great Red is shifting. The pressure is spiking."
"Almost there," Kaelen grunted, his magnetized boots clanking against the carbon-glass hull. He pulled a heavy spool of iridium wire and began threading it through the stabilizers. The wind was already picking up, humming a low, vibrating note that rattled his teeth. As the inner doors hissed shut, the colony
The world went white. Kaelen felt himself lifted, his magnetic boots screaming as they fought to hold the hull. The sound wasn't a roar anymore; it was a physical weight, a hammer of air pressing him into the deck. For a heartbeat, he saw the true face of Kaelos: a swirling, chaotic beauty of gold dust and plasma, ancient and indifferent.
Outside, the violet sky turned to black as the Great Red moved back over the sun, and the world began to scream once more. "Did it hold
Kaelen didn't look up. Above him, the clouds churned like a boiling pot of ink. A bolt of "crawling lightning"—slow, viscous, and bright enough to blind—slithered across the horizon. On Kaelos, the lightning didn't just strike; it searched.
Then, the airlock cycled. Mara’s hands were on his shoulders, pulling him into the pressurized warmth of the airlock. "The Great Red is shifting
Kaelen looked left. A funnel, thin as a needle and glowing with a haunting cerulean light, was dropping from the atmosphere. It moved with impossible speed, carving a trench into the metallic soil of the planet below.
