The chamber shook with every impact.

  Brinn drove a burning fist through the chest of another construct, molten light searing through ancient armor. Sparks spat out in all directions as the machine spasmed and collapsed in a heap of twitching limbs.

  “Left!” Sai called sharply.

  Jarek pivoted just in time to fire three quick shots—one into the shoulder of an approaching unit, another in its leg, and the third dead center in its chestplate. The thing crumpled in silence.

  “Back-to-back!” Jarek barked, falling into formation beside Brinn. “They’re circling!”

  “They don’t circle,” Brinn muttered, slamming a machine’s blade away with a gauntleted forearm. “They hunt.”

  Ramm ducked a swipe from one of the taller units, barely managing to stay on his feet as he scrambled backward. “Okay, new rule! Maybe don’t poke things that look like death!”

  Pepe zipped overhead, one eye flickering red from a burn mark. “Glad we’re learning! Now duck!”

  Ramm hit the ground just as another construct’s weapon—some kind of energy flail—whipped through the air where his head had been.

  Sai emerged from the shadows, his blades spinning in a deadly blur. He moved like a shadow stitched into motion—one moment beside Brinn, the next behind a construct, driving steel into a seam at the base of its neck. The machine folded silently.

  More dropped from the walls, activating mid-air. The thundering impacts echoed through the chamber like war drums.

  Jarek growled, blood dripping from a gash on his temple. “They just keep coming!”

  “They’re finite,” Sai said coolly. “I counted twenty-three.”

  Brinn punched through another. “What number are we on?”

  “Twenty-two,” Sai answered as one collapsed behind him. “Now twenty-one.”

  The team pressed in tighter, fighting with grit and timing. Jarek’s blaster hissed hot in his hands, its energy pack on its last breath. Brinn’s arms glowed with runes gone white-hot from overuse. Ramm, to his credit, managed to land a few solid blows with his charged glove—when he wasn’t flailing or yelping.

  Pepe flitted between strikes, barking alerts and occasionally zapping enemies with short bursts of static. “Combat probability holding at 57% survival. Not terrible! Not great!”

  The last construct lunged—massive, heavier than the others. Brinn met it mid-charge, body-slamming it into the wall with a blast of heated force. The machine buckled. Brinn drove his knee into its core, and it folded like crumpled steel.

  Silence.

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  Not the peaceful kind. The kind that follows catastrophe.

  The crew stood among the wreckage, surrounded by scorched stone, glowing wires, and the twitching corpses of machines that had been asleep for longer than any of them could guess.

  Ramm finally exhaled and flopped onto his back with a groan. “Okay. Now it’s not my fault.”

  Jarek turned to him, wiping blood from his brow. “You touched the robot, Ramm.”

  “I barely touched it!”

  “It tried to kill us!” Brinn shouted, wincing as he flexed his cracked gauntlet.

  Pepe spun slowly overhead, voice singed and sarcastic. “Proposal: we install child locks on Ramm’s hands.”

  Sai knelt beside the ruined form of the last construct, flipping open a side panel with one of his knives. Inside, layers of crystal lattice wiring pulsed dimly, still cooling. The design was unlike anything modern.

  “These weren’t just guards,” Sai said softly. “They were sentinels.”

  “Yeah? Of what?” Jarek asked, still scanning the room.

  Brinn crouched beside one, his fingers brushing the plating. “These metals… some of it’s not even from this system. Reinforcement fibers in the frame, too. Hardened for impact and corrosion. And these sigils…” He brushed ash from a panel. “They weren’t made by machine.”

  “Hand-scribed,” Sai murmured. “Runes older than anything I’ve seen.”

  “So ancient robot death cult,” Ramm muttered, sitting up and cradling his hand. “Great. Add it to the résumé.”

  “Still not sure if these were Weavernet constructs,” Brinn added. “Some of the design’s too... spiritual. Like they were made to do more than kill.”

  “Maybe they were protecting something,” Jarek said.

  That brought a silence. A slower one.

  The crew spread out, this time cautiously, moving among the remnants and wreckage. Beyond the rows of now-dead sentinels, the three doors remained unchanged.

  Massive. Sealed.

  Each one loomed like a god’s judgment.

  The left bore the image of a circular eye, surrounded by curling organic script. The right was jagged, scarred, as though something inside had tried to carve its way out. And the center...

  ...the center hummed.

  Geometric etchings traced down its frame like veins pulsing with dormant energy. The sigils here weren’t just symbols—they were instructions. Warnings, maybe. Or invitations.

  “I don’t like any of them,” Ramm said, pulling his glove tighter. “But I really don’t like that middle one.”

  Brinn approached the center door, eyes narrowed. “Whatever those constructs were protecting... it’s behind that one.”

  “And if they failed?” Jarek asked.

  “Then someone—or something—is still waiting.”

  Pepe hovered cautiously beside the group. “Fun reminder: last time we touched something mysterious, we almost died.”

  Ramm stepped up beside the center door, raising his hands carefully. “Okay, not touching! Just… admiring.”

  Brinn growled, “Ramm, I swear—”

  “I didn’t touch it!” Ramm snapped. “I was literally just standing here!”

  The door shuddered.

  Everyone froze.

  A heavy hiss filled the air, like a vault exhaling. Dust spiraled down from the ceiling as mechanisms inside the door awakened for the first time in who knew how long.

  Lights—faint, flickering—came to life along its seams.

  “Oh no,” Ramm said, backing away. “It’s doing the thing.”

  “Did you touch anything?” Jarek barked.

  “No!”

  The door began to split. Slowly. Painfully. The grinding metal groaned like an animal waking from a nightmare.

  Behind it... no tunnel. No corridor.

  Just a shape.

  A towering figure stood framed by the opening—a construct, but unlike any they’d seen. Twice the size of the sentinels. Plated in layered armor that shimmered faintly with embedded runes. Dozens of mechanical limbs folded into its back like a collapsed spider, each one ending in something different: a saw, a claw, a cannon, a blade. Its core glowed a pale, pulsing white.

  Its head turned. Not slowly. Not stiffly.

  With purpose.

  Sai took a step forward, knife low. “That’s not a sentinel.”

  Pepe scanned it and squeaked. “That’s a warden.”

  Jarek raised his blaster. “Brinn?”

  “Hit it hard,” Brinn said grimly, runes lighting once more.

  The construct stepped forward.

  Its arms began to unfold.

  And the door kept opening.

  just like one of our Starforged game nights when the dice go, “Oh? You thought you were safe?” Big thanks to my chaotic crew for inspiring so many of these moments with their in-game choices (you know who you are ??).

  next questionable decision. (Ramm’s odds aren’t great.)

  Primy