13. NAERIS- underground temple #2
This place was calling to me. For the first time in my life, I wanted to answer a higher power.
We climbed the wide, white steps together, our glowing skin cast shifting pools of gold across the ancient stone.
The grand entrance yawned open like a mouth frozen mid-breath.
The moment we crossed the threshold, the air changed; it became cooler and heavier, but it was also charged with something sacred and sorrowful.
To the right stood a massive wall that stretched up into shadow, easily thirty yards tall and twice as wide.
It was covered in starmap glyphs, intricate, flowing patterns of light that pulsed gently in time with the marks on our skin.
Suns, planets, swirling galaxies, and delicate connecting threads filled the surface in breathtaking detail.
But in the very center… there was nothing.
Just blank, untouched stone. The glyphs flowed beautifully toward the middle from all directions and then simply stopped, as if the artist had been painting one moment and vanished the next. The emptiness felt violent. Deliberate. Like a scream frozen in time.
Nadine stepped closer, drawn like a magnet. She reached out but didn’t quite touch the wall; her glowing fingers hovered inches away. Her expression was distant, almost pained. We all sensed she needed the moment. The others hung back, giving her space.
I moved up beside her, studying the wall with narrowed eyes.
It was unmistakably a starmap. I had seen thousands in my life, holographic 3D projections on Sythari command decks, ancient drawn charts on rebel ships.
I knew the landmarks of our corner of the universe by heart: the crimson veil of the Vaelis Nebula, the triple spiral of the Karath Cluster, the dark rift of the Abyssal Fracture that the Rebel Forces called home, and the bright blue beacon of Asherael.
A home I had only seen a few times, yet it anchored my soul in a way the Temples never could.
But here… nothing was familiar.
No Vaelis Nebula. No Karath Cluster. No Abyssal Fracture.
The constellations were wrong. The galactic arms twisted in unfamiliar patterns.
Whole sectors that should have been dense with stars were empty voids, while other regions blazed with suns I had never seen charted.
The scale was… off. Vast. Older. Like this map had been drawn before the universe I knew had even taken shape. Or was of another universe entirely.
A chill crawled down my spine.
Nadine finally spoke. “It’s… it’s our universe,” she breathed. Look, this spiral here, with the triple red suns… that’s the Pandraxian Core Systems. I’m sure of it. The way the arms curve, the density of the inner cluster, it matches every chart I’ve studied on the ship.”
Her finger swept across another section, and more glowing streaks ignited, filling in details that had been blank moments before.
“And here… this dense blue nebula with the dark lane cutting through it, it's Cronos.
And here… " she moved down to the right side of the map, "This…
this is us. This is Earth. See, the moon, our sun.
The red planet, Mars. The ring. Saturn."
Ashley leaned in, her eyes narrowed. “Yeah… that looks right. The way the stars cluster around what should be Pandrax’s position. And ours.”
I took their word for it, because this map…
it represented nothing familiar to me. Which kind of made sense.
The Pandraxians said they had never heard of the Sythari and vice versa.
Both powerful forces. And that’s not even taking into account the Arkhevari, and yet…
nobody had wandered into this part of the Universe?
I got that it was vast. But… there were so many adventurous species out there, pirates, traders.
All of them knew that new planets brought riches; they thrived on exploration.
And yet. Both the Sythari and the Pandraxians had stopped at Earth, it seemed. Why?
In the very center of the wall, large sections remained stubbornly dark. Empty. Unresponsive.
Ashera had stood here once. I could feel it in my blood.
She had painted this wall with her own power, mapping a universe that no longer existed in the same form.
And then something had happened, something catastrophic enough to stop her mid-stroke and shatter everything.
The ghost city around us suddenly felt heavier.
The shadows deeper. The silence more watchful.
I turned to the others, the question burning in my throat. “When did the Pandraxians find Earth?”
Ashley answered first, in a voice edged with memory. “They actually didn’t. The Cryons found us first. When the Emperor learned that humans were their mekarries, the Pandraxians stepped in and took Earth under their protection.”
Ella’s glowing hands stilled on the wall. She shuddered visibly, the golden light on her skin flickering for a moment.
“Neither had the Arkhevari heard of it,” she filled us in quietly. “Not until I was brought to a planet to be swallowed by the Dark Abyss as a sacrifice.” Her voice cracked. She hugged her arms around herself, the trauma of that memory still raw even now. “That’s when they became involved.”
Ashley nodded grimly. “Don’t forget the Space Guardians, either. They showed up around the same time, watching from the edges.”
I let the words settle, and my mind raced.
I studied the vast glowing map again, the Pandraxian empire reduced to a tiny, bright speck in one corner of an impossibly huge cosmos.
The Sythari had their own sprawling territories, just as advanced, just as hungry for new worlds.
Just not chartered on this wall. Out of reach. Purpose or accident?
“Both the Pandraxians and the Sythari are highly advanced,” I voiced my thoughts.
“They’ve explored vast stretches of the universe.
” I pointed at the glowing section that represented the known galaxy.
“Yet look, the Pandraxian worlds are only a small speck on this map. The Sythari would probably be the same if they were on here. There are riches in uncharted space, entire sectors they’ve never touched…
and somehow, they both missed this?” I swept my glowing finger across the empty void beyond Earth.
“They never ventured here. And from what I can see, nothing from here ever ventured out there either.”
Silence fell, thick and heavy. We'd talked about this before, but it still boggled my mind. I kept going, unable to stop now. “Yet somehow Kael’Varyn gave me the exact coordinates to come here. I don’t know if he knew Earth was waiting… or if this was just a coincidence, but?—”
More silence.
Rylan, still rubbing his jaw where I’d punched him, finally muttered from the floor, “Sounds less like a coincidence and more like someone wanted us all in the same place at the same time.”
Nadine nodded slowly, her glowing fingertips still resting on the wall. “We also discovered that the Harrowed One was the one behind influencing the Cryons to find Earth. To harvest it.”
The words landed like a second cave-in. I felt the starmap on my skin pulse again, hotter this time, as if agreeing with the terrible shape of the truth we were only beginning to see.
Whatever had erased the center of this map wasn’t just ancient history.
It was still reaching out. And we had just walked straight into its grasp.
Nadine’s glowing finger hovered over one particularly large blank void. She traced it carefully, but nothing ignited. The emptiness stayed cold and absolute.
“And this here…” Her voice dropped, almost reverent. “This is where the Dark Abyss should be. It’s completely erased. Like the map itself refuses to acknowledge it… or can’t.”
I stared at that blank heart of the wall, the place where everything should have connected. The starmap on my skin flared hotter, almost painfully, pulsing as if it wanted to reach out and fill the missing pieces.
Ashley shifted her weight, blaster still in hand. “Whatever erased the center of that map... it wanted us to be here.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. We all stared at each other.
Because deep down, I knew we had just stepped into the moment the universe broke.
The answers we were looking for were written in the emptiness staring back at us, an emptiness that seemed to be waiting for something…
or someone… to stand in the center and make it whole again.
Ella was completely lost in the wonder of it, her glowing fingers eagerly tracing more lines across the massive wall, lighting up new sections as she went. “This line here connects to?—”
“Stop,” Nadine called out sharply.
We all froze.
Nadine stepped forward quickly and caught Ella’s wrist, gently but firmly pressing her glowing arm against the wall right at the border between the filled map and the empty void.
“Look,” she whispered.
Where Ella’s skin touched the stone, new golden light bloomed and stayed, filling in faint gaps that had refused to activate before.
Nadine’s eyes widened with scientific hunger. “It matches. The starmap on our bodies is the missing key.” She looked at all of us, glowing with excitement. “Okay. Take your tops off.”
Ella blinked. “What?”
“Scientific necessity,” Nadine snapped, already yanking her own shirt over her head.
She stood there in just her bra, glowing starmap patterns swirling beautifully across her shoulders, chest, and stomach.
“Oh, don’t get hard-ons about it,” she snarled at the three gaping human men behind us. “This is science.”
Ashley crossed her arms, smirking. “I don’t have those, so…” She trailed off, staring at the glowing patterns on Ella and me. “Though I have to admit, this is… something else.”
I muttered a curse under my breath. “By the prophets…” But I pulled my top off anyway, leaving my bra on. The cool air of the chamber kissed my glowing skin. Ella followed a second later, cheeks pink but clearly too curious to argue.
Nadine became a whirlwind, moving us like living puzzle pieces. She pressed Ella’s back against one section, adjusted my shoulder here, my hip there, then pulled Ella's arm across a blank spot. “Arm up—higher—yes, like that. Ella, stop squirming.”
“Ow!” Ella yelped as Nadine repositioned her elbow.
“Don’t be a sissy,” Nadine chastised.
Ashley giggled from the side. “This is the weirdest group hug in history.”
Ella glared at her. “Just wait, Nadine will find something to contort you for too.”
But besides all the muttering, it worked.
Wherever our glowing skin pressed against the wall, the empty sections ignited with rich golden light.
New stars, new connections, entire sectors bloomed into existence under our touch.
The map was waking up. When we finally stepped back, rubbing abused parts of our skin where Nadine had gotten carried away, we stared at what we’d revealed.
It was breathtaking… but still incomplete. Large sections—especially the vast empty center where the Dark Abyss should have been—remained stubbornly dark.
Ashley planted her hands on her hips. “The men. We need those big Arkhevari hunks of yours. They’ve got the mapping too, right?”
Nadine nodded. “Their starmaps should fill the rest. Especially the center.”
Ashley and I exchanged a long look.
“Yeah… about that,” I nodded dryly in Rylan's direction. “Our exit is kind of blocked off.”
All heads turned to him.
He suddenly found the floor very interesting and shrugged with exaggerated innocence. “What? I sealed the tunnel like a good soldier.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’m going to kill you. Slowly.”
The glowing map pulsed behind us like a living thing, waiting. Somewhere far above, I could feel Thyros through the golden thread, furious, desperate, but getting closer. Good. Whether I wanted him here or not… we were going to need our overprotective alien gods to finish this.
Without warning, the chamber screamed. A deep, resonant tone vibrated through the stone.
The blank center of the map pulsed once—violently—before cracks of dark energy spiderwebbed outward from it.
From the walls and ceiling, crystalline constructs began to detach—tall, elegant figures made of the same luminous stone and crystal as the ruins.
Their eyes ignited with cold white light.
They weren’t alive… but they moved like they were. One of them stepped forward and pointed a long, spear-like arm straight at us.
“Intruders,” a hollow, ancient voice echoed through the chamber. “Incomplete vessels. You will not unseal what was sealed.”
“Shit—” Ashley raised her blaster.
The first guardian lunged. I shoved Ella behind me and fired. My blaster bolt slammed into the construct’s chest, cracking the crystal but not stopping it. Nadine grabbed a fallen metal rod and swung it like a staff. Ashley was already firing.
“Back-to-back!” I shouted. “Don’t let them surround us!”
Rylan, Jax, and Marek jumped into action, firing.
Whenever one of the constructs was shot, it splintered into pieces, unfortunately, only to regroup seconds later.
One of the guardians backhanded Marek hard enough to send him flying into a pillar with a loud crack, indicating he had broken his neck. Rylan cursed and kept shooting.
The constructs were fast and relentless.
Every time we destroyed one, shards of crystal reformed.
The floor beneath us began to tremble as the activation destabilized the entire chamber.
Ella was breathing hard beside me, her glowing arm raised like a shield.
“They’re protecting the map! We must be triggering some kind of final safeguard! ”
A guardian’s spear slashed toward Nadine. I tackled her out of the way, and the blade scored a burning line across my shoulder instead. Pain flared hot and bright.
This was why we needed them.
The men.
My man.
Because, as powerful as we were, we were still trapped underground in a collapsing chamber with ancient defense systems that clearly didn’t want us here.
I could feel Thyros through the golden thread, closer now, burning with fury and raw determination.
I gritted my teeth, raised my blaster, and felt blood trickle down my arm.
“Come on, you big golden idiot,” I muttered under my breath. “Now would be a really good time to prove you’re useful.”
The chamber shook harder. Another guardian rose from the floor. We weren’t going to last much longer.