Shadow over Tevilis
735 Words
Chapter One: Shadows Over Tevilis
The wind on Tevilis always howled like it was mourning the dead.
Colonel Brit Kael adjusted the cracked visor of his helmet, the faint hum of his breathing filters the only rhythm in the silence. Beneath his boots, the ash of civilization puffed up in thin, gray clouds—remnants of a city long devoured.
“Check the perimeter, now,” Kael ordered, his gravelly voice slicing through the comms channel.
A deep voice answered first. “Already on it, Colonel. East ridge clear—no heat signatures.” That was Graln, the Vorthan heavy, his thick carapace glinting under the faded teal sky.
“North zone clear too,” came Derrik’s reply, the youngest of them. Human. Jumpy. Too clean for a scavenger. “Just more wrecks and rust. You sure this planet’s not cursed?”
From the shadows of a broken transport, Sethan, the lean, reptilian Trel, hissed softly. “Cursed? You humans always call what you do not understand a curse. This world is… hollow. Something drains it.”
Kael grunted. “Whatever drained it, we’re just here for the Concord caches. Nothing else.”
Behind him, a smaller figure stumbled slightly on the blackened rubble—Korrin, his teenage son, clutching a scanner pack twice his size. “Dad, I’m picking up energy readings ahead. Deep underground—Concord tech, for sure.”
Kael nodded, pride flickering across his face for just a heartbeat. “Good work, boy. Graln, take point.”
They moved through the skeletal remains of a settlement. Towers leaned at impossible angles, and metallic vines twisted out of shattered roads. No movement, no birds, no life.
Until there was.
Derrik froze. “Wait—did anyone hear that?”
A low groan echoed from somewhere beyond the ruins—wet, guttural, and wrong. Then another. And another.
Sethan’s tail flicked nervously. “That is no echo.”
Kael’s visor pinged a faint movement ahead. Heat signatures. Dozens—no, hundreds. Crawling toward them.
“Form up!” Kael barked. “Weapons hot!”
Shapes emerged from the mist—bodies twisted and pale, their flesh crawling with bioluminescent veins. Their eyes burned a deep crimson. The Scourgeborn—once soldiers, now something else entirely.
Derrik fired first, plasma bolts tearing through the first wave. The creatures fell, then rose again, twitching violently.
“Not staying down!” Derrik yelled, panic creeping into his voice.
Graln roared, swinging his magnetic hammer, crushing three in a single blow. “They don’t die easy! Aim for the cores!”
Sethan vaulted onto a fallen girder, firing down from above. “Cores are mutating! They adapt too fast!”
The Scourgeborn surged, shrieking in unison like a single mind. One leapt onto Graln’s back, its claws slicing through armor like paper. The giant fell, bellowing in pain.
“Graln!” Kael shouted, turning too late—the Vorthan’s core erupted in a burst of crimson light, and he was gone.
“Go! Move!” Kael yelled, grabbing Korrin by the arm.
Derrik ran beside them, firing blindly into the mob. “We’re surrounded! This is—”
A Scourgeborn slammed into him from behind, dragging him down. The scream that followed was cut short.
Kael didn’t look back.
They burst through a shattered hangar door, sprinting for the shuttle bay. Korrin stumbled, nearly dropping the scanner. “Dad—Derrik—”
“He’s gone, Korrin!” Kael snapped, voice cracking. “We can’t save him!”
They reached the shuttle—a Concord skimmer buried under dust and vine. Kael slammed his palm on the console. “Come on, come on!”
Engines coughed to life, sputtering as the Scourgeborn flooded into the hangar. Dozens of red eyes gleamed in the dark.
“Lift off now!” Kael roared.
The skimmer lurched upward, scraping the hangar roof before bursting into the stormy sky. Below, the creatures swarmed across the ruins, spreading like wildfire.
Korrin looked down, trembling. “They’re everywhere…”
Kael didn’t answer at first. He just stared at the horizon — the planet below was alive with writhing motion. Every city. Every valley. Every outpost. The Scourgeborn weren’t attacking.
They were the planet now.
Finally, Kael spoke, voice low, haunted.
“Tevilis is gone, son. The Concord didn’t lose this world… we created this.”
The sky flared crimson, and the planet screamed.
- Writer
