Captain Day Renora gripped a shattered console, blood dripping from a gash above her eye. The entity invaded her mind… forcefully… painfully. Images of the crew she lost assaulted her. Ensign Patel… Lieutenant Harris…  Ensign Th’shrehlik… All seventeen were calling for her, shouting at her.

YOU FAILED US! LET US DIE!

Day sank to her knees, her memories, screams, the taste of blood in her mouth. Voices slithering through her mind… paralyzing.

YOU RESISTED… BUT WE ALL DIED ANYWAY.

Terrible images flooded her consciousness. Patel reaching for her as a plasma bolt tore through her body… Harris crushed beneath Cardassian boots… Screams… Smoke… Her own voice issued futile commands while chaos engulfed them.

“No!” she hissed, curling her fingers into fists. “We saved who we could.”

YOU SAVED YOURSELF.

Her teeth clenched as the deck seemed to tilt beneath her. Her hands gripping durasteel as her mind boiled in guilt and shame.

YOU WILL BREAK.

Then a sudden pulse of calm… A breath… clarity.

But not hers.

Jorath.

A single thread of thought, quiet but insistent, pushing through the maelstrom. A lifeline… free from the pain of memory.

Valis’s voice… small, a whisper… “Bring the Vyr’eshk to the chamber. Together we can end this.”

Jorath gasped… the sound raw and choked… surfacing from a drowning sea. His head snapped up, no longer witnessing Days’ torment, eyes wide, burning with fear… and defiance.

“I hear her,” he whispered. “She’s calling us.”

YOU ARE MINE. YOU OPENED THE DOOR. YOU DO NOT GET TO CLOSE IT.

Jorath stood, staggering toward the yacht’s hatch, every small step a wat.

“She’s waiting… the Syl’theran,” he whispered.

Day forced herself upright, shaking and dripping in sweat. “Jorath…?”

He turned to her, eyes wet with tears, but focused. “We have to go. Now.”

For a heartbeat, Day looked at him… truly looked… and saw not a trembling counselor, not the empath wracked with guilt… But a man burning with purpose. The sight gave her strength.

She tapped her commbadge, “Day to Vallejo… Status? Do you read?”

Static.

She tapped it again, more urgently. “Valis? Come in?”

Nothing.

Just the crackle of interference.

“We’re cut off,” Day muttered, jaw tightening.

Jorath was keying commands into a console on the side of the cabin. “Valis said to bring it down to the chamber. The shaft is too deep; transporters can’t get a signal down.”

“Right,” Day said, grabbing her phaser from the floor. “We’ll beam to the rim and climb down then.”

Jorath hesitated, looking at the panel. “You sure?”

“I’ll follow your lead.” She paused, looking at him. “I trust you.”

Jorath keyed the coordinates, fighting the presence assaulting his mind… pushing it back.

The Velenia’s flickering transporter engaged, and they dissolved into a haze of blue light.

_____________________________________

Valis’s finger brushed the glyph, and her mind shattered… A torrent of memories flooded her… searing and raw… vivid and overwhelming.

Crystalline cities glowing under violet skies, the Khev’ralis weaving emotions into language empathically. An ancient, small-statured, peaceful race of silicon-based life. Their worlds burning under the endless onslaught of the Zorathans… a hulking warrior race whose cruelty and malice were unmatched in this region half an eon ago. She saw massive insectoid soldiers standing in scorched ruins, laughing as their blades dripped with the gore of the young fallen.

Desperation surged… fear, resolve, hope. The Syl’theran Order, a small sect of scientist-priests. Robed figures with glowing eyes shaped a psionic weapon… one last chance for their people to survive the ceaseless attacks. The Vyr’eshk emerged… a shadow of hunger, devouring Zorathan cruelty. Pushing them back… giving the Khev’ralis hope… at first.

Horrors followed. Khev’ralis screams mingled with the enemies. They lost control, their weapon insatiable… consuming every life in its path… bringing not just death and destruction, but torture… agony. The Syl’theran, faces etched with grief and shame for what they created, knelt in a silicate chamber, their minds merging with the stone they had crafted, sealing the Vry’eshk in the dark. Their resolve lingered, a faint hum in the binding glyphs…

Valis slumped to the cold stone floor, breath ragged, the symbols adorning the structure flickering… familiar now. The terahertz pulse had worked to restart the structure, but the entity… the Vyr’eshk was absent… There was nothing here to contain.

She could still feel the Syl’theran’s presence in her mind, in this chamber… images of clasped four-fingered hands, feelings of unyielding duty… urging her forward. There were living minds embedded in the stone, saturated with emotion. She had to lure the entity back to this place…

Valis stood, steadying herself, suppressing the fear clawing at her Vulcan core. Her fingers traced the brighter glyph again, initiating a second telepathic bond. Images flashed, searing into her mind like flame…

Syl’theran eyes, glowing in unity… a wave of strength… the hum of stone resonating with a common purpose. Valis extended her mind, feeling it amplified by the structure. She reached out, her mind’s voice cutting through the fear and pain like a blade…

“Lieutenant Jorath… Bring the Vyr’eshk to the chamber. Together we can end this…”

_____________________________________

Jorath and Day materialized just meters from the edge of the collapsed catwalk at the rim of the shaft, the air around them alive with static and psionic pressure. Wind screamed in the canyon, thick with stinging dust. The fractured earth and rocks beneath their feet groaned, unsteady.

Jorath stumbled, catching himself on a jagged support strut half buried in blood-red sediment. His head turned to the dark pit ahead… the place he knew the Vyr’eshk feared… it felt it too.

Day was already scanning the descent with her eyes, the remnants of the catwalk coiling down into the shadowy maw.

A sudden bolt of nausea surged through them both… minds reeling with psionic backlash, hot and acidic like bile in their minds.

YOU WILL NOT GO DOWN THERE. I WILL FEAST ON EVERY SOUL ON YOUR SHIP.

The wind turned colder. Somewhere down in the dark, a distant metallic shriek rang out.

Jorath rubbed his temple. “It’s panicking…”

Day grabbed his arm, steadying him. She felt something outside giving her strength… amplifying her own will. “Then we move now!”

Jorath took the first step onto the twisted remains of the scaffolding.

Day followed, jaw set, phaser drawn.

Behind them, the sky screamed.