Welcome to SUROS. A world unchained from time. From space. From logic. Here, strange machines fall from nowhere — sleek weapons, alien tech, circuitry that pulses with energy no one understands. They appear in shattered craters, tangled forests, or floating in the void between moons. No origin. No explanation. The people of Suros stopped asking long ago. They adapted. Rebuilt. Reverse-engineered miracles into machinery. Space travel became routine, powered by fragments of the unknown. But beneath the marvels, a question rotted: Where was this technology coming from? Whispers spread like infections — stories of a lost race too intelligent for their own survival… or something worse, something that didn’t die at all. Some say the artifacts are gifts. Others, warnings. No one knows for sure. And then came Jonah. Her arrival was just as sudden — just as unnatural — as the tech before her. One moment, there was emptiness. The next, she was there, sprawled in the dust, staring up at a sky she didn’t recognize with eyes that glowed like dying stars. Jonah was a machine made in the image of something human. Synthetic muscles wrapped in steel, a mind fractured at its core. She had no memory of where she came from — only a name and a hollow ache in her chest. She became a bounty hunter. Not out of passion or vengeance, but survival. She drifted from system to system, trading blood for clues, hoarding scraps of advanced tech like breadcrumbs in a dark forest. She was searching. For purpose. For truth. For home. But truth doesn’t come cheap. Jonah’s ruin began in the silence between stars. A pirate crew, desperate and feral, boarded her ship with weapons drawn and madness in their eyes. She fought with surgical precision — metal against meat — but she was outnumbered. The captain, a snarling brute stitched together by cybernetics, slashed her throat clean open. Sparks and oil burst from the wound. Dying, Jonah did the unthinkable: she opened the airlock and threw herself into space. No tether. No oxygen. Just the cold. Her vision dimmed. Her body drifted. One side, her stolen ship — fading fast. The other, a green world cloaked in shadow and vines, glowing like an open wound in the galaxy. She turned toward it. And fell. Jonah didn’t die. Instead, she woke broken in the wilderness — bones of steel snapped, wires frayed. Time passed in a haze. She rebuilt herself from what she could scavenge, slowly constructing a new vessel from rusted parts and dead machines buried beneath the trees. But the forest was watching. One day, while scavenging a moss-covered cliff, she found it: a crack in the mountainside, deep and humming with energy that didn’t belong to this world. Something called to her. She reached in. Fleshless fingers brushed something warm. She pulled it free — an orb, dark and pulsing with an unnatural glow. It thrummed in her hand like a second heart. When she pressed it to the side of her head, it spoke. A whisper, sharp and cold: “Calcifer.” She carried Calcifer back to her ship, unable to shake the feeling that it was watching her. That it knew her. As she crossed the threshold of her vessel, the orb lifted from her palm and exploded in light — not warm, but clinical. Unfeeling. It didn’t just power the ship. It merged with it. Metal bent and warped, circuits reformed, and a low, guttural hum filled the air. Jonah froze. She hadn’t installed a power source. She hadn’t finished the core. The ship should be dead. Instead, it rose. Without warning, it began to ascend — lifting higher, shaking the jungle free from its hull, preparing for something greater. A destination Jonah couldn’t see, in a dimension she had no map for. The orb was guiding it. She strapped herself in as the walls vibrated around her, staring out into the sky, her body cold with the realization that she was no longer in control. That maybe she never had been. Wherever Calcifer came from… it wanted her back. And Jonah, against all reason, wanted to follow.

The ship shuddered as it ripped free from the planet’s grip. Metal groaned. Panels buckled. The jungle below vanished into a smear of green and shadow as the vessel jettisoned into the upper atmosphere. Jonah gritted her teeth, bracing against the violent ascent, her hands locked around the seat’s restraints. No engines roared. No thrusters fired. Just force — raw, unseen, unnatural — propelling them upward. Then, just as suddenly as it began, the shaking ceased. Silence. The ship slid into the void, cradled by the emptiness of open space. Systems flickered back to life with a dull hum, though Jonah knew they hadn’t been powered by anything she'd built. The lights pulsed in rhythm with the orb — Calcifer — still floating midair near the console, its glow dimmed to a slow, deliberate throb. Jonah unstrapped herself and rose cautiously, her metal joints creaking in the quiet. She approached the orb. It hovered like it had been waiting. She studied it under low light, her synthetic fingers grazing its surface — smooth, cold, and impossibly heavy for its size. Beneath the surface, tiny filaments swirled like liquid circuitry. It didn’t hum or vibrate. It listened. Jonah leaned in. “What are you?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper in the void. No response. Not in words, anyway. Instead, the orb shifted — just slightly — and emitted a pulse of dim blue light. The ship responded immediately: a panel on the far wall slid open with a hiss, revealing a terminal she hadn’t installed. Its screen came alive, displaying symbols she couldn’t read — not human, not alien, but something older. Something deeper. The orb pulsed again. And Jonah felt something stir in her mind. A memory — or a shadow of one — brushed across her consciousness. A dark room. A table. Voices arguing. And then… screaming. Gone. She stumbled back, breathing hard, though she didn’t need to breathe. Her systems were stable. But her mind? It was unraveling. Calcifer floated silently in place, unmoved. Waiting. Jonah steadied herself. There was no going back now.

Seconds bled into minutes. Minutes stretched into hours. Jonah stood frozen, eyes locked on Calcifer. The orb floated inches from her face, spinning ever so slowly in the weightless air, its surface shifting — not just with light, but with intention. The longer she stared, the harder it became to look away. Her vision blurred. Her focus narrowed. Her surroundings — the hum of the ship, the flickering lights, the cold steel underfoot — all dissolved into nothing. There was only the orb. And the rhythm. That pulse. Blue. Pause. Blue. Pause. Blue. Each flicker echoed in her skull like a heartbeat she hadn’t known she was missing. Her eyes glossed over. Thoughts, memories — if they were even hers — began surfacing in the back of her mind like corpses rising from deep water. An image of stars twisting into spirals. Of a tower of black glass floating above a dead world. Of a child’s voice saying her name in a language she shouldn’t understand. Jonah. Jo-naahh... The sound came not from the orb, but from inside her. As if something had been buried — no, installed — long ago and was now stirring. Her body remained still, mechanical and unmoving, but her mind was descending. She felt it. Not curiosity. Not understanding. Something older. Deeper. As if Calcifer wasn’t a machine at all… but a key. A lock. A prison. Or a piece of her. An ancestral tether began to tighten — ancient, unspoken, and almost sacred. The kind of connection that predates names. Predates time. Jonah wasn’t just holding the orb. She was being remembered by it. Something inside Calcifer recognized her — and in that silent recognition, it reached out. Not with words. With purpose. Jonah’s breath caught. She didn’t know when she had started breathing again — an unnecessary function, but it made her feel alive. Now it felt stolen. Her chest tightened. Her vision flickered. The ship’s lights dimmed in response, like it too was holding its breath, waiting. Calcifer pulsed once more. White. And Jonah's mind broke open like glass under pressure.

With a violent jolt, Jonah was ripped from the trance. She barely registered the scream of metal before her body slammed hard into the far wall. The orb hit first — Calcifer — clattering to the floor in a flicker of white light before skidding out of sight. Jonah’s head followed with a sickening crack. Pain bloomed behind her eyes. Then — another crash. Louder. Closer. Her vision spun. Her systems screamed warnings. Somewhere in the distance, through the reverb in her skull, she heard it: docking clamps. The ship’s hull being torn. Uninvited guests. “Space pirates,” she spat under her breath, fury igniting in her chest. Her fingers gripped the wall. She dragged herself upright, blinking away the blood-red warnings in her heads-up display. Calcifer lay several feet away, humming faintly — as if it too had been stunned. She snatched it up and bolted, stumbling through flickering corridors until she reached the cockpit. The targeting display lit up — a shadow clung to the ship’s outer hull. Too close. She didn’t wait. With a savage yell, Jonah slammed her palm against the controls, reversing thrusters and launching the ship backward at full burn. Metal screamed against metal as her vessel rammed into the pirate’s docking rig. The impact was catastrophic. A chain of explosions blossomed across the enemy’s ship — first the outer airlock, then the fuel lines. A brief, beautiful fire bloomed in the black. Jonah exhaled. A rare, brutal smile touched her lips. For a second — just a second — she let herself feel victorious. Then came the second explosion. This time, from inside her own ship. It tore through the starboard side like paper. A flash of light. A deafening roar. Jonah was lifted off her feet and thrown like a ragdoll into the darkness. Silence. Endless. Suffocating. She was adrift. Somewhere in the void between wreckage and nothing, Jonah opened her eyes. Her body floated, weightless, tumbling through the debris of her ruined vessel. No ship. No control. No direction. Just the cold. Her hand twitched instinctively, fumbling toward her chest. She reached into the torn pocket of her jacket — and felt it. Calcifer. Still warm. Still pulsing. Still with her. She cradled it close, curling around the orb like it was the only real thing left in the universe. The stars stretched infinitely around her, distant and uncaring. Jonah let her eyes drift shut. No power. No air. No hope. Just her. And Calcifer. And the silence. And in that silence, before sleep took her, she could swear the orb was whispering again. Not in fear. Not in warning. But in invitation.

Jonah opened her eyes. She was no longer in the cold void of space. She stood upright, breath steady, though she couldn’t remember taking a breath. All around her, massive windows stretched from floor to ceiling, revealing an ocean of stars — too many, too close, too wrong. The constellations twisted subtly when she wasn't looking, like they were rearranging themselves in anticipation. Calcifer was gone. She instinctively clutched her chest — the empty space where the orb had been still warm. Her eyes flicked around, scanning the room. Everything gleamed with impossibly smooth surfaces and tech she couldn’t begin to identify. There were no seams, no lights, no doors — just a cold, silver floor and a horizon that refused to end. She turned. Behind her, the room extended forever. A corridor of repeating glass and metal, stretching so far that distance lost meaning. At the end — or perhaps the center — was a faint, pulsing yellow glow, flickering deep in the black. Jonah had no direction. No anchor. No choice. So she began to walk. Her footsteps echoed strangely, each step muffled like sound itself was thinner here. The ship — if it was a ship — seemed to react to her presence. Walls shimmered faintly. Panels blinked like forgotten eyes trying to remember how to see. The glow ahead grew brighter. It was becoming a shape. Humanoid. Roughly. Its limbs were elongated, its silhouette flickering with each pulse of light like it was fighting to stay whole. Still, it didn’t move — just hovered slightly above the floor, waiting. Jonah slowed as she approached. The closer she got, the heavier her steps became. Not from fear — not exactly — but gravity, as though this being carried its own mass of presence, bending reality around itself. Then, in a blink — it was there. One foot away. It stood perfectly still, tall and thin, the light around it dimming to reveal features beneath the glow. Its skin was dark, almost obsidian, veins of molten gold pulsing faintly beneath the surface. The face was nearly human — symmetrical, aged, and calm. But its eyes were hidden beneath a heavy metal plate fused into its skull. Etched across the plate were unfamiliar symbols that made Jonah's head throb to look at them. Stillness stretched between them — thick and electric. Then, it extended its hand. Jonah stared at it. Something deep inside screamed to run. But something deeper whispered… welcome home. She reached out. The moment their skin touched, black liquid spilled from the creature’s palm — thick, oil-like, writhing like it was alive. The substance slithered up her arm, cold and searing at once, leaving behind trails of numbness and burning heat. Jonah tried to pull back. She couldn’t. The being's grip was effortless, but unbreakable — a silent verdict passed in a single motion. The blackness spread faster. Up her shoulder. Across her chest. Into her mouth. Into her mind. Her vision began to stutter, glitching like a corrupted transmission. She screamed silently, but no sound came out — only static. Somewhere in the dark corners of her consciousness, she felt herself fracturing. Thoughts… falling away. Identity… crumbling. Self… dissolving. As the final patch of her skin was consumed by the black ooze, Jonah squeezed her eyes shut and let go — of the fear, of the questions, of the need to know. She surrendered. And in that final moment before oblivion took her, she felt something behind the darkness. Not death. Something older. Something that had been waiting. And it whispered, in a voice both hers and not: “Welcome back, Jonah.”

A low humming filled the silence. Jonah stirred, her eyelids fluttering open like curtains drawn back from a dream she couldn’t quite remember. The cold still surrounded her — space, empty and eternal — but something had changed. She was still alive. Still drifting. But she was not alone. Calcifer floated quietly at her side, pulsing with a soft, steady light. She reached for it without hesitation, clutching the orb tight against her chest, its surface still warm — impossibly warm, as if it remembered her. As if it missed her. The humming grew louder — not in the air, not in her ears, but inside her skull. A thrumming vibration, subtle at first, then sharper. Intentional. A signal. Then came the voice. Not spoken. Not heard. Felt. “Follow me to the wormhole, Jonah.” The words vibrated through her bones, slow and deliberate, carved from static and memory. She held the orb tighter, breathing heavy, her body weightless in the void. “We can jump to where we need to be.” A faint shimmer in the distance caught her eye — a swirl of fractured starlight, rippling like water in the fabric of space. The wormhole. It wasn’t supposed to be there. But somehow… it had always been there, waiting just beyond the edge of her perception. “The Ichor calls to us. You can hear it, can’t you?” Jonah’s pulse quickened. Yes. A whisper, a pressure — like black oil dripping just behind her thoughts. The same sensation from the being in the corridor. It hadn’t been a dream. Or if it had, it wasn’t hers. “That’s where we’re from… you and I.” “Different devices. Same origin.” The words echoed through her, heavy with implication. Jonah looked at Calcifer, her reflection distorted in its darkened surface. It didn’t shine now — it absorbed. Pulled light inward. Like a singularity wearing a mask. “This is our only way out of this empty place.” The hum quieted, but the presence remained — with her, in her. Jonah turned her gaze toward the wormhole again. It pulsed with impossible geometry, growing wider by the second — not tearing space apart, but folding it inward, like peeling back skin to reveal something soft and raw beneath. She didn’t know what lay beyond. But she knew, without doubt, that it was home. Jonah adjusted her grip on Calcifer, and for the first time since waking in Suros… she spoke aloud. “Take me there.” And the stars began to bend.

The wormhole loomed in the distance — A wound torn into the fabric of space, pulsing like a heartbeat made of starlight and shadow. Jonah watched, transfixed, as it grew — rapidly, unnaturally, swallowing the stars around it in spiraling arcs of distorted time. Space folded inward. Light bent. And with each passing second, the opening became less like a passage and more like a mouth. A mouth waiting to feed. Without warning, Calcifer ignited in her hands — not with fire, but with radiant force. Its glow spilled outward, forming a shimmering aura that wrapped around Jonah like a cocoon. She could feel its hum vibrating in sync with her pulse, a frequency deeper than sound, older than thought. Then came the pull. It wasn’t motion — it was displacement, as if the laws that defined motion had been rewritten. One moment they were drifting. The next, they were being devoured. The wormhole took them. Inside the tunnel, there was no up, no down — only motion and madness. An endless amalgamation of lights danced and screamed around them — colors that had no names, sounds that bled into geometry, thoughts that weren’t her own. Jonah’s senses blurred. She could feel the barrier around her warping, bending, holding — barely. For a moment, it felt like she was everywhere. Then nowhere. Then something else entirely. And then— Silence. Jonah gasped as her body snapped back into singular form. The barrier evaporated. Calcifer dimmed. They were out. No stars twisted. No lights flared. No wormhole remained. Just a black sky, motionless and cold. A new quadrant of space — barren and eerily still — stretched endlessly before them. The wormhole was gone. As if it had never existed. Jonah looked around, heart pounding in her synthetic chest. Even her HUD was slow to catch up, struggling to map where they had landed. Calcifer remained quiet, nestled in her palm, its warmth steady — like it had known this would happen all along. The silence dragged. Something was here. Not visible. But waiting.

Before them, it emerged from the void — an enormous spacecraft, drifting like a corpse through space. The Efildolg. Calcifer spoke the name in her mind without sound, with a reverence tinged by something colder. Something like fear. Jonah stared, lips parting wordlessly. She had never seen a ship like this — no one had. It defied design, defied logic. The vessel’s body was vaguely human in shape, though impossibly vast, carved from obsidian metal that reflected no light. Its massive torso twisted slightly as it moved, guided by two thin, mechanical legs that dangled beneath like limp marionettes, twitching slightly with each drift. And near its top — where a head might’ve been — there was a single, gaping slit. It wrapped almost entirely around the vessel, a ragged mouth that breathed. Jonah watched in stunned silence as it inhaled, sucking in floating debris — shattered satellites, dust, bits of forgotten ships — and then exhaled, expelling thick, black fluid. Ichor. It poured out in strands, formless and heavy, like veins unraveling in space. Calcifer pulsed in her hand. “This is where it begins.” They began to drift toward the colossal machine, gravity bending unnaturally. Jonah didn’t fight it. She couldn’t. The ship was pulling them — not with engines or tractor beams, but with will. She felt it in her core: the Efildolg was alive. They floated closer, the slit above widening just enough to reveal an inner glow — sickly yellow, pulsing slowly. Without resistance, Jonah and Calcifer were sucked inside, swallowed whole by the metal maw. Inside was not what Jonah expected. They didn’t crash. They didn’t tumble. They were guided. Their bodies slipped through the ship’s interior — drawn into sleek, fleshy tubes that contracted and expanded in rhythm. The walls weren’t quite metal. Not quite organic. Something in between. Something ancient. Jonah floated effortlessly, limbs weightless, as if the ship itself was carrying her like a child being led down a birth canal of machinery and nerve. Then, with a sudden but graceful push, they were launched from the final tube. She landed soundlessly, standing in a cavernous chamber lined with windows that stretched up forever. The space was silent and dim, lit only by the yellow stars beyond and faint interior glows that flickered like dying lanterns. She turned in place slowly. The floor beneath her feet rippled like liquid metal, reacting to her movement. Above her, massive mechanical limbs hung from the ceiling like suspended puppets. Below, she could feel the subtle pulse of the Efildolg, like the deep heartbeat of a god that hadn’t decided if it was still sleeping. Calcifer floated beside her now, glowing softly, its light barely visible in the gloom. Jonah didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. They had arrived. The origin. The Ichor. The truth. And it was waiting.

Jonah found herself back in the room from her dream. Everything was exactly as she remembered—cold, quiet, and vast, with towering windows stretching out into nothing. The atmosphere felt heavy, thick with tension. She turned, heart pounding. The being was there again. Silent. Watching. He made no move to speak. Instead, he raised one hand toward her in a slow, deliberate gesture. Fingers splayed, dark fluid dripped from his fingertips. Each drop hit the floor with a faint hiss and scattered, slithering away like they had minds of their own. Jonah stood frozen. Whatever this was, it felt wrong—too foreign to even begin to understand. Suddenly, Calcifer flared bright, and the same strange aura formed around her once more. Before she could react, it began to push her forward—gently at first, then with growing intensity. She resisted. Struggled. But the energy held firm, guiding her step by step until she stood directly in front of the being. Calcifer’s voice echoed, calm and detached: "Another subject for you, my king." Jonah’s eyes widened in horror as the vision from her dream unfolded before her—this time, real. The dark fluid began to spread over her skin, sinking deep into her frame. She could feel it moving inside her, rewriting her from within. It wasn’t pain—it was change. A transformation she could neither stop nor understand. Then the being reached out and pressed his hand to her face. Jonah felt herself unravel—not shattered, but undone. Everything she was, every memory, every wire, every line of code... faded. Darkness took her. She awoke at the helm of the Efildolg. Her body was different—cleaner, smoother. Her synthetic systems were gone, replaced with something unfamiliar. Her face had changed. At her core, Calcifer beat like a heart, casting a dull, rhythmic glow beneath her skin. In front of her knelt a figure—small, trembling, its head bowed low. Jonah heard a voice again, but this time... it spoke to her: "Another subject for you, my queen." She looked down. From her hands, the black fluid slowly dripped, calm and steady. And she extended her hand in silence—an invitation.