The silence stretched between them. A massive reward... the System had acted like they had done something special, something important.

"Wait," Luca said, his voice cutting through the stunned silence. "This is it? This is what the signal was calling us to?" He gestured at the smoking crater where the guardian had been. "A fancy scanner and some credits?"

Emily frowned, looking around the chamber. "The signal... it felt different. Like it wasn't even part of the System."

"That's because it wasn't," Danny said slowly. "The System rewards are new. Fresh. But that signal we've been following? That's unrelated."

Chris nodded, studying his readings. "The signal's still here. Still broadcasting. Whatever called us here, it's not the guardian. It's not even the device on the pedestal."

"Then what the hell have we been chasing for two months?" Ryan asked.

Luca took a long drag of air, letting the adrenaline drain away, and looked over his crew. Beat to shit, but alive and buzzing like they'd just chugged a gallon of coffee. All of them were sweaty, panting like they'd just run a marathon.

His eyes drifted over to Zoe, who was helping Danny pry his precious warhammer out of the wall. Those two made a good team, watching each other's backs like they'd been doing it for years.

"You know you're ruining that ancient mural, right?" Emily said.

Danny grunted, his power armor whining as he finally dislodged the thing. "It's fine. Adds character." He gave the warhammer an affectionate pat like it was a puppy that just took a dump on a priceless antique rug.

Speaking of priceless, they still had work to do. The Varnathi Vault Decryptor sat in Luca's hands, its metal surface warm to the touch. Around the chamber, his crew moved with that post-battle energy, checking their armor and examining the murals they'd fought so hard to preserve.

For a minute there, they'd all put aside their bullshit and worked together like a well-oiled machine. It had paid off big time. He caught Emily's eye, and after a day of tense looks, she flashed him a soft, relieved smile that made his chest warm.

They might butt heads, but when it counted, they moved as one. He stepped closer to her, his arm sliding around her armored waist. She leaned into him for just a moment, solid and reassuring against his side.

Across the room, Zoe nudged Ryan playfully. "Guess we made it, partner."

These ruins weren't just relics to catalog. They were lives, a culture, a whole damn civilization that used to thrive here.

Luca's helmet light danced across the walls, picking out carvings and murals that covered every surface. Images of towering structures, stars, and planets drifted in and out of the beam. Sometimes they formed shapes he could almost recognize: ships, migration paths, symbols that might mean trade or exploration. But it was all incomplete, frustratingly fragmented. Whatever happened to the Varnathi, their story was half-erased, like time itself had scrubbed it away.

Ryan, being Ryan, was already moving along the far wall, tracing the lines of one of the murals with his fingers. His curiosity always overrode his sense of caution. Made him a damn good explorer but also a slight liability when it came to touching shit.

"Ryan," Luca called. "Hands to yourself. We've learned what happens when you get too close..."

Too late.

With a low, rumbling sound, a portion of the wall slid away, revealing another chamber beyond. Lights flickered to life one by one, illuminating row after row of what looked like...

"Holy shit," Luca breathed.

Caskets. Hundreds of them, lined up like soldiers in formation.

Zoe let out an exasperated sigh. "Ryan! What part of 'don't touch' wasn't clear?"

Ryan shrugged, sheepish but not really sorry. "Hey, I didn't know it'd do that." He gestured at the vast room beyond, eyes widening. "Besides, look at this. It's the find of a lifetime."

They filed cautiously into the new space. Some stasis pods cast cold, sterile light over the scene, their blue glow illuminating the sleeping forms within. But most of the chamber lay in darkness, row after row of pods that had gone silent. Dark. Empty.

Luca's heart hammered against his ribs, threatening to burst out of his chest.

"Oh, fuck," he muttered, breath catching in his throat. "What the fuck is this?"

His mind reeled, trying to process what he was seeing. The lit pods held real, living Varnathi. Not constructs. Not part of the System's elaborate dungeons. This was something else entirely. But the dark ones... how many had they lost? How long had these survivors been alone?

Panic clawed at his gut. They were so far out of their depth. This wasn't just another mission, another dungeon crawl. They weren't equipped for this. Not even close.

Emily approached a pod, her fingers ghosting over the glass without touching it. "Luca, they're real. Flesh and blood Varnathi." Her voice carried reverence, tinged with disbelief. She looked up at him, gaze flickering with wonder and apprehension. "We've been fighting their echoes this whole time, and here they are. Frozen in time."

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Luca moved to stand beside her and held her hand. The warmth of her presence helped ground him against the enormity of what they were seeing.

The crew moved among the pods, each caught between awe and fear. Joey stood next to one pod, looking into the serene, sleeping face of a Varnathi with that gentle bedside manner he brought to his medical work.

"This isn't the System," Joey murmured. "This is something else entirely. We've found a piece of them untouched, uncorrupted."

Danny moved close to one of the lit pods. "The preservation is incredible. These life-support systems have been running for... god, how long?" He gestured toward the dark sections of the chamber. "But look at all the ones that didn't make it. How many were there originally?"

Chris was examining the technical readouts on the nearest console, his face grim. "Most of the power grid has failed over time. We're looking at maybe... what? A few hundred survivors out of thousands?"

"Maybe tens of thousands," Joey added quietly, counting the dark pods. "This place is massive."

Luca stared at the rows of darkened pods, some with cracked covers that were just... empty, their inhabitants reduced to dust at some point and dead for who knew how long. His chest tightened with something he couldn't name. All those lives, lost while they slept. Waiting for help that never came.

Until now.

"This is it," Danny said suddenly, his voice carrying that excited tone that usually meant he'd figured something out. "This is what the signal was leading us to. A lifeboat. A species calling out in the dark." He turned to face the group, eyes bright with realization. "This is why we were called here. The signal... it's a distress call. They want us to wake them up."

The words hit Luca like a punch to the gut. Wake them up. Save them. Every human instinct screamed at him to do something, anything, to help. These weren't just alien artifacts. They were people. Living, breathing people who had been trapped in nightmares for God knows how long, waiting for someone to find them.

But his rational brain kicked in just as hard.

"We're not waking them up," Luca said.

Danny blinked. "What? But Luca, we can't just—"

"And if we do, then what?" The words tumbled out of him in a rush. "Who's going to feed them? What do they even eat? How long have they been in there? What if they want to kill us, take our ship? How do we even wake them up?" His voice cracked slightly. "What if we fuck it up and kill another one?"

The silence that followed was deafening. Danny looked like Luca had slapped him. Emily's hand found Luca's arm.

"He's right," she said quietly. "We can't just... wing this. These are lives we're talking about."

But even as the words left his mouth, something nagged at Luca. The vault was pristine. Perfect preservation for millennia. Yet there were no other structures on this planet. How the hell was this place still running when there was nothing else?

What made this vault so special?

Zoe looked at him, expression grave. "We can't just leave them here. But if we wake them, we're opening doors we may never be able to close."

Luca's head spun, a chaotic mess of thoughts and fears. What the fuck did they do now? This was insane. Waking the Varnathi might mean breathing life back into a species lost to time, rekindling a culture that had been nothing more than memory fragments for millennia.

But the risk? The unknown consequences for Earth, for Alpha Centauri, even for the Varnathi themselves? They were just explorers, for fuck's sake. This was way above his pay grade.

Luca nodded, throat tight. Every instinct screamed for caution, to get the hell out of there. Yet another part of him, the reckless, curious part, demanded they explore. He glanced at Emily, whose wary eyes were fixed on the pods.

Emily caught his eye, shaking her head slightly. "We need to be careful. This isn't just about us. We're talking about an entire species." Her voice softened. "But maybe we're not the ones who should make this decision."

Silence filled the chamber as the crew absorbed her words.

Ryan glanced at his multitool, then back to the stasis pods. "Maybe we catalog it all. Let Earth know. Let people who understand genetics, culture, hell, even diplomacy make the call."

Danny nodded. "Yeah, that's probably the best way forward. The scanner will keep a record of this place. We don't have to touch another thing." He smirked at Ryan, slight warning in his eyes. "Got that?"

Ryan grinned, holding his hands up. "Alright, alright. I'll keep my hands to myself. Mostly."

They set to work, snapping pictures and analyzing every detail of the pods. The designs on the stasis pods, the controls, the faint hum of life-support systems that had sustained most of the Varnathi all these years. Emily and Zoe made it their mission to keep an eye on the idiots, ensuring no one wandered too close to any suspicious panels.

Luca took one last look around, his eyes lingering on the sleeping faces behind the glass. Each of these Varnathi represented lives, memories, futures. Possibilities they couldn't fully understand.

He'd come here seeking adventure, thrills, but what he'd found was something he could barely comprehend. Like staring into the face of eternity, and it was terrifying.

"What's going to happen to them?" Zoe asked quietly, almost to herself.

Luca reached out, placing a hand on her shoulder. "They'll live on, one way or another. They've made it this far. Now it's our job to make sure their story doesn't end here."

The crew stood in silence, gazing at the rows of stasis pods. For now, they'd carry this story, this legacy.

This wasn't what he'd signed up for, but here they were anyway. Were these the last surviving members of the Varnathi?

It was one thing to fight through dungeons and take down Varnathi echoes. Another to realize those echoes were born from a culture, a way of life that had been interrupted.

He watched his crew cataloging data, Ryan scanning everything he could to upload back to the Triumph. The routine of it grounded him, yet he couldn't shake the feeling that they were tiptoeing around something monumental.

This place was an archaeological marvel. They were going to make so much money, but the thought rang hollow. There was so much more here than profits and discoveries. How would they handle this? How could they even begin to bridge the gap between their world and the Varnathi's, separated by cultures, languages, and even climates?

What did they know about diplomacy?

He looked back to the pods, mind spinning with questions, each one more daunting than the last. If they woke them, would the Varnathi even recognize the world outside? Would they find Proxima Centauri b as alien as humans did?

They were so fucking advanced too, if the vault was an indication of their technology level.

The crushing weight of not only his team's safety but the survival of this entire species hung in the balance.

"We've got work cut out for us," he murmured, barely audible.

Emily caught it, giving him a questioning glance, but he only nodded. Not now, not here. There would be time to discuss what they'd uncovered, but for now, it was enough to know they were the first to witness it.

As he turned back to the others, one thought echoed in his mind: Just don't mess this up. For all our sakes. Please don't let us fuck this up.

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