The soles of his boots crunch over the shattered fragments of starship armor, while Kalerin clutches the “Stellar Rift” in his palm, his knuckles turning pale and bluish from the sheer force of his grip 💥. As a reconnaissance scout with the Federation Marine Corps, he has been adrift on the desolate colony world of Eros for 72 hours; when the flagship crashed, only this dagger emerged intact from the ruins of the armory. The intricate openwork pattern etched into the blade is no mere decoration—Kalerin has seen similar star-map encryptions in the flagship’s database. At that very moment, the chelae of the mutated mechanical insectoid swarm begin to screech against the debris behind him, and he darts sideways into the shadow of a broken pillar. The serrated edge of the dagger sparks as it slices through the alien exoskeleton 🔥. When he finally deciphers the coordinates indicated by the openwork design, the metal door of the shelter slowly slides open—only to reveal a half-finished holographic projection left behind by his comrades. At the end of the projection, the dagger’s pattern suddenly glows with an eerie blue fluorescence, perfectly aligning with the core marker of the insectoid hive in the hologram 😱.