CHAPTER VII - Project Ksara

I entered the structure as if the dark inside it might still be listening.

The door remained partly open behind me, admitting a narrow blade of exterior light that reached only a few meters into the corridor before failing against the depth. Dust moved in the gap where the outside air met the colder atmosphere within. It did not swirl freely. It drew inward in thin, hesitant threads, as though the building had taken a shallow breath after centuries of restraint and did not yet know whether to continue.

I stood just beyond the threshold and waited for the structure to respond.

No alarm sounded. No lights activated. No voice demanded identification. The corridor ahead descended beneath the visible body of the building, its walls smooth in places and scarred in others where panels had shifted under geological pressure. The floor was not dust-covered in the same way as the surface ruins. A thin residue lay across it, but beneath that residue the material remained intact, dark and faintly textured for traction. This place had been sealed well enough to resist the planet's long neglect.

My sensors adjusted.