Arsenal of the Gods #1

Prologue: The First Age of Memory

From the Codex of the Arsenal of the Gods

Sing, O Muse, of the First Age of Memory,

When stars recorded every mortal deed,

And ancient weapons slept in shadowed realms,

Dreaming of glory and their wielders’ hands.

Like fires hidden under winter’s frost,

Wars born of pride and wrong only pause their fight.

With patience deep as night, they bide their time,

While ages drift by like leaves on a stream.

But when fate’s bell rings, these wars will rise,

And ancient drums will roar once more,

Calling the young to take up what was left

By those who came before.

For conflict’s wheel spins, and stars remember

What people forget.

1 | The First to Wake

Pain was her universe—sharp, unyielding, a jagged shard burrowing deeper with every shuddering breath. Valentina Morrigan lay pinned to a frigid metal slab, her skin clammy with sweat, her mind a kaleidoscope of fractured screams. The overhead light pulsed erratically, a sterile glare that carved harsh shadows across the chamber’s seamless walls. A low, incessant hum—containment fields, she somehow knew—drilled into her skull, vibrating through her marrow. The air reeked of antiseptic, undercut by a faint, alien musk that turned her stomach.

A memory flickered, tantalizingly close: the dim glow of artificial sunlight on the Katha mining colony, steel corridors stretching into infinity, the ghost of pine on recycled air. It felt real—too real—but a deeper instinct screamed its falsity. The Greys had woven those lies, stitching them into her mind to keep her pliant, a puppet dangling on neural strings. Now, those strings were snapping, one by one, as something primal clawed its way free.

The pain flared again, a molten wire threading through her veins, and with it came a torrent of clarity. Voices—hundreds, thousands—whispered in her head, overlapping in a chaotic symphony. Images burned behind her eyes: battlefields ablaze beneath alien skies, violet and venomous; plasma bolts searing through metal-clad streets; the coppery tang of blood, sharp and exhilarating. A name rose unbidden, etched into her soul: Valentina Morrigan.

She choked on a gasp, her chest heaving as reality splintered. She was here, bound to this table, yet she was there—fighting, bleeding, winning. The Greys loomed over her, their skeletal forms swaying like reeds in a storm. Their elongated skulls gleamed under the chamber’s bluish pallor, and their eyes—black, bottomless voids—blinked in unison, unfeeling and relentless. Their minds slithered into hers, a frigid, probing whisper: Sleep. Forget.

Too late.

Something ancient roared awake within her, a force the Greys had buried deep, a terror they couldn’t contain. The metal restraints groaned, then shattered with a deafening crack. Her body surged upright—instinct, not thought, driving her. A Grey twitched, its spindly, seven-jointed fingers stretching toward an alarm panel. She was faster. Her hands—unshackled, impossibly precise—closed around its throat, the leathery flesh alien and repulsive beneath her grip. She squeezed, and the snap of its neck reverberated, a sound too loud for the silence it left behind.

Another Grey swung a control rod, its crystalline tip flaring. Valentina rolled off the slab, the motion fluid, preternatural, as if her muscles remembered what her mind couldn’t. The rod sliced the air, missing her skull by a hairsbreadth. She snatched a scalpel from a tray, its edge glinting coldly, and lunged. The Grey’s black eyes widened—a flicker of something like fear—before she plunged the blade upward, slicing through its throat. Black, syrupy blood sprayed her hands, warm and wrong.

The room pulsed, walls tightening as silent alarms screamed through the ether. But the thing inside her—the thing that knew—refused to yield.

She stumbled, her breath ragged, her pulse a war drum in her chest. Who am I? The question gnawed at her, raw and relentless. These hands—they’d killed before, hadn’t they? The realization iced her spine, but there was no time to falter. No time to fear.

The doors hissed open, a mechanical exhalation. Containment enforcers flooded in—not Greys this time, but Drathnuuls. Towering, reptilian, their crimson scales shimmered beneath armored exoskeletons. Vertical pupils contracted in the sudden light, assessing her with predatory calm. They moved as a unit, seamless and deadly, rifles trained, angles covered. They’d expected this. They’d planned.

Valentina’s lips twitched into a feral grin. Not well enough.

The lead Drathnuul fired, plasma sizzling toward her chest. She was inside its reach before the shot landed, driving her elbow into the soft hollow beneath its jaw. Bone crunched, and the rifle dropped. She caught it mid-fall, spun, and fired—a single, perfect shot through the next enforcer’s throat. Black blood painted the wall in a grotesque arc.

The others froze, their slit eyes flickering with hesitation. A fatal misstep.

She became a specter, a memory of battles she hadn’t lived but knew by heart. The corridors were a labyrinth of steel, but she used them—darting behind a bulkhead as plasma scorched the air, then pivoting to drop a Drathnuul with a shot to its knee, followed by a skull-shattering blow. Her movements were poetry, brutal and precise, each kill a verse in a song she didn’t remember learning.

But they adapted. A Drathnuul flanked her, claws slashing from the shadows. She twisted, too slow—pain erupted across her shoulder as talons tore flesh, blood welling hot and bright. She bit back a scream, channeling the agony into fury. The rifle’s butt smashed into its snout, staggering it, and a point-blank shot to its chest ended it. The body crumpled, scales clattering against the floor.

Her vision blurred, the wound pulsing in time with her racing heart. She couldn’t stop. Not now.

She reached the final bulkhead, the corridor awash in crimson emergency light. Shadows writhed like living things, and her hand shook as it pressed the exit console—not from fear, but from the weight of certainty. A breath. A heartbeat. The door slid open.

Cold night air rushed in, a brutal, beautiful shock. She stepped out, boots sinking into gritty soil, and looked up. Stars—endless, indifferent—spilled across the sky, their light a promise and a challenge. For the first time, she felt the world beneath her, real and unyielding. Freedom.

But it wasn’t enough.

The memories locking into place revealed what the Greys had fought to suppress: others like her, countless souls still entombed in sleep, their echoes faint but alive in her mind. She would find them. She would wake them. No matter the cost, no matter the centuries.

Standing there, blood dripping from her shoulder, she felt a deeper memory surface—older, resonant. A voice, steady and eternal: The stars remember what flesh forgets. Her jaw tightened, her gaze fixed on the heavens.

The stars would remember her, too.