Ten789 -

Ten years of guilt. Seven kilometers of descent. Nine minutes of mercy turned to seven seconds of truth.

Not nine minutes. Seven seconds.

He reached for it.

Then he saw it: a single crystal, no larger than his thumb, floating in the exact center of the space. It was transparent, almost invisible, but it hummed at a pitch that made his joints ache. ten789

He stood on the launch platform, his pressure suit humming with recycled air. Above him, the sky of Kepler-186f was a bruised purple. Below him, seven kilometers of vertical shaft plunged into the planet’s crust—a natural fissure lined with ancient, crystalline growths that the science team called "singing glass."

He fired his descent thrusters to slow his fall. Four kilometers. Five. The walls narrowed. The amber turned to blood-red. The singing grew sharp, insistent—not a choir now but a thousand whispered arguments, each one tugging at a different fear.

But for now, he had the crystal. And the singing had finally stopped. Ten years of guilt

Ten years of drills. Seven kilometers of pure dark. Nine minutes of oxygen buffer once he hit the bottom.

Six kilometers. His heads-up display flickered. Pressure warnings blinked yellow, then orange. The singing glass here was black as obsidian, and silent. Dead. That was wrong. Every sample from the upper shaft had sung. Why were these dark?

Leo didn't grab the crystal. He opened his suit's sample pouch and let it float inside on its own. Then he fired his ascent thrusters and rose, not looking down, not listening to the boy in the mirror. Not nine minutes

You were never good enough. They chose you because you were expendable. Nine minutes isn't a buffer. It's a countdown.

Leo tore his gaze away. Nine minutes. He swept his helmet lamp across the chamber. No glowing glass. No fragments. Just the black, silent shards embedded in the walls like broken teeth.

Ten seconds to the first ledge. Seven minutes to the surface. Nine years until he could forgive himself.

For the first three kilometers, the shaft was wide as a cathedral. Stalactites of singing glass glowed faintly amber, vibrating at a frequency he felt in his molars. His suit's audio pickups translated the hum into a low, wordless choir. Stay, they seemed to say. Listen.