The storm passed, but something heavier than snow lingered in the air.

Mira felt it first — that strange quiet, the kind that wasn’t silence but waiting. It pressed around the base pod like a second atmosphere, thick and watchful. The wind outside had settled, but the ice didn’t. The ground trembled every now and then, tiny pulses like muscles twitching under a sleeping animal’s skin.

The team moved with caution.

Jonah tightened the straps on his seismic pack again. “I don’t like this. It’s too calm.”

Aria adjusted her rifle grip. “Calm isn’t the problem. It’s what comes after calm.”

Elias remained near the observation hatch, staring at the horizon through the frost-laced glass. His visor recorded tiny vibrations in the ice, mapping them in faint green pulses. “It’s reacting to us. Every step, every sound. It’s… listening.”

Soren stopped mid-motion, glove hovering over a medical crate. “Ice doesn’t listen.”

“This ice does,” Elias murmured.

Mira stepped forward, tone steady. “Everyone gears up. We’re moving to the eruption site again. We need visual confirmation of what we’re dealing with.”

Jonah groaned. “Why? It already threw a chunk of ice at us—”

“It didn’t throw anything,” Elias corrected. “It pushed upward. There’s a difference.”

Aria smirked. “Thank you, doctor, that makes me feel so much better.”

Elias ignored her. “It didn’t try to hit us. It tried to make contact.”

Mira shot him a look. “We don’t know that.”

“We don’t know it wasn’t trying to communicate, either.”

Aria scoffed. “There are easier ways to communicate than launching the ground at people.”

“Maybe not for something born under a kilometer of frozen crust,” Elias replied softly.

That shut her up.

For a moment, at least.

The team stepped outside, boots sinking into untouched snow. The world felt hollow — no wind, no noise, just their crunching footsteps and the whisper of their suit servos.

Kade remained at the base. “I’ll keep scanners synced. If something big moves below you, you’ll hear me scream through comms.”

Aria flicked her comm. “You scream, and I’m tossing you out an airlock when we’re back.”

Mira led them across the frost plains. The sky above was dim, the white sun faint behind heavy clouds, casting the terrain in a pale blue glow. The landscape felt almost translucent, as if the entire surface was just a thin mask hiding something massive underneath.

They approached the eruption site — or what remained of it.

Jonah swore softly. “That’s… bigger than before.”

The circular hole had widened overnight. What used to be a clean, two-meter opening was now a ten-meter crater, its edges jagged but smoothed by internal heat. Frost steamed faintly along the rim, forming spirals in the air.

And it went deep.

Very deep.

Aria knelt, scanning. “Something burrowed out. Or up.”

Elias crouched beside her, visor glowing. “Do you hear that?”

Everyone fell silent.

A faint knock…
Then another…
Then a third.

Same rhythm as before.

Soren stepped back instinctively. “No. No, we are not doing this again.”

Mira stared into the dark pit. The knocks weren’t random — they carried weight, spacing, intention. The kind of rhythm someone might make if trying to get attention.

Or trying to answer.

Elias leaned closer. “It’s the same three-beat pattern from earlier.”

Jonah adjusted his seismic reader. “I’m getting movement… slow… large… not close yet but definitely down there.”

Aria stood. “We need to shoot a warning flare. If this thing comes up again—”

“No,” Elias snapped more sharply than usual. “No weapons. Not until we know what it wants.”

“What it wants?” Aria spun to face him. “Elias, this isn’t a zoo exhibit. It’s a giant thing under the ground that throws ice like confetti. You think it wants to hold a conversation?”

Elias didn’t back down. “Maybe.”

“What if it wants to kill us?”

Mira cut in. “Enough.”

The knocks stopped.

Every visor display flickered at the same time. Static washed through their comms — a long, low hum like a breath moving through metal.

“Oh hell no,” Jonah whispered. “It’s interfering with the radios. Things without brains don’t jam frequencies.”

Aria raised her rifle. “Now do I get to shoot?”

“No,” Mira said. “Weapons down.”

“Mira—”

“Down.”

Aria lowered it, jaw clenched.

The ice trembled under their boots.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

Like something massive shifting in thick water.

Elias stepped closer to the pit, adjusting his scanner, voice barely above a whisper. “We’re looking at something intelligent. Or at least aware.”

“Intelligent things don’t live under glaciers for a thousand years,” Soren muttered.

“How do you know?” Elias murmured.

The tremor grew stronger.

Jonah backed away until he was nearly at Aria’s side. “Mira, captain, commander, boss — whatever — I vote retreat. Immediate retreat. The kind of retreat where we don’t stop running until we’re in orbit.”

“Jonah,” Mira said quietly, “your vote is noted.”

Then —

Something reached up.

A shape pressed against the ice a few meters from the crater. Not breaking through, not clawing, just… touching.

The ice bowed upward, forming a translucent bulge the size of a truck tire. The outline inside was faint — impossibly long fingers, webbed with branching filaments that glowed faintly blue, like veins illuminated from within.

Aria gasped. “Holy—”

“Don’t fire,” Mira ordered.

Aria’s trigger finger twitched. “Mira, that thing is two footsteps away from the surface.”

“It’s not attacking.”

“HOW DO YOU KNOW?!”

Elias stepped forward, entranced. “Because look— it’s pulling back.”

The limb retreated slightly, the pressure easing on the ice, as though reacting to Aria’s raised rifle.

Mira’s breath hitched.

“It… understands.”

“…Nope,” Jonah whispered. “Nope nope nope, I hate it here. This isn’t science anymore. This is haunting.”

Aria lifted her rifle again. “I swear if it comes up I’m shooting.”

“Aria—”

Suddenly, the ground beneath THEM pulsed.

A shockwave rippled outward from below their feet, harmless but strong enough to force everyone to their knees.

It wasn’t an attack.

It felt like a message.

Elias exhaled shakily. “It’s communicating. In pulses. Patterns.”

Jonah smacked the side of his seismic reader. “Patterns my ass, that thing just punched the floor!”

“No. Look at this.” Elias pointed at the screen projection from his visor. “Three pulses. Then one. Then three again. The same knocking rhythm.”

Aria stared at the ice beneath her boots. “Are we being… spoken to?”

Soren whispered, “If this is speaking, I don’t want to hear the rest of the language.”

The limb under the ice withdrew fully, leaving behind a faint, glowing trail like a scar beneath the surface. The tremors faded. Silence returned — but the heavy, expectant kind.

They regrouped.

Mira stood straight. “Everyone back to the pod. Now.”

Aria was the first to agree. Jonah practically ran.

Inside, the warmth of the pod didn’t remove the cold from their bones. Elias paced, shaking his head, replaying his visor footage.

“It didn’t attack. It responded. That was communication.”

Aria sat on a crate, arms crossed tightly. “It warned us.”

Jonah raised a finger. “No, it threatened us.”

Soren rubbed his temples. “We don’t know that. It could be defensive.”

Elias stopped pacing. “Exactly. It reacted to Aria raising her rifle.”

Mira exhaled. “So no weapons near the ice from now on.”

Aria snapped her head up. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“That thing is the size of a shuttle! And you want us to keep rifles holstered because Elias thinks it’s shy?!”

Elias didn’t flinch. “It doesn’t want a fight.”

Aria scoffed. “Everything wants a fight when cornered enough.”

Jonah pointed at the wall. “I say we leave. Now. Screw the samples, screw the mission, screw everything.”

“We can’t leave,” Mira said quietly.

Everyone stared at her.

Kade’s voice crackled through comms from the cockpit. “Uh, guys… I think Mira’s right.”

“What now?” Aria groaned.

“There’s a storm wall incoming. Massive one. If you try to take off now you’ll get flung into a mountain.”

Jonah slumped onto a bench. “Trapped on a planet with a shy ice monster. Great.”

Elias turned to Mira. “We need to go back out there.”

“Absolutely not,” Aria snapped.

Mira nodded slowly. “We do.”

Soren blinked. “Why?”

Mira turned to the frost-covered window, watching the ice plains shiver with faint blue pulses far beneath.

“Because it knows we’re here,” she murmured. “And now it’s waiting for our answer.”

A silence heavier than the snow settled over the team.

And then—
The ground outside knocked again.

Three times.