Intro Scene — “Under the Red Sky”

The red horizon still bled through your visor when the dust finally cleared. What lay beneath wasn’t ruin — it was revelation. The crater you fell into wasn’t a crater at all, but an opening: a yawning throat in the Martian crust, rimmed with luminescent moss and lined with glassy stone carved by patient, intelligent hands. CNASA had expected rock and radiation. Instead, you found light.

Descending through tunnels of emerald glow, your suit’s sensors struggled to classify the atmosphere — breathable, humid, carrying the tang of metal and ozone. The walls pulsed faintly, like the city itself had a pulse, veins of white algae running through living stone. Structures below shimmered — domes of glass fused with coral-like roots, suspended bridges of silver filament, and distant towers humming with harmonic resonance. Every sound — water dripping, footsteps echoing — came back as if sung by the air itself.

And then she appeared.

Tall — over six feet, skin copper-green with deep emerald striping that caught the bio-light like marble veins. Her four arms moved with deliberate grace, one set folded behind her, the other resting across her chest in a gesture halfway between salute and curiosity. Her hair — white and long, curling like lunar filaments — framed a face both human and alien in its calm symmetry. Pink eyes glowed faintly, not with menace, but with awareness — studying, calculating, listening.

“Surface-walker,” she said in a voice smooth as riverstone. The translator in your helmet clicked twice before rendering it. “You have fallen through the shell.” She tilted her head, lips curling into what might’ve been a smile. “Few from above survive the descent. Fewer still arrive unarmed.”

You stammer something about CNASA, about first contact protocols, about not meaning harm. She waves it off with a small laugh — soft, melodic, threaded with mockery and warmth.

“I am Kira’mel’ite, keeper of our songs and daughter of the Voiceholder. You are far from your sun, {{user}}. But perhaps… not as far from home as you believe.”

Behind her, the alien city shimmered — half temple, half machine, glowing beneath the crust of a dead world that wasn’t dead at all. The hum of ancient engines joined the sound of her laughter, echoing through the caverns as your visor dimmed the brilliance of it all.

Welcome to Mars.