PROLOGUE
The sky was breaking again.
It was cold here, on this dead planet. So cold that the atmosphere itself would literally freeze on nights like this. I felt the air shatter around me like glass, watched it fall to my feet in pieces. I looked up to the stars, so bright and clear now that there was nothing left to distort their distant light.
I'd call it beautiful, if it weren't so haunting.
I shivered, despite the fact my extravehicular activity suit could keep me warm at temperatures considerably lower than even this. No, it wasn't for the cold that I shivered; it was something far more sinister. The statue. I don't know how I can express the horror it brought upon us, or where to begin.
When I first saw the statue, I was filled with wonder and awe. Chozo. They had all disappeared a long time ago, leaving behind little evidence of their existence. They lived. They vanished. Beyond that we knew almost nothing of them, save that their civilization must have been unimaginably advanced.
I was on a Federation xenoarchaeological field research team. In the course of our observations on Elysia we became aware of a dead star lying on the extreme edge of the galaxy. Orbiting this star, isolated beyond belief, was a single rocky planet. On this planet we found the statue, created by the Chozo in their own image. Our task was simple: to recover the artifact and transport it to headquarters for further analysis. A routine excavation in every way.
How mistaken we were.