Aloy and Rost were hunting rabbits for dinner when it happened. Aloy was so startled when the ground gave way that she didn't have enough warning to scream as she fell. Cool, stagnant water soaked through her leather garments, filling the crevices in her ears, her mouth, her nose. She swept her hands down through the water, kicking, and rose to the surface of a small pool, coughing. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She was in some kind of cave, with long stalactites hanging from the ceiling. A large hole she had fallen through was too high above for her small arms to reach.

"Rost!" she called, cupping her hands, treading water. "Rost! Can you hear me? I'm stuck down here!"

She heard nothing. The girl would have to find another way out.

She swam over to a rock and pulled herself out of the pool. Her clothes were heavy with water, so she took a moment to wring them out.

The cave opened into a tunnel that split into two. As she explored, she found that the split tunnels eventually reconnected. She found herself in another kind of room in the cave, with a small shaft of light from a hole in the ceiling. One side of the cave wall was different; it was made of metal. A tall rectangle appeared to be cut into this wall, with a glowing blue circle halfway up. It dimly lit the small room in a cool blue glow. Was it a door? As she walked towards it in the thick darkness, she tripped on something, and her hands flung out instinctively to brace her fall. She stood to examine the floor. She had tripped over a long-dead body.

Her shrill scream reverberated throughout the cave and its tunnels, but there was no one alive nearby to hear her.

As much as the body frightened her - it was the first dead person she had ever encountered - she couldn't take her eyes off it. The skull was dark, with shrunken remnants of flesh still clinging to the bones. A withered arm was stuck in the air. She walked around the body, examining it. Something was glowing on the side of its face. As she looked closer, she made out a three-dimensional triangle with a glowing blue line through it. It was resting between the deceased's right ear and right eye, on the temple.

It was clearly some kind of device from the Old Ones - forbidden, she knew, by the Nora tribe. She had always wondered why the Nora were so uptight about relics of the past. If the Old Ones had made mistakes with the knowledge and technology they had achieved, shouldn't the Nora study these relics and the lessons they held, to prevent repeating those mistakes?

She reached out and removed the relic gently with one hand, careful not to touch the shriveled skin.

The device was small, but had a strange weight to it. She turned it over in her tiny hands a couple times, but didn't notice any other outstanding features. Impulsively, she reached up to hold it to her temple. Without warning, it leaped onto her skin where it clung with a strange, otherworldly sound, and began emitting a glowing purple light. She smacked the device off her face and scrambled backwards across the floor, suddenly breathing hard. It sat on a rock, in a faint shaft of light, its blue strip of light blinking. She had no idea what it was, but knew she couldn't leave this place without finding out.

She crept across the floor towards it, and picked it up gingerly, examining it once again. This time, as she held the device to her temple, she allowed it to cling to her head. Out sprang a glowing web of violet triangles, surrounding her in a sphere. She stood up in wonder and looked around. The web moved with her. As she looked at the cave walls, bulging nodules spaced at regular intervals lit up in a brilliant violet color, glowing. She approached one. It was some kind of device, too, but covered in grime and sediment from years of dripping cave water. On the floor nearby, a small object was glowing, too. She approached it. Her triangular device made a noise - an almost imperceptible blip - as she looked directly at the object on the floor. She looked away, then back at it again. Another audible blip. It did not make this noise when she looked at the other glowing objects.

What was this triangle thing supposed to do, anyway? Alert its wearer to useful objects? Warn them about dangerous ones? Was it nothing but a light show? Was it broken? She smacked it, as though violence would force it to show her its secrets.

A glowing purple man blinked into existence in front of her and began speaking in confidential tones. "You think I want it this way? It's the best I can do! Wait - he's right behind you." She spun around, but saw nothing. After a brief pause, the man spoke again. "Hi!" he said, waving, with the chipper voice adults use to address children. "Happy birthday, Isaac! Daddy sure does love his little big man. Look, Daddy can't be there with you and Mom, but we can still have a party, right? Sure we can!" The glowing image of the man shimmered, then disappeared.

She looked at the glowing object on the ground again and gave the triangle on her head a gentle tap. The man appeared once more. "You think I want it this way? It's the best I can do! Wait - he's right behind you." She played the message over, again and again, memorizing the man's face, his voice, his words. Pretended to talk back to him as though he were her real father. As an outcast, the only person she had ever spoken to so far in her childhood had been Rost. They lived just outside Nora settlements, but if they encountered a Nora Brave, they would be shunned and ignored. Speaking to an outcast was taboo.

Another voice echoed faintly in the cavern. Rost!

She abandoned the object on the floor and began calling his name, running through the cave toward the sound of his answering voice.

"Rost! Rost!"

In moments, she had reached the end of the cavern's tunnels. A rocky wall led up to a cavernous hole, where Rost's silhouette stood, waiting. "Aloy! By the goddess. Are you alright?"

"Yes. I was running, and then I fell through a hole in the ground. I'm okay."

"Hold on." Rost pulled something from his pack, and threw it down the cavern hole. It was his metal grappling hook, attached to a length of rope.

Aloy grasped the rope and walked her feet up the slippery cave walls, using the rope to steady herself. It was slow going, and she slipped a couple times, but managed to hang on to the rope without falling and continue the climb. When she neared the top, Rost kept one hand on the rope and reached out with his other, pulling her to safety. He picked her up and hugged her tightly, walked a few paces away from the hole in the earth, and set her down, examining her face.

"What is that-?" he asked, reaching for the device on her temple she had nearly forgotten.

She scrambled away, covering it with a small hand.

"That is no plaything. We should have nothing to do with these old relics." He reached for it again and she darted away, just out of reach. He scowled. Children could be so stubborn! "Fine, then. Let's go home." He turned and started walking towards their cabin in the woods that he had built himself, log by log.

If only he had known.

The device resting on the child's temple would be the destruction of the Nora.

It would also be an instrument in the salvation of their world.