"What do you remember of The Collapse? Where were you, when it happened?

It was to be our moment of victory. Our Grand Celebration. The Sentient were broken; finally vanquished by the Void killers we had so carefully crafted, after so many disastrous setbacks. Our greatest triumph. Our most ruthless creation. Our crowning mistake.

The blood was still warm on the floor of the Outer Terminus when it began. The Grineer in open rebellion. The Technocyte Plague running rampant; entirely unchecked. Those who could salvage the situation were too few. Our leaders, for the most part, were dead. Noble Ballas was nowhere to be found. I had assumed him slain, like so many others.

The Tenno had betrayed us; the Seven butchered with thinly disguised hate. Our ruling council cut down; decapitated in a single savage stroke.

A Grand Betrayal; one that buried a civilisation; and damned us all."

- Musings on the Fall of the Orokin Empire, Author Unknown

The Severance and the Forward Transaction flew away from the smoking ruin of the ziggurat with all speed. They had no destination.

"Pardon me for asking the obvious question." Sara cleared her throat. "But where are we going?"

"Anywhere but here." Telin replied. Privately he had been wondering the same thing.

"You're running away?" Sara was incredulous.

"Have you a better plan?!" Telin shot back.

Smoke churned up all around the two barges as they sped through the ruins of the Upper Tier. It blanketed the city; a layer of impermeable smog that billowed and parted as the barges sped through.

All was ruin. If the colony had once resembled an ornate candlestick, its top layer was a melted mess; ugly and misshapen. Skeletal blown out buildings rose out of the smog like headstones. Plumes of boiling smoke rose up from the bombed out data stacks and washed across the viewport. Pohld kept his eyes on the instrumentation, lips taut. The smoke afforded them cover from the recovering Corpus army, but there was the ever present-risk of colliding with the architecture.

The silence was deafening. Telin felt the Tenno's eyes on him. He kept his eyes on the viewport as he spoke.

"Look, I admire the whole noble child warrior monk schtick, I really do. But let's deal with the facts here. We barely got out of there. We've barely any ammo. Our shields? All but toast. And the mine trick? That's a strictly one-time gig."

"We're in the salvage business, not miracles." Kelpo agreed.

"Sara's not asking for miracles." Kael replied patiently. "Only to let us finish what we started."

Telin sighed, twisting in the command chair to face Kael. His face was lined with exhaustion.

"Let's assume for a moment that staying in this fight was in any way possible, Kael. That somehow we had some way of meaningfully stopping the Board from simply filling the sky with more dropships. Let's be clear: this is ship isn't space-worthy. Not even before it was riddled with holes; and certainly not now."

"You're right." Isolde stepped forward, eyes narrowed at the sifting fog ahead. "It's not."

She pointed behind him, one hand resting on the back of the command throne.

"But that is."

The smoke parted. The Orokin barge awaited them on the Northern Landing Pad. A majestic, sleeping behemoth fully three times the size of the Severance. A gilded brute.

"What the hell is that thing?" Telin blinked.

"You mean you haven't noticed the gilded monster sitting on the edge of the Upper Tier?" Stren raised an eyebrow. "Need your eyes checked, lad."

Telin shot him a look. Stren coughed.

"Erm, Captain."

"Let's just say I've been a little preoccupied. What am I looking at?"

"Unfinished business." Isolde said, her expression grave, "Why I came back."

Telin smiled politely at that.

"… yeah, not helping. One more time, with less Tenno mystique?"

Isolde ignored him. She turned and looked at the other Tenno.

"Time is short. A brief word, if I may."

They convened in private, in an empty hold at the rear of the ship. Their Frames lined the edges of the chamber, silent statutes; heads bowed.

Isolde paced before them, gripping the golden nikana. She felt Doric's glare upon her; hated the fleeting, uncertain look Sara gave her whenever they made eye contact. A thousand emotions roiled beneath her surface. They were friends. Or had been, once. Damnit, it wasn't meant to be like this.

Kael said nothing. So much remained a mystery to him. How had he found himself on Venus? What had struck him down, and why? He bit his tongue, wary of the leaden tension that draped the air. For all the clarity that had returned to him, so much remained elusive; wrapped in the fog of ancient memory.

Isolde heaved a sigh, then began, addressing Doric and Sara in particular.

"I know you don't trust me. For doing what I did. For leaving, when I thought the task was done."

The others said nothing. She continued.

"You have to understand. I wanted revenge. For what they did. For the lives they stole from us. And what they planned to do."

"And you sought it alone." Doric's eyes were slits.

Sara studied the floor, desperately wanting to be somewhere else.

"What did you want me to do?" Isolde stood tall, arms spread; incredulous. "Sohren was gone. Kael; lost to us. The other Tenno were in open rebellion. The Empire was falling. We knew Septimus' wretched contingency. We had to act!"

Sara had gone entirely pale. She crossed her arms, her chin tucked against her chest.

A war she could handle. But this row had been coming for centuries.

"And I asked you to wait." Doric stepped closer to her,. "To stand with us. To find Kael; act as one! As we agreed! As we prepared for!"

"There was no time!" Isolde blazed. "A moment's delay and the House would have been gone forever! I saw my chance to bury them and I took it!"

"It didn't give you licence to murder!" Doric thundered, words all but spitting "To butcher!"

"Would that I butchered them sooner!" Isolde snarled back as she stepped closer. "Sohren might still be with us!"

"How dare you—"

"Enough!" Kael blazed. The lights in the hold flickered.

They all shut up. Looked at him. Doric and Isolde were nose to nose, fit to kill one another.

Kael looked at them all in confused frustration. His expression pained, all but pleading.

"Can somebody please tell me what's going on?"

Both Doric and Isolde fell silent, their faces a mask of guilt.

It was then that Sara stepped between them, pushing them aside; and began to speak, quietly.

Of the end times.

Of how they got here.