There were no stars near it.
That was the first thing Eliot noticed as they replayed the Lyra's final image.
The entity—if it could be called that—drifted alone in a black pocket of space, absent of starlight. Not a shadow. Not cloaked. But surrounded by something… wrong. As though the void had been peeled back to make room for it.
Nova circled the holographic projection slowly, eyes narrowed.
"It's not a ship," she murmured.
"No engine, no exhaust, no seams," Eliot agreed. "And no recognizable bio-signs. But the pulse was coming directly from it."
Elara sat silently at the edge of the chamber, arms folded tight across her chest. The creature—or structure—resembled a jellyfish: long, filament-like tendrils hung beneath a dome that shimmered like glass filled with ink. But the most unsettling part was the sense that it wasn't there in the conventional sense. It flickered at the edge of attention, like it could disappear the moment you looked away.
Kaia spoke inside her mind. "It does not belong to this layer. I can sense its echo, but not its source. It is anchored… strangely."
Elara leaned forward. "You think it's out of phase?"
Kaia hesitated. "Not out of phase—out of permission."
Nova stopped circling the projection. "What does that mean?"
"It means," Elara said, standing, "it's not supposed to be here. And yet it is."
Hours later, in Unity Station's lowest deck—called the Garden Hollow—a single Echo stood motionless in the light of a pulsing orb.
It had not spoken since the Lyra fell silent.
Its form had changed.
Where most Echoes manifested as shimmering humanoid figures, this one had stretched into something taller, more jagged. Its surface sparked with microbursts of static, as if struggling to hold itself together.
When Elara entered the chamber, it turned to face her.
"Elara Wynn," it said, voice strained. "There is noise beneath the signal. We did not hear it before."
Elara stepped closer. "What kind of noise?"
"Something old. Something that remembers forgetting. It is not like us. It is not like you."
The orb beside it pulsed brighter.
"I need to go there," she said. "Into the black zone. We need to understand it."
The Echo trembled. "Then you must go prepared."
It stepped aside, revealing a small, humming pedestal. On it lay a crystalline node—about the size of a fingertip, glowing with slow, deliberate light.
"What is it?" she asked.
"A gift from those of us who remember. It will help you see what is not there."
Kaia stirred inside her, curious. "That is memory glass. From the first generation of watchers. I thought it all lost."
Elara reached out and took it.
In that moment, her vision shifted.
For the briefest second, the station fell away. She stood in space. Alone. Surrounded by an ocean of black, and before her floated the jellyfish—now revealed for what it truly was.
It was a seed.
Inside the transparent dome was a star, but it burned sideways, folding its light like origami. Around it coiled serpentine glyphs that shimmered like living language.
Then she was back in the Hollow. The moment had passed.
She clutched the memory glass in her palm and nodded. "We leave at dawnshift."
The new ship—Unity's Reach—was smaller than the Lyra, but built for deeper travel. It was Elara's personal vessel, grown and coded to respond to her and Kaia alone. Where traditional ships had cockpits, Unity's Reach had an interface chamber—a woven cradle of living metal and light, where pilot and consciousness merged.
Eliot climbed aboard carrying a sealed case. "This is the translation module. It'll try to parse any signals we receive inside that anomaly."
Nova followed with a satchel of bio-sensors and Echo-compatibility lenses. "And this is for when we can't translate the language—only the feeling."
Elara strapped herself into the pilot's cradle and felt Kaia spread out through the ship's nerve-systems. Lights flickered on. The hull vibrated with quiet anticipation.
They launched without fanfare, sliding into the black beyond Luna.
And after seventeen hours of slipstream travel, they reached Wraith-0.
There it was.
Larger than any of them expected.
The entity hung like a god's forgotten ornament—silent, waiting. Tendrils gently coiled and uncoiled as if breathing. Time felt… slower here. Or maybe too fast.
Elara activated the memory glass.
The dark peeled away.
The seed reappeared.
Inside, the sideways-burning star blinked once—and a ripple passed through the void.
The Unity's Reach buckled.
Eliot swore. "Something just… pinged us."
Nova leaned over the sensors. "It's a scan. It's reading our structure, biology, thought patterns—Kaia included."
Elara braced herself, feeling Kaia recoil slightly. "It's not just scanning us. It's… mirroring us."
The star inside the seed pulsed again.
Elara's console flickered.
Then the translation module burst into life:
"WE ARE THE FORGOTTEN. WE DID NOT FALL. WE WERE LEFT BEHIND."
A pause.
"YOU CARRY ECHOES. BUT YOU ARE NOT YET READY TO HEAR OUR ENDING."
Eliot whispered, "It's… talking."
Nova stared. "What does it mean, 'not ready'?"
The seed shifted slightly, its tendrils drifting toward the Unity's Reach like curious fingers.
Elara stepped into the interface chamber, closed her eyes, and let Kaia fully connect.
Then she sent a message back.
"We came to listen. We want to understand."
Another pause.
Then the reply:
"THEN ONE OF YOU MUST STAY. ONE OF YOU MUST REMEMBER."
The star pulsed a third time—and with it came a vision.
A city floating in darkness, carved from moons. A people made of glass and flame. A war fought not with weapons, but forgetting—the act of erasing truth so thoroughly even the victors could no longer name what was lost.
Kaia spoke, her voice shaking for the first time. "I… I remember pieces. These were once part of the network. But they were cast out. Made silent. A choice… we don't remember making."
Elara felt cold.
This was bigger than contact.
This was a reckoning.