The artifact hovered in stillness.
Outside the viewport, the marker loomed. Cold. Silent. Drifting in a cradle of asteroid dust.
It had no signal lights, no engines, no visible power source, yet, the design was unmistakable. Jagged angles, seamless alloys, faint engravings that seemed too perfect for any human hand. It was neither machine nor monument, but something in between.
Inside the Atlantean lead vessel, the bridge was quiet.
No one spoke. Not yet.
The relic pulsed gently within its chamber, casting thin lines of blue light across the walls. It had pulsed once the moment the marker appeared on their scans, and now again, as if in recognition.
Aeloria stood at the console.
Talin moved beside her, eyes locked on the data feed.
"Preliminary scans confirm it's alien," he said, his voice low. "Structure matches some of the deeper unknowns from the fragment we found beneath Earth. Age? Impossible to date. It's as if it was placed outside of time."
Aeloria's gaze narrowed. "Then it was meant to be found."
Talin hesitated. "Or it was meant to be forgotten."
The docking process was delicate.
The vessel edged closer, lights scanning every crevice of the marker's hull. It had no response. No movement. But its presence felt… intentional.
Kaela led the boarding team. Her palms were clammy beneath her gloves as she stepped into the pressurized hatch, flanked by two silent engineers. Her voice came through clearly over the comms.
"Airlock stabilized. Chamber sealed. Entering now."
The metal was smooth and strangely warm to the touch. Not natural. Not manufactured in the way they understood. The entrance panel slid open without resistance.
Inside: a narrow corridor. Curved walls, faintly glowing lines, etched circuitry like veins across the surface. The air was breathable. Stale, but not dead.
"Lights are reactive," Kaela noted, watching them shift beneath her footsteps. "Tech is still alive."
The hallway opened into a chamber.
A dome-shaped room, walls lined with data panels, or what looked like them. Symbols scrolled across the curved surface, not in lines, but in circles. They blinked slowly. Waiting.
And at the center stood a single object: a pedestal.
Upon it, a hollow ring. Fractured. As if it once housed something… or someone.
Back aboard the ship, Aeloria watched the live feed with growing tension.
She turned to Talin.
"It's a memory vault."
Talin's brow lifted. "You're certain?"
"No." She crossed her arms. "But I've seen something like it before… in the data residue from the relic. Same configuration. Same pulse signature."
Talin moved to the console. "Let me try something."
He opened a feed and redirected the relic's frequency toward the marker.
Instantly, the vault lit up.
On the screen, the interior chamber flared, not with light, but with motion. Projections spilled from the walls. Flashes of a world made of metal. Towers that stretched beyond sight. Titans in battle, moving like shadows of memory.
Kaela staggered back, shielding her eyes.
"Something's happening in here!"
On the bridge, the feed stabilized. The holograms resolved into fleeting images, distorted and incomplete.
But two words scrolled across the main feed in ancient Cybertronian script.
"PRIME… LOST."
Later, in the ship's debriefing chamber, the team replayed the footage frame by frame.
Talin leaned over the controls, enhancing one of the holograms.
A massive figure stood in the projection. Broad-shouldered, lined with armor, and bearing a mark, a sigil shaped like a face. The image glitched, but not before revealing a flash of red and blue.
Aeloria studied it carefully.
"Who is that?"
Kaela's voice was quiet. "A guardian, maybe. Or a memory."
Talin didn't answer. He was focused on the symbol.
"I think we're not the first ones to follow this trail," he said at last. "This marker… this vault… it's not just a guide. It's a message left for someone. And I don't think it was meant for us."
Far across the galaxy, on Cybertron, an alert sounded in a quiet corner of the rebuilt Autobot command center.
A beacon had blinked, one long thought dormant.
It was faint, corrupted… but it bore a recognizable signature.
Optimus Prime stepped into the chamber, his eyes drawn to the map.
"That's not possible," he said softly.
Ratchet looked up from the console. "It's the marker… the one we lost after the Exodus. But the energy signature that activated it… it's not Decepticon."
Optimus studied the readout.
"No," he said. "It's something new."
Back aboard the Atlantean ship, Aeloria returned to the relic.
It hovered in place, humming softly. She didn't touch it this time. She simply watched it.
"You're showing us a path," she said under her breath. "But whose path is it really?"
Behind her, Talin entered the chamber.
"There's something else," he said. "The marker projected a second coordinate before going dark."
He held out the pad.
"It's not a location," he added. "It's… a movement. A direction."
Aeloria stared at the line stretching across the screen.
A path, toward something still unseen.
Toward something that had once been lost.