The final words of the old Canid Keeper – "a wound that has festered across galaxies, for longer than your human histories can comprehend" – settled into the luminous silence of the Sanctuary, each syllable a drop of ancient poison.
My mind, still reeling from its own psychic overload, struggled to process the sheer scale of the deception, the almost casual cruelty of the Progenitors who had played with their creations like cosmic chess pieces.
Eva let out a breath beside me, a small, shaky sound. "So, all of it," she said, her voice hushed but carrying a new edge of anger. "Millennia of war, countless lives lost on both sides… all because your 'gods' had a squabble and decided to use you as their proxies?"
The Felid matriarch inclined her head, a gesture of somber affirmation. "A bitter truth, Captain. One that has been buried under layers of vendetta, retribution, and the simple, brutal momentum of unending conflict. Few, on either side, remember the original spark. They only know the consuming fire."
This was it. The answer to why the hatred was so absolute. It wasn't just instinct; it was a carefully engineered catastrophe. But as the weight of it settled, another, more personal question clawed its way to the surface of my mind, a question that had been a quiet hum beneath all my other anxieties since leaving Earth.
"Then… why Earth?" I blurted out, the words tumbling, perhaps a little too loud in the hallowed quiet. Both Keepers turned their ancient, patient eyes towards me.
"What do you mean, Memory-Bearer?" the old Canid rumbled gently.
"On Earth," I explained, images of sunbeams shared with grudging feline housemates, of playful park chases that ended in nothing more than ruffled fur, flashing through my mind.
"My kind, Canids, and the felines there… we're not like this. Yes, there are disagreements. Chases. Sometimes a bit of… well, vocal debate." I remembered Mrs. Higgins' perpetually annoyed Siamese next door. "But mostly? We coexist. We can live in the same houses, share the same cities, even, sometimes, become companions. It's proven.
It happens every day. If this… this engineered hatred is so deep, so galactic, why is Earth different? Why isn't it just another battlefield in your endless war?"
Eva nodded, picking up my thread. "He's right. If the core of your species were programmed for such animosity by your creators, how can that programming simply not apply, or be so muted, on one random planet?" She then pressed on, her captain's pragmatism kicking in. "And that leads to the bigger question: here, out among the stars, even after all these centuries, with your advanced technology, with the Progenitors long gone… why are you still fighting? If this truth you speak of – about the manipulation, the fractured Heart of Orion – is known to you, why hasn't it changed anything? When can this finally end?"
The Keepers exchanged another long, silent look. It was the Felid matriarch who answered first, her voice a soft, melancholic whisper.
"Earth," she said, a strange, almost wistful expression in her emerald eyes.
"The 'Earth Anomaly,' as some of our oldest, most fragmented texts refer to it.
It lies far from the primary energy conduits of the fractured Heart, distant from the core worlds where the Progenitor influence was most potent and the initial betrayals burned hottest.
The… signal of our ancient schism, the psychic residue of the Sundering, it reached your world as little more than a faded echo, a whisper on the solar winds."
"Your terrestrial canines and felines," the old Canid added, "while still descendants of the original stock, developed in a crucible of their own, shaped more by that planet's unique environment and less by the direct, lingering command codes of our shared, tragic genesis.
The instinct for rivalry remained, perhaps, a shadow in the blood, but without the constant reinforcement of the galactic conflict, without the direct trauma passed down through generations exposed to the Heart's corrupted energies, it was… diluted.
Mellowed. Allowed to find a different path."
"A path towards tolerance?" Eva asked, a hint of hope in her voice.
"Or perhaps," the Felid matriarch said softly, "a path towards a different kind of understanding, born of shared experience rather than imposed design. Earth, in its isolation, may represent a… deviation. A possibility of what might have been, had the Progenitors not interfered so catastrophically."
A heavy silence fell as we all contemplated that – Earth, not as a backwater, but as an accidental experiment in peace.
"As to why the war continues out here," the old Canid sighed, the sound like wind through ancient ruins, "that is a question that weighs upon us every cycle. The truth of our origins, of the Progenitors' deceit, is not widely known.
It is a truth held tightly within sanctuaries like this, dismissed as myth or heresy by the war commands and political factions who have built their power, their very identities, on the bedrock of this eternal conflict.
To admit the war was founded on a lie would be to unravel everything they believe, everything they are."
"Generations have been weaned on hatred, Memory-Bearer," the Felid matriarch stated, her voice hardening slightly. "Atrocities have been committed by both sides, creating fresh wounds, fresh justifications for vengeance that bury the original cause ever deeper.
The technology you speak of, Captain, has only made our capacity for destruction more efficient. It has not, alas, brought wisdom."
"And when can it end?" Eva pressed, her gaze unwavering.
The two Keepers looked at each other, then at us. This time, it was the old Canid who spoke, his voice imbued with a profound weariness, yet something else too – a flicker of something I hadn't sensed from them before.
"It ends," he said slowly, "when the wound is acknowledged. When the truth of the Heart of Orion – what it was, what happened to it, and what it could be again – is brought into the light for all to see." He paused, his amber eyes locking onto mine. "It ends when the First Echoes are not just remembered, but understood. And perhaps… healed."
"The Sanctuary of Respite was created for that purpose," the Felid matriarch added, her gaze sweeping around the luminous chamber.
"To preserve the memory, to await a time when both Canid and Felid might be ready to listen. To await… a catalyst."
Her eyes, ancient and piercing, met mine again. "Your arrival, Memory-Bearer, in such a state, resonating so strongly with the Scar of Awakening… it is the most significant event this Sanctuary has witnessed in ten thousand cycles."