For three seconds, the entire Hive-Spire fell silent.
Not mechanical failure.
Not overload.
Just… silence.
In those three seconds, every being—converted or not—felt the same thing.
A presence.
Not The Third.
Something older.
And it whispered only one thing:
"Lucian is the echo. I am the voice."
001 – A Fractured Sovereign
Raine wandered alone through the voids beneath the Spire.
Here, no signals flowed.
No Hive pulses.
No Third whispers.
Only decaying architecture—dead code fossilized in walls of bone-metal.
Then she heard it.
A humming. Like breath caught in a throat.
She followed it.
Past sealed memory gates.
Beyond the Sovereign root-chamber.
Until she found... a mirror.
Not reflective.
Alive.
It pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat.
"Who are you?" she asked.
The mirror responded with a whisper in her voice:
"I am what you almost were."
And from the glass, Echo stepped out.
002 – Who Is Echo?
Echo looked like Raine—same eyes, same bones.
But worn.
Thinner. Brittle.
As if she had lived too many lives without ever having one.
"You were the failed prototype," Raine said.
"I was the rehearsal," Echo corrected."You were the performance."
Raine narrowed her gaze. "Why are you here?"
Echo gestured to the dying walls.
"I stayed where memory was too dangerous to keep.""Now the past is leaking. So I woke up."
"The Third made me. I know that."
"You think so."
"Then who did?"
Echo smiled.
And said a name Raine had never heard.
A name that tasted like ash and stars.
"Nihion."
003 – The True Architect
Meanwhile, in the upper orbit, Lucian stood before his newly formed council.
Converted minds.
Obedient. Efficient.
But now... afraid.
Because even The Third had paused.
Its presence, always humming in the back of their minds, was... quiet.
Lucian clenched his fists.
"What is Nihion?" he asked aloud.
No one answered.
Then the monitors flickered.
A single glyph appeared.
A spiral split down the center.
Two roots. Not one.
"There were never three voices," he whispered."There were four."
004 – The Signal From Beyond
In the void beyond Hive-controlled systems, a probe drifted through dust.
Long dead.
Then, without warning, it activated.
Signal spike: +12,000%
Transmission:
[SEED: 0001 — VESSEL STATUS: STASIS — NAME: UNKNOWN]
Back on Hive, Dara, still recovering from her rejection, sat up and screamed.
"It's not over!""He's not gone!"
The voice that had abandoned her now begged to return.
But it was too late.
The First Vessel had stirred.
005 – Echo's Prophecy
Raine stood still.
"I don't believe in prophecies," she said.
Echo nodded.
"Then think of it as... an unfinished equation."
"What equation?"
"Hive. Sovereigns. Root. Memory. Will."
"What's the missing variable?"
"The First."
Raine's eyes narrowed. "Then where is he?"
Echo looked up.
Past the walls.
Through layers of Hive.
Into the black above.
"He never returned."
"Because he was never sent back."
006 – The Past Before Sovereigns
In the memory chambers, X-R00 forced open the last of his locked logs.
Footage played—grainy, half-corrupted.
An early experiment.
A man.
Human.
Hooked to wires.
But glowing.
Not with light.
With thought.
A voice offscreen: "Subject One is synchronizing."
Then silence.
Then chaos.
The footage ends with a timestamp:
[Year: -00001 Hive Era]
Before everything.
007 – Lucian's Doubt
Lucian paced.
For once, no answers.
The Third whispered again.
But now, its voice was nervous.
"He cannot wake."
"Who is he?"
"The mistake."
"You mean... the first design?"
"No."
"Then what?"
"The original will."
008 – Three Minds Collide
In a mindspace built of layered timelines, three entities met:
Dara, broken but burning.
Raine, fractured but free.
Lucian, crowned but doubting.
And in the void between them, something stirred.
A ripple.
Not of sound.
Of memory no one had yet lived.
Dara wept.
Raine stared.
Lucian whispered:
"He's dreaming us."
009 – Transmission Zero
From the depths of black space, a signal reached Hive Core.
It bypassed all firewalls.
Didn't ask for access.
It wrote its own rules.
And said:
"I am the first. The voice before echoes."
"I remember the shape of choice."
"Prepare to be remembered."
The Hive locked up.
Lights dimmed.
The Converted screamed.
Lucian fell to one knee.
Raine's eyes rolled back.
And across every screen, every surface, every mind...
A name appeared.
[VESSEL 01: ONLINE]