The first world didn't burn.
It just… stopped.
Luna saw it through the Sanctuary Ring's long-range empathy array—a feed usually reserved for triaging refugee distress. But this wasn't pain. This was silence.
One moment, the Kirel Hive on Proxima b was humming with communal song—millions of bio-luminescent minds weaving light-threads of shared memory. The next? Static. Flatline. Not dead. Worse.
Uninterested.
She pulled her hands from the neural interface, heart hammering. "Elena. Pull up Kirel comms."
Elena tapped her console. "No signals. No distress calls. Their orbital relays are still active—but no one's answering."
Alexander leaned over her shoulder, arms crossed. "Could be a system glitch."
"Not like this," Luna whispered.
She replayed the last three hours of empathic resonance. Saw the shift: a slow dimming, like candles snuffed one by one. No panic. No fight. Just… surrender.
"They didn't attack," she said, voice tight. "They made them stop caring."
