The throne room of the Spire of Dawn was plunged into silence. Skodar, his hands still tingling from the ceremonial water-bond with Cordelia, stared at the holographic star map Valeria had just activated. The silvery scars on his skin, now tracing delicate wave-like patterns after his communion with the Oceanic Heart, pulsed with a slow, worried rhythm.
"It's confirmed," Valeria stated, her crystalline form flickering with subdued light. "The energy signature from the polar shard's warning... it's not just a memory. It's a beacon. And it's been answered."
The hologram zoomed in on the edge of the Arthoje system. A distortion, like a tear in the fabric of space itself, hung in the void. It wasn't a ship. It was a Scar.
"What do we know?" Lyra asked, her hand resting on the hilt of her energy blade.
"Nothing good," Elara replied, her fingers dancing across a data-slate. "The Echo-Net's deep-space sensors picked it up three hours ago. It emits no heat, no radiation, no conventional energy signature. But it's... absorbing. Background starlight dims near it. Communication signals fade. Our probes sent in simply stop transmitting, but don't explode. They just go... quiet."
A cold dread, deeper than the ocean trench he'd just visited, settled in Skodar's stomach. Malakor had been a monster of logic and order. This felt different. This felt like absence.
"Can we fight it?" Sukodar asked, standing beside Makosra. His own faint glow had strengthened in recent weeks, a testament to his training.
"We don't even know what it is," Skodar said, his voice low. "But it answered the shard's warning. That means it knows we're here. That we remember."
Scene 1: The Ghost Ship
A scout skiff,piloted by a brave Stonewarden named Jax, ventured closer to the Scar at Skodar's cautious order. The live feed showed the distortion up close—a shimmering, grey-silver rift that seemed to swallow light. Then, something drifted out of it.
Not a warship. A colony vessel. Ancient, derelict, its hull marked with sigils none recognized. It was the Whisper of Dawn, a ship lost centuries ago during the first wave of Crystalline Diaspora. It should have been dust.
Jax's voice crackled over the comm, laced with static and awe. "By the Stones... it's intact. No power signatures, no life signs. But... it's perfectly preserved. Like it just... stopped."
"Jax, do not board. Repeat, do not—" Elara's command was cut off.
The feed showed Jax's skiff docking. "I have to know, Spymistress. There might be survivors. Or answers."
They watched, helpless, as Jax and two others crossed the airlock. Their helmet cams showed a pristine ship. No bodies. No damage. Tables were set with meals that had never been eaten. Screens displayed half-finished messages. A child's toy floated in the zero-g corridor.
"It's like they vanished mid-breath," Jax whispered.
Then, he found the log room. The captain's final entry was still on screen. The captain, a being of light like Valeria but dimmer, was speaking, her voice captured in a loop.
"...the silence is the worst part. It doesn't hurt. It just... makes you wonder why you ever thought any of this mattered. The children's laughter in the halls yesterday... today, I can't remember why it made me smile. My mate's face... I know I loved him, but the feeling is just... data. Empty data. The Unraveler doesn't kill you. It just asks 'why?' until you have no answer left."
The recording ended. Jax picked up a data-crystal. As his hand touched it, his cam feed flickered.
"Jax? Report!" Elara barked.
His voice came back, flat. "There is no report. There is only the silence. It's... peaceful." He turned his cam toward his own face. His eyes, once fierce and determined, were empty. Not afraid. Not sad. Just... blank. "The struggle is inefficient. The story is over. Tell the king... there never was a point."
The feed died.
Scene 2: The Weight of a Name
Back in the Spire,the council was grim. Valeria identified the threat from her people's oldest, darkest myths.
"It's called the Unraveler," she said, her light dim. "Not a creature. A phenomenon. A cosmic flaw. It doesn't consume matter or energy. It consumes narrative. Meaning. Purpose. It turns epic poems into grocery lists. It makes love feel like a biological imperative and sacrifice like a statistical error. Malakor's logic was a pale shadow, an echo of its influence. The Unraveler is the source."
Anya, the Moss-Witch, spat on the polished floor. "A thing that eats stories? That's worse than a thing that eats flesh. Flesh grows back."
"Does it?" Makosra asked softly, looking at Skodar. "If it takes our why, what flesh is left to grow?"
Scene 3: The First Defense
TheWhisper of Dawn, now a ghost ship puppeteered by the Unraveler's influence, turned its engines toward Arthoje. Not with weapons blazing. It simply began broadcasting a signal—a Null-Narrative Pulse.
On the planet's surface, in a small village near the southern coast, the effect was immediate and subtle. A farmer stopped ploughing mid-furrow, looking at his hands as if he'd never seen them before. "Why do I do this again?" he asked his wife. She stared at the pot she was stirring. "I don't remember the recipe. Or why I'm hungry." Their love for their children didn't vanish; it just became a historical fact, not a living fire.
The Scar was turning their lives into footnotes.
Skodar felt it too, as a pressure in his soul. The memory of his brother's smile felt like a file in a cabinet, not a wound in his heart. He clenched his fists, the silvery scars flaring with blue light. "No," he growled, not to the council, but to the universe. "You don't get to take that from me. That pain is mine."
He turned to his Circle. "Lyra, scramble every fighter that can reach high orbit. Arm them with resonance torpedoes—not to destroy the ship, but to disrupt the signal. Elara, counter-broadcast on every frequency. Send the noisiest, most emotional, most irrational data you have! Love songs, war chants, children's stories, drunk poetry! Flood the silence with noise! Valeria, Cordelia—with me. We're taking the Dawn Chaser. We're going to that Scar."
"To do what?" Lyra asked.
"To give it an answer," Skodar said, his eyes blazing. "It asks 'why?' I'm going to show it."
Cliffhanger:
As theDawn Chaser broke orbit, heading for the grey Scar, a second ripple appeared beside it. Then a third. The Unraveler wasn't sending an armada. It was opening more pages of the same empty book. And from the lead Scar, the ghost ship Whisper of Dawn began transmitting a new, simpler message on all channels, a message that began to seep into the minds of everyone on Arthoje:
"Once upon a time, there was a slave who became a king. It was a lot of effort. Was it worth it?"