It wasn't morning yet, but Reach pulsed gently in a transitional glow.
A translucent blue.
An aura of pre-form.
In the Eclipsed Archive Sector, Kael carefully reopened the isolated terminal where the unknown schematic had appeared the previous evening. He hadn't dared to transmit it yet. Something in his instinct—and in Shadow's silence—told him it wasn't time.
But last night… he'd dreamed a sentence:
> "Not everyone who leaves returns. But some choose not to be forgotten."
The console no longer asked for a password.
No confirmation.
It simply opened — as if it recognized him.
But instead of the schematic from before, the screen displayed a line of slow, handwritten script:
> "Guidance comes from within.
Connection begins with remembrance."
Kael whispered:
— "This isn't code. It's… a message."
—
In a deactivated projection hall, Eyla and Mira tested an old pulse-scan model. Once used for subterranean mapping, it had been reactivated at Brann's suggestion.
— "If the signal's frequency has a physical source," Mira explained, "this might help us find it."
Eyla adjusted the parameters.
And then… the signal locked.
But not onto a point.
It centered on a moving space, a living loop that opened and closed gently between two familiar corridors.
Brann, analyzing the data remotely, murmured:
— "That's not a location. That's… behavior. As if something only moves when it's not being watched."
—
At the edge between the Beneath and the city's foundational structure, Leon stepped into a passage he hadn't known existed.
It wasn't blocked.
But it wasn't open either.
Just… allowed.
The stairs spiraled downward into a hollow that felt as old as the framework itself.
At one point, he stopped.
An ancient wall.
A handprint painted onto it like a symbol.
No words.
Just an open palm.
He raised his hand, placed it over the print—
And without light or sound, the wall shifted back.
A round chamber, cold, filled with dormant capsules.
And in the center… a chair.
Empty.
But its fine layer of dust had been disturbed—
By the outline of someone who'd sat there recently.
—
In the quiet garden of District 2, Shadow walked among plants that hadn't bloomed in years.
But today, a marble-white flower had opened on its own.
He stopped in front of it.
The child from yesterday reappeared, wearing the same smile.
— "Did you know you've been here before?"
— "More times than I can count."
— "And the flower?"
— "It only appears when something is about to return."
The child looked up.
— "From the sky?"
— "Or from memory," Shadow replied.
In Observatory 5-B, Brann was receiving data from a probe no one had launched.
The signature was old. Nearly corroded. But unmistakable.
— "It doesn't belong to Reach," he said softly.
The terminal displayed a fixed trajectory—circular—orbiting a collapsed star, yet pulsing with perfectly calibrated impulses.
As if the probe had a precise mission.
As if it had been programmed by someone who understood time as a loop, not a line.
Eyla stepped beside him.
— "Is it coming back?"
Brann tilted his head.
— "It already did. Now it's just… waiting for us to be ready."
—
In the Beneath's corridors, Mira discovered a metallic door, nearly melted with age.
On its surface, a single word:
> "ARCHAIOS"
It wasn't a Reach term.
Nor a file name or sector label.
It was… a name.
She placed her palm on the surface.
It didn't open.
But a faint voice, like vibrating metal, spoke:
— "Access is not denied. Only delayed. You'll know when to enter."
Mira froze.
— "Who spoke?"
But no one was there.
Only her.
And the echo of a door not yet ready to leave silence behind.
—
Leon descended deeper into the capsule chamber.
Each unit was marked with a numerical sequence.
But not in the usual archive order.
Each number pulsed—gently—in rhythm with his breathing.
As if the space around him was beginning to synchronize with him.
He reached the central, empty chair and paused.
On the floor beside it, a plaque:
> "Waiting is not sleep.
It is preparation."
Leon touched the plaque.
Above, a small light activated.
And on the far wall, a projection appeared:
A ship.
Massive.
Elegant.
Bearing Reach's signature… but in a form no one had seen before.
—
Back in the District 2 garden, the child had asked:
— "Are they coming back?"
Shadow had answered:
— "Some of them never truly left. They just went quiet."
The child let a leaf fall from his palm.
— "And what if they didn't forget anyone?"
— "Then we'll know where to look first."
Eyla and Kael sat in an isolated analysis room, reviewing every frame of the ship projection Leon had uncovered.
— "That's not a Reach design," Kael whispered.
— "Not from now," Eyla added.
— "But it's not alien either. It looks… too much like the lost constructs from the intermediary eras."
Brann spoke over comms:
— "Compare it with what remains of Project Ark blueprints. It might be a prior generation."
Kael frowned.
— "But the Ark was never built."
— "Then what are you seeing?" Brann asked.
Eyla smiled, as if accepting a paradox:
— "Maybe it was. Just… not here."
—
In a lower layer of the Beneath, Mira moved through a narrow corridor where the ceiling wasn't painted but shifted in tone to form symbols.
Each step caused the shadows to reshape—like a language that reinterpreted every passing moment.
At the end of the hall stood an old door.
No handle.
No lock.
On its surface—a face outline.
A kind of mask.
She raised a hand to her own face.
— "Shadow…"
And without sound, the door melted into the wall.
—
Leon now scanned the capsules with a portable device.
Most appeared empty.
But some showed traces of biological activity—old.
Very old.
In one of them, he identified pre-modified human carbon traces—humans without implants, without cerebral digital integration. From a long-forgotten era.
— "That… shouldn't be possible," he muttered.
But the scanner confirmed it.
Then, behind him, the voice of the child who had been with Shadow in the garden spoke:
— "It's not impossible. You just haven't asked in a long time."
Leon turned sharply.
— "You… how did you get here?"
The child didn't answer.
He smiled.
Then touched the capsule—and it lit up gently.
—
In External Observatory Level 3, a silent alarm triggered.
Not a warning.
An… invitation.
In the sky, a fixed light pulsed at a rare frequency.
A code.
But not a mathematical one.
An emotional code—sequences translated into color and intensity, echoing lost feelings:
longing, fear, recognition.
—
At that moment, Shadow stepped into a forgotten chamber in the Spherical Tower.
There, on a dusty pedestal, an object.
Simple.
An old mechanical clock.
It ticked.
No energy.
No connections.
But it worked.
Shadow stood before it.
— "Who wound it?" he whispered.
No answer.
But the clock's hand moved.
And as it passed 3:33…
…every console in Reach went silent for one second.
Then, without command or algorithm—they synchronized.
In the Historical Navigation Center—where old maps of the solar system and remnants of human expeditions were stored—a forgotten terminal powered on.
The screen displayed a message with just three characters:
> "R-E-1"
Kael was summoned immediately.
When he arrived, the terminal played a visual sequence: a stellar recording of a ship gliding silently through asteroid fragments.
Brann, analyzing the signature, murmured:
— "The ship isn't just real…
…it's ours. But 700 years older than any documented vessel."
—
Mira discovered an inscription inside a recently reactivated chamber.
Etched into a black granite wall, it read:
> "Those who feared being forgotten…
sowed memory into the stars."
She touched the text—and a partial hologram appeared in the air: a feminine face, human, but with elongated features and eyes that gleamed like stellar lenses.
The voice was faint, but clear:
— "If there's still a mind that searches…
then we weren't in vain."
—
In the room with the clock, Shadow turned away from the old device.
Above him, the ceiling lights had formed a constellation—one no astronomer had identified in centuries.
He whispered:
— "The initial node is active. The time has come."
The child's voice came from behind:
— "Will you tell them?"
Shadow didn't turn.
— "No. I'll show them."
—
In the Central Projection Tower, all screens across Reach displayed, for the first time in its history, a single synchronized image:
> A man aboard a silent ship.
Looking back toward a distant planet.
With the same mask that Shadow now wore.
And in that moment, everyone who saw the screens understood—without being told:
He had been there.
At the beginning.
Before everything.
—
Across Reach, a unique transmission echoed through all systems:
> "The Archive is no longer just witness.
It is the point of return."
At that same moment, every person felt a vibration in their chest—
Faint, but intimate.
Not a signal—
But a memory that had just been reawakened.
—
The child, in a garden where the flowers had once again closed, said:
— "Now I understand why you came back."
Shadow knelt before him—for the first time.
— "Because the world forgot…
…but hasn't closed its eyes yet."
"Echoes of the Departed"
—
In a realm no one named—but one Shadow sometimes visited without telling anyone—a static space drifted among the stars.
It had no mass. No gravity.
Only presence.
Here there were no words, only intention.
Here, time didn't exist—only the perception of memory before it was lived.
In that place, a human-shaped figure stood.
It wasn't Shadow.
But it was made of the same thread.
A mouthless voice spoke:
— "The ones who left never abandoned us.
They created the space in which we still breathe."
—
In a far corner of Reach, deep beneath the layers where even the Carriers wouldn't go, a machine of glass still functioned.
It didn't process data.
It didn't transmit signals.
It remembered.
Frame by frame, like a wheel of light, it rotated forgotten human figures.
Each face — a version never chosen.
Each smile — a moment that never happened.
A child, identical to the one who spoke with Shadow—but younger—appeared on one of its screens.
— "These were the first dreamers.
Those who chose departure over being forgotten."
—
In an interface node above Sector 11, particle data began to form a symbol: a circle open inside an inverted triangle.
Delra, on routine patrol, saw it on a projection wall.
Brann, called in quickly, recognized it.
— "It's the mark of those who built the first stellar gates.
Before Reach existed.
Before we even understood them."
—
In the silence of an invisible chamber, Shadow stood before a mirror that didn't reflect.
But in its surface, an image appeared:
A ship.
A man.
A child.
A spiral.
And a question—unwritten, yet vibrating through the entire space:
> "If you returned… what would you do differently?"
Shadow didn't answer.
But a current of energy poured from his mask's eyes.
Not anger.
Not sorrow.
But decision.