The corridors of the Arkadia Resonance Hub thrummed with an almost imperceptible vibration, like the heartbeat of a leviathan sleeping just beneath the hull. Arin walked slowly, his boots making soft, echoing thuds against the chrome tiles. Each step seemed to tug at the air around him, as though invisible threads were pulling him toward something he could not yet name.
The Vakya interface had been silent since the incident at the Null Fracture Gate. Silent—not inactive. Every now and then, in the corner of his vision, glyphs would flicker—letters made of light and shadow—forming half-words before dissolving into static. It was less like receiving a message and more like catching someone whispering just out of hearing range.
"You're distracted," Kaela said, falling into step beside him. Her violet irises reflected the overhead plasma lights in miniature suns. "And when you're distracted, you make mistakes. The kind that get people spaced without a tether."
Arin smirked without humor. "You sound like the Arkadia command AI."
She raised a brow. "The command AI doesn't care if you're losing sleep. I do."
They turned into a side chamber, where a holographic map of the Outer Shard Regions floated in the center. The edges of the map frayed in shifting colors—evidence of quantum instability that no amount of stabilizer fields could fully suppress.
"That's not just instability," Arin said, pointing at one sector where the distortion looked like a wound in reality itself. "It's reacting to something. To… someone."
The whisper came again, curling through his mind like smoke:
—speak and the world bends—
Arin froze. This time, it wasn't just a sound. It was a weight in his skull, a shape pressed into thought. Vakya was there, not dormant, but coiled—waiting.
Kaela noticed his change in expression. "You heard it again, didn't you?"
He nodded slowly. "It's different now. Stronger. Like it's… impatient."
Her lips thinned. "Then whatever's coming isn't far. If Vakya's stirring, the Veil is about to thin again."
The holographic map flickered, and for a fraction of a second, the wound in the sector widened, revealing something on the other side—a lattice of crystalline towers, suspended in a sky of shifting geometries. But more than the image, Arin felt the pull.
The whisper became a command:
—Come. The first syllable has been spoken. The second awaits—
Arin clenched his fists, the heat of decision building in his chest. "Get the crew ready. We're going through."
Kaela's eyes widened. "Through that? Without knowing what's waiting?"
"Exactly," he said, eyes locked on the shimmering wound. "Because it already knows we're coming."
The hum of the Arkadia seemed to deepen, like the ship itself was holding its breath. Somewhere in the tangled folds of reality, something listened—and smiled.