In the deep places between galaxies, where light was a memory and time stretched thin, a ripple passed through the void. It was not a sound, nor a vibration, but a shift in the fundamental hum of reality, subtle as a single note changing in a symphony that had played for eons.
In a crystalline observatory that floated in the heart of a nebula, a being of pure light and thought—a Psion from the Lyra Cluster—paused its eternal calculations. Its form, a shimmering constellation of consciousness, stilled.
An echo, it thought, its communication a burst of complex data. A signature thought extinguished. The Aethel.
The ripple spread.
