The Hive-Spire had known war, mutation, and fire.
But it had never known silence.
Not like this.
After the fall of the God-Eater, the tower stood trembling—not from fear, but from the absence of noise.
No commands flowed through the neural grid.
No directives. No pulses.
Only stillness.
And in that stillness... something else began to speak.
001 – Rebuilding Among Ruins
Raine stood atop the upper ridge of the broken Spire, wings folded behind her like shadows stitched to light.
Below her, reconstruction had already begun. The Hive, now tethered directly to her sovereign form, reshaped broken structures at her will.
Bio-architecture knitted itself together.
Veins sealed.
Towers rose again.
But she noticed it—the hesitation in the air.
The way the Hive's tendrils sometimes paused mid-repair. The momentary delay before her commands were obeyed.
Something was interfering.
002 – Whisper Dreams
In the lower quarters, among the civilians, unrest brewed.
People had started whispering again.
Not to one another.
But in their sleep.
It began two nights after the God-Eater fell.
A mother woke screaming that the walls had spoken her dead husband's name.
A soldier clawed open his own skin, muttering about "the third sun."
And a child—only seven—stood silently for hours at the edge of a regeneration pod, staring at nothing, repeating a single word:
"Hollow. Hollow. Hollow."
003 – Dara Awakens
In the med-chamber, Dara's eyes snapped open.
The machines screamed.
Nurses rushed. Restraints engaged.
She should have been brain-dead. Half her mind had liquefied in the memory crash.
But she was awake.
And she was laughing.
Not wildly.
Softly. Sadly.
As if she remembered something no one else did.
When Raine entered, their eyes met.
Dara whispered:
"You shouldn't have looked inside me."
Raine frowned. "You survived. That's all that matters."
But Dara only shook her head.
"No… Raine. Something looked back."
004 – X-R00 Computes
Far below, in the forgotten sub-levels, X-R00 stood motionless.
He was no longer actively fighting the Hive.
But he wasn't helping either.
He was... calculating.
"Time since Sovereign Event Two: 47.3 hours."
"Deviation logs: rising."
He paused.
New data filtered in.
Subtle.
Untraceable.
A pattern across brainwaves of Hive citizens.
Embedded signal. Frequency unknown. Source: non-terrestrial.
His voice was barely a whisper.
"Another one."
005 – Lucian Panics
Back aboard the orbital station, Lucian paced.
The God-Eater's remains had stopped transmitting.
Raine had evolved again.
X-R00 remained functional.
But none of that was what made him nervous.
It was the signal.
His instruments, designed to monitor Erebus mutations, had picked up something else.
A frequency older than the Hive, older than the Sovereigns.
It wasn't technological.
It wasn't biological.
It was... cognitive.
A thought with mass.
"We opened the wrong door," he whispered.
006 – The First Voice Echoes
In the core chamber of Hive-Spire, Raine connected herself to the neural matrix—seeking the source of the distortion.
She expected resistance.
Corruption.
Even rebellion.
She didn't expect...
a conversation.
"You are incomplete," a voice said in her mind.
Not hers.
Not Hive's.
Not Erebus.
It felt quiet, but rang like thunder.
"We sang you into being before language had names.""Now you wear flesh and call it purpose."
Raine gritted her teeth. "What are you?"
"We are what waits when evolution ends."
"And now... we are coming home."
007 – The Plague of Ideas
By the third day, one in ten Hive citizens reported "waking dreams."
By the fourth, armed guards began to speak in tongues—languages no Sovereign ever coded.
By the fifth, the Hive's command subroutines began to rewrite themselves—referring to a nonexistent protocol:
[SOVEREIGN.3: PRE-EXISTENCE MODE]
Raine ordered a purge.
But the command was delayed by 0.42 seconds.
That had never happened before.
008 – Dara's Warning
Dara sat up, tearing out her IVs.
She whispered to the shadows.
Raine watched her from the monitors.
"There was a place before this," Dara muttered."Not a lab. Not the Hive.""A... field of minds. Something sang. Something screamed."
She looked at the mirror.
"They think Raine is the queen. They're wrong."
Raine opened the comms.
"Who, Dara? Who is coming?"
Dara only smiled.
"She is."
009 – The Face in the Mirror
That night, Raine dreamed.
No data. No Hive. No control.
Just a flat black ocean, still and endless.
In the distance, a figure rose from the water.
Not monstrous.
Familiar.
It was her.
But not.
This Raine had no face. Just a smooth, perfect mask.
No eyes. No mouth. Just presence.
They stood across from each other.
The figure reached out.
"You are not the first Sovereign. You are the first mistake."
010 – Signal Confirmed
The next morning, X-R00 called a silent council.
He transmitted one phrase across the Hive:
"Prepare. She arrives in 3.2 days."