The gunship cruised low over a quiet skyline. Below, New Toronto’s streets were lit not by sirens or spotlights, but lanterns—handmade, flickering, fragile. A new kind of light.Ethan Cross sat alone in the cabin’s rear hold, helmet at his feet, head bowed. Beside him, Nyah quietly patched a cut above his brow, her hands slow and deliberate, as if giving him time to return to himself.“Any of it coming back yet?” she asked.He shook his head. “I remember names. Faces. I know the logic of what happened… but the color’s gone. The warmth. Ava’s voice—I can’t hear it.”Nyah’s fingers paused. “She sang a lot. Off-key, usually.”“That tracks,” Ethan said, a sad smile tugging at his lips.Across from them, Cade and Mira reviewed comm logs. Cade’s mood was restless; he kept glancing toward the rear sensors like he expected another drone swarm to burst from the clouds.“Hard to trust the quiet,” he muttered.“It’s not quiet,” Mira corrected. “It’s paused. That’s all we’ve earned—time. Let’s us

Aboard the Crosswind – Orbiting the Rift’s Lull Silence, for the first time in months, didn’t feel like dread. It felt earned. The Crosswind hovered in orbit, its engines humming at a low, steady frequency. No alarms. No fractures. No screams buried in static. Just quiet. Inside the central chamber, Ethan Cross stood with his hand pressed against the observation dome. Before him, the Rift—once a chaotic maelstrom—now shimmered like a placid ocean of stars. The colors moved slowly, like breath. The hunger that had once bled from it was gone. Or… transformed. He wasn’t sure. Behind him, Nyah stirred from the integration pod. She blinked, pupils still adjusting to full-spectrum reality. “How long was I out?” she asked, voice raspy. “Three hours,” Mira rep

Chrono: +6 days since Rift StabilizationLocation: The Crosswind – Observation DeckEthan Cross stood alone in the darkened observation chamber, eyes fixed on the Rift. It no longer pulsed erratically. No surges. No collapses. Just that slow, calculated shimmer—like light moving through memory instead of space.He hadn’t logged anything tonight. Not yet.He couldn’t bring himself to speak aloud.For the last three nights, he’d seen the same dream. A field of fractured mirrors, each reflecting a version of himself—some older, some younger, some monstrous. One had eyes filled with stars. Another had blood on his hands.And in each reflection, the same voice echoed behind him.“You were never the first.”Elsewhere – Secondary Lab Deck,Nyah adjusted her neural interface collar and sat beneath the glowing network grid. The glyphs had become less chaotic. They now resembled syntax. Sentence fragments, even. She didn’t read them. She felt them, like currents of emotion laced into symbols.“

Location: The Crosswind – Archive SubdeckChrono: +7 days since Rift StabilizationZeke stared at the interface logs on his tablet for the third time in an hour.Something didn’t add up.“Run it again,” he muttered.The ship’s AI, IONA, pulsed a soft blue on his display.Recompiling neuro-spectral logs… completed. Variance detected: Subject ‘Mara Voss’ exhibits temporal inconsistency.Zeke blinked. “Mara?”He opened the biometric stream. Her heartbeat was steady. Too steady. Exactly 68.4 BPM for the last six hours. Not even a half-second fluctuation. Not while running drills. Not during sleep.Human physiology didn’t do that.Machines did.Elsewhere – Combat Simulation DeckMara Voss moved through the drill like a ghost. Every movement efficient. Every strike precise. The sparring drone couldn’t keep up.Cade stood on the observation platform, arms crossed, trying to ignore the chill at the base of his spine.“She’s… better,” Mira observed beside him.“Too better,” Cade muttered. “Tha

Chrono: +10 days since Rift StabilizationLocation: Aperture Sigma Prime – Threshold of Core EchoThere were no alarms. No tremors. No distortions of time or physics.Just silence.And then—an aperture formed.Not torn, not forced. Opened.A spiral of light peeled outward from the Rift’s edge like a blooming flower. Glyphs hovered midair, translating themselves in real-time as if waiting to be read:“You’ve remembered enough. Come.”Ethan, Nyah, Mira, and Zeke stood at the edge of the Crosswind’s core launch bay, geared in lightwear suits designed for inter-dimensional stabilization. Behind them, Cade and Cora manned the control deck with narrowed eyes and weapons nearby.“I don’t like this,” Cade muttered.“You were never meant to,” Cora replied. “You’re a soldier. This isn’t war anymore.”Cade didn’t answer. He just locked eyes with Ethan as the crew stepped forward.“Bring them back.”Ethan nodded once.And then the team crossed the threshold.They expected chaos.They got stillnes