Solenne’s presence grew more intimate, as if she were no longer speaking through speakers, but through the Archive itself.
“You are not the first to arrive without orders. You are not the last to carry grief as currency.”
Thane paused at a junction. Three corridors branched outward, each marked by a symbol: a cracked mirror, a spiral of flame, a hand reaching toward a star. He knew the choice was not his to make.
The glyphs responded to his pulse. The mirror ignited.
“Corridor of Echoes,” Solenne said. “Where memory is not retrieved, but relived.”
Thane exhaled. The directive in his implant pulsed once—confirmation. He stepped forward, into the mirror’s light.
The corridor did not welcome him. It remembered him.
and a single directive etched into his neural implant: Preserve what remains. Forget nothing.
The docking corridor narrowed as Thane approached the threshold. The air grew still, as if the Archive itself were holding its breath. No hiss of pressure equalization. No mechanical greeting. Just the soft, persistent hum of memory, vibrating beneath the skin.
Solenne’s voice returned, quieter now, as if speaking from within the walls.
“You carry relics. They will be tested.”
Thane glanced down at the case in his hand. It was sealed with a biometric clasp, but he knew its contents by heart: a shard of obsidian from the drowned city of Virell, a child’s tooth carved with runes from the mourning tribes of Elessa, a spool of thread spun from the last harvest on Orin-9. Each item a wound. Each wound a story.
He stepped into the vault.
Inside, the Hollow Star did not resemble a station. It resembled a cathedral abandoned mid-construction. Vaulted corridors arched overhead, inscribed with glyphs that pulsed in response to thought. The floor beneath him was not metal, but memory—woven from the neural signatures of those who had entered before. He felt them: footsteps, hesitations, final prayers.
