The instant Arin's boots touched the hangar floor of the Vigilant Dawn, he knew something was wrong. The air was heavy—not from gravity—but from tension. Lights flickered erratically, and the low hum of the ship's systems seemed… off, like a heartbeat skipping every few moments.
"Vakya…" he whispered under his breath, letting the name of the system roll off his tongue like a key into a lock.
The familiar resonance answered, but faintly, as though speaking from the other side of a thick wall:
The last time Arin had heard that tone in Vakya's voice, entire sectors had collapsed into nothingness.
Rhea emerged from the corridor, her coat torn, eyes fierce. "You feel it too? The ship's sensors are glitching, but it's not just hardware—it's something in the quantum field."
He nodded, his mind running through possibilities. The battle at Cerulean Rift had left them with more than damaged hull plating—it had left a ripple in the very fabric of the language-bound reality Vakya governed. If the resonance was fractured here, then every word of power he spoke might come twisted… or not at all.
The crew gathered in the command chamber. Projection displays showed ghostly distortions—like echoes of the same starfield, slightly out of phase, overlapping reality in shimmering duplicates. The distortion pulsed in sync with the flickering lights.
"This isn't a malfunction," Captain Joren said grimly. "It's a bleed-over. Something's pushing through from another resonance layer."
Arin's stomach tightened. "Another layer means another speaker. Someone with a system like mine."
The words hit the crew like a magnetic shock. Vakya's abilities weren't supposed to have equals. For months, Arin had been the only one able to bend quantum truth with his voice. If someone else was out there… and they weren't aligned with him…
A sudden static burst ripped across every comm channel, followed by a voice. It was deep, distorted, but each syllable carried a strange harmonic that made the air in the room vibrate.
"You've spoken too long in my silence, Arin Valis. Now, I will speak over you."
Rhea's hand instinctively went to her weapon, but Arin raised a hand. "Don't. It's not a direct channel—it's layered through the fracture. They're speaking through the ship's own resonance field."
Vakya's voice hissed back to life:
Arin exhaled slowly. "We don't have a choice."
The moment he gave consent, his vision split into threads. He saw multiple timelines branching from the same moment: one where the ship imploded, one where it drifted endlessly, and one where they pushed the invader's voice back into the void.
He chose.
"Return to your silence," he commanded. The words were not loud—but they resonated like a struck bell in the bones of the ship. Vakya amplified the command, weaving it into the core frequency of the fracture.
The lights dimmed to black for exactly 3.4 seconds. In the darkness, Arin could see faint glyphs glowing in midair—unfamiliar symbols spiraling in and out of existence. One set was his, the language of Vakya. The other was alien… sharper, almost aggressive in its shape.
When the lights snapped back, the voice was gone. The distortion remained, but weaker.
Rhea looked at him, still gripping her weapon. "That wasn't just interference. That was a duel."
"Not just a duel," Arin said, his voice low. "That was a warning shot."
And deep in the ship's systems, unread by any but him, Vakya whispered:
Arin felt the cold weight of that name. If Solkara's voice could fracture reality, then the war for the galaxy's fate had just shifted into a battle of words… and only one could keep speaking.