**Time: 27th**
The purple rifts grew more frequent. Unearthly lights streaked the sky, accompanied by deep, subterranean booms.
Terrifying reports spread: people snatched by giant insectoid shadows; inhuman roars in abandoned buildings; sightings of floating, translucent entities radiating cold.
Panic became total chaos. Heavy gunfire erupted near Canary Wharf overnight—military clashing with looters over supplies.
Jack locked himself in the inner room, monitoring via hidden cameras. Using the relative quiet, he tried "Aetheric Resonance" again.
The ambient "hum" was stronger now, persistent.
He sank his consciousness into it, visualising the figure from the diagram, letting the "Tide" wash over him.
After three hours, a faint **tingling** sparked in his fingertips! Like weak current! Still far from channelling a "Spark," but a breakthrough!
He felt at the threshold of a colossal door, light seeping through.
Then—his shortwave radio, hooked to backup power, caught a faint, fractured signal.
Its source seemed beyond geosync orbit, using heavily encrypted but fundamentally ancient comms protocols (Jack recalled scraps from uni info-engineering history).
"…zzzt… This is… Void Watcher… zzzt… Encountered… unknown… spatial turbulence… zzzt… Critical damage… zzzt… Request… landing clearance… zzzt… Repeat… no hostile intent… Observation… recording only… Aether Tide… Return Event… zzzt… Complying… Ancient… Star-Sea Accords… zzzt… Warning… Detecting… high-dimensional… rifts… zzzt… and… unstable energy signatures… matching… 'The Emptiness'… zzzt… descriptions… Extreme… danger… zzzt… Repeat… no hostile intent… Request… emergency… landing…"
The signal vanished, swallowed by violent Aetheric static.
Jack froze. Blood iced.
**Aliens!**
A starship named "Void Watcher"!
Damaged by Aether Tide turbulence, requesting Earth landing! Claiming "observation only" under "Ancient Star-Sea Accords." Warning of "high-dimensional rifts" and "The Emptiness"—a signature of "extreme danger"!
"The Emptiness…" Jack whipped back to the book. Was *this* the disaster behind "Dimensions Torn"?
Were these alien "Watchers" friend or foe? Did their "Accords" connect to the book… to the mysterious Eastern star chart?
He frantically flipped pages. On one, a line he'd missed—written in dark red ink, radiating warning—stabbed his vision.
Its style matched the primal symbols in the figure's diagram:
> **"The Emptiness devours worlds, foe not of this cosmos alone; Star-faring wayfarers may be the wolf at the door; Only through Breath reaching the Mysterious Feminine (Origin), can one withstand the tribulation of myriad laws."**
"Breath reaching the Mysterious Feminine…" Jack mouthed the awkward translation.
He didn't know Chinese, but the book occasionally used a unique symbol for "Aether"—phonetically like "Qi"! And "Mysterious Feminine"… a hazy cosmic-origin illustration had labelled a chaotic, womb-like source similarly!
*Oriental!* His great-grandfather brought back an Eastern civilization's legacy of cosmic truth and apocalypse! "Breath reaching the Mysterious Feminine"—was *this* the key against "The Emptiness"?
A cultivation level beyond his fumbling "Resonance"?
Alien Watchers… "the wolf at the door"? The book's warning dripped distrust.