The Archive has no dawns, no nights- only the slow,silent drift of creation itself.
Between the folds of what once was and what might yet be,Eira Senn moved among the worlds.
Each sphere hung in its cradle of light,glowing faintly, the color of old memories. Some pulsed with oceans and cities frozen mid-breath; others were only dust, time folded in on itself. When she passed her hand through the scanning halo, the spheres whispered- faint echoes of languages long dead.
"Stability : 0,003% degradation" - the system chimed.
"Correction applied"
Eira's breath fogged the air,though there was no temperature in the Archive - no air at all,really. The illusion of breath was for comfort, a remnant of the humanity she refused to surrender.
She paused before a particular world - a soft blue shimmer, barely intact.
"Hold together," she murmured.
"You've lasted this long."
Her voice carried no sound, but the orb's pulse steadied as if in response.
The console flickered, breaking the rhythm of her shift. One slot in the containment wall was empty - a void where light should have been.
She frowned. "System - index audit, section fourteen."
"Record unavailable."
"World identifier: not found."
Impossible.
She ran a deeper trace. There was no corruption,no fragment trail, no deletion log.
As if the world had never existed.
Her reflection stared back at her from the glass wall : pale skin, cropped dark hair, eyes reflecting the infinite shimmer beyond. For a moment, she saw someone else in the reflexion - the faintest outline of another woman, same face, different expression.
Then it was gone .
She blinked hard. "System, reinitialize visual sensors ."
Nothing changed. The absence remained.
Eira turned toward the central console. In the distance, the Archive's spires stretched like crystal veins into the void, every surface alive with soft blue code. The sight usually steadied her - proof of order, of structure.
But tonight, something in its symmetry felt wrong.
"Director Voss will want to see this," she said quietly.
But a smaller voice, one that lived in the quiet corners of her mind, whispered otherwise: Don't tell them. Not yet.
For the first time in six centuries of service, Eira Senn hesitated to report an anomaly.
She placed her hand on the empty cradle. The surface was cold - not absence, but erasure. And beneath the silence of the Archive, she thought she heard a low, distant sound, like a whisper carried across light-years.
"Do you remember us?"
She pulled her hand back, heart racing.
When she looked again, the cradle was still empty.
But faintly, very faintly, the console recorded a single new line of data:
"World ID : SEVEN."
"Status : UNKNOWN."