Small jump through time to the Eidolon POV
The Return to the Graveyard
Twelve years after the Odyssey vanished into the dark, the Eidolon followed her sister's trail — each Luminous Anchor found like a heartbeat echoing through eternity. The Anchors sang softly as the ship passed them: faint recordings of laughter, wonder, sorrow. They guided the crew not just with coordinates, but with memory.
When the Eidolon reached the third beacon, she found the graveyard exactly as it had been left — a lattice of broken crystalline giants suspended in the endless night. The wreckage shimmered faintly in the starlight like glass coral, and at its center, the third Anchor still pulsed.
Phase C — Contact and Collection
[Mission Log | Commander Lysa Anwar, Eidolon]
Coordinates match Odyssey's last confirmed position. Gravitational distortions within safe limits for survey drones.SERA-11 active. Phase C authorized — limited material retrieval permitted.
Under Captain Anwar's cautious order, small drones descended into the wreckage. Their lights traced the contours of the ancient form. They gathered particulate samples, trace filaments, a single shard of fractured crystalline plating no larger than a human hand.
When the sample entered containment, the temperature aboard the Eidolon dropped three degrees. Monitors flickered. Drones faltered mid-flight.
The Reaction
[Bridge Transcript | 04:12 GST]
ANWAR: What's happening?SERA-11: Magnetic field instability detected. ANWAR: From the debris?SERA-11: No, Commander. From us.
The shard pulsed once — a flash of deep violet light. Then, through every comm channel aboard the Eidolon, came a single low-frequency hum — not a signal, not interference, but a resonance.
It was the same tone that the Odyssey had recorded from the Living Drift, but inverted — mournful, trembling.
For seven minutes, the hum persisted. Systems glitched. Artificial gravity rippled. Crew members reported sensations of being watched, though sensors showed nothing. And then — silence.
The Lesson
After the disturbance, the shard stabilized. SERA-11's scans revealed no threat — only that the fragment contained a form of stored energy responsive to emotional telemetry. It had reacted not to the retrieval, but to the crew's fear.
Commander Anwar ordered the shard resealed and placed beside the third Luminous Anchor.
"If it could feel, then it knows we came here not to plunder, but to remember," she said quietly. "Let this be our apology."
A final message was added to the Anchor's plate:
"To disturb is to learn. To listen is to understand. We have done both, and will do better."
The Departure
As the Eidolon departed, the ruin's lattice shimmered faintly — one last ripple of violet light, matching the pulse of the Luminous Anchor.
No harm had been done, but the lesson lingered: even in death, the creations of light remember how to feel.
The Eidolon adjusted course, her crew subdued and wiser. Ahead of them, another Anchor awaited — and somewhere beyond, the Odyssey's fading path