Gravethread, Driftroot
Space didn't speak.
But it leaned.
As the Rook-Spar creaked along the outer rim of the abandoned hyperlane, the Vaultseed rooted deeper into the ship's neural substrate. Not invading. Not commanding.
Just growing.
Kye stood in the silence of the observation dome, one hand pressed to the cold glass, watching constellations twist against memory.
They were moving again.
Not with purpose.
With pull.
A gravethread had awakened—a pull unlike any gravity well. A signature left not by matter, but by meaning. Something lost was asking to be found.
The Vaultseed reacted first.
> "Anomalous memory pull detected."
"Source: Driftroot Beacon. Last contact: never."
Kye frowned. "That's not possible."
The console whispered:
> "You're heading toward a story no one wrote."
The ship adjusted course.
Not by logic. By leaning.
Like a body remembering how to bow.
Driftroot was the name given to stations that failed before launch—structures abandoned before occupation. Most never left blueprint. But this one had something more.
A gravitational ache.
The closer the Rook-Spar approached, the heavier Kye felt—not physically. Emotionally.
He descended to the Vaultseed chamber.
The filaments had spread now into a full biosynaptic weave. The Chronicle was still quiet, but its glow pulsed in rhythm with the ship's hum.
Kye reached out.
The Vaultseed uncoiled a thread—thin, delicate, burning faint blue.
A memory caught in orbit.
He took it.
And his knees buckled.
A voice. A whisper.
> "We built it for the ones who couldn't follow us. But no one stayed to hold their names."
An image: A garden of metal, half-formed. Cryopods sealed in a ring around a void-heart.
They never launched.
They never left.
And no one returned to remember.
Until now.
Kye whispered, "We're coming."
The Vaultseed pulsed like breath.
And for the first time, the stars ahead seemed to listen.