Soil for the Unremembered
There was no grave.
No flowers. No monument. No name etched in metal that would fade beneath a thousand orbits.
Only stillness.
Only waiting.
Kye stood in the central corridor of Driftroot-0, the air chilled by centuries of silence. Around him, the cryopods pulsed faintly now—warm light threading from the Vaultseed root into the cryogenic lattice. It wasn't reviving them.
It was honoring them.
They weren't asleep. They were roots.
And he was standing in a field sown with memory.
> "Anchor pulse holding," the Rook-Spar reported through his comm. "Driftroot is stabilizing."
Kye breathed out slowly. "Don't power anything yet. Let it stay quiet."
He walked to the far end of the corridor, where a round hatch marked with no symbol sat inert. He placed his hand against it.
It opened.
Inside: a garden.
Or what was meant to be.
Rows of soil trays never seeded. A light-dome disconnected from its array. Tools scattered but unused. It was a space built for life that had never been lived in.
And yet, it felt like the most sacred room in the station.
Kye stepped to the center.
The Vaultseed bloomed again, this time from the walls.
A low hum filled the chamber.
> "Would you like to give them something to grow?"
Kye closed his eyes.
And remembered everything he had never written down.
The laughter of strangers in the Sprawl before the Market fell.
The quiet patience of a street cook who fed children without taking names.
The humming of the freight child.
The weight of Zeraphine's silence before she walked away.
He opened his hand.
The Vaultseed extended a root into his palm.
And took nothing.
It accepted.
From the garden trays, soft light bloomed—not flowers. Not crops.
Memories that had never asked to be remembered.
One by one, names flickered above each row:
> LIRA, WHO NEVER COMPLAINED
HENNE, WHO STAYED BEHIND
JOM, WHO WHISPERED THE STARS TO HIMSELF
Kye dropped to one knee.
This wasn't a memorial.
It was a nursery.
And the unremembered were not dead.
They had become soil.