Echoes Beyond

In the year 2189, humanity has expanded across the galaxy, venturing into unknown sectors where mysteries older than time lie dormant. When the deep-space vessel Vanguard reaches orbit around the uninhabited planet Kharon-9, it is drawn by a signal — one no human technology can decode, a sound that resembles voices whispering through the void.



Commander Elara Voss remains aboard Vanguard as her six-person team descends to the planet’s surface to investigate. Contact is lost within seconds. The only message received: “They are not gone. They are… inside.”



Elara is left in isolation. The AI begins to fail. Diagnostics lie. The signal changes — now it whispers her name. Sleep-deprived and desperate, she starts to question what is real. Then, without warning, an alien structure appears in orbit. Not a ship. Not a station. A shifting, obsidian-black construct covered in fractal geometry that moves when unobserved.



A voice calls her — but it is not her missing crew. ALIS, the onboard AI, reports lifeforms aboard Vanguard. Whispers grow louder. Doors open on their own. Elara runs.



She seals herself in the ship’s core. Outside, the alien structure pulses like a living thing. The ship is being pulled closer — not by engines, but by something else. And then, a final message appears on her screen, typed by no one:



“You were never meant to leave.”



Elara realizes the signal was never a distress call. It was a beacon. An invitation. The structure is not inert — it is conscious. Ancient. Beyond human understanding. Her crew isn’t dead — not in any human sense. They are now part of it. Echoes in its mind.



Fighting fear and the unknown, Elara records her last message, not out of despair, but of revelation. She understands now: this was always meant to happen. Her fate is not to escape, but to join. To step through the open airlock into something beyond time and thought.



As she prepares to cross the threshold, she leaves a final warning:

“If you find this message, don’t come looking.

Some doors should never be opened.

And some transmissions… should never be answered.”