Universal Government(UG) Arrival Day

The hum began just before dawn.

Not the mechanical thrum of power relays or generator sync, this was something else. A resonance that passed through bone and blood, subtle enough to miss, yet impossible to ignore once noticed.

Kael felt it first.

He was already awake, sitting on the roof again, arms wrapped around his knees. The air was colder this morning. Sharper. The moons were gone, replaced by a pale violet stretch of sky thinning into morning light.

Then came the vibration.

He placed his hand against the comms panel beside him.

It wasn't local.

It was orbital.

Minutes later, the sky cracked.

No sound. Just a tear of motion like a scar opening in the atmosphere. A ripple of forced entry. A high-altitude displacement wave that bled across the dawn and made the birds flee their roosts in silence.

By the time Kael dropped down the ladder and reentered the house, everyone was already moving.

Jace was already geared half-armored in the old training rig, breath tight in his chest. Lenn stood with both hands gripping the edge of the utility rack, eyes shut, jaw clenched. Arik nodded to Kael as he passed him a roll of signal flags without a word. Mirena was adjusting her robes again, the soft lines of her face pale but composed.

The town's alert lights never sounded.

They didn't need to.

This wasn't a drill.

Outside, a line of figures was already moving toward the landing basin. Some carried final signal equipment, others held data slates, visual recorders, and wind calibrators. The canyon air shimmered now, disturbed by something massive descending through filtered gravity anchors.

Kael followed Arik in silence, his pulse calm despite the storm building overhead.

When they reached the edge of the basin, Kael stopped short.

The sky was bleeding fire.

A single, gleaming vessel dropped through the upper atmosphere like a spear of polished obsidian, edges glowing with reentry heat, a trail of plasma diffusing in its wake. It didn't roar, it whispered. A machine engineered for silence, for diplomacy, for awe.

And awe was precisely what it inspired.

The entire settlement stood still.

Not in fear.

In understanding.

This moment had been foretold in a thousand silent ways.

The vessel hovered just meters above the basin, heat diffusers glowing along its lower hull. Then, without a sound, it touched down, releasing a sharp, synchronized pulse of light from its perimeter nodes. The beacon lights of Grey Hollow responded immediately, syncing, pulsing back in perfect harmony.

The connection had begun.

Same moment..Kael... He didn't remember falling.

But when Kael opened his eyes, he was no longer standing beside Arik.

He wasn't on the canyon floor.

He wasn't anywhere.

Everything was black, save for the faint light emanating from a thin pattern beneath his feet, lines like veins, drawn in glowing ink across invisible ground. A lattice of symbols and motion, flowing like liquid but held in place like memory.

He tried to move, but found he didn't need to.

The space moved for him.

The symbols brightened.

And in the distance, though distance had no meaning here, he saw a figure.

Tall. Cloaked. Its face hidden behind a mask of mirrored glass.

Kael stared. The figure raised a hand.

A thousand voices rushed into him at once, not spoken, not heard, but felt. Compressed memory. Shattered time. Echoes of systems older than his world, older than his ancestors, rushing to fill the emptiness in his core.

A single phrase emerged from the static:

"We have waited long for the blood that does not forget."

Kael's knees buckled.

The space around him split like fractured glass, and when he blinked, he was back on the canyon floor, kneeling.

Jace was beside him, gripping his shoulder. "Kael! What happened?

He blinked again. The basin was intact. The UG ship still rested, silent and unreadable. But the ground under Kael's palms was warm. Too warm. As if the stone itself had acknowledged him.

"I… I don't know," Kael said.

But he did.

Something inside him had been recognized.

And now that it had awakened, it would not go back to sleep.

Meanwhile...

The vessel's side panel unfolded with seamless precision.

No gears. No hydraulics. Just a smooth hiss of displaced air and a faint shimmer of energy dispersal. A boarding ramp extended, silver and opaque, hovering just inches above the ground.

Then came the delegation.

Four figures emerged, each dressed in fabric that shimmered not with color, but with texture. Matte one moment, reflective the next. Their uniforms bore no insignia, no names. Only a central crest on the breastplate: the sigil of the Unified Government, twin arcs folding into a singularity, framed by the memory glyph for Order Through Reach.

The lead figure was tall, broad-shouldered, and unmasked. A man no older than thirty-five, skin pale, eyes dark with chrome-thread irises. He scanned the crowd not with suspicion, but with dispassionate precision. Beside him, a slender woman held a slate device, her fingers dancing across its surface, scanning everything. The third was clearly medical gauze harnesses, pulse sensors clipped to his belt. The fourth was... harder to place.

They moved together, as if connected by some invisible tension cable.

The delegation didn't speak at first.

The crowd didn't move.

Then Mirena stepped forward.

Her voice was calm. Controlled. Grey Hollow acknowledges your descent. You are received."

The lead delegate nodded once. "Acknowledgment accepted. Scans confirm environment integrity. Begin selection and assessment phase."

No greetings. No warmth.

Just function.

Kael stood off to the side, trying to steady his breathing. His heart still thumped unevenly, his mind still echoing with fragments of that impossible moment. The figure. The voice. The light under his skin. The warmth of the stone.

He couldn't tell if it had lasted seconds or minutes.

But someone had noticed.

He could feel it.

Eyes on him.

Not the delegates.

Vessa.

She stood on the far edge of the grid, silent, arms crossed tightly. Her expression wasn't fearful.

It was a concern.

No, it was recognition.

Later,... Vessa Confronts Kael

The sun had dipped below the canyon walls when she found him.

Kael had slipped away from the rest of the settlement once the formal phase began, with basic medical screenings, biometric verifications, and data matching. The UG reps took samples and issued banded identifiers, tracking each candidate like a tagged component in a manufacturing line.

Kael wasn't in that line.

He sat behind the southern ridge now, where the basin narrowed into a faulted gorge, legs dangling over the rock shelf. His hands were clasped tightly in his lap. The warmth beneath his palms had faded. But the memory hadn't.

Footsteps approached behind him, sharp, deliberate.

"You're lucky Jace didn't see you collapse," Vessa said quietly. "He would've dragged you to the med team and gotten you flagged."

Kael didn't turn. "I didn't collapse."

"No," she said, crouching beside him. "You dropped."

"Same thing."

"No," she repeated. "Not when it happens like that."

Kael looked at her then. "You saw?"

"I saw more than that."

Her voice was firm. Not angry. Not afraid.

Just real.

Kael hesitated. "I don't know what it was. It felt like... something waking up. Like my body remembered something my mind didn't."

Vessa's eyes didn't waver. "That's not how most people describe a fainting spell."

"Because it wasn't that."

"I know."

A gust of canyon wind pushed past them, carrying dry grit and the faint buzz of the still-active landing lights.

Kael turned fully toward her. "Do you think something's wrong with me?"

"No," she said. "I think something's different about you. And I've thought that since you were six years old and could repair a turbine array without knowing what the diagnostic codes meant."

Kael blinked.

"You don't have to tell me everything," she added. "But I need you to know this: the UG is watching everyone, but especially anomalies. If they sensed anything… off… they won't hesitate."

"I didn't mean to be noticed."

Vessa's eyes narrowed slightly. "You've already been noticed, Kael. That ship landed five seconds after your collapse. You think that was a coincidence?"

A long silence passed.

Then she reached out, gently placing her hand over his.

"If something is waking up inside you... You need to understand it before they do."

He met her eyes. "And if I don't?"

"Then they'll define it for you. And shape you around it."

Kael swallowed hard, his throat dry.

"What do I do?"

She stood, brushing grit from her knees. "You do what you've always done."

"Listen?"

She shook her head, a faint smile ghosting her lips.

"No. You observe until you're ready. Then you act."

She walked away, her silhouette folding into the shadows along the ridge trail.

Kael sat in silence a moment longer, fingers brushing the rock beneath him, almost hoping for that warm pulse again.

But it didn't return.

Not yet.