The moment the Tempest was swallowed by the Wave , time itself seemed to lose its meaning. The stars outside twisted into impossibly sharp angles, bending and breaking like glass under pressure. The ship lurched, its system groaning under the strain, as if the very fabric of space around them was testing their will to survive.
"Status report!" Kael's voice cut through the chaos, roughened by the roaring hum of the emergency alarms.
"Shields are holding for now, but the power level are unstable," Sera's voice come in over the comms, strained but focused. "We're being pulled deeper into the distortion. The gravity-manipulation field is active, but it's fluctuating."
"Keep it stable," Kael snapped, eyes narrowed as he gripped the edge of the command chair. "Do whatever you can Lieutenant. I don't need to remind you that we're not just fighting this Wave--we're fighting to understand it."
The ship groaned again, the hull creaking as through the very structure of the Tempest were being stretched thin. Kael's knuckles turned white as he tightened his grip. The field was flickering--one minute, it would hold, the next it would tear at the edges like fraying fabric. They were inside it now, hurtling towards the heart of the storm.
Suddenly, the view outside shifted.
At first, it was subtle--a ripple across the stars, as if someone had disturbed the surface of a vast ocean. But then, a deep rumbled shook the deck beneath Kael's feet. And then it came--the center of the Wave.
It wasn't like anything Kael had ever seen. The Wave was no longer just a distortion in space--it was a living, pulsating mass. It wasn't a force of nature or a weapon of war or even a anomaly. It was something more.
A massive swirling vortex of energy, vast beyond comprehension, throbbed in the distance. Pulses of light erupted from its core, like lightning in a thunderstorm, rippling outward with terrifying speed. But what froze Keal's blood wasn't the storm itself--it was what wasn't there. The emptiness.
He had read the reports, he had heard the whispers. But seeing it with his own eyes was different. The stars--the very stars--flickered and died in the wake of the Wave. Not like they were being destroyed. It was as if they were being erased, reduced to nothingness, their light snuffed out of existence before it even had a chance to burn.
"We're not in space anymore," Sera muttered, her voice trembling slightly as she watched the display. "Whatever this is, it's not natural. It's not just a Wave. It's like--like a filter or a boundary. It's consuming everything."
"Keep your eyes on the readings," Keal barked. "We need to gather data, not speculate. If we're going to survive this, we need to understand what it's doing to us." But even as the words left his lips, something new began to happen. The stars that were once swallowed by the Wave...started to pulse.
It was subtle at first, almost imperceptible--like distant beacons blinking from the depths of the Void. And then, the pulses grew stronger, more coordinated, as if they were following a pattern.
A pattern they hadn't seen before. A pattern that didn't make sense.
"Commander...Commander!" Seras voice was sharp, panicked. "The energy pulses--they're coming from the Wave itself! They're not random!"
Kael's eyes shot to the viewport. The pulses were forming-shapes, like symbols, patterns, language. It was as though the very fabric of the Wave was communicating, broadcasting a message encoded in the movements of its energy.
"What is this?" Hale murmured from behind him, his voice filled with awe and dread in equal measure.
Before Kael could answer, the comms crackled to life. A voice-harsh, guttural-broke through the static.
"Are you... listening?"
Kael froze. His heart skipped a beat, the words hanging in the air like an impossible truth.
"Who is that?" Sera demanded, her eyes wide with disbelief. "What... what is that?"
"I don't know," Kael said, his mind racing. "But whoever they are, they're connected to this Wave."
The voice came again, louder this time, a low growl that reverberated in Kael's chest. "We are the Wakers. The sleep is long. You awaken what should never be."
"What are they saying?" Hale muttered, his eyes wide with confusion.
"It's not a language we know," Sera responded, her fingers dancing over her console, but her attempts to translate were futile. "It doesn't match anything in our database."
But Kael wasn't listening to the words-they didn't matter. The message, however cryptic, was secondary. What mattered was the fact that they were hearing it at all. This wasn't a natural phenomenon. It was a sentient presence. And it was reaching out to them.
And then, as quickly as the voice had come, it was gone, replaced by a guttural silence that swallowed the ship whole.
The hull rattled again. The Wave was closing in.
"Brace for impact!" Kael shouted, throwing himself into the command chair as the ship began to tremble violently. The gravity field was destabilizing, their artificial singularity failing under the pressure of the Wave's pull.
"Commander!" Sera's voice was frantic. "We can't hold it! We're being pulled into the center of the distortion. If we don't disengage the drive now, we'll be torn apart!"
Kael's mind raced, the weight of the decision hanging over him. They could pull the drive, but they'd be stuck at the mercy of whatever the Wave was. On the other hand, if they stayed in, they might not survive the storm's center.
No choice.
"Pull us deeper into it," Kael ordered, his voice low, his decision final. "We're going to push through this-find out what the hell it wants, and maybe we can turn the tables on it. We need answers."
A deep, guttural rumble echoed through the ship as if the Wave itself had heard him, responding with a sickening vibration that shook every last pier of the Tempest. The viewport flickered as the ship surged forward, driven by the failing gravitational field, hurtling into the heart of storm.
And as the ship disappeared into the swirling abyss, Commander Rynar Kael could only wonder what kind of hell they were about to unleash.