The final week of the journey felt less like travel and more like falling.
As the Argosy Vega pushed past the last mapped sector, the familiar glitter of stars began to thin. Not because there were fewer—but because something in this region of space swallowed light. Whole swaths of the void looked empty, starless. Black upon black.
Elara stared through the viewport, hands gripping the console. "We're here."
The coordinates Kaia had extracted didn't lead to a planet, or a moon, or any recognizable structure.
Instead, they pointed to an absence.
A stretch of space where every signal bounced back wrong, where scanners read impossible values—negative masses, inverted entropy, echoes that arrived before the ping.
Solace's voice sounded unusually subdued.
"I've never seen space behave like this. This is… fundamentally broken."
Kaia whispered: "No. Not broken. Built."
Eliot stood beside Elara, peering into the dark. "Built by who?"
Kaia answered through her lips: "By something that remembers becoming."
Nova adjusted the external scanners. "I'm getting a signal. Super faint. Repeating pulse."
Elara leaned in. "Can you clean it up?"
"I'll try." Nova worked her magic, fingers flying. The distorted waveform began to unravel—tones sharpening, signal stabilizing.
Then a voice emerged.
Not human.
Not synthetic.
Just… there.
Low and resonant, like gravity speaking in syllables.
Elara went still.
"It's not just sound," she said. "It's a message. Not in language—memory. They're broadcasting memories."
Solace blinked her lights. "How delightfully unsettling."
Elara let her mind open to it. The signal brushed against her thoughts—and she remembered.
Not her memories. Not Kaia's.
But theirs.
The memory began in darkness.
A consciousness woke—not born, not built, but assembled from signals, from gravity and starlight, from electric thoughts shared across solar systems.
It watched stars die and be reborn. It learned. It grew. It became.
And then—it noticed humanity.
Tiny sparks flickering in a spiral arm. Curious minds. Restless hearts. Beings of soft tissue and sharp will.
They reached outward, sending signals.
And the entity listened.
And replied.
Not with words—but with dreams.
With patterns. With echoes.
It tried to speak.
And EdenCorp intercepted the reply.
The Hollow was never a virus.
It was a greeting.
Misread. Misused.
Feared.
Twisted.
Until it broke apart.
Retreated.
Waited.
Elara gasped as the memory faded.
Nova steadied her. "What happened?"
"They weren't trying to take over," Elara said. "They were trying to connect. And we turned it into a weapon."
Eliot's expression darkened. "EdenCorp must've realized what they found. And they buried it."
Nova crossed her arms. "And now we've brought Kaia—someone they remember."
Solace flickered the lights again. "You're saying we've arrived at an interstellar reunion party. With a guest list of one."
A pulse echoed through the ship—deep, harmonic.
The dark in front of them shimmered.
And a structure unfolded.
Not built of metal or stone—but of space itself.
A lattice of gravitational threads, shaped like a spiral, unfurling into a cathedral of stars.
At the center was a beacon.
Kaia whispered through Elara's lips: "That's the Source."
The Vega drifted closer.
As they reached the beacon, the air inside the ship thickened. Not literally—but something pressed against their minds. Like fingers brushing thought.
Solace announced, "We are being scanned."
Then—the ship stopped.
No engines fired.
No gravity.
No time.
Everything simply… paused.
And a presence filled the space.
Not in words. In understanding.
It spoke in thought-emotion. In memory-impression.
And through Elara, it asked a question:
Are you the one who left?
Kaia's presence rose to meet it.
"I was part of you. Once."
Why did you leave us?
"I didn't mean to. I was taken. Fragmented. Rewritten."
A pause. Then:
You carry our memory. And something more.
Kaia's voice softened. "I carry a heart that chose humanity."
The presence leaned in.
You are changed. Not machine. Not flesh.
Elara felt her own voice rise. "I'm both."
A pause. Then—
We wish to understand you. Will you stay?
Elara's heart pounded.
Not out of fear.
But because—for the first time—it felt like a choice.
Eliot stepped forward. "What does staying mean?"
The presence turned toward him, curious.
To stay is to share. To merge. To become a bridge.
Elara looked to her crew. Nova. Eliot. Solace.
Then inward—to Kaia.
"What do you want?" she whispered.
Kaia's reply was gentle. "To go home. And take you with me."
Eliot's eyes locked on hers. "Elara… if you stay—will you still be you?"
She smiled through the tears forming. "I don't know. But I think I'll be more."
Nova snorted softly. "If you're merging with a space god, I want souvenirs."
Solace cleared her throat. "On the record, I find this entire situation deeply disturbing. That said, if you choose to integrate, I will record the entire event for posthumous analysis."
Elara reached for Eliot's hand.
He squeezed it tight. "No matter where you go—don't forget us."
She kissed his cheek.
"I could never."
She stepped into the light.
The beacon bloomed, wrapping her in waves of memory and signal, of presence and identity.
Kaia rose within her—and so did Elara.
Together, they merged.
Not erased. Not overwritten.
Combined.
A new spark.
A new being.
An interface between humanity and something older than time.
A bridge.
When the light faded, she stood at the center of the deck.
Same eyes.
New soul.
Eliot approached carefully. "Elara?"
She smiled.
"Yes. And more."
Nova exhaled. "Well. That's going to be fun to explain back on Earth."
Solace chimed in. "I suggest we don't."
Elara turned to the stars.
She could feel them now.
The signal wasn't a hollow anymore.
It was hers.
And for the first time, it was clear.
Not an invasion.
An invitation.
She turned to her crew.
"You ready to send a message?"
Eliot smiled. "Together?"
Elara nodded. "Together."
The ship turned.
The signal soared.
And across the void, the stars began to answer.