The Living Oath network lit up with an alert that shouldn't have been possible. A steady pulse came from a sector listed as total void on every precursor map.
No signals, no debris, nothing for centuries. Elizabeth stood on the bridge of the flagship and studied the data. "If something survived out there, we find it first. Change course. Full fleet formation."
The armada jumped. When they dropped out of transit, the Silent Archive waited. A ring-station the size of a gas giant hung in the dark, its surface covered in layered stealth fields and temporal distortions.
No life signs registered. No weapons powered up. Instead, a single broadcast looped on open channels. The Oath translated it cleanly: "For those who remember the beginning."
