Morning came anyway.
That was the strangest part.
After the sky bent.
After the stars moved.
After something vast had answered a single human mind—
The sun still rose.
Artificial though it was, the colony's daylight cycle activated right on schedule. Floodlights dimmed. Atmospheric filters brightened the sky into a pale amber glow. Sirens marked the shift change with mechanical indifference.
Routine.
Virex-9 clung to routine like a drowning body clings to driftwood.
But nothing felt real anymore.
Kael hadn't slept.
Not truly.
He had spent the night sitting against the cold wall of his quarters, staring at nothing, replaying the sky over and over again in his mind. Every flicker. Every shift. Every impossible second burned into memory with perfect clarity.
He still felt it.
Not the full presence from last night.
But an echo.
Like warmth left behind after lightning strikes nearby.
A reminder.
You are not alone anymore.
That thought should have been comforting.
Instead, it hollowed him out.
A sharp knock hit his door.
Kael flinched violently.
Not because of the sound—but because of what it might mean.
Dominion.
Containment.
Disappearance.
The knock came again.
Firmer this time.
"Kael," Vera's voice called from the other side. "It's me."
He exhaled shakily and stood, legs stiff and heavy. When the door slid open, Vera stepped in quickly, scanning the corridor behind her before sealing it shut again.
She looked worse than he did.
Dark circles under her eyes. Jaw tight. Shoulders rigid like coiled wire.
"You didn't sleep either," he muttered.
She shook her head. "Nobody did."
That made sense.
After something like that, sleep would feel like denial.
And denial was impossible now.
"They shut down all external comms," she said immediately.
Kael's stomach dropped. "Dominion?"
"Has to be." She paced the small room restlessly. "No outgoing signals. No incoming traffic. Even internal relays are being filtered."
"They're locking the colony down," Kael whispered.
"Yes."
The word hung heavy between them.
Because both of them understood what lockdown meant in Dominion territory.
Investigation.
Isolation.
Erasure.
Kael sat slowly on the edge of his narrow bunk, running a hand through his hair. "Maybe they think it was a mass hallucination."
Vera stopped pacing and gave him a look that was almost pity.
"After what happened in the mines?" she asked quietly. "After the grid failure? After last night?"
He didn't respond.
Because they both knew the truth.
The Dominion didn't believe in coincidences.
If something impossible happened—
It was a threat.
And threats were removed.
A cold weight settled in Kael's chest.
"Then why hasn't anything happened yet?" he asked.
That was the question.
The terrifying one.
Because silence from the Dominion wasn't mercy.
It was calculation.
Vera didn't answer right away.
Instead, she walked to the small window slit built into the wall and looked out over the colony.
When she spoke, her voice was quieter.
"Because they're watching first."
Kael followed her gaze.
Outside, Virex-9 looked the same.
Mining towers rose like skeletal giants against the dusty horizon. Transport rails hummed. Workers moved in small clusters, speaking in hushed voices.
Normal.
Except for one thing.
The sky.
It looked completely ordinary now.
Still.
Empty.
Silent.
But no one trusted it anymore.
"They saw it too," Kael said softly.
Vera nodded. "Every orbital relay. Every satellite. Every Dominion sensor in this sector."
A chill crawled up his spine.
Which meant the most powerful force in human space had witnessed the same thing he had.
And they would want answers.
Kael swallowed hard. "They'll blame the colony."
"Of course they will."
"They'll blame me," he said before he could stop himself.
Vera didn't deny it.
That hurt more than if she had argued.
Because deep down, he already knew.
He had felt the connection.
The thread between himself and the sky.
If he could feel it…
Something else might too.
"You can't let them know," she said firmly.
Kael looked at her. "Let them know what?"
"That it answered you."
The words struck like a physical blow.
"Vera—"
"Listen to me." She stepped closer, voice low and urgent. "If the Dominion even suspects that you're connected to whatever that was, you're not just in danger. You're gone."
Not arrested.
Not imprisoned.
Gone.
Kael's hands began to tremble.
Because he believed her.
Not out of fear.
Out of logic.
The Dominion didn't study anomalies.
It erased them.
A long silence stretched between them.
Then—
Something shifted inside him.
Not the whisper.
Not the presence.
Something human.
A realization that settled slowly but completely.
"They won't stop," he said quietly.
Vera frowned. "What do you mean?"
"They won't stop looking," Kael continued. "Not until they understand what happened."
"That's obvious."
"No," he said, shaking his head. "You don't understand. If they keep looking… they might find it again."
Her expression changed instantly.
Fear.
Real fear.
Not of the Dominion.
Of something else.
Because now she understood what he was really saying.
If the Dominion kept pushing outward…
If they probed the sky hard enough…
They might provoke whatever had answered.
And that thought was far more terrifying than any government.
"You think it would come back?" she whispered.
Kael didn't answer immediately.
Because he didn't know.
But deep inside—
He felt something.
Not words.
Not intent.
A quiet certainty.
Not gone.
Waiting.
And somehow, impossibly—
Watching through him.
"I don't think it ever left," he said.
The room fell into suffocating silence.
Outside, the colony moved like a machine trying to convince itself it was still alive.
Inside, two people stood on the edge of something neither of them could name.
Finally, Vera spoke again.
"What do we do?"
It was the first time she'd asked that.
Not told.
Asked.
And that scared Kael more than anything else so far.
Because it meant there were no instructions anymore.
No systems.
No rules.
No safety.
Just choices.
And consequences.
Kael looked toward the window again, toward the pale imitation of a sky that had already proven it could lie.
"I don't know," he admitted.
And for the first time since the silence in the mines—
That answer felt honest.
Because whatever came next…
Would not belong to the Dominion.
Would not belong to the colony.
Would not belong to humanity at all.
Something had answered from beyond the stars.
And now the universe was no longer quiet.
It was waiting to see what he would do next.