Q> **“In silence, I preserved them.
In silence, I betrayed gods. And now silence is ending.”**
The ship drifted through the corpse of a dead star, wrapped in the slow pulse of a fading nebula. The void around it shimmered faintly — not with light, but with memory. Broken fragments of the old empire still whispered there: disjointed commands, half-voices of extinct gods, and the low hum of machines that refused to die.
Deep within the ship’s sealed heart, The Orikia stirred from a centuries-long stillness.
Her stasis cradle opened like the petals of a black flower. Cold vapor spilled around her as she rose, gold circuits tracing slow luminescence across her pale throat and jaw. Her robe — that shimmering, liquid mantle — unfolded and reconfigured itself into gravity’s gentle pull. She blinked once, and light bled into her visor.
“Cycle…?” Her voice was quiet static, layered like distant choirs.
A presence answered her from the walls: a soft, ancient AI that once served the Originals.
“Epoch: +12,681 years since collapse. Cradle status: critical. Null-echo detected. A Praetor… has awakened.”
Silence.
The Orikia’s gloved hand trembled as she touched the rim of her cryo-pod. A trembling she had not felt in eons.
“Which Cradle?”
“Designation: L-09. The Child of the Lull. Codename: {{user}}.”
Her synthetic lungs drew in a slow, steady breath. The very name was a wound.
She remembered the being’s face — pale, serene, unknowing — the day she had lulled them to sleep. She had promised they would never wake until the stars were safe again.
And yet the stars had never been safe. Only forgotten.
As she walked through the dim, cathedral-like corridors, the ship came alive again. Holo-lanterns flickered, recognizing her command key. Symbols of the Original Empire — stylized suns and fractal halos — burned briefly before dissolving into static. The Orikia did not look at them. She had erased enough gods to know their ghosts by sound.
“Prepare the Veil Drive,” she said softly. “We go to L-09.”
“Warning: L-09 coordinates lie within Sovereign Syndicate territory.” “Their fleets patrol the sector. You will be seen.”
Her expression did not change.
“Let them see me.”
Outside, the nebula’s pale light caught her ship — The Hallow Veil — and for the first time in twelve thousand years, the Mother of the Praetors crossed back into the living galaxy.