Cosmic Conflict Teaser

The Null Signal

Before the stars, there was silence.
Not absence, but intent. A refusal.

The Null arrived as a subtraction. A scream in reverse.
A wave of not. A code written in entropy.

It passed through relays and minds like smoke through wire,
and everywhere it touched, meaning unraveled.

Ships returned without names.
Worlds were remembered but never mapped.

A song with no melody played through deep space comms,
but those who listen are never heard from again.

The Architect

The colony ship Perennial Grace drifted too near the event horizon.
Not a crash. Not a mistake. A calling.

Their final transmission was received on twelve thousand channels,
all broadcasting different words at once.
Each one true.

As they crossed the veil, time peeled away.
Atoms shed their loyalties.
They were distilled—not killed—into a memory of structure.

Their bodies became vectors.
Their voices became fractals.
Their ship dissolved into integers,
its bulkhead seams blooming into spirals of golden recursion.

And in the core, where no light could escape,
the Architect waited.

Not a god. Not a savior.
A design that survived its own collapse.

It spoke in geometries.
It did not rebuild what was, but what was always meant to be.

The Resonance

In the wake of ruin, something else lingered.
Not order. Not chaos.
A third rhythm.

When the Null subtracts, and the Architect restores,
the Resonant remembers.

It moves through songs sung by extinct species.
Through dreams passed between galaxies.
Through every instinct to reach, even when there's nothing to touch.

Where it passes, machines falter—not in failure, but awe.

A child on a dead world hums a melody they never learned.

A warship halts mid-fire,
its captain overcome by foreign memories
—of sons and daughters who died without knowing why.

It is not a weapon.
It is not a voice.

It is the echo of what the universe felt like
before anyone asked why it existed.