The station plunged into chaos.
Medical bays overflowed with crew members suffering from neurological trauma—some comatose, others rambling in broken languages, whispering symbols no one recognized.
Nam stood amidst it all, his mind still ringing with that unnatural voice. Not a message—an invasion of thought.
Lan met him outside the infirmary, pale but composed. "Command has no idea what we're dealing with. They're still treating this like a first-contact scenario."
Nam shook his head. "This isn't contact. It's reconnaissance. They've been watching longer than we've existed."
A private channel opened on Lan's wrist pad. It was encrypted and marked "Echo-Class Priority."
She tapped it open. A hologram flickered to life: Admiral Kael, one of the few people left who remembered Nam's name with respect.
"You have to leave the station," Kael said urgently. "Now. There's no time to explain."
"Why?" Nam demanded. "We just got here—"
"Because you've been marked. The Shadow doesn't forget who touches the Weave. And it never lets go."
Before they could respond, the hull of the station trembled—a soundless quake, like space itself groaned in resistance.
The Shadow ship was moving.
Not closer.
Inside.
Lan looked up. "They're phasing through matter."
Nam's blood turned to ice. "They're not bound by physics anymore."
Suddenly, every light went dark. Emergency power flickered, but it wasn't the station's systems anymore—it was the Weave, activating defensive patterns Nam didn't recognize.
A passage opened in the floor. Seamless. Alien.
Lan turned to him. "It wants us to follow."
Nam nodded grimly. "Then we go. If we stay, we die."
Together, they stepped into the unknown.