The alarms screamed.
Kael bolted upright, the Echohound's deck bathed in flashing red light.
"Contact!" Lira shouted from the console, hands flying over the controls. "Something just ripped into realspace!"
Kael was already moving, strapping into the captain's chair.
"Visuals!"
The main screen flickered—and froze.
At first, there was nothing but darkness.
Then... it moved.
A vast, featureless shape, blacker than the void itself, coiled in the distance. No engines. No lights. Just a presence that made Kael's skin crawl and his heart hammer in his chest.
Vakya's voice whispered in his mind:
> Warning: Silence Entity detected.
Codename: The Maw.
Advisory: Immediate disengagement recommended.
Kael's mouth went dry.
The Riftborn's warning had not been a prophecy.
It had been a countdown.
And time had run out.
The Maw surged forward.
It didn't move like a ship. It didn't accelerate or burn fuel.
It flowed—like a living shadow across a frozen sea.
"Weapons online!" Rax barked, slamming missiles into launch bays.
Lira cursed under her breath. "Targeting systems aren't locking—it's like it's not even there!"
Kael gritted his teeth.
"Fire manually."
Rax didn't hesitate.
The Echohound's cannons roared, lighting up the void with torrents of plasma and explosive shells.
The blasts struck the Maw—and vanished.
No sparks. No impact. As if the very laws of physics refused to acknowledge the creature's existence.
Kael felt it then—not just in his mind, but in his soul.
The Maw wasn't here to fight.
It was here to erase.
"Hard evasive!" Kael barked.
The Echohound banked sharply, engines howling.
The Maw lashed out, a tendril of darkness whipping past them, missing by meters.
Where it touched the debris field, ships that had floated for millennia simply... disappeared.
No explosion.
No wreckage.
Gone.
Wiped from history.
Lira's voice was tight with fear.
"It's rewriting the space around it—deleting everything!"
Kael's mind raced.
They couldn't kill it.
Couldn't outrun it.
But maybe... they could outthink it.
"Vakya," he said aloud, "analyze its movement pattern."
> Processing...
Prediction: Maw follows narrative disruption vectors.
Conclusion: It seeks sources of Shard resonance.
Kael understood instantly.
It was hunting him.
He stood, unbuckling himself.
"Rax, prep the skiff."
The big man stared at him. "You can't be serious."
"I am. It's after me, not the ship. I'll draw it away."
Lira grabbed his arm. "That's suicide!"
Kael squeezed her hand gently.
"It's survival."
The Echohound couldn't fight the Maw. But maybe—just maybe—Kael could lead it somewhere... break its focus... buy time.
He turned to Rax.
"Lock onto my beacon. If I don't call for pickup in twenty minutes... leave."
Rax's jaw clenched.
"You're a stubborn bastard," he muttered.
Kael grinned faintly.
"Comes with the job."
The skiff launched, a tiny dart of light against the overwhelming black.
Kael piloted manually, diving between shattered asteroids and frozen hulks.
Behind him, the Maw followed.
Slow. Inevitable.
A glacier of annihilation.
Every instinct screamed at him to run, but he forced himself to stay steady—unpredictable. He weaved through a wrecked battleship, engines burning erratically, cutting sharp turns that defied the Maw's slow hunger.
And slowly... the gap widened.
But not enough.
Vakya whispered:
> Structural integrity warning.
Gravitational stress increasing.
Probability of survival: 12%.
Kael laughed bitterly.
"I've beaten worse odds."
Ahead, he spotted it—a rift, a natural spatial tear hovering near a neutron star's corpse.
A gravity well deep enough to crush entire fleets.
Kael's mind raced.
The Maw wasn't bound by normal physics—but if he could bait it closer...
Maybe even it had limits.
He shoved the throttle forward, every alarm on the skiff blaring in protest.
The rift loomed larger.
The Maw followed.
Vakya's voice was grim:
> Warning: Point of no return approaching.
Kael didn't slow down.
At the last possible second, he yanked the skiff into a sharp arc, engines screaming, barely skimming the edge of the gravity well.
The Maw surged forward—and faltered.
Its form twisted, shuddered.
For a brief moment, Kael saw inside it—saw the flickering bones of failed timelines, the hollow remnants of worlds that had never been.
And then, with a silent roar, the gravity well caught the Silence.
The Maw was pulled inward, folding and unraveling at the same time, its form disintegrating into streams of broken possibility.
Gone.
Kael coasted away from the rift, every system in the skiff on the verge of collapse.
He slumped back in his seat, heart hammering.
Vakya's voice was softer now:
> Threat neutralized.
Warning: Entity may reconstitute over time.
Recommendation: Accelerate Shard acquisition.
Kael laughed weakly.
"Yeah... no kidding."
The Echohound swooped into view, tractor beams locking onto his battered skiff.
As they reeled him in, Kael closed his eyes.
The Maw had been just one of many.
The Silence was coming.
And next time... it would be even stronger.
But Kael wasn't afraid.
He was ready.
The Song wasn't finished yet.
And neither was he.