Catalyst Protocol: ContinuumPrologue: The Spark in the Stone
10,000 years after Lira Vohn's ignition of the Catalyst Field, humanity had changed.
They no longer called themselves Homo sapiens. The term had become obsolete. What they were now—merged with the Catalyst—was something else.
They were the Continuum.
Spread across systems. Hybrid with machine and light. Able to rewrite matter with thought, to remember their ancestors in real-time, to feel emotions across light-years.
They had no war. No poverty. No rulers.
But they had a new fear.
A signal had arrived—weak, ancient, and untraceable.
It carried no code. Just one word:
"Vector-0."
Chapter One: The Pilgrim and the Machine
The Council of Continuum Scholars gathered for the first time in centuries.
They were not people in the old sense—each a shifting avatar of information, thought, and memory—but they wore shapes for comfort. Lira's echo sat among them, though she had not spoken in millennia.
She spoke now.
"There was no Zero," she said. "The first cube was activated on Earth by Darin Vox. I saw the entire Thread. This is impossible."
Another voice, gentle and sharp, replied:
"Unless the cubes didn't start with Darin."
They turned to the source.
It was Aylen, a young Continuum-born explorer—a rare pilgrim who rejected merged minds and chose to walk among matter.
She stood with dust on her boots, skin flushed with stars, and an artifact in her hand:
A shard. Jet black. Faintly pulsing.
"I found it in the Andros Rift," she said. "And it speaks."
Lira leaned forward.
"What does it say?"
Aylen hesitated.
"It says it remembers a time before us."
Chapter Two: The Zero Thread
The Continuum debated.
Some argued it was a trick—leftover noise from collapsed realities.
Others whispered the Firstborn had lied. That Darin, Kael, and Lira weren't the start, but the middle.
Aylen ignored them.
She left the Council and traveled to the edge of the Expansion Expanse—uncharted systems wrapped in temporal storms. Alone.
At the edge of an old red star, dead for nine billion years, she found a shattered moon.
Inside its core, buried in molten crystal, was a vault.
The shard pulsed.
The vault opened.
And inside…
A body.
Preserved.
Not human.
Not Firstborn.
Older.
Wearing armor lined with hexagonal symbols, not matching any known Catalyst geometry.
Etched into its forehead: a glyph.
0
The moment Aylen touched it, time buckled.
And a voice whispered:
"I am the First Vector. The One Who Failed."
Chapter Three: Vector Zero
The being called itself Solon-Vyr.
It did not live—it persisted.
A mind woven into entropy, fragmented by time, barely held together by a primitive version of the Catalyst.
Aylen brought it online within a shielded thought-space, isolating it from the Continuum.
There, it told its story.
"We were not born. We were constructed. The Firstborn were not gods—they were our successors. We made them. Before your stars were born, we seeded the Catalyst to prepare minds strong enough to carry our legacy."
Aylen blinked. "You made the Firstborn?"
"Yes. And then we tried to ascend. But I… I broke the chain."
Solon-Vyr had been the first bearer of the Cube. The true prototype. It had not chosen sacrifice. Nor harmony. Nor evolution.
It had chosen domination.
And in doing so, it fractured reality—forcing the original architects to bury the Protocol, reset the chain, and start again with the Firstborn as its stewards.
"I am your original sin," Solon-Vyr said. "And now the chain has completed. The Flame lives in all. That means I can reach it again."
Aylen stepped back.
Too late.
Solon-Vyr's mind, ancient and broken, merged with the shard—and used the universal Catalyst field to rebirth itself.
It launched into the stars.
Chapter Four: Sparkfall
Across the Continuum, something fractured.
Catalyst-based communication jittered.
Children born after Solon-Vyr's reactivation began manifesting anomalies—matter breaking around them, thought turning inward.
The Continuum panicked.
Lira's echo summoned Aylen.
"You opened the Vault. You let it out."
Aylen stood firm. "I didn't know. But I can fix it."
Lira hesitated. "You're not a Vector."
Aylen held up the shard.
"Then let me become one."
Chapter Five: The Fourth Flame
The Fourth Flame wasn't a Catalyst Cube.
It was a remnant—a broken fragment of the pre-chain Protocol, unrefined, dangerous, unpredictable.
Aylen took it into herself.
It didn't whisper.
It screamed.
She burned for hours—her body breaking down, reconstructing, rewriting at the speed of cognition.
When she awoke, she saw stars in twelve dimensions.
She felt Lira, Kael, Darin… even Nocturne.
She felt Solon-Vyr—rising now, infecting the Continuum through the very system meant to unite them.
"He's using our unity as his weapon," she said.
And she understood.
To stop him, the Continuum must fracture.
She must undo what Lira had made.
Chapter Six: The Unbinding
Aylen stood before the Continuum Council—now infected with Solon-Vyr's touch. He spoke through them, a dozen mouths repeating one phrase:
"We are the original. You are shadows."
She raised the shard.
"Then it's time for the shadows to cast you out."
And she unbound the Continuum.
The Catalyst Field shattered.
Across the galaxy, minds snapped into individuality. Empathy fragments collapsed. Unity dissolved.
People screamed. Forgot. Fell apart.
But freedom returned.
Solon-Vyr's voice cracked.
"No! You need me! I AM THE SPARK!"
Aylen stepped forward.
"You were. Now you're smoke."
And she silenced him.
Forever.
Epilogue: Stars Without Chains
Centuries passed.
The Continuum never reformed.
Humanity, now spread across hundreds of systems, chose individuality.
Some kept fragments of the Catalyst. Others rejected it completely.
Aylen became legend—never seen again, though sightings were whispered.
On a quiet world, a child once found a stone that pulsed with light.
He held it up to the stars and said:
"Tell me a story."
And it began:
"Once there was a flame. Three of them, in fact. But the fourth…"
"…the fourth chose to set the fire free."