The stars were clear tonight.
Nolan sat at the edge of the cliff, his arms resting over his knees, his gaze locked onto the dark sky overhead. The grass moved in the wind around him like slow waves. Beside him, Vela sat with her legs crossed, her cloak tucked beneath her, silent and still.
Neither of them spoke for a long time.
Then Vela finally said, "I can still hear it."
Nolan turned slightly. "The song?"
She nodded once.
There was nothing musical about it. No melody, no rhythm. But it was still there — a presence, like a hum just outside the range of sound, still vibrating through their bones.
"I've flown past stars that sang to each other," Vela said. "But I've never heard a voice that wasn't alive."
"She was alive," Nolan said.
"Maybe."
"She was something."
Vela didn't argue. She leaned back on her hands and tilted her face toward the stars.
"You want to go back," she said.
"I don't think we should."
Vela's brow rose. "That's not like you."
Nolan let out a slow breath. "No, it isn't."
They sat in silence again, both thinking of the woman they had seen. Both thinking of how she looked — not powerful, not dangerous, but beyond them in a way neither could name.
Nolan stared up at the stars. "What if she's not from a place? What if she is a place?"
Vela tilted her head. "What if she's watching us now?"
Neither of them smiled at that thought.
Gabe had left two weeks ago.
No one noticed at first — or if they did, they didn't speak up. Gabe was always coming and going. He never made noise when he left, and he rarely gave updates when he came back. He would show up with a strange rock, or some new map carved into his arm, or a dozen stardust-smeared feathers from some celestial bird no one else had seen.
He wasn't searching for anything.
But he was searching.
This time, he had gone farther than usual — a dying solar system at the edge of a void pocket, where no star had lit the sky in centuries. The planets here didn't orbit anything anymore. They just drifted like bones in a frozen ocean.
Gabe landed on one.
The ground crunched under his feet. Black dust, thin ice. No air. No heat.
He walked anyway.
The planet was flat and broken. There were remnants of structures — not buildings, but something older. Sharp edges. Angles that didn't make sense. Not made by humans. Not made by Viltrumites. Maybe not made at all. Maybe grown.
He knelt beside one of them. Ran a finger along its edge. It flared faintly with violet light.
He didn't flinch.
He stood and began to hum to himself. Just a sound. Something low and forgettable.
He moved through the ruins without purpose. But as he walked, he started to carve. Not symbols. Not warnings. Just lines. Long, curving arcs that spiraled through the dust and vanished over ridges.
When he finished, he stepped back and looked at them from above.
It was a constellation.
Not one from Earth.
Not one Lyanna had shown him.
But one he had seen — once — in the far distance, painted across the side of a drifting comet.
He smiled.
He sat down, alone, and watched the stars overhead.
And for a few minutes, he forgot he wasn't home.
Alexandra walked through a shallow river.
The water was cold and brown. She didn't care. She had taken off her boots hours ago. They were tied to her belt now. Her hair was braided over one shoulder. Her eyes were fixed on the small human village up ahead.
She had seen it from a ridge two days ago. Something about it tugged at her — not curiosity, but something else. A need to feel something.
She didn't try to hide when she approached. There was no point. The humans didn't fear her. Not yet.
A young man spotted her first. He was carrying a basket of fish. He froze when he saw her, then waved awkwardly.
Alexandra waved back.
He motioned toward the fire pit in the center of the village. She walked there and sat.
They gave her food without asking who she was.
She accepted it without explaining.
She stayed in the village for a week.
They asked her name. She gave a simple one — a human name. Something they could pronounce.
She helped them carry heavy loads. Helped mend thatched roofs. Watched over their sick.
They didn't ask what she was.
But they knew she wasn't one of them.
A child fell from a tree. She caught him mid-air.
A man slipped into the river. She pulled him out without ever getting wet.
They didn't say anything. But they left fruit at her door. Offered her their best blankets. Whispered when she walked past.
She didn't like the worship.
But she didn't hate it either.
At night, Alexandra sat by the fire with the old women. They sang stories. Stories of the stars. Of gods and monsters. Of things they didn't understand but feared anyway.
She listened more than she spoke.
She watched the way they looked at their children.
And she wondered.
The sixth night, a storm came.
Lightning tore the sky.
The villagers huddled together in their homes.
Alexandra stood in the rain, face up, unmoving.
She thought about Merrick.
She thought about the way his hands moved when he worked the forge.
She thought about the sound of his breathing when he slept beneath the cliff ledge.
She thought about asking him for something he hadn't offered.
Then she thought about Nolan.
And his words from so long ago.
"Don't deny your heart. Even if it takes a thousand years to understand what it wants."
She didn't make a decision that night.
But something shifted in her.
Something small.
Something quiet.
Gabe returned to Earth a week later.
He didn't land in the valley.
He landed in the northern mountains.
He stood on the edge of a frozen cliff, wind howling around him, and pulled a single stone from his pouch.
He placed it on the ground.
Then he carved one symbol next to it.
An arc. A dot.
The start of a new constellation.
He didn't speak.
But he smiled.
Alexandra left the village the next morning.
No goodbyes.
Just a small basket of herbs she had gathered, left on a doorstep with no name.
She returned to the valley that night.
Merrick was at his forge.
She walked past him without a word.
But she slowed when she passed.
And for the first time, she looked back.
He didn't say anything.
But he watched her long after she was gone.
In the sky above, a star pulsed once — violet and distant.
Somewhere beyond the edge of known space, a silent planet lit up for the first time in a thousand years.
No one saw it.
But something had changed.
And something had begun.