Space was usually silent.
But on that particular rotation cycle, the silence broke—softly at first, like a distant shiver moving through the void.
Orion Hale, senior quantum engineer aboard Astra-9, didn't notice it until the ship's primary sensor array flashed a warning he had never seen before.
A single word pulsed on the holo-screen:
ANOMALY: UNKNOWN.
He frowned.
"Again?" he muttered, adjusting his glasses as the readings spiked in unpredictable waves.
The sensor graph didn't behave like normal data.
Instead of smooth lines or sharp peaks, the readings drew fractals—recursive patterns repeating infinitely inward. They resembled snowflakes folding into themselves, galaxies collapsing into spirals.
And they were growing.
"Orion, you seeing this?" came Lyra's voice through the comms—calm but edged with concern.
"Yeah…" He tapped the display. "This isn't natural. This is… deliberate."
Before he could explain further, the ship trembled gently, as if touched by something enormous and invisible. He braced himself against the console. Astra-9 wasn't supposed to feel anything. Their inertial dampeners could stabilize them even inside a black hole boundary.
Which meant whatever shook the ship was beyond conventional physics.
Lights dimmed.
The hum of the quantum core shifted.
The expanding anomaly outside shimmered through the observation deck's transparent shields.
A "ripple" was the only word that fit.
A distortion spreading across space like a stone dropped into a pond—but the pond was the universe itself.
Orion's eyes widened as the ripple expanded. Space folded, bent, twisted, unfurled—and then, just for a moment, tore open.
A thin slit of glowing geometry appeared in the distance.
"Commander Rhea," Orion said, voice tight. "We've got a spatial rupture forming two hundred thousand kilometers off our bow."
Rhea's image flickered onto the display.
"Is it an attack?"
"No," Orion said.
This time he knew.
"This is something else. Something… new."
The split in space pulsed.
Not with light—but with structures. Shapes too perfect to be natural, too alive to be mechanical. Triangles grew into tetrahedrons. Spirals unfolded like blooming flowers. Geometry became motion. Motion became sound—a low vibrating hum that felt like it resonated inside the bones of every crew member.
"It's beautiful…" Lyra whispered over the comms.
"It's impossible," Orion corrected.
Then the slit widened.
Space peeled apart like opening curtains, revealing not darkness—but a glimmering, swirling corridor of shifting universes. A tunnel of energy, color, and mathematics intertwined. Something was on the other side.
Something huge.
"Commander," Orion said quietly, "we need to pull back."
But it was too late.
From inside the tear, a silhouette emerged—vast, glowing, unreal. A creature shaped like a dragon but made entirely of starlight and fractal patterns flew outward, wings leaving streaks of quantum fire.
Lyra gasped.
"Is that… alive?"
Orion stared, breath caught in his throat.
"I don't know."
The dragon turned its massive head—its eyes twin supernovas—and looked directly at Astra-9.
The ripple was only the beginning.