The alarm blared, a shrill reminder of life—or what passed for it in Kael Draven's existence now. His eyes snapped open, but the sterile white of the medical bay did nothing to soothe him. Machines beeped in measured rhythm, monitors flickered with numbers he could barely comprehend, and the smell of antiseptic hung in the air like a ghost. The nurses whispered somewhere behind glass walls, their voices low and almost anxious, as if afraid of breaking some fragile boundary.
Kael's chest burned where the mark had appeared, an intricate network of lines glowing faintly under his skin. No one had explained it. No one had even looked at it directly—they just stepped around him, wary and silent. Memories of the crash came in flashes: the engine failure, the cold void of space, the warning lights flashing red, the final pull of black. And then… nothing. He had been pronounced dead. Seven minutes without a heartbeat, a corpse floating in the void, until something inexplicable yanked him back.
He tried to sit, but the movement sent a jolt through his body. His muscles screamed, his vision swirled with static. And then the whispers started. Faint, indecipherable, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. Numbers, sequences, coordinates he had never seen, yet somehow understood. Kael pressed his palms to his temples, trying to ground himself.
"This isn't possible," he muttered. No sound came from his lips, yet the words echoed in his skull. They weren't just echoes—they were answers. Calculations, probabilities, a map of something larger than Earth, larger than the solar system, larger than anything he had ever imagined.
A nurse finally approached, her eyes wide behind her protective mask. "Mr. Draven… are you awake?" Her voice trembled. Kael's gaze locked on her, but he didn't respond. Because he knew… something had changed. He wasn't merely alive. He was connected. And that connection whispered of things no human should hear.