The frequency Hajin had recorded from the destroyed survey body sat in his memory like a coin from strange soil. It was heavy with a metal he could not identify.
He carried it to the one place where old metal could be tested, which was inside himself.
He waited until the camp slept, until Vella's breathing had settled into the slow rhythm of genuine rest rather than exhausted collapse. Then he closed his eyes and let his consciousness sink inward past the Rings, past the core, into the Fragment where the Goddess waited.
The inner world had changed significantly since his last visit. The flower field that had served as Vella's prison now bloomed across the Fragment in wild patterns.
Her freedom had left the space open for the Goddess to grow something new.
She had chosen to grow a garden of memory, each flower holding a fragment of a moment she was trying to reconstruct.
