Starlit Legacy
When an ancient alien artifact surfaces on a festival world, a young dreamer finds himself at the heart of a galaxy-spanning quest. Hunted by secretive council agents and guided by unlikely allies, Kiran must unlock the secrets of the diaspora before a dormant war among the stars awakens once again. The fate of countless worlds hangs in the balance, and the key to peace—or destruction—might rest in the hands of those who dare to dream.
Decoding the Starlit Message
They worked deep into first bell, breaths rising in clouds beneath the ruined columns, the city’s everwatchful eyes blinded by the night. Tala lit her data tablet, the soft blue glow picked out the elegant lines of her jaw and the furrowed brow she wore when focus consumed her. Kiran sat opposite, cross-legged, the artifact gleaming at the center of their careful circle—a little sun rolling delicate arcs of light across Tala’s notes.
Above, the bruised purple sky was thinning to dawn, but the river carved through black glass, and wind whispered through weeds and fallen stone—the only witnesses to their furtive work.
"Show me again," Tala whispered—equal parts reverence and hunger—her stylus poised. Kiran placed the artifact at the precise angle he’d discovered by accident, tilting its surface to catch the twin moonlight. The swirling glyphs shivered, and for a moment nothing happened—then lines and whorls surged, flowing like magnetic sand into new configurations.
He closed his eyes and concentrated, letting the foreign syntax brush the raw edge of his thoughts. Electric pulses spiked behind his eyelids, and in their wake came images—maps, starfields, faces both familiar and impossible. Every time he tried to focus, meaning slipped like oil along his skin, but each effort brought him closer.
Tala’s programming tools flickered, interpreting the changing light and running pattern recognition scans.
"It’s almost like a language puzzle. Not just static. Like—it wants to see how much we know before it shows more," she murmured.
Kiran nodded, breathless. "It’s—teaching. Or testing? This isn’t just a message."
All night she’d sketched glyph after glyph, cross-referencing with old diaspora fragments from the Archive. Finally, sweating with triumph, she tapped a series of strokes: the artifact’s dominant symbol—a star surrounded by seven orbiting figures—appeared in the center of her display, layered atop the shifting blue.
The artifact rippled. The central star brightened, the surrounding marks realigning and pulsing in time with her heartbeat. Symbols blazed, then resolved into three distinct glyph groups.
"Alright…first group," Tala breathed, voice tight.
She ran a translation lambda, pressing on the key intersection. Her tablet’s display flickered—and a rough phonetic transcription appeared. She whispered it aloud:
OCCUPANTS OF THE SEVENWOLD, SCATTERED IN FLIGHT—
Her voice broke. She scanned the next line:
SEEK THE ANCESTOR’S BEACON. THE PATH TO RETURN IS MARKED. THE PERIL SLEEPS, NOT DEAD.
Kiran shivered. It echoed the voice from the vision, but now raw with new fear and promise.
Tala sat back, eyes stinging. "A beacon. They scattered—something happened to their people. And they left this… not just a warning. It’s a summons. Or a map. Maybe both."
The artifact pulsed, suddenly brighter. A pattern scrolled across its surface, less like writing and more like a holographic map viewed through deep water. Filaments of light expanded—projecting for the first time a fully three-dimensional star chart, tiny and imperfect but unmistakable. It shifted, settled, and aligned with the major constellations over Eloria.
Tala sucked in a sharp breath. "It’s…mapping the sky? But that shouldn’t be possible—the security screens would—"
"It’s not broadcasting," Kiran realized. "It’s showing us. Maybe only us. Look."
He pointed. One of the stars, pulsing an urgent amber, hovered at the edge of the map where no known Elorian sat-comm marked any habitable zone. The artifact’s outer ring rotated, and a fractal glyph—the same ‘home’ shape they’d just translated—pinned itself precisely on this star’s position.
Tala tapped rapidly, cross-referencing starmaps. "That’s not even in the main Archive—it’s unclassified! It’s outside everything."
As she spoke, the projection flickered. New symbols traced across Kiran’s vision, accompanied by another surge of alien sensation. Not words, but unmistakable warning—loss, urgency, reunion, hope. The artifact trembled as if straining against invisible bonds.
“I think… it wants us to go,” Kiran whispered, realization striking with awe and terror.
Tala stared at the star, her own fears warring with the thrill of possibility. “Kiran, if this is a beacon, it’s not just for us. If the council finds it, or anyone else—”
He swallowed, recalling Maris’s measured gaze, the awakening suspicion in the council. The warning was no longer theoretical. The artifact—no, the beacon—was already calling out. The ancient diaspora’s path still lingered, and their message demanded action.
He clutched Tala's hand. Around them, the city shivered, dawn touching the highest towers.
“We have to reach that star,” Tala said, voice hoarse with resolve. “But first—we need to find out what’s waiting for us there. And who else might already be listening.”
Out beyond the river, in a tower cloaked by the last shreds of night, a silent watcher marked the lights below—the faintest glimmer from between fallen pillars. Maris Denara narrowed her eyes and activated a surveillance drone, quietly logging the anomaly. The council’s patience, she resolved, would soon run out.
Kiran tucked the artifact away, the echo of its light burning behind his eyes. In the newborn sun’s first warmth, he felt the size of their inheritance—and the weight of history demanding a reckoning. Eloria’s fate, his own, Tala’s—the galaxy’s perhaps—hung in the beckoning dark between stars, and the signal was theirs to follow, or to silence.