The summons from the All-Galactic Veche had been a political problem to be managed. This was different. This was a wound. The alert that pulled Admiral Valeriy Sineus from his ready room was not a chime but a discordant tear in the low, resonant hum of the flagship Stoikiy. It was a sound of wrongness, and it drew him to the Comms Center with the grim gravity of a foregone conclusion. He moved through the corridors of his vessel, his posture a rigid line of authority, his face an impassive mask that betrayed nothing of the cold certainty coiling within him. The truth he had buried a century ago was stirring.
He entered the Comms Center, a vast hemisphere of dark, polished alloy where the ship’s consciousness, the Logos Weave, rendered the galaxy as a river of light. A young ensign, his face pale and his posture ramrod-straight, turned from the central holographic display. His name was Lyov, and his discipline was a thin, brittle shell over a core of rising panic. He had been trained to report anomalies, not impossibilities.
— Admiral, — the ensign’s voice was tight, but it did not break. — A priority-alpha data-burst. From Patrol Fleet ‘Vigil’ in the Zarya System. It is their final transmission.
Sineus gave a curt nod, his gaze already fixed on the display. He had felt the tremor from Zarya on his own Psio-Tapestry, a flicker of grey in a sea of perfect blue. This was the echo. He had known it would come. His gloved hand rested on the cool metal rail of the command dais, a small, grounding gesture.
— Render it, Ensign.
The holographic display, a form of Svetopisnaya Vyaz that turned data into flowing art, shifted. The tactical map of the Zarya System dissolved, replaced by the feed from the patrol fleet’s lead vessel. The image was a ruin. The normally clean, vibrant lines of the Gzhel Weave that represented the fleet’s shield and system integrity were fractured, bleeding cobalt light into the void. The visual data was corrupted, with 88% of the information lost to a creeping, featureless grey that seemed to eat the image from the edges in. It was a portrait of decay, a memory actively unmaking itself. This was not a weapons failure. This was a reality failure.
— Signal integrity is at 12%, sir, — Lyov reported, his eyes locked on his console. — Mnemonic corruption is exponential. We are losing the record as we watch it.
Then came the sound. It did not come from the room’s audio emitters. It bloomed inside the skull, a dry, whispering rustle like a universe of dead leaves skittering across cold stone. It was the Zabvennyy Shelest, the Rustle of Oblivion, the signature of the Sudopis itself fraying into nothing. It was the sound of forgetting. No voices were intelligible, only that persistent, maddening whisper that promised utter emptiness. The Gzhel Weave on the display flickered and died, the last thread of blue light consumed by the grey.
— Isolate the final clear frame before total corruption, — Sineus commanded, his voice a blade cutting through the rustling noise.
— Trying, Admiral. The data is… resisting, — Lyov’s fingers flew across his console. The holographic display shuddered, fighting to render a paradox.
For a fraction of a second, the grey vanished. A single, perfectly clear image burned in the air above the display table. It was the bridge of the patrol cruiser, seen from a security lens. The viewscreen beyond showed a Slavic Continuum warship, a Derzhava-class dreadnought identical to the Stoikiy, its main batteries glowing with imminent fire. The image held for a heartbeat, a perfect moment of recorded treason, and then shattered into digital snow. An entire patrol fleet, gone. The price of this single, impossible frame was the lives of twelve hundred sailors and five Continuum warships.
The ensign stared, his training giving way to sheer disbelief.
— A Derzhava-class… It’s one of ours.
— Cross-reference the attacker’s sigil, — Sineus’s voice was dangerously quiet. He already knew the answer. He had known it the moment he saw the flicker on his own map.
Lyov’s hands were trembling now, but he obeyed. He isolated the sigil on the attacking ship’s prow from the single clear frame. He ran it against the Continuum’s naval records. The search took less than a second. The result appeared on the main display in stark, simple text. The ensign read it aloud, his voice a hollow whisper.
— Sigil not found in active naval registry. Cross-referencing historical archives… one match. The warship ‘Verniy’.
He paused, his breath catching in his throat as he read the next line.
— Decommissioned standard century 379. All records redacted. Vessel mnemonically erased by order of the Synod of Admirals.
The ship that had just annihilated Patrol Fleet ‘Vigil’ did not exist. It had been cut from the script of reality one hundred years ago. It was a ghost, a memory that had returned to kill. The past was not simply haunting the present; it was actively, violently rewriting it.
Sineus betrayed no shock. His face was carved from stone. He had been the instrument of that erasure. He had stood on the bridge of his first command and, with his own unique, terrible gift, unmade the ‘Verniy’ and its fleet. He had done it to prevent a civil war, a sacrifice of the few to save the many. He had buried the truth to preserve order. Now, the ghost was back.
He turned to the ensign, whose face was a mask of horrified confusion. The boy was now a carrier of a lethal truth, a piece of information that could shatter the morale of the entire fleet, the entire Continuum. A truth that was a contagion.
— Ensign, — Sineus’s voice was calm, absolute, and final. — Seal this room.
Lyov looked up, not understanding.
— Sir?
— Level 1 Mnemonic Quarantine. Now.
The ensign’s eyes widened in comprehension and fear. It was the fleet’s most extreme protocol, an order to create an information black zone, to trap a dangerous idea before it could spread. It was an admission that the truth itself was the enemy. For a moment, the young officer hesitated, his mind reeling from the impossibility of what he had seen. Then, his training took over. He nodded, his face grim. He keyed in the command.
Heavy pressure doors slammed shut, their metallic thunder echoing in the sudden silence. All external communication lines were severed. The main holographic display went dark. The only light came from the pulsing red of the emergency quarantine sigils that now glowed on the walls, their stark lines forming a broken, menacing Gzhel Weave. The air grew still, charged with the clean, sharp scent of ozone from the high-energy seals. They were locked in, cut off from the rest of the ship, from the rest of the universe. Trapped with a ghost.
Sineus stood motionless in the red gloom, the impossible image of the ‘Verniy’ reflected in his cold, dark eyes. He had cut the thread a century ago. Now, he had to face the echo. He had to hunt the monster he himself had created.
