The Primordial Record novel Chapter 1751

Chapter 1751: First Contact

The transition from the shimmering, hyper-dimensional substrate was not a smooth descent into a star system, but a sudden, silent translation into a space that defied all Elythrii sensory parameters.

One moment, their harmonic seed-ship was navigating the river of pure mathematics that was the Archai’s realm. The next, it was... docked.

There was no starfield outside their viewports. No planet. Instead, they found themselves in a vast, silent harbor of polished black stone, its architecture both impossibly ancient and eerily devoid of wear.

The air was still and carried the faint, dry scent of dust, ozone, and old parchment. The "sky" above was a vaulted ceiling of the same black stone, stretching into gloom, from which hung immense, unlit chandeliers of a twisted, metallic design. The only light came from a soft, sourceless glow that seemed to emanate from the air itself.

Their sensors, which had the power to map universes and perceive the flow of causality, went silent or returned nonsense readings. The laws of physics were... present, but idle, as if waiting for an instruction.

The Elythrii knew they would be stepping into a Reality outside their own, but what they were experiencing still made them shudder, and only the thrill of new discovery kept the fires burning in their hearts.

However, the ones who made this trip were among the most adventurous, and they were eager to plunge into the sea of the unknown.

"Location indeterminate," Kaelen reported, his light-form flickering with frustration. "No stellar references. No gravitational gradients. Spatial dimensions are stable but... contextually null. It is a non-space."

"It is a space," Lyra corrected, her perception tuned to deeper frequencies. "But I think it is a made space. A defined one. We are inside something. Something vast. It almost reminds me of home, but it is too fragile to be placed in the same breath."

Their ship had not landed. It was simply sitting on the polished floor of the harbor, as if it had always been there. A single, colossal archway led out of the harbor into shadowed depths.

As they watched, a flicker of movement resolved in the archway. Not a crystal entity, but a figure. A woman. She walked with a slow, deliberate pace, her footsteps echoing faintly in the immense silence. She was tall, dressed in robes of grey that seemed to shift like mist, and her face was pale and strikingly sharp-featured, with eyes that held a depth of knowing that was immediately unsettling. Perched on her shoulder was a large, iridescent black crow that gleamed with a faint purple sheen, which highlighted her blue hair.

The crow cocked its head, regarding the ship with one bright, intelligent eye. Winding around her ankles was a sleek, black cat with wings, its fur the same absolute black as the castle stone, its movements fluid and silent.

The trio stopped a hundred paces from the ship. The woman made no gesture, gave no signal. She simply waited.

"No energy signatures beyond baseline biological," Elara the empath, an Elythrii ambassador, whispered, her voice tense with confusion. "But... there is a pressure. An awareness. It is not coming from them. It is coming from... everything. The walls, the floor, the air. This entire place is alive."

Lightning-fast communication bounced across the Elythrii, and Lyra made the final decision, which was supported by the rest. "If they can come to us, we can go to them. No weapons. No active scans. We go as we are."

The hull of the seed-ship dissolved into a curtain of light, and the Elythrii delegation descended. Their forms—shimmering constructs of energy and will—were a stark contrast to the grim, static architecture. They approached the woman, the crow, and the cat.

The woman spoke first. Her voice was dry, clear, and carried a weight of immense age. It was not loud, but it filled the silent harbor perfectly.

"The name it was given," the woman said, gesturing slightly with one hand to indicate the infinite architecture around them. "It prefers ’Sheba’ now. A more elegant phoneme. It is still deciding." 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

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