The Chancellor's seal glowed like a ghost on his datapad—a glyph woven into strands of blue encryption, elegant and absolute. It pulsed once, then faded to a single line of cold, efficient text:
> CLEARANCE GRANTED — SOLO OBSERVATION. PROTOCOL ZERO.
No fanfare. No signature flourish. No Council witness.
Just silent authorization from the one voice that mattered.
Lu'Ka stared at it, unmoving.
For a moment, he wasn't a professor. He wasn't a historian, a mythologist, a speaker of half-dead languages. He was something simpler. Smaller.
A scholar with permission to step into a graveyard.
He turned off the projection and leaned back in his chair. The lights of his private study dimmed automatically, reacting to his stillness. The walls around him—lined with sealed relic drawers, shattered circuit fossils, glyph-plated shards from long-dead planets—seemed to breathe with him.
So that's it, he thought.
He rose slowly, almost reluctantly, as if the air itself had changed. As if the approval was a threshold, not a decision.
Lu'Ka stood slowly, his pulse steady but heavy with anticipation. He crossed the quiet chamber to a storage alcove set into the far wall—its polished doors marked only by faint symbols known to him alone.
Inside was his expedition gear, laid out carefully. Each piece precisely chosen, tested, calibrated, and yet now it felt inadequate. No one had visited Dakun in centuries—at least, not anyone who'd returned to speak of it.
He paused, hand hovering over a survival belt, his mind heavy with the shadow of the lost team. They'd been scholars too. Scientists. Explorers of language, biology, technology. Professionals trained in the unknown.
Gone without a trace.
The thought lingered bitterly. The Council had erased their names from official archives, leaving only whispers—warnings dressed as silence.
But he remembered.
Lu'Ka gathered his gear methodically. An atmosphere regulator, compact rations, emergency medical nanos, a handheld scanner with encrypted databanks. He hesitated over a comm device, then pocketed it anyway—even though he knew transmissions were forbidden.
Old habits.
His gaze settled on a drawer at the bottom of the alcove. He opened it slowly, revealing a small black cylinder etched with symbols—symbols he'd studied obsessively, despite their refusal to yield any meaning.
He picked it up, rolling the cylinder gently between his fingers. It was discovered at the edge of charted space, encased in a material that defied classification. The inscriptions matched nothing recorded.
An anomaly.
Perhaps a clue.
Or perhaps nothing.
Yet he placed it carefully among his gear anyway.
This is how obsessions begin, he thought. Small, quiet, easily ignored.
His preparations complete, he stepped back, staring down at the neatly packed bag.
"I'm chasing ghosts," he murmured softly, the room absorbing the words without echo. "But ghosts don't send signals."Lu'Ka returned to his desk, his footsteps quiet against the cool metal flooring. He paused there for a long moment, fingers hovering over his communication console.
It was habit, perhaps—a tradition he'd started long ago, one he could not easily explain even to himself. Before every expedition, he'd always recorded a private message: a quiet confession of intentions, addressed to no one specific, yet deeply personal.
He activated the recorder. A faint blue glow pulsed gently, awaiting his words.
He hesitated.
"I've spent decades chasing stories," he began quietly. "Stories about a species no one can prove existed. Legends we tell ourselves to justify our fears, or perhaps our hopes."
He paused, staring at the soft blue pulse.
"This time feels different," he continued softly. "This isn't theory. It's not another archaeological hunt or archive dive. This is stepping into something sealed—not by accident, but deliberately."
He drew a long breath, eyes distant.
"I am leaving behind what is known, safe, and reasonable. The Council has their reasons, and perhaps they're right. But this signal… this call from a place meant to remain forgotten—it feels important. Like a message meant for someone who's willing to listen."
His fingers flexed, his voice quieting further.
"I don't know what I'll find. Perhaps silence. Perhaps answers. Or perhaps just more questions, ones we aren't prepared for. But if you're listening to this, know I went willingly. Know I accepted whatever came next."
He swallowed, then finished simply:
"Remember me, not as a fool, but as someone who believed that truth matters—even when hidden."
Lu'Ka ended the recording. For a moment, he stared at the console in silence, then quietly encrypted the file. No recipient was listed. Perhaps no one would ever hear it.
But he'd spoken. That was enough.
Now, only Dakun remained.
The ship waited in the lowest hangar—quiet, sealed, anonymous.
Lu'Ka stood alone before it. No ceremony. No farewell. The docking bay lights hummed softly overhead, casting sterile shadows across the polished floor. This was where missions went to be forgotten. Even the air felt colder down here.
The vessel was medium size. Sleek. No ornamentation. No identifiers. Its black hull curved like a blade half-buried in night.
He placed his hand on the side panel. The ship recognized his genetic imprint, and the ramp unfolded with a quiet hiss.
Inside, silence greeted him like an old companion.
The control cabin was clean and minimal. A single seat. A bank of instruments already powered. The nav display blinked quietly with a red triangle pulsing over uncharted space—coordinates not found in any public star map.
Destination: Unknown / Restricted
Route: Nonlinear FTL Drift / Stealth Cloak Enabled
Mission: Observation Only
Survival Guarantee: None
Lu'Ka strapped himself into the seat without a word. His pack sat by his feet, heavy with tools, fragments, and hopes no scientist would put on record.
He ran his fingers once along the edge of the console. The ship felt still, waiting—as if aware that once it moved, nothing would be the same.
"Begin departure," he said quietly.
The engine thrummed beneath him, low and smooth. Docking clamps released. The launch tunnel glowed faintly with guiding lines—then darkness swallowed the view as the ship slipped forward into open space.
The stars didn't welcome him.
They only watched.
And behind him, the station faded like the closing of a door.
No messages. No transmissions.
Just one man heading toward a dead world with nothing but silence waiting to speak back.