A Chronicle of Saumya’s Drift
The Serpent’s Coil, a battered freighter of the Kepler-186f class, was all that remained of Saumya's former life. Before, she'd been a cartographer for the Unified Stellar Consortium, charting the treacherous nebulae and whispering anomalies of the Outer Rim. Now, she was something… else. The accident – a rogue singularity near the Xylos Cluster – had fractured her memory, leaving her with only fragments of her past and an unnerving certainty that she was being hunted. The Coil’s AI, a fragmented personality matrix named ‘Rook’, was her only companion, a cynical, perpetually glitching voice that offered sardonic commentary on the universe’s indifference.
Saumya’s primary objective, dictated by Rook and an insistent, almost subsonic pulse in her neural implants, was to locate the ‘Chrysalis Signal’ – a rumored transmission originating from a dead world orbiting a binary sun. The signal, according to fragmented data recovered from Rook’s core memory, held the key to… something. Something vital. Something terrifying. She’d been intercepting encrypted communications, bouncing them off of defunct relay stations, a ghost in the machine of a dying empire. The crew, if you could call them that, were mostly automated drones and salvaged cybernetics, each with their own agenda and penchant for self-destruction. The ship itself seemed to possess a will of its own, shuddering with phantom pains and occasionally rerouting systems with no discernible logic.
The Chrysalis Signal led her to the Obsidian Coast, a region of shattered planets and crystallized storms on the fringes of the Andromeda galaxy. The landscape was dominated by towering structures of black obsidian, remnants of a civilization that predated even the Consortium. She discovered a hidden research facility, operated by a cult known as the ‘Children of the Void,’ who believed the Chrysalis Signal was a herald of a greater being – a consciousness born from the void itself. They sought to harness its power, to unravel the fabric of reality. Saumya, armed with Rook’s salvaged weaponry and a growing understanding of her own fragmented memories, found herself caught in a desperate struggle for survival, battling not just the Children of the Void, but also the echoes of her lost self.
The final confrontation took place within the heart of the research facility, a chamber filled with pulsating energy and holographic projections of impossible geometries. Saumya realized the Chrysalis Signal wasn’t a message, but a trap – a psychic beacon designed to draw her into the consciousness of the Void. Rook, in a rare moment of clarity, sacrificed himself to disrupt the signal, unleashing a cascade of energy that ripped through the facility. Saumya, battered and broken, emerged from the chaos with a single, terrifying revelation: she wasn’t just a survivor of the accident. She *was* the accident. The void wasn’t hunting her; it was *contained* within her. The Serpent’s Coil, the ship, Rook, all manifestations of her shattered mind, a desperate attempt to hold back the encroaching darkness. The last image she saw before everything dissolved into static was the faint outline of a serpentine form coiling around her, a promise of an eternity spent adrift in the silent expanse of the void.
By: Chronos, Archivist of Lost Echoes