Page 105 of She Who Devours the Stars

White: the detonation, the spike, the new pattern.

Inside the churning event horizon of SGR 0418+5729, every sensor, mythic or mundane, recorded a single, perfect moan. Not a scream, not a wail, just a long, rapturous “ohhhhhh” that rippled through the galaxy at the speed of truth.

The mythic archives tagged the sound with the caption:

“First ever. Not the last.”

—[HOLO-NET: EVENTIDE COUNCIL EMERGENCY SESSION]—

Twelve mythic dignitaries, all at once, tried to out-shout each other. The chair, a silver-haired old monster in a neon sash, banged the table until it dented. “We can’t let this spread! We have protocols!”

A junior staffer whispered: “But it’s already trending. It’s… viral.”

Silence. Then, a single, trembling voice:

“Do you think this is how the Accord ends?”

The chair said nothing, just poured herself a drink and watched the city lights flicker from blue-white to something she’d only seen once: a color without a name.

—[WORLD FEED SUMMARY / SYSTEM ALERT]—

[MYTH-RESONANCE EVENT DETECTED]

[CANDIDATE CONVERGENCE: TRIVANE x TRIVANE]

[INTERPRETIVE STATUS: MUTUAL BOND CONFIRMED]

[AGE AT EVENT: 27, 19]

[PRIMARY VECTOR: SGR 0418+5729]

[COMMENT: “IS THIS A MARRIAGE? MAYBE. WHO'S TO SAY.”]

[FILED UNDER: UNPRECEDENTED | FLAGGED FOR MYTH REVIEW]

The feed blinked out.

For a long, giddy minute, the world ran in silence, as every person, program, and ghost in the Accord stared at the new mythology burning its way onto their screens.

And in the afterglow, a little girl somewhere whispered, “It’s real,” and the city wept with her.

—[SYSTEM: RESUME PROGRAMMING]—

But nothing was the same.

Thread Modulation: Kaela Vaelith

Axis Alignment: Vaelith Estate, Tenevar Prime

Kaela Vaelith woke to the sound of three marriages dying, one sex scandal igniting, and at least six major houses going into threat posture. All before breakfast.

She sprawled on the marble lip of her penthouse bath, legs bare and hair matted to her scalp by the sweat of an all-night comms bender. Around her, the air was thick with the perfumes of burnt citrus, old lust, and the kind of high-grade ethanol they didn’t even try to bottle anymore. Her glass—tall, heavy, hand-cut—held a quarter-inch of the most expensive thing she could still taste. It shimmered with that blue you only get from void-aged grapes and a total disregard for moderation.

The AR feeds above her head were a mess. Some overlays still stuck on last night’s drama: a royal wedding dissolving on live stream, a hostile merger between two bloodlines, a rant from a cousin in exile. But every new feed crashed in, battling for focus, all of them jittering and lagging like the world’s finest minds had been replaced by sleep-deprived bots. Kaela swatted the old feeds away with a lazy finger, then let the fresh ones stack, side by side, a parade of beautiful idiots screaming about the mythic event.

At 08:44, the System Alert came through.

She didn’t even read it at first. She just stared at the subject line, then cackled so hard she snorted the rest of her drink out her nose.