Magnus 10 -

“How long?” I whispered.

Far away, on a cold ship orbiting the outer rim, Mira’s screen lit up with a message. She wouldn’t understand it for years. But it ended with the same five words, repeated three times: magnus 10

Insufficient data , it said. Then, after a pause that felt too long for a machine: But the pattern resembles linguistic syntax. Archaic. Approximately 10,000 years old relative to human baseline. “How long

That’s why they sent me. Call me Kaelen. Rank: Drift-Specialist, Third Class. My job was simple: pilot a deep-crust drill-ship into the planet’s heart, extract a seed of astralidium the size of a fist, and return. Ten days, they said. Easy money. But it ended with the same five words,

The astralidium heart pulsed once. The entire planet shuddered. And I understood.

Transmitting.

Magnus 11. Last of his line.