After audience with the Lost King

I have just left the King’s chamber, and my hands are still unsteady as I write this. I told myself that if he dismissed me, I would return to the field and gather more proof. Instead, he finished two of my sentences before I could. That unsettles me more than if he had laughed.

I began this journey thinking I was chasing environmental stress.

On the first Ark, the wildlife grew restless. Their movements felt strained, unfocused. Several specimens carried a pale discoloration in the eyes, faint but unmistakable. I assumed a coming storm was disrupting migration patterns, yet the atmospheric readings did not correspond to any system I recognized. I recalibrated twice. The data remained wrong in a way that felt deliberate. I left for the Caldera because I believed distance would clarify the problem.

It did not.

On the second Ark I found a creature whose flesh had split along its flank, not from battle, but from something pushing outward. Red veins pulsed beneath the hide in a steady rhythm that did not match a heartbeat. It attacked me without hunger driving it and without the defensive panic that even the most territorial beasts display. I killed it and examined the remains. The tissue resisted decay for hours, as though waiting for instruction. I took the Obelisk transit that evening with a feeling I have struggled to name.

By the third Ark I understood that I was not observing disease.

These changes carried intention. The corruption spread from within the host rather than from external exposure. It moved with coordination. I found myself thinking of Valguero and its deep caverns, of the spiders that weave networks no one notices until a hand passes through them. That thought lingered longer than it should have, and I admit that I considered descending there simply to feel that I was pursuing something tangible. I did not. I chose instead to follow the signal drift.

The breach came without warning.

It was not a falling body, though that is how my mind first framed it. The sky tore in a narrow line and sealed itself just as quickly. The Obelisks flickered in response, not randomly but in sequence, like relays acknowledging a new command. The fracture left no debris. It left silence. I felt it in my bones. Whatever approaches is not native to any Ark I have studied.

I came to the Colony at once. I told myself that the King would need convincing. I rehearsed my argument during transit. I intended to present the evidence carefully, beginning with the altered wildlife and ending with the breach. I did not make it halfway through.

He asked whether I had noticed that the corrupted ones attack infrastructure before they attack prey. He asked whether the Obelisks flickered in ascending order. He asked whether I had begun to suspect that the creatures were not the threat but the message.

I confess that for a moment I resented him for knowing.

The corrupted are not the invaders. They are scouts. They move ahead of something larger, shaping resistance, testing responses. The King spoke of movements between Arks, of channels that were never meant to remain closed. He did not explain how he knows this, and I did not press him because I was thinking about the sky and how easily it split.

He believes the arrival is inevitable.

I believe it is close.

If what moves between the Arks completes its approach, the damage will not be confined to wildlife. Systems will strain. Boundaries will shift. The sky itself may burn in ways that cannot be mistaken for weather.

I set out to warn him.

Instead, I left understanding that the warning was late.

— A.V.