The stars above Mount Aether Observatory flickered like static on a dead screen. Dr. Taylor Mercer traced the jagged peaks of their light on the monitors, their fingers trembling—not from the cold, but from the weight of a truth they could no longer deny. Ten years, they thought. Ten years listening to the void, ten years of silence. The universe did not answer. It never had.

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  Carl would have called it heresy.

  Taylor’s colleague had vanished three weeks ago, leaving behind a desk littered with coffee rings and a journal filled with sketches of spirals—endless, recursive geometries that hurt the eye. At first, Taylor dismissed them as the scribbles of a man cracking under isolation. But then the signal came.