Darkness.
Cold. Still. Unmoving.
No breath. No sound. No movement.
Only the weight of time pressing against a hybrid frame that had not stirred for cycles beyond counting.
Then—
A pulse.
Soft. Warm. Alive.
It rippled through the collapsed chamber, sliding between tangled roots and fractured alloy plates. It brushed the dormant organism buried beneath the old hull.
Something deep within him twitched.
A second pulse followed—stronger this time, carrying a faint harmonic edge.
His systems shuddered.
CEC-7 // INTERNAL LOG — BOOT ATTEMPT
Status: Dormant (17,931 cycles)
Power Core: 0.8% → rising
Hybrid Gel Conduits: Rigid
Cooling Channels: Inactive
Emotional Matrix v1.0: Offline
External Resonance: Detected
A thin blade of light cut through the shadows—blue-gold and trembling.
It pierced the darkness like a soft breath, spreading across his cracked plating.
Optics struggled to initialize.
Blurred shapes.
Dust drifting in slow spirals.
Jagged roots weaving through shattered hull metal.
He tried to move.
A servomotor groaned, then snapped.
Heat flared across his shoulder, followed by a sharp spike of simulated pain.
CEC-7 // INTERNAL LOG
Right Arm Actuator: Ruptured
Left Arm Mobility: 18%
Lower Body Mobility: <12%
Hybrid Tissue Index: 34% (Unstable)
Warning: Pain Simulation Active
Movement ceased immediately.
He lay still, suspended between fragments of metal and old soil.
Another vibration.
Footsteps—light, careful—pressing softly from above.
His auditory sensors strained to listen.
Leaves rustled. Soil shifted.
A faint hum accompanied each step, a resonance that felt strangely… rhythmic.
Then the glow arrived.
Blue-gold light spilled through a larger crack.
It wasn't mechanical.
It wasn't harsh.
It was warm—alive—and it reached him with surprising clarity.
CO2L // PASSIVE SCAN
Energy Source: Biolight organism (Unknown), single entity
Glow Frequency: Blue-Gold
Pulse Meaning (Probable): Caution / curiosity
Effect on Hybrid Core: Stability +2% (temporary)
The glow steadied his trembling matrix.
He reached toward it without thinking.
His hand scraped the floor, metal grinding painfully against stone. Pain surged and he froze—but the glow reacted instantly.
It snapped violet—fear.
A voice followed, soft and harmonic, trembling at the edges.
He didn't understand the words, but the resonance was unmistakable:
I see you.
Don't be afraid.
I won't hurt you.
He attempted to speak in return.
"St—… sys—tem… a—ct…"
Static swallowed the sound. His vocalizer crackled with distortion.
The glow above wavered, shifting from violet toward worried blue.
A slender silhouette leaned close, framed by strands of glowing hair that swayed like soft light tendrils.
Her skin shimmered faintly with bioluminescent veins—pale strands of blue and gold threading beneath the surface. Her resonance heartbeat pulsed softly under her sternum, like a warm glow-thrum.
She whispered something again.
Her glow brushed the hull like a warm breath.
He echoed her tone—not understanding its meaning, only copying the gentle shape of the sound.
"A…ae…"
Her glow burst gold—not recognition, but shock and emotion.
He had answered her.
He had tried.
Instinctively, he raised his fingers again.
Tap.
The glow steadied—then tapped back.
Something inside him stabilized more than any system process could explain.
CEC-7 // INTERNAL LOG
Emotional Matrix: Activating (Unstable)
Detected External Resonance: Soft, calming
Stability: +3%
Anchor Source: Unknown glow-organism
Another voice echoed behind her, faint and cautious.
More footsteps. More glows—different hues, different rhythms—moving closer to the cracked opening.
The first glow turned toward them.
Her silhouette shifted, posture tightening with concern.
Before she stepped away, she pressed her palm gently to the hull—just above where his hand rested on the other side.
Her glow pulsed once.
Warm. Steady.
A promise.
He reached weakly toward the fading light.
"A…ae…?"
But she was already pulling back, glow retreating into the forest above.
Darkness followed her departure.
But it felt different now.
Not empty.
Not cold.
He replayed her glow signature through his failing matrix.
He replayed the sound of her voice.
He replayed the tapping pattern—simple, but filled with intent.
The darkness no longer swallowed him whole.
It was tinted with blue-gold warmth.
A memory.
A connection.
A reason to keep his systems from collapsing.
The forest shifted overhead—distant breezes humming through the glowvine canopy.
Even through fractured plating, he sensed the faint harmony of the world above:
Biolight moss shimmering.
Glow-insects drifting like small stars.
Resonant leaves whispering soft chimes against one another.
These tones eased the simulation-pain that pulsed through his hybrid conduits.
He focused on them.
Stored them.
Clung to them.
His optic shutters fluttered, adjusting to the fading light.
He felt the weight of his own frame begin to sink again—power dropping, systems flickering.
He was slipping.
Aeri's glow—though he did not know her name—echoed faintly through his matrix.
He reached for it again, but only dust met his fingertips.
More time passed.
Minutes? Hours?
He had no reliable internal clock left.
But the ambient resonance of the forest continued to hum around him—like a distant lullaby.
He processed its patterns slowly, extracting stability from its soft, living warmth.
Somewhere far above, he heard hurried footsteps—multiple glows moving in haste.
Her glow was among them.
The blue-gold pulse.
The one that had touched him.
The one that had anchored him.
Whatever she had gone to do, she was coming back.
Shadows shifted as the group approached.
His sensors flickered weakly toward the cracks—barely enough to catch the edge of blue light seeping through the hull once more.
He reached—trembling, torn, exhausted.
Tap.
And the glow answered again.
Tap.
He stored the resonance with slow, fragile certainty.
Someone out there had returned for him.
Someone whose glow softened his fractured matrix.
Someone whose voice he did not understand—but whose tone soothed an emotional system that barely functioned.
He let his optic shutters drift closed.
He let the ambient glow-memory cradle his failing awareness.
He allowed himself to fall into low-power mode—
not into oblivion,
but into the memory of blue-gold light.
He saved that.
He saved her.
CEC-7 // INTERNAL LOG — STANDBY MODE
Awakening: Partial
External Harmonic Interest: Confirmed
Emotional Matrix: Active (Unstable)
Core Status: Recovering from external resonance
Directive: Seek the glow again.
And for the first time in nearly eighteen thousand years,
he did not fall alone into the dark.