THEY DIDN'T CHOOSE THIS WAR.
Out here, the stars don't offer second chances. They offer distance, silence, and the kind of darkness that makes even a fleet feel small.
The Astralis moves through that darkness like a myth with engines-old power, newly upgraded, carrying the weight of everyone who's still breathing. A ship that has seen too much, survived too much, and learned one brutal truth: in deep space, mercy is a luxury... and fear is a weapon.
But there are places the maps don't prepare you for. Orbits that feel wrong. Signals that don't behave. Long-range scans that come back clean when your instincts swear they shouldn't. The crew can feel it in the pauses between words, in the way command decks go quiet, in the way seasoned officers look twice at the same starfield.
Because something is changing.
A new name begins to circulate through the fleet-spoken carefully, like it might attract attention if said too loudly. The Threshold. A hard point in the void. A place to gather, to coordinate, to breathe... or to be found. A place that turns survivors into a presence the galaxy can no longer ignore.
And once you become visible, the universe answers.
Not with explanations. Not with banners.
With absence. With interference. With shapes that slip in and out of sensor range. With the uneasy knowledge that someone else is close enough to listen.
Crew members who thought they'd left terror behind start checking bulkheads twice. Patrols run tighter. Weapons systems stay warm. Shields hum a little longer than they should. And every quiet moment begins to feel like the inhale before impact.
Because the Astralis isn't just carrying people anymore.
It's carrying a decision.
Stand. Or vanish.
Hold the line. Or scatter.
And when the moment finally arrives-when the void stops being empty and becomes a presence-one message cuts through every screen, every channel, every heartbeat in orbit.
Not a speech. Not a demand.
Just two words that could mean anything... until you open the first page and realise what they're really saying.
RUN & HIDE.
