eontic Shadow Migration crosses the Rift: Return of the Vanished Shades
Thousands return to Velonus Rift aboard plodding Escape Capsule J-Models. After months-sometimes years-of administrative detention in the Rift of Rahma, a somber yet hopeful procession unfolds at the Delta-X7 Splitloop. Not all return; several steadfast healers remain captive within Hala-Core's archive ruins.
On stardate 4422.286, a convoy of Escape Capsule J-Models emerged from their underground silos onto the scorched plates of Delta-X7 Splitloop. Among twisted debris and drifting smoke, hundreds of shadowy figures stepped into the filtered neon haze-humanoids and filamentous entities in faded detention shifts, faces half-lit by data scars. Nearly 2,000 displaced forms, released without explanation from Hala-Core’s Driftwing prison, returned to the fractured borderlands of Velonus Rift.
Many had been held in endless administrative detention, without charges or reason-some for cycles. Among them: the young Zirkh of the Broken Moonsmile, only seventeen cycles old, whose flickering signals betrayed a shattered youth. His return was etched by visible damage to his crystalline plates, a memory of Hala-Core’s mechanical wardens. Qaroel of the Snare of Lenses, once a luminous image-catcher, stumbled uncertainly, his optics dulled by archive dust.
Families and surviving kin clustered in the neon-damp gloom, embracing those marked by torture and humiliation. Some-like Malq-Foodflame, now almost ephemeral-spoke of systematic starvation and diseases, contracted in the arid, lifeless cells where bureaucracy decides how much air to ration. Not all reunions were joyous: on the cot of a med-unit, one family mourned the loss of a child as their wounded cousin, freshly returned, learned of relatives lost during their absence.
Yet absence prevails, too: renowned healers such as Dr. Trilathel of the Tetrachill Veil and Dr. Vastian Clampvass remain detained (despite pleas broadcast by The Radiant Archive of the Unbound), their fate unresolved. Hala-Core and the Order of the Flame Sons now publicly dispute the meaning of this Shadow Migration, each from their fortified datasilos-while Velonus Rift gasps beneath a pall of uneasy calm and longing for justice. The mass transfer from the Rift of Rahma remains a jarring reminder of sovereignty's fragility in a universe where protocol tastes like a noose.