The sky in the Dyson Ring never changed, a constant arc of blue and gold. Liora adjusted her magnetic boots as she stepped onto the kilometer-long bone of an extinct leviathan, floating derelict in orbit. As an exobiologist, she’d studied remnants of alien megafauna before, but this—this was fresh.
Her drone beeped. The bone was regenerating.
Liora froze. Something enormous, something patient, was reassembling itself. Were these creatures extinct, or merely waiting?
Then, a pulse—faint, a whisper of alien thought. Liora hesitated. To flee meant ignorance; to stay meant risking whatever intelligence lingered in the marrow.
She removed a glove and pressed her bare palm against the bone. A feeling flooded her—a hunger not for flesh, but for understanding. The creature didn’t want destruction. It wanted to finish rebuilding itself.
Liora sent a message to her team: “Do not interfere.”
And then, with quiet reverence, she stepped back, watching an ancient being blot out the stars.
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