Some truths don't come easily.
They're not simple. They don't comfort. They don't resolve neatly into heroism or failure. They just persist.
Even when it's hard.
Kye stood in the observatory dome, looking out across the Driftroot's growing web of light. The Vaultseed's filaments had stretched beyond the station's ribs, weaving into the husks of abandoned scaffolds, transforming old solar collectors into memory-harvest petals. It wasn't expansion.
It was survival by remembrance.
But resistance had its cost.
"Five interruptions to our longwave relays in the last six hours," Zeraphine reported, her fingers skimming through the translucent threads of the Chronicle interface. "Targeted jamming. Subtle. Timed to critical memory transmissions."
Kye nodded. "They're not trying to stop the story anymore. They're trying to fragment it."
"They want memory to feel unstable," she said. "Like truth is only real if it's complete, formal, verified."
He glanced at her. "You don't sound shaken."
She met his eyes. "Because we knew this would happen."
They descended to the communal concourse, where arrivals from a dozen scattered outposts mingled in quiet conversation. People trading seeds, phrases, gestures. A freighter captain showed a map stitched from linen instead of screenprint. A child gifted another a stone she claimed sang when held right.
None of it was provable.
All of it was real.
Kye passed by a small stone bench. On it: a folded note, unsigned.
> "She said it would be okay, and even if it wasn't, we would still be us."
No context. No story. No author.
The Vaultseed pulsed in response.
> ARTICLE FORTY-EIGHT: Truth does not have to be tidy. It only has to be tended.
They moved to the garden rings, where a cluster of refugees had repurposed sensor dishes into light-traps—collecting radiant energy not for power, but for warmth. At night, they huddled under the faint glow, whispering names to each other not out of duty, but hope.
"It doesn't always feel like enough," Zeraphine said.
Kye didn't answer immediately.
He placed a small, cracked ring into the soil of the newest plantbed. No inscription. Just the kind of ring you'd wear when you didn't want to forget someone.
Then he said, "It never is. That's why we keep going."
Above them, the Driftroot signal shimmered again—answering a new beacon in the Bleak Hollow Expanse. This one didn't transmit language.
It played three notes.
Slightly off-key.
Recognizable only to those who'd served on long-haul cargo freighters before the Collapse.
Zeraphine tilted her head. "You know that?"
Kye smiled. "Only if you've ever cried while doing fuel line diagnostics."
She laughed, even as her eyes misted.
No database would've recorded that melody.
But it survived.
Because someone carried it.
Even when it hurt.