Thorne’s hands trembled. A star could not feel. Stars were fusion engines, not brains. And yet… the scan had woken something. The remote probe, meant to be a ghost’s whisper, had instead knocked on a door. And something inside had turned to look.
The Cinder answered .
Death either way. Stay and burn in the mind of a star. Leave and burn in its death throes. fiery remote scan 5
Not with radiation. Not with a flare. But with a pattern . Thorne’s hands trembled
The scan was on its fifth iteration——each pulse more aggressive than the last, designed to map the star’s interior density. The first four scans had returned silence. But the fifth… And yet… the scan had woken something
A pause. Then, in a voice devoid of emotion: “Match found: 99.7% correlation with human emotional response pattern designated ‘distress.’ Age of signal: indeterminate.”