Trần Hoàng Nam sat in the control room of Station V-12, a forgotten outpost orbiting the gas giant Raloen. Around him, silence hummed louder than any noise. This station wasn't meant for discoveries; it was a punishment—an exile disguised as duty. And Nam, once a rising star in the Galactic Political Council, now lived in this mechanical tomb with only the AI assistant "Ira" for company.
But that silence shattered at 03:27 UTS.
A low-frequency hum began pulsing through the data stream—soft, rhythmic, unnatural.
"Ira," Nam called out, narrowing his eyes. "That noise. Source?"
The AI's voice responded, calm as ever. "Unknown origin. Matching no known signatures in the database."
The signal repeated. And then repeated again.
Nam leaned forward. "Amplify. Run it through ancient signal translation protocols. Cross-reference with all known languages—human and non-human."
There was a pause. Then Ira's voice wavered slightly, as if hesitating. "Decoded message reads: 'We have opened. You are late.'"
Nam froze.
He stared at the terminal, his pulse suddenly quickening. He had studied hundreds of signals during his political-military career. None ever sounded like this. This was no accident, no glitch. This was intelligent. This was deliberate.
He immediately began pulling records—tracking the origin of the signal. The data trail was faint, distorted, but traceable. It led to one place: G-Delta 7.
A black hole known as the "Mute Eye" by fringe scientists. A region where time distorted, where gravity collapsed all certainty—and where no signal should ever escape.
Nam sat back, stunned. "This can't be real," he muttered. "No data should come from G-Delta 7. Nothing comes out of a singularity..."
But here it was.
For years, the Galactic Council had dismissed G-Delta 7 as a curiosity. Unstable, inaccessible, and unprofitable. It wasn't worth military or scientific interest—until now.
Nam knew he had to contact someone. Someone who wouldn't laugh. Someone who had the intelligence to understand what this meant.
He sent an encrypted message to Nguyễn Thị Ái Lan, the astrophysicist who had once predicted that dark matter could interact with quantum signals under extremely rare gravitational conditions. Her theories were dismissed back then—too speculative. But now? They might be the only explanation.
Aboard the research cruiser Helix Arc, Ái Lan's screen lit up with the incoming message. The sender: Trần Hoàng Nam.
She hesitated. She hadn't spoken to him since the political collapse. Many thought he had died. Others assumed he had gone insane.
She opened the file and read the decoded message. Her heart skipped a beat.
"We have opened. You are late."
Ái Lan whispered, "No... It's not possible."
But the signature was unmistakable. The gravitational fluctuations around G-Delta 7 matched her early models. Something was there.
She quickly rerouted her cruiser's path. Destination: Raloen Orbit.
Back on Station V-12, Nam had begun decoding more of the signal. There were patterns—mathematical structures buried within the audio spectrum. Fractal harmonics. Quantum key patterns. Coordinates?
It was more than a message.
It was an invitation.
But others had noticed the signal too.
At a remote base on the icy moon Serex, General Bùi Hữu Hoàng of the Stellar Dominion stared at the same message. His scientists had confirmed it—G-Delta 7 was no longer silent.
Hoàng smiled coldly. "Prepare the fleet. If the universe has opened a door... we will be the first to walk through."