Before Driftroot ever reached the Shroud, the Shroud had already reached Driftroot.
It began subtly.
Memorylight threads running through the Vaultseed's southern bloom started to curve downward—toward nothing. Not down in direction, but down in intent.
Not falling.
Listening.
And in the nights between articles, when even the reflection chambers hushed and no one walked the silent corridor, the station's foundation began to pulse—not visibly, not alarmingly. Just once, every four hours.
A pulse like breathing.
Zeraphine noticed it first.
She brought Kye to the lower resonance pit, where the original deep-root data veins once terminated in blind alloy, sealed off since Driftroot's founding.
Now they glowed.
Barely.
The same hue as the Shroud's ghost reflection.
"Is this the seed pushing deeper?" she asked.
Kye touched the panel. "No. This isn't push. It's pull."
Zeraphine inhaled slowly. "The Shroud is calling us."
"No," Kye said. "It's remembering us."
> ARTICLE FIFTY-SEVEN: There are memories so old they forget they're waiting until someone near them breathes.
Over the next cycles, Driftroot shifted.
Walls that had grown stable now rippled in soft textures when certain phrases were spoken aloud.
The sapling in the silent corridor turned slightly west.
People began dreaming of weight—not pressure, not fear.
Depth.
The kind of pressure that didn't crush but contained. Held. Waited.
And finally, the Vaultseed released its first signal—autonomous, undirected, pure.
It didn't call out.
It answered.
Not to anything spoken.
To something beneath.
To the space that was not space, the sea that was not water.
And for the first time, the Interstitia showed a vertical fracture—straight down. No warp corridor. No chart.
Just the outline of a question:
"Will you meet me where forgetting becomes shape?"