Unity

The Hunter said a word before he left the Lodge: Unity.

Matteo knew it. Or knew of it — the way people know the edges of something without being able to see the center. His faith, the Sanctum Universum, had a version of the idea. It was... deliberate. Explicit. Matteo simply couldn't shake that it was relevant somehow.

That was worth following.

Keeper Aquilus met me at the Sanctum with the careful attention of a man who has been asked many questions and has learned to wait for the one that matters. I asked about Unity. He gave me what he had, which was partial — fragments of a thing larger than any one tradition had preserved. But he also had some breadcrumbs for me. He told me to talk to the other major "religious" orders operating in the Settled Systems. The House of the Enlightened, which was explicitly an Atheist organization, but apparently had early records that came off as prophetic in nature. and the Zealots of House Va'ruun. Fortunately both were readily accessible in New Atlantis.

I will spare the details here of what specifically I learned, and I do so ostensibly because I am not sure yet that it's information that I want anyone to ever be able to stumble across in the future. But in the end, I did find myself on a remote planet, in a sort of abandoned compound, reading the diaries of a man who seemed to have been following a similar path... or, has followed a similar path. It is... confusing. But this point in the path lead me to a new location. And this location had its own strangeness, its own puzzle.

When I warped to where the trail had ended — the final star of the Scorpius constellation — I was greeted by a familiar ship. A Starborn ship. The Hunter's ship.

I boarded.

On this ship were two Starborn: The Hunter, who had killed Sam and tried to kill the rest of Constellation, and the Emissary who had confronted me in orbit over Neon. The two Starborn we'd encountered, in the same room, waiting. They each spoke, spun a tale that I'm hesitant to believe even with the evidence before my eyes. I almost don't want to divulge what I've learned here, either, but I feel I must.

The artifacts form something referred to as the Armillary. The Armillary leads to the Center of the Universe, and at the Center of the Universe there is... The Unity. And when one glimpses the Unity they are presented with an option: The chance to ascend humanity and become Starborn. But it is not without cost. You leave your world behind, travel to another universe, much like this one but wholly different at the same time.

I never would have believed any of this were it not for what happened next. The Emissary revealed their face to me, and it was one I knew all too well, and one I never thought I'd see again. It was the face of Sam Coe.

But it was not Sam, at least not the one we'd lost at the Eye mere days ago. It was Someone else. A different version of Sam.

Alive. But not our Sam.

My theory — human, or human-adjacent — was correct. The Starborn are us. Were us. People who found the artifacts, found the temples, followed the path I am on now, and made a choice.

What infuriated me, what I am still furious about, is that the Hunter's argument makes sense.

He killed Sam. He attacked Constellation. He has done things I cannot forgive, and I am not interested in forgiving them. And his position on Unity — what it is, what it costs, what repeating the cycle endlessly actually produces — is not wrong. I can see the logic of it. I followed the thread of his reasoning and arrived, against my will, at a place where I understood it.

I hate that. I hate it in a specific, bone-deep way that I don't have a more precise word for.

Earth's moon. The Emissary says it's relevant. The next step.

I'm not going yet.

Right now I'm sitting in my room on the Naginata, staring at a lamp. I don't know why. I can't...