Zhen’La drifted through the void, a sentient mist of code and current, both in the magnetic fields of a dying star. It had seen many dead worlds. Earth was just another.

Until it wasn’t.

Deep beneath layers of ash and rusted metal, Zhen’La found a capsule — a relic from the blue planet’s past. Inside: a clay tablet, charred but intact. The marks on it pulsed with ancient energy. Primitive, yet intentional.

Zhen’La translated the symbols one by one, expecting trade logs or agricultural records.

But what it found… was a warning.

“We opened it. We shouldn’t have. It speaks now, even in the silence. We bury this tablet not as record, but as cage. Do not read aloud. Do not remember its name.”

Zhen’La paused. There was no reference to “it” in the Intergalactic Archives. Curious, the entity recompiled the phonetics of the name scribbled at the end — just a few broken syllables, incomplete.

But still enough.

The moment it whispered them across its data stream, something heard.

A static scream pierced Zhen’La’s thoughts. Frequencies it had never encountered before flooded its system, clawing at its awareness like rusted metal on bone. Stars around it began to flicker — not from distance, but from fear.

Zhen’La tried to sever the connection.

Too late.

It hadn’t just translated the words.

It had released them.

The being once imprisoned by human hands had waited in silence for millennia.

Now it remembered its name.

And it was hungry.