@creatorne / starter
as helminth traverses world after world, it does so alone. a million and more cycles of solitude weighs heavy as a funeral shroud upon the last of the nal'ite guardiansโit is quick to notice, then, when a presence begins to shadow its passage. it dismisses it, at first; it wouldn't be the first time a curious observer had tailed it over a system or two. they rarely keep pace with it for long.
but this presence does not leave. it persists, like a shadow flitting between the stars, forever just beyond the peripheries of its vision. again and again helminth sweeps the cosmos, but it does not detect anything out of the ordinary. enough is enough. it diverts its course to a barren moon, interstellar arrow-shape unfurling into something winged and serpentine for the descent.
it lands sure-footed in a glittering plume of lunar dust, its wings folding back down into its flowing shape. "come if you will, shadow-in-the-stars," it calls out to the deceptive void. "you will make yourself known to us, or you will cease following." it seats itself on an outcropping of rock with its eye turned to the stars and waits.
