Taylor recalibrated the telescope, chasing the signal’s origin. The monitors fizzed with interference, but through the glass, they saw it—a colossal shape seated among dead stars. Its body was a tapestry of vacuum and dying suns, its face a hollow where light bent and broke.

  It did not speak. It was speech—a vibration in the marrow.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  You are not thinkers. You are echoes. Your civilizations rise and fall in the time it takes My gaze to linger.

  The cosmos peeled back. Taylor saw the nebula’s truth: a graveyard of worlds, their histories unwritten, their ruins dust. The Watcher’s voice hummed:

  Significance is a story you tell yourselves. A flicker. A dream.