Prologue The Deep Ocean
The universe is a deep ocean.
Every civilization is a creature drifting through the lightless abyss, moving silently through the crushing dark, trying not to disturb the water. Even the faintest bioluminescence must be suppressed. The creature must be careful, for everywhere in the depths are other predators just like it. If it detects another life—another predator, or even a juvenile, or an elder barely able to swim—there is only one thing it can do: strike and consume them. In this ocean, hell is other people. Any life that creates a ripple shall be swiftly devoured.
Everyone is hiding.
The Creators understood this. Ancient beyond reckoning, they spread across the galaxy in an age so remote that the stars themselves have shifted positions since their passing. They found the Deep Ocean already waiting—older civilizations had been consumed and had consumed, had hunted and been hunted, had learned the terrible arithmetic of survival in an infinite void where resources are finite and trust is fatal.
The Creators chose a different path. They did not conquer. They did not broadcast. They did not build monuments nor leave beacons. Instead, they planted seeds—
The prologue continues in the book.
