Sera noticed the changes gradually.
That was what made them difficult to notice at all.
Nothing happened on one particular morning that made the world suddenly feel different.
There was no announcement declaring that something had changed.
No government broadcast.
No scientist standing in front of a camera telling people that humanity had crossed some invisible boundary.
There were simply more stories.
Another exploration vessel had disappeared.
Sera read the article during her lunch break, then closed it.
The following week, another one disappeared.
This time, the authorities said the vessel had lost communication after entering an area of unexpected interference.
Sera remembered that phrase.
Unexpected interference.
It was the sort of phrase governments used when they didn’t want to say they didn’t know what had happened.
She continued eating.
A few days later, a vessel returned.
It had been missing for almost three months.
The ship was damaged, though the reports were vague about how.
Several systems had failed completely.
The crew had survived, but only a few members were willing to speak publicly.
One of them described seeing lights outside the ship.
Not stars.
Not another vessel.
Lights.
They had appeared at impossible distances, moving without any visible acceleration.
The interview lasted less than five minutes.
The recording was removed from several platforms shortly afterward.
Sera found a copy anyway.
She watched it once.
Then she closed it.
The man’s expression stayed with her.
Not because he looked frightened.
Because he looked like someone who had seen something and had decided that explaining it was worse than remaining silent.
Sera put her phone down.
She had learned not to chase everything.
That was one of the differences between eighteen and twenty-two.
At eighteen, she would have spent days searching for the missing parts of the story.
Now she asked a simpler question.
Does this affect me?
Usually, the answer was no.
So she moved on.
But the stories continued.
Astronomers reported strange readings from deep space.
A research station temporarily suspended operations without giving a clear reason.
A group of scientists publicly disagreed over unexplained observations and then stopped discussing the matter altogether.
Several countries quietly updated emergency procedures concerning communication failures in space.
People noticed.
The internet noticed everything.
Conspiracy theories multiplied.
Some claimed aliens had arrived.
Others claimed governments had discovered ancient civilizations.
Some insisted the stars themselves were changing.
Most of it was nonsense.
Sera knew that.
She had spent years sorting nonsense from things that deserved attention.
But something bothered her.
The nonsense was beginning to surround pieces of truth.
That had never happened this often before.
One evening, Sera sat in her apartment with her laptop open.
An article was displayed on the screen.
SECOND DEEP-SPACE MISSION DELAYED AFTER UNEXPLAINED COMMUNICATION LOSS
She read it twice.
Then closed the page.
Her eyes moved toward the window.
Night had fallen over Arkhangelsk.
The city lights reflected faintly against the glass.
Sera picked up her notebook.
She had been keeping it beside her lately.
Not her old investigation files.
Not the encrypted archive she had built when she was younger.
This was different.
A record of her experiments with her ability.
She turned to a blank page.
For several seconds, she hesitated.
Then she wrote:
Question: Is something going to happen to humanity?
She stared at the words.
It was a ridiculous question.
Too broad.
She knew that now.
Still, she closed her eyes.
She focused.
Nothing.
She waited.
Nothing.
She tried again.
Her awareness stretched outward.
For a brief moment, the familiar sensation appeared.
Possibilities.
But there were too many.
They appeared and disappeared before she could understand them.
A city.
Darkness.
Crowds.
Empty streets.
Light.
Fire.
A ship.
A forest.
People she didn’t recognize.
People she did.
None of them remained long enough to become meaningful.
Then everything collapsed into uncertainty.
Sera opened her eyes.
Her breathing was slightly faster.
She stared at the page.
“Too broad.”
She crossed out the question.
Then she tried something more specific.
Will the world still be ordinary five years from now?
She concentrated.
This time, something came.
Not an image.
Not even a clear sensation.
It was more like standing at the edge of a road and realizing there were countless paths disappearing into darkness.
Some continued straight.
Some turned.
Some ended.
Some went somewhere she couldn’t see.
Sera opened her eyes.
She sat very still.
She had learned enough by now to recognize the difference between seeing a possibility and simply imagining one.
This had felt different.
But it hadn’t given her an answer.
There was no yes.
No no.
Only uncertainty.
Sera looked down at her notebook.
Then she wrote:
Result: unclear.
She stopped.
After a moment, she added:
Possibilities too numerous to distinguish.
She put the pen down.
That should have reassured her.
Instead, it didn’t.
Because for the first time, she wondered whether the problem wasn’t the question.
Maybe the future itself had become too complicated.
Or maybe there was something approaching that she simply wasn’t capable of seeing.
Sera closed the notebook.
She stood and walked toward the window.
The clouds had cleared.
The sky above Arkhangelsk was unusually bright with stars.
She remembered being five years old.
Back then, space had seemed simple.
Humanity was expanding.
Ships were leaving Earth.
People were going to the Moon.
Mars was becoming a place humans could actually visit.
The stars had represented possibility.
The future had seemed enormous and exciting.
Then humanity had reached farther.
And farther.
And farther.
Sera watched a small point of light move slowly across the sky.
An orbital vessel.
A machine carrying people above the world.
When she was five, she would have stared at it with wonder.
Now she simply watched.
Another light appeared.
Then another.
The sky was crowded with things humanity had built.
Stations.
Satellites.
Ships.
Machines.
A civilization reaching outward in every direction.
Sera suddenly wondered whether humanity had ever stopped to ask what might be reaching back.
She frowned.
The thought felt unnecessarily dramatic.
“Stop it.”
She turned away from the window.
But after a few seconds, she looked back.
Something had appeared between the stars.
Just for an instant.
A faint point of light.
Too distant to identify.
Too brief to be certain she had even seen it.
Sera’s instincts remained quiet.
No warning.
No sense of danger.
Nothing.
The light disappeared.
She continued staring at the empty patch of sky.
For some reason, the absence of a warning unsettled her more than the strange light itself.
She finally stepped away from the window.
The world outside continued normally.
Cars moved through the streets.
People went home.
Ships continued crossing the northern waters.
Somewhere above them, humanity continued moving toward the stars.
And far beyond what Sera could see, something was already changing.
She simply didn’t know it yet.