Elias stared at the "File Deleted" prompt that immediately followed the playback. The server had a self-destruct protocol triggered by the final frame. He looked out his window at the night sky, wondering if the HI-7 team was still up there on the plateau, or if they had moved on to wherever those three suns were shining. Thorne's next discovery?

The audio begins to tear. The "hi7" in the filename, Elias realizes, wasn't a version number—it was a warning for Harmonic Interference Level 7 . The video starts to artifact. Figures in the background aren't walking; they are appearing and disappearing, caught in a frame-rate lag that isn't a digital error, but a physical one.

The perspective shifts to a body camera. A scientist, identified in the metadata as Dr. Aris Thorne, is kneeling by a fissure in the rock. He isn't looking at minerals; he’s looking at a pulsing, bioluminescent moss that seems to move in rhythm with his breathing.