Not Yet

Hope does not require proof

The Ghost had searched for so long they had stopped counting the years. Cities became ruins, roads disappeared beneath grass and snow, and other Ghosts found their Guardians. This one kept looking.

Every body received the same careful scan. A ruined transport outside the Cosmodrome. A collapsed shelter beneath the mountains. Bones half-buried beneath winter. Nothing.

Eventually, another Ghost asked the question nobody liked asking. "What if they aren't out there?"

"They are."

"You don't know that."

"No." The Ghost turned toward the horizon. "But I haven't found them yet."

Years passed. The search carried them farther from the roads Guardians still traveled, into places nobody had bothered to reclaim. Then, beneath the remains of an old overpass, something answered. Not a voice. A pulse. The Ghost stopped. Broken concrete covered the remains of an old vehicle, crushed almost flat. Another scan confirmed it.

There.

A spark.

For the first time in centuries, the Ghost did not move. They descended into the wreckage. A body lay pinned beneath twisted metal. No armor. No weapon. Nothing that suggested heroism. Just someone who had died a very long time ago.

"So it was you."

The Ghost opened their shell. Light gathered. For one terrible moment, nothing happened.

Then the stranger gasped. Their eyes opened.

For the first time since the Traveler made them, there was nowhere else they needed to be.

The search was over.

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