Planet: Harkonnen V — Seat of Culture, Core Spiral
His name was Selariin-Vex.
Third-born of the Vex Lineage.
Minister of Temporal Diplomacy.
Architect of the Peacekeeper Protocols.
A nobody to the story, but a pillar to the system.
He had never seen war.
He had never heard of psionic corruption.
And he didn’t know what a Mirror was.
Not yet.
Morning Ritual — Vexian Tradition
Selariin-Vex stepped into the skyfold pool, his six ocular lobes blinking away last night’s still-dream. The house AI whispered the day’s schedule into his thoughts, with a lilt he found soothing.
He sipped from the kel-stream. Checked his pulse-sync.
Everything was in perfect rhythm.
Like always.
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He paused by the floating glass garden, watching petals regenerate from light. Beauty was his culture's defense. If a society could make art like this, why would it fear anything?
Later — At the Cultural Grand Hall
The delegates arrived from across the spiral: the bioluminescent Syth, the temporal-bonded Iziari, even a representative of the Woven Cloud.
They came to discuss trivialities—border music rights, delayed trade in synthetic moons, post-dream etiquette.
Selariin made his way through the talking, smiling, bowing.
And then—
A flicker.
Just a flicker.
In the eyes of the Syth delegate.
A reflection that blinked when they didn’t.
Selariin dismissed it. Perhaps a trick of refracted thought-waves.
But that night, in his dreams—
Fragmented Dream Log — Selariin’s Neural Core
A burning planet, its core unraveling like a scream.
A woman with silver eyes standing on a sunless shore.
A man made of static, whispering the word “mirror” in reverse.
He woke up shaking.
Alien or not, the instinct for fear is universal.
Elsewhere — Unseen Satellite Intercept, Hidden Above Harkonnen V
Two human voices.
Encrypted.
“She’s bleeding memories again.”
“Then it’s starting.”
“They’re seeing echoes. They don’t even know what they are.”
“Let them dream a little longer.”
“Why?”
“Because the dream will be the first thing they mourn.”
Selariin-Vex's Final Entry That Day
"I am stable.
My world is stable.
My Union is stable.
I am… being watched.”
“But I am no one. Why would they watch me?”
“What is a Mirror Plague?”
He paused.
Typed again.
“And why do I feel like it remembers me?”