The Duskling Paradox

The Great Colony was silent. Not a rustle of carapace, not a shimmer of wing. Only the low thrum of bio-reactors echoed in the depths, while above, the stars pulsed faintly in the velvet dark. Kael stood alone at the edge of the observation tier, watching a pale aurora ripple across the sky — not natural, but generated by the Duskling Gate.
The gate had opened again.
The Dusklings — obsidian-bodied, scentless, and silent — had first emerged from what the Myrminians called “The Scar Between Stars,” a portal of gravitational fractures powered by a controlled dark matter anomaly. Unlike the insectoid leaders of Chitin Prime, the Dusklings were energy-based lifeforms from a forgotten fold in the universe, their minds humming like static and storm.
Kael knew they were older than the bugs. Older than humans. Perhaps even older than time itself. And now… they had started to whisper.
“You have opened what should have stayed sealed,” buzzed Vryx, the centipede archivist, coiling beside Kael. “Even the Elders fear them.”
“I didn’t open anything,” Kael muttered. “They came. Uninvited.”
“No… you called them.”
Kael turned sharply. “What do you mean?”
The centipede’s eye clusters gleamed with ancient data. “You carry the anomaly. Your DNA was altered when you entered the Spindle Nest. You’re resonating with dark matter frequencies. You are the key, Kael.”
Far below, the Duskling Gate pulsed with violet light. Shapes flickered in the mist — some vaguely humanoid, some unnamable. Kael felt them in his skull before he saw them.
One word formed in his mind: Unweave.
The Dusklings weren’t trying to invade. They were trying to undo the Chitin Age itself.
Suddenly, alarms rang — a breach. One of the Gate’s stabilizers collapsed, leaking controlled dark matter into the colony’s deep veins. Chitin walls cracked. Insect workers collapsed, twitching, disoriented. Something was wrong with time.
“Seal it! Seal the gate!” screamed Commander Kzex from the Hivewall.
But the Dusklings were already inside.
Kael ran through warping corridors as gravity twisted, shadows crawled up the walls, and Myrminians fell prey to hallucinations. He felt something rise within him — a voice not his own, guiding his steps.
“You are the thread,” it whispered.
He reached the Heart Core, where the gate’s main control crystal shimmered — dark, unstable, and reacting to him. As Kael touched it, time paused.
He saw the beginning. The end. And in between, a choice.
He could unweave the anomaly… and erase the Duskling paradox.
Or he could let them in — embrace what came beyond matter.
When time resumed, his hand was already glowing.