Swipe Right
Copyright© 2026 by Sci-FiTy1972
Chapter 15: Semai Prime
The transition took longer than anyone expected.
Not because the distance was vast—distance had stopped being meaningful—but because Shroud transit demanded patience. You didn’t push through the universe while unseen. You allowed it to forget you were there.
The Praesidium moved without wake or echo, probability closing around it like water over a blade.
When Semai Prime resolved into view, Amina stopped breathing for a moment.
It was smaller than Earth. Older.
Its light carried a softened spectrum, filtered through an atmosphere engineered for balance rather than conquest. No glaring orbital structures. No weapons platforms. Only geometry, oceans, and continents shaped by intention.
“My home,” Amina said quietly.
Darius joined her at the view-port. “It survived.”
“Yes,” she replied. “Because it learned when not to be seen.”
The Praesidium did not descend.
It waited.
Semai Prime responded.
Deep beneath the planet’s surface, dormant systems awakened—not explosively, not defensively, but with recognition. Power flowed through ancient lattices of crystalline logic and organic computation that had not been used in centuries.
They had not been shut down.
They had been holding breath.
The Royal AI’s tone shifted—subtly, respectfully.
Royal Lineage Confirmed. Semaian Continuity: Intact. Ascension Protocol Available.
Amina closed her eyes.
Darius said nothing.
He did not need to.
But he felt it—the shift in the air, the weight that always came before something irreversible.
The chamber beneath Semai Prime was not built to impress.
It was built to last abandonment.
Living stone rose in columns etched with geometry that refused permanence, patterns that changed when observed directly—as if the space itself rejected fixation. The air hummed with restraint, not power.
Figures emerged from the alcoves as the final seals disengaged.
The sleepers.
Semaians—engineers, architects, systems-shapers, silver-haired, silver-eyed, waking slowly as though the universe itself might punish haste.
One elder stepped forward, her gaze locking onto Amina.
“You lived,” she said.
“I hid,” Amina replied. “As we were taught.”
The elder inclined her head. “Then you learned.”
Another elder approached from Amina’s side—female, sharper in presence, eyes weighing more than they spoke.
“Before ascension,” she said quietly, “there is a requirement.”
Amina did not turn. “Say it.”
“To become Semaian Queen,” the elder continued, “you must release your Earth heritage.”
The chamber seemed to still.
“You were sent to hide,” the elder said. “The Earth identity was a mask. It must be removed.”
Amina turned slowly.
“A mask?” she asked, voice steady but thin at the edges.
“You learned survival there,” the elder said. “But not sovereignty.”
Amina inhaled once. Deep. Controlled.
“I learned what fear does to people,” she said. “I learned what power does when it isn’t balanced by empathy. I learned how humans break—and how they keep going anyway.”
The elder studied her.
“You carry two cultures,” she said. “That creates tension.”
Amina lifted her chin.
“Yes,” she said. “It also creates balance.”
She placed a hand over her own chest.
“Semaian is who I am,” she said. “But Earth is where I learned how to lead people who are afraid. If you want a queen who only reflects Semai Prime, you want an echo of what we were.”
Her voice did not rise.
“If you want the queen our people need now—after centuries of hiding—you need the version of me that survived Earth without becoming what Earth can make people become.”
The elder said nothing.
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