In the year 2177 of the Cosmic Calendar, humanity has long since broken the light-speed barrier, linking the galaxy-spanning Star-Ring Federation through the Hyperstring Network. Yet a physical phenomenon known as the Silent Decline is devouring reality: in certain regions of space, the cosmic constants shift irreversibly, the laws of physics fail, the structure of matter collapses, and everything lapses into the “Silence” of nothingness. During a routine survey of a star region, the Federation’s most elite deep-space exploration fleet, Pioneer Seven, unexpectedly receives a complex information pulse from the heart of a Decline Zone, something that should theoretically be impossible. It is named the Echo from the Abyss.
