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I step onto the platform.

The lights brighten automatically. Holographic displays unfold around me in slow blue spirals: geometric ruin diagrams, linguistic overlays, age-comparison models, carefully redacted timelines. No origin sequences. No Echo recordings. No catastrophic archive data. Enough truth to move civilization forward. Not enough to break it open in one violent pull.

I look out at the chamber.

For one terrible second, I remember Nareth-Kul.

The collapsing archive.

Reality tearing like wet paper.

Rolaev standing beneath dying light asking whether people truly survive the loss of sacred certainty.

My pulse jumps.

Then I see Sira.

Brakk.

Ghar stands just outside the crowd, arms folded, watching me with absolute steadiness.

And I remember something more important.

I am not alone in this anymore.

I begin.

“Three months ago, the Nareth-Kul recovery initiative confirmed archaeological evidence inconsistent with established Precursor origin timelines.” My voice carries cleanly through the chamber. “Since then, public speculation has ranged from cautious revision to what one news network called ‘time ghosts with political agendas,’ which I regret to inform everyone is not technically accurate.”

Scattered laughter breaks the tension.

Good.

“Today’s presentation concerns what we can responsibly confirm.”

The first diagrams bloom overhead.

Ancient geometric structures rotate slowly above the audience, impossible angles stabilized into comprehensible form through the initiative’s filtered models. I walk them through the evidence carefully: material degradation curves, symbolic continuity markers, architectural sequencing, linguistic drift patterns older than any known Precursor framework.

Questions erupt before I finish the third section.

A Coalition historian rises immediately. “If verified, these findings imply the Precursors inherited portions of their cosmology from earlier civilizations.”

“Yes,” I answer.

An Alliance representative stands next. “Inherited or appropriated?”

Murmurs spread.

“Potentially both,” I say. “Cultural inheritance and reinterpretation are not unusual across civilizations.”

“That framing minimizes the theological implications,” a Coalition cleric snaps.

“And exaggerating them before the evidence is fully contextualized would be irresponsible,” I reply.

The cleric stiffens. “You presume authority over public readiness.”

“No.” I keep my voice level. “I acknowledge consequences.”