Echoes Across the Stars: Book 02: The Second Ruin (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798181234659)

Echoes Across the Stars Book 02: The Second Ruin

For twelve years, Elias Cross has navigated the dangerous fringes of the outer rim as a salvager, piloting his worn-down ship, the Corvus. But his latest recovery has left him with something far more dangerous than scrap: a fully active, two-billion-year-old shard from the ancient Prialy civilization.

This artifact isn't just a relic; it is a live connection to the past. Across a gap of two billion years, Elias is in active resonance with Vaelia, an ancient Prialy substrate engineer. She has left a sequence of waypoints hidden deep in the cosmic microwave background (CMBR), meant to guide the artifact's bearer to the "Source-Place"-a repository holding the ultimate "Record" of her civilization's existence.

Elias isn't the only one looking for the sequence. He is being hunted by the Convergence, a ruthless ideological organization willing to burn research and assassinate scholars to keep the Prialy's secrets buried. Close behind them is Marek Voss, a calculating rival broker determined to extract the shard's immense value for himself.

Outgunned and running out of time, Elias forms an uneasy alliance with Jessa Vinn, a highly capable Halfling smuggler following a coded bearing left by her murdered cousin. Together, they must evade blockades, navigate treacherous derelict fields, and decode the ancient Prialy inscriptions before the Convergence can silence the echoes of the past forever.