What if the Big Bang wasn't the beginning? What if it was the end of a war?
For Dr Aris Thorne, a reclusive astronomer haunted by his past, the universe is a place of comforting, absolute certainty. From his lonely post at a remote observatory on the Cornish moors, he listens to the faint hiss of the Big Bang's afterglow - the cosmic microwave background. To others, it's static. To him, it's the sound of creation.
Until one night, in a cold, empty patch of sky, the static blinks.
A single, impossible glitch in the data pulls Aris into a spiral of obsession. It's an error that thermodynamics says cannot exist, a moment where the fundamental laws of reality seemed to stutter. While his colleagues dismiss it as an anomaly, Aris can't let it go.
Soon, the glitches begin to bleed from his screen into his world. A teacup that vibrates without cause. A reflection that moves a half-second too late. A familiar star chart that rearranges itself in the blink of an eye. Aris finds himself trapped between a terrifying discovery and the fear of his own collapsing sanity.
He's forced to confront a truth that reframes all of human existence: What if the laws of physics are not natural, but engineered? What if they are the bars of a cosmic cage, a firewall built to keep an ancient, unimaginable enemy at bay?
The static is no longer the echo of creation. It's the sound of the firewall beginning to crumble. And Aris Thorne, a forgotten man in a forgotten observatory, is the only one who can hear it.
