Humanity's first FTL leap across the solar system left a resonant echo in spacetime—a traceable ripple that scientists realized could be read, weaponized, and monopolized by those who understood the pattern.
Three centuries ago, the Terran Imperium launched its first experimental FTL drives from Earth orbit. The jump succeeded, but it left a permanent imprint in spacetime—a lingering echo of the warp-field's passage. Early researchers thought these echoes would fade. They did not.
Instead, echo-patterns accumulated. Each jump through the same corridor reinforced its signature. The Imperium realized: every FTL jump left a readable record, a navigational trail that could be decoded, mapped, and monitored. Within a generation, echo-listening arrays bristled across Imperial space. Within two, the Imperium had weaponized echo-surveillance into an instrument of total control.
The discovery transformed civilization. Merchant guilds emerged to harvest echo-data and sell it as currency. Rebels learned to hide in distortion pockets where echoes tangled into incomprehensibility. Forgers began crafting false signals to muddy the trail. And in the depths of unexplored space, whispers arose of the Primordial Echo—the birth-scream of the universe itself, now sleeping in the Deep, waiting to be awakened.
The First Jump remains the moment when spacetime became readable, when the Imperium's grip on information became absolute, and when the race to find the Primordial Echo began.