They say forests remember everything.
Every step, every scream, every silence—they hold it in their roots, their soil, their shadows. But this forest near the edge of town remembered something different. Something not from Earth. Something that fell from the stars.
It wasn't the birds that first noticed. It was the silence that followed. The wind itself, which usually played through the leaves, stopped—as if holding its breath.
In the middle of a clearing, hidden from any known hiking trail, was a crater.
Fresh. Violent. Wrong.
Not the kind made by lightning or weather. It looked surgical—like something had punched a hole straight through the sky and slammed into the earth with such force that it left a bowl of scorched dirt and splintered trees in its wake.
But no meteorite was found.
No government tape. No hazmat suits. No satellites noticed.
Only one thing remained at the center of the blast: a small, untouched object.
It looked like a pen drive.
Sleek. Black. Seamless. Not a scratch on it. Not even dirt.
It pulsed faintly. A low, silver glow tracing unfamiliar patterns along its surface—almost like it was breathing.
It lay there for hours. Days, maybe.
Then came the wolf.
It sniffed. Growled. Backed away. The pen drive flickered. The wolf whimpered and ran, tail tucked, eyes wide with terror. Something about the object didn't belong to this world. The forest, ancient and wise, agreed.
For weeks, storms circled overhead, but never struck. Trees bent unnaturally away from the clearing. Birds refused to perch on branches nearby.
Eventually, a hiker stumbled upon it.
She didn't recognize it. Thought it was junk.
Took it home.
The next morning, it crashed her laptop. Froze her house's power. Sent her dog into a barking frenzy that ended only when she tossed the device into the trash.
By noon, a garbage truck picked it up.
By sunset, it had passed through six different hands.
Each person tried to use it.
Each person failed.
Glitches. Shocks. Static.
One man claimed to hear a voice whisper his name through his Bluetooth speaker. Another swore his smart lights formed binary code after plugging it in. But no one could open it. No one could access a single file.
And every time, the same pattern: the device would refuse… and then move on.
From desk to trash. From hand to ground. From office to junkyard.
The world had given up on it.
Until one evening… it was thrown from the third-floor window of an old apartment building. It tumbled through the air and smacked the concrete road below.
It should've shattered.
Instead, it bounced.
Right into the path of a bicycle.
The boy riding it didn't see it until it struck his front tire. He swerved, cursed, fell into a pile of leaves, and groaned in frustration.
His name was Nova.
Fifteen. Scrawny. Hair always a little too messy. Grades that lived somewhere between average and forgettable. His teachers barely remembered his face. His classmates barely noticed when he walked into a room.
He picked up the device, brushing off dust.
"What kind of cheap USB is this?"
No label. No port. Just smooth black metal that shimmered faintly in the dying light.
Curious, Nova slipped it into his pocket.
He didn't know that five seconds earlier, the glow had pulsed twice.
Not for rejection.
But recognition.
That night, Nova skipped his homework.
Not that anyone expected him to do it.
He sat at his second-hand desk, staring at the pen drive. The house was quiet except for the occasional hum of traffic from the road. His mom had fallen asleep watching a cooking show.
He turned the device over in his hand. It felt warm. Almost alive.
Against better judgment, he plugged it into his laptop.
No click. No loading screen.
His computer glitched. The screen fuzzed with static.
Then went black.
He reached for the plug—but before he could, the screen lit up again.
Only now it wasn't his desktop.
> [SYSTEM REBOOTING...]
> [SECURITY SEAL LIFTING...]
Nova frowned. "Security seal?"
The cursor blinked rapidly. Then, a low mechanical voice whispered from the speakers:
> ["Verification... pending."]
His heart stopped.
He pulled the device out.
Nothing happened. His laptop was still on.
The screen blinked once more.
> [Hello, Nova.]
He jumped so hard he nearly knocked over his chair.
No webcam. No mic. No account.
> [Welcome to... Stellar Genesis.]
A flash. His laptop fan roared. The lights in his room dimmed. For a moment, everything felt... heavy. Like the air itself had thickened.
Then, silence.
Nova blinked.
The screen was normal again.
Desktop. Icons. No sign anything happened.
The device was no longer in his hand.
It had melted. Dissolved. Fused with the USB port like ink soaking into paper.
He touched the edge.
Warm.
Alive.
Suddenly, a sound. Not from his laptop.
From outside.
Nova rushed to the window. Something glowed in the distance. Just past the treeline near the outskirts of the city.
The forest.
The place where the device had fallen weeks ago.
The glow pulsed again. Like a heartbeat.
And then, it vanished.
Nova stepped back, unsure what he'd just seen.
Behind him, on his laptop, the screen flashed once more.
> [Begin Level One.]
Then everything went dark.