Luke sat with his knees in the snow, palms braced against the ground, eyes narrowed at the jagged slope before him.
"This will collapse in a hundred years," he said.
Behind him, Daniel exhaled into his hands, then rubbed warmth into his fingers. "Only if you keep shaping it like a funeral mound. No one wants to remember death."
"No one will remember it at all if it's buried under rock."
"We're building for the stars, not the ground."
Luke stood. "You build for beauty. I build for time."
Daniel just smiled. That was how most of their arguments ended — not with a winner, but with the quiet agreement that they were both right.
They had been building for over a thousand years, leaving behind towering monuments and impossible structures across Earth. Some were hidden under jungle overgrowth. Others poked through ancient snows. More than a few had been swallowed by the sea.
The humans didn't know who built them. Most assumed gods. A few thought giants. One tribe even worshipped Daniel as a singing mountain spirit, though he never said a word to them.
This structure, however, was different.
Perched on a mountain peak that never saw summer, the foundation stone shimmered in the pale light of dawn. Luke had shaped the base by compacting the bedrock beneath the ice, crushing it with raw force until it fused like molten glass. Daniel traced wide curves and starburst spirals into its surface, each line resonating faintly with warmth.
"Is it functional?" Luke asked.
Daniel shrugged. "It's beautiful. It'll outlast the language needed to understand it. I'd call that functional."
Luke didn't reply. Instead, he added another plate of stone to the north-facing edge. He aligned it with the stars — true north, true balance.
Daniel hummed as he worked. "I'm thinking something smaller next time. Maybe a single arch."
"No curves. They collapse under weather."
Daniel smirked. "That's why we reinforce them with faith."
Luke blinked. "That's not how materials work."
Daniel just laughed.
The tower took twenty years to complete. A spiraling, pillar-supported monument with a hollowed center that focused starlight into a single beam at midnight each solstice. No one asked them to build it. No one would know it existed for thousands of years.
But it was the kind of structure that would haunt dreams and spark myths.
At the end of their work, Daniel sat on the edge of the ringed platform, legs dangling into the clouds. Luke sat beside him, not speaking.
After a long moment, Daniel said, "We're going to disappear one day."
Luke nodded. "But our work won't."
"That's enough, right?"
Luke didn't answer. But he didn't leave either.
Elsewhere in the world, the rest of the Legion had etched their presence into Earth in quieter ways.
Teal spent his time in the highlands of what would one day become Tibet. His days were spent wrestling the beasts of the mountains — bears, great cats, things too ancient for memory. He didn't fight them to kill. He fought to remember how. He sparred with nature like it was his equal.
He bled once, early on, when a three-tusked predator surprised him in the snow. He laughed as it gouged his side — not because he enjoyed pain, but because it reminded him that he was still mortal.
He carried no tools. He needed no home. When he meditated, the earth around him stilled.
A monk once saw him split a boulder with his palm and disappeared into the mountains to spend the rest of his life seeking him. Teal never let him find him.
Nira wandered the Sahara before it was a desert.
She had watched the land die over centuries — rivers vanish, lakes recede, forests turn to sand. She never intervened… until once, when a caravan collapsed under the weight of thirst.
She couldn't ignore them.
So she struck the earth, not with power, but with compassion. A well opened. Cold water surged upward. The people wept and prayed.
She left before they saw her.
She never returned.
Later, a generation of desert wanderers would build shrines to "the water goddess with a silver gaze." They carved her into stone with arms outstretched and sand swirling at her feet.
But she never looked back.
Kelly worked in the fire.
She shaped ridgelines, crater walls, tectonic shelves. She'd been known to walk directly into volcanoes, not to test herself, but to learn their rhythm.
She never spoke much to the others, not even when the Legion gathered. But she always stood ready at Nolan's side, and her eyes never stopped moving. When she wasn't training, she was carving battle paths — terrain meant for use during a future war they all hoped would never come.
To humans, she was nameless. But some civilizations called her the Woman of Stone. Others whispered of a flame-walker who could stop eruptions with a whisper.
She never cared.
Fimmel didn't seek solitude. It found him.
He lived deep in jungles, blending so thoroughly into the foliage that even the local apex predators feared his scent. He hunted, not for survival, but for balance. He believed the only way to truly live among nature was to challenge it.
One story passed through tribes for hundreds of years — of a single man who took down a jaguar barehanded, not in anger, but in silence. Another tale spoke of a "storm-skinned shadow" that crushed a metal war chariot in a flash during a battle none of the witnesses survived.
He didn't speak at gatherings. But when others trained, he watched.
His eyes missed nothing.
…
..
.
Nolan didn't speak for a long time as he hovered above the broken starship.
Vela hovered beside him, arms crossed, jaw tight. Her silver eyes reflected the shattered hull drifting before them — a ruin suspended in space, torn open from the inside.
The debris floated gently, no longer tethered by gravity, no longer part of anything whole. Twisted steel, fractured crystal, dried organic matter.
And one pod. Still intact. Faintly glowing.
"Is it Kryptonian?" Vela asked.
Nolan didn't answer. He moved closer, scanning with his senses, trying to piece together what had happened. The ship wasn't Viltrumite, and it didn't match any of the known technology he'd encountered during his off-world explorations.
There was a kind of tension in the air around the pod — not danger, exactly, but density. Like the space around it refused to be empty.
He moved forward.
Vela grabbed his arm. "Wait. This could be a trap. There's power in that thing."
He turned to her slowly. "I know. That's why I want to open it."
The pod hissed before he touched it. A seam split down the middle with slow finality. No alarms. No lights. Just a soft release of vapor and a single sigh, as if the galaxy exhaled.
Then she sat up.
Her eyes opened — pale gold, rimmed with silver — and met Nolan's without flinching. Her skin glowed faintly under the starlight. Not bright, but steady, like she reflected something just beyond visible light.
She looked at them both. Then down at herself. Then up again.
She didn't speak.
"Are you hurt?" Nolan asked carefully.
She tilted her head. Her hair fell to the side — weightless in the void — thick and long and midnight-black with strands of deep violet woven through like veins of nebula. She blinked once.
Then she spoke, voice soft and even.
"I was dreaming."
Vela narrowed her eyes. "Of what?"
The woman frowned slightly, as if trying to remember something just out of reach. "A sun I've never seen. A field of glass. A child."
She looked down at her hands.
"I was supposed to die."
Nolan hovered closer. "What's your name?"
She looked at him for a long moment. Then, almost uncertainly, she said, "Celestine."
Vela's jaw tightened. "Celestial? Or Celestine?"
"Celestine," she repeated. "I think that's what I was called… once."
"What are you?" Nolan asked. Not with suspicion. Just curiosity. The kind that came with living for centuries and still being surprised.
Celestine looked at her reflection in a twisted piece of alloy nearby. She reached up, touched her own face as if confirming she was real.
"I don't know anymore."
The flight back to Earth took hours, even with Nolan and Vela adjusting the path through folded space currents. Celestine followed them easily, though she said nothing.
She moved like someone who had flown through vacuum since before she could walk. Her body shimmered faintly when she flew, like she left a soft echo behind her — a ripple that the universe itself hesitated to smooth over.
They entered Earth's upper atmosphere in silence.
Below them, oceans churned with early storm seasons. The planet had aged since the last time Nolan had left it. Centuries had passed, and yet, somehow, it still felt exactly as he remembered.
As they descended, Nolan glanced toward Vela. She didn't look back.
Celestine finally spoke.
"This world is young."
Vela nodded. "It's ours."
Celestine floated beside them, arms loose at her sides. "It feels… kind."
"That depends where you land," Vela muttered.
Nolan slowed. "We've made this planet our home. It's not Viltrum. But it's free."
Celestine didn't answer for a while. Then she said, "I don't remember where I'm from. But something in my bones recognizes this sun."
She lifted her face toward it as the clouds thinned, letting light pour down.
"I feel awake here."
They landed quietly, in the stretch of highland tundra they called Legion Valley. None of the others were present — scattered as usual. But the moment Nolan touched down, he felt the air shift.
Celestine landed beside them, her bare feet pressing into the moss and stone like she belonged there. Her eyes closed. She breathed in slowly.
"I've never touched this ground," she whispered, "but it feels like it's always known me."
Vela gave her a sideways glance but said nothing.
Nolan looked between them, then to the horizon.
"We should introduce her to the others," he said.
"Later," Vela replied, too quickly.
Celestine turned. "You don't trust me."
"I don't know you," Vela replied flatly.
Celestine didn't seem offended. "Then I will show you."
She took a few steps forward, kneeling near the edge of the cliff that overlooked the valley below. Wind pushed her hair back in slow waves. Her hand touched the stone beside her.
The moss beneath her palm curled upward. Not in decay — in growth. Flowers bloomed from nothing, reaching toward the light.
Vela narrowed her eyes. "How did you—"
Celestine stood. "I think the sun here… listens to me."
Nolan exhaled slowly. His eyes lingered on Celestine for a long time. Not with awe. Not with suspicion. But with a sense of recognition. Of something old waking up in his blood.
"You were made," he said, voice quiet.
Celestine turned toward him.
"Weren't you?"
She didn't nod. She didn't deny it.
Vela crossed her arms again. "We're still under oath."
"I'm not asking her to break it," Nolan said.
Vela's eyes softened, just slightly. "Just remember what we promised."
"I remember."
They stood there — the three of them — under the blue sky, surrounded by wind, in a world untouched by war, by empires, by legacy.
But not for long.