Elisa was born on Aetheris, a world bathed in the eternal light of its three moons, where the stars seemed so close that some claimed they could hear them sing. It was a planet of scientists, artists, and dreamers, but also of strict rules and an obsessive devotion to controlled knowledge. On Aetheris, the chaos of the unknown was a threat... except to Elisa.
From an early age, she was an anomaly. While her classmates memorized equations and obeyed stellar simulations, she slipped away into the mountains to listen to the whisper of the cosmic winds and gaze at the starry sky. She read forbidden texts from vanished civilizations, studied alternative theories of the multiverse, and questioned the idea that knowledge should have limits.
She was always asking what lay beyond, always presenting projects and presentations that spoke of entire galaxies, theses that disproved the limits of the universe, or formulas for complete solar systems. Yet her hunger for knowledge was always looked down upon. The teachers consistently gave her low grades or made her redo her assignments because, according to them, she did not follow the clear instructions and had to respect the established rules. Whenever she conducted experiments in the laboratories, or even simply left class, her classmates mocked her, ruined the formulas she was working on, and called her a freak so they could all laugh together.
"If you want to know what's beyond so badly, why don't you just leave and go find it, and leave the rest of us alone?" they would sometimes say.
"Believe me, that's something I'd love to do... loser," Elisa would answer, only to receive another beating afterward.
At first, Elisa cried. But before long, she noticed that the teachers always turned a blind eye or walked away, so she was forced to carry those feelings inside.
At home, things were not much different. Her parents, brilliant scientists but deeply rooted in their traditions and rules, saw in her a dangerous spark. They loved her, yes, but with fear. Elisa told them about the bullying and discrimination she suffered, and although they tried to intervene by speaking to the directors or sending letters, the academy always excused itself, claiming that the teachers had seen nothing and that they were merely jokes between students. Her parents, though worried about her, would always tell her that perhaps she should try to be more obedient and sociable with her teachers and classmates, that perhaps she should also try a little harder herself.
Those words only made Elisa withdraw further and grow more resentful. There were days when she disappeared into the mountains for entire days, and the academy could not have cared less about her absence. In any case, Elisa was far more intelligent and capable than anyone in the complex, and she had begun to feel that attending was a waste of time. She would stare at the sky for hours, imagining herself traveling among the stars she admired so much and being recognized by entire planets while crowds cheered her name. She would even make wishes upon the shooting stars that crossed the heavens, but her wishes and dreams never came true.
"I really do think about leaving... for a better place," she would sometimes murmur.
One day, while wandering through the forests as she always did, Elisa found something among the roots of a tree that immediately caught her attention: a shining black hat. She did not know why, but the hat fascinated her deeply, as though it emitted a mysterious aura, as though it were calling to her.
She picked it up and was about to put it on when four students from her academy appeared. They had skipped class and, seeing Elisa, decided to harass her as usual.
"You know, you should live here like the rest of the creatures."
Elisa tried to walk away, but they surrounded her. When they noticed the hat in her hands, they snatched it away, saying that the object felt just as strange as she did.
"No! It's mine! Give it back!" Elisa shouted, trying to wrestle the hat away from the boy holding it. She even struck him in anger and frustration, but as always, another beating awaited her.
The boys punched and kicked her while she curled up on the ground, and in her mind all she could feel was growing rage and frustration. She was sick of all of this. And the hat, almost as if it had responded to her emotions, began to vibrate and released a pulse that sent all the children crashing into the surrounding trees and rocks.
They hit the ground and trunks, dazed and in pain, and Elisa seized the opportunity to grab the hat and run.
When she arrived home, she locked herself in her room without saying a word and stared in astonishment at the object in her hands. It was undoubtedly something special.
"I think my prayers have finally been heard," she whispered.
Elisa continued sneaking into the mountains and began studying and using the hat, practicing and trying to recreate the pulse it had produced, attempting to feel its power. Little by little, she succeeded and learned to use it at will. She managed to create pulses that lifted the grass, and on one occasion she even levitated for a few seconds. Yet she told no one. No one knew the object existed. She knew they would never understand her.
That hat was not merely a relic—it was a doorway. When she wore it, she heard voices—not human, not threatening—that spoke in symbols, emotions, and memories. She felt the limits of her world shatter like glass. From that day onward, Elisa was no longer a girl from Aetheris. She was something else. Something out of place.
Even after being expelled from the academies for experimenting with unauthorized technology and shunned by her own parents after an accident involving a miniature wormhole, Elisa felt that nothing remained for her on her planet except the hat. Resigned and hurt, but determined, she left.
She departed in a ship she had secretly built over the years, using wreckage from crashed spacecraft, shattered satellites, and whatever materials she found while sneaking into the scrapyards. It was a small vessel, no larger than a room, assembled in an abandoned laboratory she had discovered at the edge of the forest. She had never managed to make it work. In fact, the reason she had conducted the experiments that led to her expulsion was to find a power source for it, though the results had been discouraging. But with the help of the hat, she had finally found a usable source of energy, and now she would make the ship fly once and for all.
The day she left her home planet, there were no farewells—except from her parents, and even that was neither grand nor moving. They watched her pack a few belongings, put on her favorite purple sweater, and place the hat on her head before heading toward the door. They asked what she was doing and where she was going, and Elisa simply replied that she was doing what everyone had always wanted her to do: leave.
Her parents did not fully understand what she meant, but they tried to persuade her to stay.
"Why? So I can keep being treated like garbage? There's nothing left for me in this place, and I know very well that you want me gone too."
"That isn't true, daughter. I know we can be distant or harsh with you sometimes, but it's only because we love you and want what's best for you."
"What's best for me?... is getting away from this place. Besides, you don't love me. You're just like everyone else. To you, I'm an anomaly too. You never supported me or encouraged me, and you never truly defended me. The day they voted to expel me from the academy, you voted in favor as scientists. And when they condemned me for the wormhole accident, you weren't even there. You didn't want your image stained. So don't tell me you care about me, because you don't. The only thing I ask now is that you stop worrying about me and leave me alone, just as you always have."
Her parents fell silent, unable to respond. As Elisa turned to leave, they grabbed her arm to stop her. Exhausted and fed up, Elisa released a pulse through the hat that forced them to let go before she finally walked away. None of the three noticed it—Elisa never looked back, and her parents stood frozen behind her—but all of them were crying.
Her parents regretted everything. Their daughter's words had wounded them deeply. They realized the mistakes they had made: they could have supported her more, shown her more love, put her above everything else. But it was too late.
"Have a safe journey, Elisa... we love you," her mother said as a final act of love, knowing it was all she could do now.
Elisa stopped for a few seconds, but she did not answer. She wanted to, but she did not know how. She simply kept walking without turning around.
Elisa entered her ship, placed the hat inside a glass display case, and launched into the sky. Aetheris breathed a sigh of relief at her departure, and Elisa... broke a little inside.
On her first journey, a malfunction in her radar led her to a hostile planet where she discovered the cosmic pieces. It was on Yllium, a world devoured by its own core, where the laws of gravity and logic bent like wet paper. The pieces were not hidden; they lay in plain sight at the center of the planet, almost as if they had been waiting for her. As she approached them, her hat shone brighter than ever before, and for the first time Elisa felt power. Not just curiosity. Not just wonder. Real power.
The fusion was immediate, almost instinctive. The pieces surrounded her briefly before shooting into her ship, which transformed completely, becoming vastly larger and merging with it as a new source of energy. Elisa gained the ability to see and understand things no mortal should, as though she were waking from a dream and finally seeing the real world. Her eyes could perceive entire galaxies. Her voice could alter minor gravitational patterns. And her mind began to lose its sense of "limits."
At last she could see everything that lay beyond, all the planets she might now explore, and she decided that she would finally fulfill her dream: she would make the universe recognize and cheer for her. She stepped into her transformed ship and placed the hat upon her head once more.
"If the universe has no limits... then neither will I."
The first missions she undertook across the cosmos were noble. She helped evacuate collapsing worlds, resolved interstellar conflicts, and cured diseases that the scientists of those planets considered untreatable. But every act of heroism carried a hidden price: residual radiation, quantum displacements, black holes no larger than marbles. Small mistakes, acceptable mistakes, Elisa told herself. The greater good justified them.
Over time, she began avoiding the planets where she had made those errors. When certain worlds stopped appearing on her stellar maps, she simply erased them from her memory. Some began calling her "the traveler of catastrophes," while others worshipped her as a savior.
Elisa knew.
And she did nothing to deny it.
One day, in the nebula of a galaxy called Vam'Raeth, a group of children greeted her with flowers and prayers. They even offered her a crystal containing the history of their people. Elisa celebrated with the inhabitants, and after the festivities she wandered alone across the plains, where she happened upon several boys bullying and beating a young girl.
The sight left her frozen. She saw herself in that girl and could not ignore it. She approached the boys and shouted at them to leave her alone. But the children, who had not attended the celebration, did not know who she was.
"Go away," one of them said. "This doesn't concern you."
"Oh, believe me," Elisa replied, "it concerns me very much... loser."
She released a pulse of power that slammed the boy into the ground.
The others recoiled in fear, though a couple of them tried to strike her. Elisa spoke a single word, and they collapsed.
"Stay down."
Her voice altered the gravity around them, crushing them against the earth.
Then she raised her right hand, now wrapped in a dark aura, and lifted the first boy into the air.
"Now you're going to feel a fraction of the pain you caused me, you bastard," she hissed.
Rage had almost consumed her completely. In her mind, the boy floating before her was one of the many who had made her life miserable on Aetheris.
The child begged for forgiveness, but Elisa only answered that she had begged countless times as well, and no one had ever left her alone.
She tightened her hand. The pressure of the aura increased, and the boy screamed in agony. Her judgment grew more clouded with every second. Her eyes began to glow with a violet light, and the hat shone in response.
The girl Elisa had been trying to "protect" was now crying, pleading with her to let him go. But Elisa was too consumed by fury. The girl's words echoed in her head as if they were her own, and that only made her angrier.
"HOW MANY TIMES DID I BEG YOU TO STOP, AND ALL YOU DID WAS LAUGH AND HIT ME?!" Elisa screamed.
"CAN YOU HEAR ME ASKING FOR FORGIVENESS?! CAN YOU FEEL THE PAIN I FELT?!"
She increased the pressure until, although she did not kill him, the boy's bones broke and his lungs collapsed. Only when the girl grabbed her free arm and begged her again, and when she saw the boy lose consciousness, did Elisa regain her senses. She released him, watching his motionless body fall to the ground.
"No... I... I'm sorry, really, I..."
She looked from the boy to the terrified girl. Elisa tried to approach her, but the girl screamed for her to stay away. Hearing those words, Elisa saw herself once again. A chill ran through her entire body. She vomited from shock and collapsed to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably.
"I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY! IT WASN'T MY FAULT! I DIDN'T WANT TO DO IT! DON'T BE AFRAID OF ME! PLEASE DON'T FEAR ME! I DON'T WANT TO HURT YOU! I'M A GOOD PERSON!"
The children, seeing her on the ground and realizing she was no longer reacting, carried the unconscious boy away and left her there alone.
Elisa remained there for a long time. When her tears finally subsided and she regained some composure, she stayed until nightfall. While the planet slept, she returned to her ship and left. She was afraid that if the inhabitants learned what she had done, they would judge her or see her as dangerous.
Elisa said nothing.
She simply left.
From that moment onward, something inside her broke forever.
She began to wonder whether she was still exploring... or merely running away from herself.
Every jump carried her farther from the memory of Aetheris. She became more distant, more erratic, more feared. Some claimed Elisa no longer aged, that her body was no longer entirely human, that the cosmic pieces had not only transformed her but replaced parts of what she once was.
The changes showed in her appearance as well. Her hair, once blonde, had turned brown. Her eyes, once blue, had become violet, as though stars and entire skies lived within them.
And yet she never lost the flame. Amid the chaos, she still looked at the sky and the stars with the same fascination she had felt as a child. From a different mountain each time, she gazed upward with nostalgia and sometimes with remorse, asking the stars to guide her along the right path, asking that the next planet become the adventure she had always longed for.
Whenever she saved a life, something inside her reconnected. Whenever she caused harm, no matter how small, something inside her went dark.
Elisa was, is, and always will be a living paradox: a heroine driven by curiosity yet corrupted by power; a villain without intending to be; an explorer who may have discovered too much.
When the guardians stole the cosmic pieces from her, she did not merely lose her ship. She lost the disguise of certainty that had kept her standing. She was forced to confront what she had done—and what she might be becoming.
And perhaps, in the depths of that pain, redemption was born.
Notes: I remade the chapter.