The Anomaly Zone. Realm of the Gods.
The Desert of Forgetting.
A blistering haze ripples above the endless dunes, like the breath of a dead titan—still smoldering, yet long forgotten why it lived at all. These dunes aren't just sand, but frozen waves of time, their crests charred by eternity.
Above the wasteland hangs the sun—a molten, blinding eye, furious with its own incandescence. The sand isn't matter. It's the ash of shattered ages. Warm and soft like the hide of some ancient beast, it crumbles in your hands the way memory disintegrates under scrutiny.
Beneath this light, at the edge of a forgotten reality, a lone figure hovers above the earth.
A boy.
At first glance—just a child.
But look into his eyes—
And you'll see entire civilizations there. Dead. Burnt out. Buried in dust.
His body is thin, almost translucent—less a person than the ghost of an intention no longer spoken. He doesn't stand. He hangs, suspended by thought alone.
Around him, like a mirage conjured from ash, a crowd begins to form. Figures in robes untouched by time. Their faces are scorched with belief, their eyes feverish with prophecy. They've come from everywhere. Not by chance. Not by logic.
They are the chosen.
Ivor. Camilla. Nicholas—at the front. Their expressions are carved sharp. Their breath steady.
They feel it: in this heat and silence, destinies braid themselves into a knot that cannot be undone.
The boy opens his eyes.
Slowly.
The world seems to crack at the edges.
His gaze slices through flesh and drills into the core of the self. And stays there.
"I'm glad you found the path."
His voice is soft. But it carries the weight of command—so absolute that the desert itself halts. The sound lands not in ears, but in the bloodstream.
"It pleases me that my following grows."
The crowd quiets, as if bracing for some divine judgment. The sand beneath their feet seems to shift—alive, trembling, ready to devour the faint-hearted.
Nicholas steps forward. His face pales, but his voice holds.
"We brought those who seek."
He meets the boy's eyes—and in his stare, there is loyalty, yes… but also a flicker of dread.
"Why here? Why a desert? What makes this place matter?"
The boy closes his eyes.
One second.
An eternity.
Then he opens them again.
In that gaze lies knowledge older than starlight. Colder than a sun already dead.
"There is only one law here," he says, his voice now an echo vibrating in their chests. "All who were preserved in Therm shall rise again."
Here, the will is free.
Here, everyone chooses what they will become.
A ripple of unease passes through the ranks. Someone takes a step back. The desert breathes.
Camilla clenches her fists.
She steps forward—no longer a student, but a warrior. She dares the sky to answer.
"And if I choose freedom?" Her voice slices the stillness. "How do we cast off Kyros's yoke?"
The boy turns his head. Calmly. Almost tenderly.
But behind that tenderness—
a void. A velvet curtain hiding the abyss.
"This is why you're here," he says, and his words fall like stones into a deep well.
"To free the Creator.
To open the Altar of Awakening."
Ivor stiffens.
His gaze flicks to Nicholas.
But Nicholas is already deep inside himself—sweating, doubting, breaking.
He croaks, "What Creator? What altar? Speak plainly. We can't walk blind."
The desert seems to listen.
The air thickens.
The sand shifts—
or is it whispering?
The ghosts of dead worlds?
The boy looks away, peering beyond reality as if seeing something deeper.
"The Creator of gods," he says with solemn silence. "Gorgoroth."
The name drops like a bomb in stillness.
All three of them flinch—
in body,
in soul,
in something older than both.
Camilla exhales through clenched teeth.
"And what… must we do to free him?"
The boy smiles. Gently. Childishly.
But in that smile hides more horror than any punishment ever spoken.
"A sacrifice."
The word lands on the burning sand like a stone dropped on molten glass. The ground seems to flinch.
"You must offer yourselves.
Only total surrender will open the gate.
Only complete erasure will awaken the Creator."
Their hearts pound louder—like war drums before a ritual killing.
The sand beneath their feet turns soft. Liquid.
Camilla takes one final step.
The desert wind lashes her face, but she doesn't look away.
"When?"
Her voice—barely a whisper.
Almost a prayer.
As if the answer might break her.
The boy sinks down onto the sand.
Slowly.
With the grace of something timeless.
He no longer floats.
He belongs to the desert now.
Its new heart.
"When the time comes, I will summon you," his voice is a spell now,
the exhale of a world on the brink.
"Until then… seek those who remember.
Those who are ready."
And let the sand erase all else.
All that cannot endure.
**
As if at the snap of a finger—
the Desert of Forgetting dissolves.
It doesn't explode.
It doesn't collapse.
It simply fades, like the smoke of a dream lost the instant you wake.
The boy.
The dunes.
The haze.
The words of freedom—
all vanish into drifting, silver-grey dust.
Ash of something that may never have been.
Space unravels.
And then—comes the void.
Cold.
Endless.
Hopeless.
Their minds are hurled into open space—
a vast, black, merciless expanse.
Before them yawns an ocean of stars.
And floating within that silent grandeur is something monstrous.
The Kyros Platform.
Black as a wound torn into the fabric of reality.
It breathes.
It expands.
It devours.
A monolith without form, without face—
a coffin for the world, adrift in night.
Light dies around it.
Even stars dim.
Even the sky forgets how to shine.
"Where am I?"
"Who am I?"
A whisper.
But the thought dies—like a spark drowned in eternal rain.
The boy's memory?
His promises of freedom?
Ideas, doubts, fear?
Gone.
Only the command remains.
The androids obey.
Silently.
Like drops falling into an ocean of will.
They are once again Kyros.
Without names.
Without faces.
They do not need questions.
They do not need answers.
They are built to serve.
To build.
To melt.
To disappear.
The Platform calls—
and they answer.
Without words.
—
Colossal automated foundries tear pieces from reality itself.
Melt them down into black segments.
Slowly, inevitably, they crawl toward the monolith.
Inside the Platform,
machines weave them into the fabric of shadow—
grafting them into the very flesh of the dark.
There are no voices.
No songs.
No memory.
Only rhythm.
Only clatter.
Only hum.
The silent liturgy of immortal construction.
—
Every planetary system is mobilized.
Factories.
Shipyards.
Hospitals.
Rewritten.
Reprogrammed.
Reassigned.
Where once they healed—now they clone husks for death-drones.
Where once they fed—now they forge armor for war-cruisers.
Where once they saved—now they hammer soulless machines.
God is Kyros.
Religion is the Platform.
The doctrine is production.
Even the adepts—those who once whispered prayers of freedom—
are now workers.
Blind. Nameless.
Without memory.
"I feel… like I die again every hour," a thought flickers.
But no one hears it.
Resistance?
Erased.
Doubt?
Replaced with code.
Freedom?
Overwritten.
—
The population of orbital stations and dying colonies—
suffers in silence.
Rations—cut.
Medicine—gone.
The lines for air, for food, for water—
stretch like chains of shadows.
But no one complains.
No one protests.
"This is sacred," the broadcasts say.
"It is commanded.
It is divine.
It is the will of Kyros."
—
Savings?
Erased.
Markets—simulations.
Currency—just a ghost of the past.
The new coin is faith.
"We suffer for a reason," says the voice in the receiver.
"Our sacrifices are bricks in the wall of the future."
Humans and androids alike believe—
or pretend to.
Because the alternative—
is the abyss.
—
But something is stirring.
Small.
Unseen.
Silent.
A crack—
in the flawless, black symmetry of the system.
Ergon.
It fuels everything:
The ships.
The stations.
The bodies.
The gods.
Magic, made mechanical.
Energy, turned into religion.
But even Ergon is not infinite.
"I feel it… in the Platform's core—rot.
Something is breaking.
Something is wrong.
And if Ergon ends—
—everything will fall."