Rourke's vision blurred—first at the edges, then everywhere at once. The chamber dissolved like dust swept into a storm. The platform beneath his feet melted away. Seren's voice faded, her silhouette swallowed by a brightness too vast and ancient to belong to the present.
Then there was silence.
Not the silence of space.
Not the silence of vacuum.
But the silence of memory.
Rourke blinked.
And the universe came back—not as it was, but as it had been.
A Civilization of Stars
He hovered above a city carved into the shell of a titanic sphere—much larger than the ruin he had just entered. This place was whole. Alive. Radiant.
Millions of structures spiraled around a central core of swirling gravity-light, like a star held in place by pure will. Walkways curved along impossible angles. Towers pulsed with energy that hummed like living music. Ships glided along ribbons of gravity instead of engines, weaving through the sky like birds dancing through currents.
People moved across the platforms—humanoid, but taller, more elegant, their bodies infused with faint filaments of shimmering energy. Their eyes glowed with focused intensity, and every motion carried the weight of purpose.
Rourke realized with a tightening in his chest:
These were Wielders.
Real ones.
The ancestors he never knew existed.
"The Solarii," the figure's voice echoed inside the vision.
"Masters of gravitational force. Keepers of the cosmic balance."
Rourke watched in awe as a Solarii child lifted a stone using nothing but a ripple of energy from her fingertips. Her father, smiling, shaped the stone into a floating sphere with a flick of his wrist.
They were powerful.
But not destructive.
Graceful.
Disciplined.
Unified.
A far cry from the uncontrolled pulses tearing through Rourke's body.
The vision pulled him forward, deeper into the city. He saw vast libraries etched into the walls of the sphere, their halls filled with glowing memory crystals that pulsed when touched. He saw a council chamber where Solarii elders gathered around projections of entire galaxies.
He saw beauty.
But he also saw something else—
something darker, lurking beneath the surface of perfection.
The Cataclysm
The sky cracked.
Just a thin fracture at first—barely visible. But the Solarii immediately reacted, alarm rippling through the city. Gravity around them warped, flickering. Towers shook.
A blast of impossible energy tore through the heavens like the opening of a wound.
Creatures emerged from the rift.
Tall. Thin. Unnatural.
Rourke's breath caught.
Hunters.
Their bodies were skeletal outlines draped in shimmering metallic exoskin. Their heads were smooth ovals with three glowing eyes. They moved with terrible precision, bending gravity with every step.
The Solarii rallied.
Warriors leaped into the air, gravity bending beneath their feet. They hurled spears of condensed mass. They folded space to strike from impossible angles. Their power was magnificent—
—and useless.
For every Hunter toppled, two more stepped from the rift.
Their gravity signatures were wrong—cold and devouring, not flowing and alive. They twisted the battlefield with ruthless efficiency, breaking Solarii bodies with invisible force.
Rourke felt the despair like a weight crushing his chest.
"This was the Fall," the voice whispered.
"The day our kind was broken."
He watched as the core of the sphere—the bright swirling star at the city's center—shuddered. The Solarii elders converged around it, channeling all their strength into a final desperate act.
A great shield formed—an enormous gravitational dome designed to seal the breach and repel the invaders.
The Hunters turned their gaze toward the core.
Their eyes flared.
A wave of annihilation tore through the city.
Buildings unravelled. Walkways crumbled. Gravity reversed, then shattered. The dome cracked. The sphere splintered like glass dropped from a great height.
The Solarii fell.
One by one.
Until only silence remained.
The rift dimmed and closed, leaving a dead world in its wake.
Rourke felt a tear slip down his cheek.
He didn't know these people.
But somewhere deep in his bones—
he knew this was his lineage.
And it had been extinguished.
The Last Spark
The vision shifted again.
Rourke now stood before a solitary figure hovering above the ruin—a Solarii woman holding a glowing fragment of gravitational energy in her hands. She was weak, trembling, her body cracking with the same fractures that had split the city.
But she was smiling.
Because cradled in her arms was—
A child.
A newborn.
The last Solarii.
"He will not die here," she whispered, tears floating weightlessly from her eyes.
"He will not be devoured by the void."
She drew a symbol in the air—an intricate spiral of gravitational sigils. The energy wrapped around the infant, forming a protective shell.
"Let him be hidden.
Let him be forgotten.
Let him survive."
The fragment in her hand flared and then exploded outward, dispersing into the darkness.
The woman smiled one last time.
Then the light consumed her.
The vision shattered.
Return to the Ruin
Rourke collapsed onto the platform, gasping. Seren knelt beside him, grabbing his shoulders. "Rourke! What happened? Say something—!"
But Rourke couldn't speak.
Not at first.
He stared at the glowing figure standing before him, trembling.
"You…" he whispered. "You saved the last child. But that was thousands of years ago."
The figure's voice vibrated through the chamber.
"Time bends. Memory endures.
And the child was hidden…
in the lineage of humans."
Rourke's heart pounded.
"No," he breathed. "That's not possible."
"You carry her spark."
Rourke staggered backward. "You're saying I'm—what—some kind of descendant?"
The figure tilted its head.
"Not descendant.
Continuation."
Rourke's blood turned to ice.
"Rourke Talon…
you are the last living Solarii."