I returned to my crib as the first true light of dawn bleached the stars, my body humming with exhaustion and my mind buzzing with stolen data. Sleep was a shallow, fitful thing, more a system reboot than rest. When I woke, the sun was high, the twin moons mere ghosts in the lavender sky. The routine played out—the maid's silent ministrations, the bland nutrient-rich paste that passed for breakfast—but my consciousness was elsewhere, locked on the treasure in my head.
The next morning I decided to read the book. Or rather, to unpack the perfect, photographic copy now residing in my memory. I lay still, feigning a nap, and turned my focus inward. The crisp image of the first page materialized behind my eyes.
I skipped the dry preface and plunged into the first chapter: "Genesis: The Forging of Aetheria."
Aetheria- The world of Aether. The name resonated. Not Earth. Aetheria. A place built on a different principle.
It all started 2 billion years ago. The timescales were immediately staggering, written with a casual grandeur that dismissed human lifespans as a blink. The planet Aetheria- was created by the collision of two massive rocky planets. It became a huge planet. Its radius is 15290 km.
My mind, trained in basic astronomy, did the math. Earth's radius was about 6,371 km. Wait, isn't that way bigger than earth? The number was more than double. The sheer scale was mind-boggling. A single continent must be the size of Earth's surface area. The gravity must be higher... but since humans are natives of this planet it must feel normal. Our bones, our muscles, the very flow of our blood—all evolved with the help of some mysterious force.
When the planet was 30000 years old a huge mysterious asteroid entered the planet and exploded 6000 km above its surface. The text was maddeningly precise yet vague. Uh, what's with the numbers? Can this book not explain it simply?. It read like a scientific report filtered through a medieval scribe. Just say a mysterious asteroid collided when the planet was young. But the precision hinted that this event, the "Aetherial Ingress," was a fundamental datum of their science, as critical as the cosmic microwave background was to mine.
The asteroid had mysterious properties and contained a special thing: Aether. This mysterious energy spread all across the world for millions of years. So, magic wasn't just a force; it was an alien contaminant, a cosmic additive that suffused the forming world. It wasn't supernatural here; it was part of the natural order, as integral as gravity.
Millions and millions of years later after immeasurable asteroids bombardments that brought water, oceans started to appear. The text was a dry recitation of eons. It took a while for any living organism to develop. Ah, what's with this complicated biology!? I will just skip it. Diagrams of proto-Aetheric cell structures and energy transduction cycles flashed in my memory, dense and incomprehensible. I bypassed them. Let's just start with the first multicellular organism.
After 1 billion years a single species appeared- Aethera. The name was simple, profound. The First. Not an animal, not a plant, but something else. A life form born directly from the mingling of primordial soup and ambient Aether. They had the ability to use Aether that freely surrounded the entire planet. Aether was in rocks, air, everywhere. It was the building block of the planet. Without it, the planet won't survive.
Woah woah… The implication was staggering. Aether wasn't just an energy source; it was a structural component. Like the force binding atoms, but on a macro scale.
Now what's this? The next page was a nightmare of interconnected diagrams. Detailed analysis of the relationship between Aether and how it is a building block. It was full of complicated diagrams and arrows. It looked like a cross between a quantum physics schematic and an alchemical ritual. Arrows looped from "Ley Line Convergence" to "Geomantic Stability" to "Soul Resonance (Theorized)."
Um, what the hell is this?. It was the underlying theory, the math of magic. And it was far, far beyond my current understanding. I will forget what I saw.
I moved on to geography. The Land was 40 percent and the oceans were 60 percent. This continent is known as Aetheria, the same name as the planet. A single, monstrous supercontinent dominating a planet of water. No wonder the nations felt so vast, so old. They were isolated on a landmass of unimaginable scale, with cultures diverging over distances that would span Earth multiple times.
Then the text took a fascinating, taxonomic turn. Chapter 2: "The Succession of Dominance." It wasn't a history of events, but of species, ranked by a cold, ecological metric of success.
List of most successful species.
4th most successful - Being in existence - Hawks. Not just birds, but "strong birds with super speed and wind power but their health was low." They could manipulate Aether for velocity, it seemed. True elemental raptors. They spread all around the continent and oceans. And at THAT TIME they were the most SUCCESSFUL being. It was because of their rapid expansion and control of the sky no other species had.
Their downfall was not predation, but their own triumph. After years the downfall of hawks occured. Reasons - Because of low unity. They spread all across the world. Every place is not the same therefore the place with different temperatures, heights, altitudes and other conditions like rain etc. caused them to evolve and separate from the main hawk species. This caused the slow downfall of the hawks. Speciation. Diversity fractured their collective dominance. A lesson in the perils of expansion without cohesion.
After many million years came the third most successful beings. The text split the designation. The extremely fast evolving creatures that evolved within 100 years. That is in just one generation. They were called 'Fluxinn.' They were extremely adaptive and resilient to extinction. But the expansion rate of fluxinn was very very slow. That is why they couldn't expand as much as the hawks. Masters of adaptation, but poor colonists. They existed in pockets of extreme specialization.
The 3rd most successful being was also held by… elves and dwarfs for their slow expansion and very very slow EVOLUTION but strong genes and power. Here they were, the fantasy staples, but framed not as magical beings, but as biological marvels of stability. Their "strong genes and power" suggested innate, potent Aether manipulation passed down through unchanging bloodlines. They were the opposite of the Fluxinn: rigid, powerful, enduring.
Then came the 2nd most successful beings that dominated the continent - dragons and their other lesser species. The apex predators. Not just giant lizards, but the ultimate expression of Aetheric power fused with physical might. They dominated. The text implied an age where their shadows darkened the skies of the entire supercontinent, where lesser species lived in fear of their whims.
After many millions of years all Species decided that they would be in a balance- not attacking others, no dominating species. The wording was odd. "Decided." Was it a treaty? A cosmic accord? Or simply the inevitable equilibrium of an ecosystem after a brutal, millennia-long war of all against all? The world goes like this for a long time. A balance between all of the species. A fragile, ancient peace between hawks, fluxinn, elves, dwarves, dragons, and countless unnamed others.
Then, the disruptors.
THE MOST SUCCESSFUL BEING IN THE WORLD.
- humans -
The declaration was stark, devoid of pride. It was a statement of biological fact.
Humans were strong with Aether. Not as innately powerful as dragons, nor as stable as elves. But strong enough. And very quickly spread all across the world. Our classic advantage: relentless reproduction and mobility.
Shorter lifespan and fast reproduction. We were the rabbits to their tortoises, the weeds in their garden of ancient, slow-growing trees.
Still, the average life as a human on this planet was 130 years with the help of Aether. Even with shorter lifespans compared to elves or dragons, we lived long enough to accumulate knowledge and power, and bred fast enough to replace our losses exponentially.
This caused the balance to break causing aggression of all other species on humans.
I felt a grim, familiar smirk in my soul. Ah, humans are the same everywhere… We didn't just enter the ecosystem; we exploded into it, shattering the million-year-old balance. Our success was our declaration of war.
This causes THE FIRST WAR of humans vs other species which humans lost due to lack of Unity and underestimating other species.
There it was. Our first, greatest failure. Not a lack of strength or cunning, but the ancient, perennial human curse: division. We fractured into tribes, clans, fledgling kingdoms, squabbling amongst ourselves while the unified fury of elder species fell upon us. We underestimated them, seeing beasts and monsters, not realizing we were challenging civilizations older than our entire evolutionary line.