Floating. Wandering. Hopeless.

  I watched as the home of my species, my planet, burned. Fading into the void, becoming nothing more than a memory. How could we let it get this far? How could we let ourselves fall so completely? We swore to be better. We made oaths, promises meant to outlive us, to carry on beyond our deaths.

  We lied.

  If you are reading this now, then in the shadow of our failures, my species still lives on through me. I'm now the last.

  Our religions were wrong. That I had already known. There was no God watching over us, no divine creator to guide us through the darkness. I do find a certain peace in that. But once long, long ago there were gods of a sort—ancient beings whose existence predates even my own.

  I know more now. They destroyed themselves... and then, eventually, destroyed us. Long ago, they turned their own world to ash and ruin, and when their time was done, they came to mine to escape the destruction.

  We repeated their mistakes.

  Our beautiful, fragile blue pearl, in a sea of endless stars—destroyed. It was so beautiful. A world of cascading waterfalls that could bring tears to your eyes. Endless plains, offering peace that could silence even the loudest soul. And cities, oh, our cities— human ingenuity and ambition made physical.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  We wanted more. We always wanted more.

  When we found the body of a dead god, we thought ourselves blessed, pioneers on the cusp of a new age.

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  "We can use this," we said. "It will power everything. We’ll leap forward in ways unimaginable. We will see the stars as they truly are."

  What fools we were. Such was the way of humans.

  One day, something changed. Some insignificant scientist, lost in their ambition, ran a test. A spark—small, imperceptible—ignited a storm. Whatever they did, it started everything. The pulse of a dead god’s heart beat once more, a sound so deafening the entire world felt it.

  The pulse was not just the sound we heard or the vibration we felt—it was an ancient energy awakened once more. The last dying exhale of a god, the echo of their power. Like a stone dropped in a still pond, it rippled outward, destroying the flow of everything. It called for them.

  We hadn’t realized the truth. The body we had found was not alone. Others lay beneath our oceans, deserts, cities, everywhere, scattered across our lands like hidden tombs. Their power began to awaken, calling out to one another. Their remains, ancient and dormant for eons, sought to reunite.

  When they did, it was annihilation. Entire cities were vaporized. Earth, our home, became a depiction of destruction. The gods had destroyed their own world once, and now history repeated itself, and we destroyed ours.

  So I fled.

  I abandoned the cradle that made me, the planet that gave me everything, in exchange for survival. I told myself it was instinct, a primal need to live—but sometimes I wonder if it was cowardice, a betrayal of my humanity. Maybe it was both. That is human nature, isn’t it? To survive?

  So I did.

  I was the last, the only passenger aboard that first and final ship to leave Earth’s corpse, like a parasite fleeing its host. I drifted forward into the vastness of the void, a speck of life in an endless blanket of stars.

  Hopeless. Shattered. Alone.

  But alive, so alive. Whatever that pulse did to me, it stopped my ageing. Me and time parted ways long ago now. I am old now, very old, and yet I still have so many questions.

  I have seen many planets. So much has happened. Stars have burnt out, and yet, here I stand. A traveler with no path– that's what I am now. I do not know what my home looks like now, but I hold onto the pieces I have left in memory and try to depict earth as it was; a place of warmth, of belonging.

  I have long forgotten my true name.

  I'm hunted now, beings wish me dead for I have something of theirs. The curse I bear has opened up new problems I had never dreamt of. So, like that day so long ago now, I must flee again. Always running, always hiding. Or must I?

  Perhaps I should have stayed behind, let the flames take me along with the others. I wonder, every single day, if I made the wrong choice.

  I still don't know.

  I have found humans again—not from Earth, but from another planet. They are different, yet familiar, their eyes show a humanity I have seen before, something I had lost in mine. But their world is younger. I see my own people in their faces, but I also see the path they might avoid. The path we failed to avoid.

  I have seen many worlds, but none like Telora. It is different, and yet it reminds me of Earth in ways that bring both comfort and sorrow. I am faced with the same question I’ve carried for millennia: flee, or stay? I do not know if I have it in my heart to flee again.

  I see my own world in Telora. I see my own people.

  I have a story to tell, one that carries the weight of truth.