Chapter 139: Sins

  "Artemis."

  The word didn't just leave Raito's mouth; it escaped, heavy and precise, hanging in the sterile air of the central room like a summoned ghost. It tasted strange on his tongue—metallic and ancient, a flavor of memory that wasn't his own.

  "How do you know that name?" Dr. Iskandar asked. The hologram flickered violently, his face contorted with a mixture of scientific suspicion and genuine bewilderment.

  The question lingered, heavy with implication. Raito, a twenty-two-year-old orphan from the backstreets of current Calvenoor, should not know the name of a high-tech space station constructed a hundred thousand years ago. Logic dictated it was impossible. But logic was struggling to keep up with reality; Raito's genetic makeup had just revealed he was a ghost of the Old World, more akin to the scientist before him than to Bob standing beside him.

  "I... I don't know," Raito stammered, shrinking back slightly under the intensity of the room's focus. He rubbed his chest, feeling a phantom ache. "That name... it just surfaced. Like a bubble popping in my mind. Why do I know that name?"

  He looked at his hands, turning them over as if the answer were written in his calloused palms.

  "Have you come into contact with any relic or remnants of Artemis? A data shard? A beacon?" Iskandar pressed, his projection leaning in so close the blue light washed over Raito's face.

  "Not that I know of," Raito shook his head, his confusion deepening.

  "What if the Void within us told you that name?" Yukari suggested softly, her thumb absentmindedly tracing the Sakura ring on her finger. "It seems to carry memories, doesn't it? Echoes of the past?"

  "Probably that," Raito laughed awkwardly, a nervous, jagged sound. He ruffled his messy hair, sending a small cloud of desert dust into the clean air. "There is no way I know the name of something from long ago, right? I don't even know what a space station is."

  "That... would be the most likely reasoning," Iskandar conceded, stepping back. His digital eyes lingered on the boy for a second longer, calculating, before he straightened his coat of light.

  "Dr. Iskandar, please continue," Zhu coughed sharply, crossing her arms. Her patience for mysteries was wearing thin; she wanted history, not riddles.

  Iskandar nodded, regaining his composure. "Very well. If there are no more interruptions."

  He cleared his throat—a sound like static resolving into a clear frequency.

  "Where was I... right. It was after I discovered elemental energy and started mass-producing Core technology. Just like I said, the world would soon enter a new Golden Age."

  The hologram shifted, expanding to fill the room. The metal walls dissolved, replaced by a vivid, moving montage of a world in transition.

  "We left behind older forms of energy. Oil, nuclear, gas... they became obsolete overnight," Iskandar narrated. The image showed massive oil rigs standing silent and rusted in the ocean, skeletal monuments to a dead era. Smokestacks ceased their belching; nuclear cooling towers went cold. "We shut down the reactors. We capped the wells."

  "Elemental energies are stronger, more abundant, cleaner, and more flexible in their use," Iskandar explained, his voice swelling with the passion of a creator watching his child grow.

  "Using Fire and Wind, we could create thrust without the need for volatile fuel. Rockets became efficient. Travel became silent and cheap."

  Above them, ghostly projections of sleek, silver aircraft soared through clouds that were no longer grey with smog, but brilliant white. They moved with a soft hum, propelled by jets of blue flame and compressed air.

  "Using Lightning, we created high-capacity batteries and more efficient power plants. The grid never failed. Cities glowed with a steady, unblinking light that banished the night."

  "With Ice, we created tools to preserve objects and food perfectly, ending spoilage. No more rot. No more waste."

  "And with Water and Ground," Iskandar swept his hand low, bringing up images of lush, vertical farms stretching toward the sky. "We created more natural, accelerated ways to grow livestock and crops. The soil was rich, the water pure. Famine became a memory found only in history books."

  "Each element and their combinations instantly became our new way of conducting ourselves in day-to-day lives. Each person had their own Core, tailored to their needs. Each object and building had its own Core system, humming with life."

  "Everything looked great," Iskandar said, his voice wistful, lost in the beauty of the projection. "We also gained breakthroughs in scientific and technological advancement that we had only dreamed of. Space became less and less of a fantasy thanks to Gust Cores providing infinite air and oxygen recyclers to our explorers."

  The hologram shifted one last time, showing a skyline that stretched impossibly high, piercing the atmosphere.

  "We were thriving," he whispered, the light of the golden age reflecting in his eyes. "And before I knew it... sixty years had passed."

  "I was sixty-eight years old by then," Iskandar continued, touching his own wrinkled, holographic face as if checking for age lines that were no longer there. "By that time, multiple space elevators anchored Earth to the heavens like silver threads. Space stations blossomed in orbit, fragile petals of civilization against the black. Mars, Jupiter, Neptune... even the next solar system. Our possibilities were endless. We just needed to choose a direction, and we could explore."

  The room filled with awe-inspiring images of red dust storms on Mars, the swirling storms of gas giants, and the silent, beautiful void of deep space.

  "Nothing felt impossible to us at that time," Iskandar said, his voice swelling with pride.

  Then, the light in the hologram dimmed. The triumphant music of progress faded into a low, ominous drone, like a heavy heartbeat.

  "However... there was still one thing that we tried to ignore."

  The projection zoomed out violently, leaving the planets behind, focusing on Earth's pale, cratered satellite. The Moon. Specifically, the side never seen from the surface.

  "The crack in the sky," Iskandar corrected himself, his tone dropping an octave. "Or more accurately, the crack in the dark side of the Moon. Visible from Earth only as a scar on the night for those who knew where to look."

  A jagged, glowing fissure marred the lunar surface. It wasn't just a physical canyon; it pulsed with a sick, violet light that seemed to bleed into the surrounding vacuum. It looked like a wound in reality itself, festering.

  "Why did we ignore it?" Iskandar asked the silent room, his back to them as he stared at the anomaly. "Because we were afraid."

  He began to pace back and forth, his steps agitated. "We were capable of space travel. Capable of trailblazing through the stars, free to expand our civilization. But that crack... it still haunted us. Looming. Immobile. Quiet."

  "The current advancement was only possible thanks to the chain of events after that crack appeared," he reasoned, wringing his hands. "But the question gnawed at us, day and night: What if it has the power to take it all back?"

  He stopped pacing and looked at the group, his eyes haunted. "That was the time I suggested... enough is enough. Before humanity could expand, we had to solve the mystery. We couldn't move on if the ghost of this crack kept holding us down. That was my argument to the Council."

  "So, we rallied under my command. Once again, I gathered the smartest minds on Earth. We called ourselves the Voyagers."

  The hologram shifted to show a massive construction project in lunar orbit. A station, sleek and predatory, bristling with sensors, antennas, and reinforced shielding.

  "We built 'Artemis'," Iskandar declared. "The most advanced observation space station at the time. We stationed it near the crack on the dark side of the Moon. We were ready. We were curious. We wanted to know. And we wanted more."

  An image appeared on the main screen—a high-resolution group photo of the Voyager team. Men and women in crisp, white uniforms, standing proudly in front of a shuttle, the Earth rising blue and beautiful behind them.

  Raito stared at the screen. His breath hitched in his throat.

  He walked closer to the hologram, his hand reaching out, trembling. His eyes locked onto a figure on the far right of the photo.

  It was a woman with jet-black hair tied back in a severe bun, wearing thin-rimmed glasses. She wasn't smiling broadly like the others; she had a small, private smile, her eyes sharp and intelligent behind the lenses.

  "Who... is this?" Raito asked, his voice barely a whisper, thick with an emotion he couldn't name.

  Iskandar glanced at the photo, and for a moment, the hologram seemed to flicker with genuine grief. A flicker of pain crossed his face.

  "She is my assistant. Luth," Iskandar said softly. "She is gone now. Like all the rest."

  Yukari followed closely next to Raito, sensing the sudden spike in his distress. She took his hand, squeezing it. "What is going on?" she whispered.

  "I don't know," Raito murmured, unable to tear his eyes away from the woman's face. His heart was pounding a rhythm he didn't understand. "She looks... familiar. Painfully familiar. Like... I've seen that smile a thousand times."

  Iskandar ignored Raito's crisis, pushing forward with the narrative. He couldn't afford to dwell on ghosts, not when the living needed the truth.

  "We worked day in and day out on Artemis," Iskandar continued, his voice regaining its clinical edge. "Analyzing the crack. Figuring out the best way to approach it. We figured out multiple things."

  He held up a finger. "One. The crack is oozing Void energy in concentrations lethal to biological life. It makes it very dangerous for any human to explore it directly. Exposure meant madness or dissolution."

  He held up a second finger. "Two. We don't know how it formed. The crack is less a feature of space and more a fracture in reality itself. A wound in the fabric of dimensions that refuses to heal."

  "Three," a third finger joined the others. "There is a strong gravitational field around the crack that sucks anything near it into oblivion. And lastly... we simply didn't know what lay beyond it."

  Iskandar looked at his hands, clenching them into fists of light. "However, we were scientists. Curiosity became our hunger. We ignored all the danger alarms blaring in our minds. We had to know."

  "So we got to working," he said. The image changed, displaying complex blueprints of a humanoid machine.

  "If a human is too fragile to explore, all we needed to do was make something strong enough. Something durable enough to withstand the Void, cross the event horizon, and get what we wanted from beyond the crack. To record the unknown."

  The blueprints coalesced into a rotating 3D model of a mechanical being. It was sleek, armored, and radiated power even as a schematic.

  "We called this project..." Iskandar's voice dropped to a whisper, heavy with sin. "Project SILUX."

  "Silux... Silas... are they one and the same?" Zhu asked, her voice tight, the pieces finally clicking into a horrifying picture.

  "The same being," Iskandar confirmed, his gaze fixed on the rotating model. "Project Silux."

  "A project meant to satisfy our curiosity," he continued bitterly. "Little did I know... this project would be our doom."

  The hologram zoomed in on the machine's chest cavity, revealing a complex lattice of crystals.

  "Silux was a robot. A mechanical being built with the most advanced AI we created, with one sole purpose: to document what lay beyond the crack and come back safely. It was a probe. An explorer. It had no combat capability, no weapons systems."

  He pointed to the sleek, matte armor plating. "Its chassis was forged from the leftover scraps of the alien spaceship—the only material we knew could withstand direct exposure to the Void. Six types of experimental Cores were attached to its central processor to increase its adaptability to whatever environment it found."

  "We finally had our perfect sacrifice," Iskandar said, his voice trembling. "If this proved to be successful, humanity could finally move on. Become the driver of our own destiny."

  The simulation showed the machine running diagnostics, its movements fluid and precise.

  "All the preemptive testing was successful. We were ready to send it."

  "This mechanical being... that you built... somehow became our God?" Bob asked, scratching his beard in utter confusion. "How? Did it have its own conscience? Did it rebel?"

  "It did not. At least, not initially," Iskandar said firmly. "Silux was just a robot. A sophisticated tool. No free will, just code designed to follow prompts and directives. It was safe. We made sure of it."

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  "Then, how?" Zhu pressed, her patience wearing thin.

  "It happened after we sent it," Iskandar said, the memory visibly painful to recall.

  The projection changed to the view from the Artemis station's observation deck. A small, reinforced capsule ejected from the bay, drifting silently toward the glowing purple fissure on the lunar surface.

  "We launched Silux inside a reinforced capsule into the crack. The entire world was watching. We held our breath."

  The capsule entered the violet light.

  STATIC.

  The projection fuzzed out into snow.

  "We immediately lost contact with it," Iskandar whispered. "All forms of advanced communication built within it ceased responding. All the lifelines... gone. Silence."

  "We waited. We prayed to gods we didn't believe in. We sent drones after drones to retrieve it, or at least get a signal. No luck. They all vanished into the void."

  Iskandar sighed, the sound echoing in the silent room. "Our machine was lost. We had to go back to the drawing board. We had failed."

  "Unfortunately," he continued, turning away from the screen, "after two months of silence following this event, I had to go back to Earth. I had to oversee a peace summit and make up excuses to our sponsors for the loss of a multi-trillion-credit asset. The politics were eating us alive."

  He looked at the photo of Luth again, his expression softening with regret.

  "So I left the station. I left the project in the hands of the rest of the Voyagers... specifically, Luth... to build Silux Mk.2."

  "I... I did not know specifically what happened to Artemis, seeing as I was on Earth," Iskandar admitted, his hologram shimmering with instability, static lines running through his form like tears. "But I know... it got destroyed. Erased from the sky."

  "The machine we thought was lost to the endless Void... it came back."

  His voice dropped to a terrified whisper. "And it changed. It evolved. Into something beyond our imagination."

  The projection shifted to a grand hall filled with dignitaries in expensive suits. Chandeliers dripped crystals; flags of a hundred nations hung from the ceiling. It was a scene of opulence and order.

  "It was during the peace summit. I was told by my attendant that we lost contact with Artemis. I thought that was simply static noise, solar flares. It would pass soon, and we would hear from them again."

  "I was wrong."

  CRASH.

  The sound was deafening. On the screen, the reinforced glass ceiling of the summit hall imploded. Shards the size of guillotines rained down on the screaming politicians. Dust billowed, choking the air.

  "Silux returned. It crashed the summit. It descended from the sky not as a savior, but like a fallen angel made of chrome and hate."

  The machine stood in the center of the devastation, rising from a crater of crushed marble. It wasn't the sleek explorer anymore. It had grown. It was larger, jagged, its armor shifting and rippling like liquid metal trying to contain a storm.

  "The words it said were..."

  "Not... worthy."

  The mechanical voice on the recording sent shivers down everyone's spine. It wasn't just synthesized speech; it was a judgment delivered in a frequency that rattled bones. It scanned the room with a beam of violet light that felt like a physical weight.

  "Obviously, most just thought this was a joke. A performance I set up to secure funding," Iskandar said bitterly. "But I knew. The machine that was lost was floating right in front of me. I was terrified. A joke is not something I could make at that time."

  "Then... the more pressing reveal."

  Smoke-like black energy started oozing from the seams of Silux's metallic body. It wasn't exhaust. It was solid shadow, darker than the deepest night, swallowing the light around it.

  "Silux wielded that smoke. It gathered it, condensed it, and turned it into a spear."

  THWIP.

  The President on the screen—a man protected by the best security in the world—was impaled before he could even scream. The black spear pierced his chest and dissolved him into ash instantly.

  "That was when everyone knew... this wasn't a joke. It was very much real."

  The guards opened fire. Bullets, lasers, concentrated Core energy—everything was thrown at the machine in a desperate wall of fire.

  "To no avail. The smoke protected it, changing its shape to guard and counterattack anything that dared to harm it. Modern weaponry, Cores... they were useless before it. It was like throwing pebbles at a hurricane."

  The image showed the horrified face of Dr. Iskandar in the crowd, frozen in shock as his world crumbled.

  "I had to run," Iskandar said, shame coloring his voice. "If I died, humanity might have no answer against this. But I had to collect a sample first."

  He tapped a console on the screen. "The first spear that was thrown... I scanned it before I fled. And much to my surprise and shock... it was something that I hadn't seen in decades."

  "It was pure Void energy," Iskandar said.

  "The robot I sent... came back. It became a wielder of pure Void and started hunting humans. It was terror incarnate."

  The projection sped up, becoming a montage of nightmares. Cities burning. Armies crumbling. The sky turning dark with smoke.

  "Seeing your creation culling your race... Men, women, elderly, children. It had no care in the world. It just wanted to destroy. To cleanse."

  "I had to do something. Time was running out. And..." Iskandar bowed his head. "I failed."

  "Silux's killing was faster than my mind. Before I knew it, I was the only one left. Here, in this bunker lab that I hid myself in. I lost everyone. My team. My friends. My People."

  "And worse of all... I was dying. Old age. Stress. Radiation sickness from the fallout. I am old, with no resources, and no answer."

  "I failed," he said again.

  "So I did what I could only do to preserve myself. I transferred my consciousness. I turned my mind into data and recorded it in this bunker's mainframe. A fool's errand. Humanity had lost. There was no hope for the future. Yet... I still clung to life."

  "Within a year... humanity was no more."

  The image shown was Silux, standing triumphantly amidst the debris and fire of a dead world, corpses piled up around him like offerings to a dark god.

  "Urgh..."

  Zhu’s breathing started getting shallower. She gripped the edge of the console until the metal groaned under her fingers.

  "I... I know that vision," she gasped, her eyes unfocused. "I... I was there."

  Her pupils dilated, staring at the mechanical god on the screen.

  "It took me," she whispered, the memories in her mind getting clearer, sharper, cutting like glass. "Wires. Tables. The smell of ozone and blood. It... did something to me. To us. The pain... The cold... I’m starting to remember, but none of what happened afterwards."

  "Silux experimented on you," Iskandar confirmed gently.

  "But for what?" Zhu asked, desperate. "If what you said is true... why did Silux leave six of us instead of killing everyone? Why spare six children?"

  "I... don't know," Iskandar admitted. "Silux's actions... never made sense to me either. It operates on a logic beyond human comprehension."

  "But, I'll continue with what I know so far," he said, waving the hologram forward in time.

  "1,000 years after the carnage... Silux had built multiple mechanical beings. Titans. To terraform the Earth. Move continents. Shape the world in the way it wanted."

  The image showed massive mechanical beings scraping the land flat, moving mountains, redirecting rivers. One of them was a familiar snake-like machine burrowing through the crust.

  "That looks like..." Yukari commented.

  "Uroboris," Raito said, his voice hard. "The one we fought at Hanyuun."

  "This is one of Silux's terraforming machines," Iskandar nodded. "It seems one got damaged and found its way to Hanyuun to sleep."

  "How do you know all of this?" Mila asked. "You said you were dead."

  "My body was dead. My consciousness became data, like this hologram you see right now. I use my micro-drones," Iskandar summoned a cloud of mosquito-sized drones from a hidden port. "This is the device I use to observe the outside world. I have been watching. Silent. Helpless."

  "So you know all of Calvenoor's history," Bob said.

  "Mostly surface level information. I still don't know what Silux is planning," Iskandar said.

  "50,000 years after the terraforming had begun... Silux introduced a new lifeform on Calvenoor. Biological test subjects. But this lifeform was imperfect. Unstable. Their forms began to melt, corrode."

  "The Fallen," Zhu said, recognizing the monsters.

  "Yes. That's what you call them."

  "And after this..." Iskandar said.

  "Us," Zhu said, her voice hollow.

  Six elemental figures, glowing with colors matching their elements, showed up on the screen and began massacring the melting creatures.

  "This was the Fallen War," Zhu said. "Our first mission."

  "It seemed Silux was not satisfied with those creatures, so It needed them gone," Iskandar said.

  "And we are its butchers," she whispered.

  "20,000 years after that... Silux brought a new form of life. One resembling us—I call them New Humans," Iskandar pointed to Bob and Mila. "And one more beast-like in appearance."

  "Sacreds," Yukari said.

  The image started showing a montage of Calvenoor's history playing out in fast forward. From the prehistoric age of stone tools, through race and ideological wars, famines and plagues. Finally, the peace between Human and Sacred, the discovery of technology, the establishment of governments, and the Lords mingling within society to guide it.

  It ended in the current present day of Calvenoor. A world built on the ashes of Earth.

  "Thus... that was the story. And the sins that I fostered," Dr. Iskandar said, his voice fading into a somber whisper like a dying radio signal. The hologram flickered, the blue light dimming as if the weight of his confession was draining his power source. "I discovered Void. I tried to harness it. We wanted more. We made a machine to take more. And we ended up paying the price."

  Bob exhaled loudly, the breath puffing out of his cheeks with a tremor he couldn't hide. He slumped against a console, his legs suddenly unable to support his bulk.

  "That was..... too much...." Bob muttered, wiping sweat from his brow with a shaking hand. "I am but a merchant. I deal in spices and fabrics. All of these... star gods and ancient apocalypses... it seems like a twisted fantasy."

  "A very real, very twisted fantasy," Mila added, her hand instinctively checking the edge of her sword, as if cold steel could protect her from existential dread. "We saw the machines. We know of Lords, of Fallen, of this structure. Yet... I have no idea how to process this. It rewrites everything we know."

  "This was the answer all six of us Lords had been seeking this whole time," Zhu murmured, staring at her own hands as if they were foreign objects. "We were both its creation... and its victims. But one thing remains... why did it transform us? Why give us abilities to control elements itself? If it hates chaos, why create weapons of it?"

  Yukari scanned everyone's face in the room. The expressions ranged from information overload to deep, gnawing worry. The air felt heavy, suffocating with the dust of a dead world.

  She turned to Raito, looking for his usual goofy grin to break the tension.

  "Hey," she whispered, nudging him gently. "Everyone seems overwhelmed. Honestly, I’m in the same boat. What about you?"

  She looked at Raito. He wasn't looking at the history montage. He wasn't looking at her.

  He was still staring intently at the frozen image of the Voyager team—specifically at the woman named Luth and the man standing beside her. His eyes were wide, unblinking, reflecting the blue light of the screen.

  "Hey, who is this?" Raito asked again, pointing a trembling finger at the man next to Luth. His voice sounded distant, detached from the room.

  "Charlie. Luth's husband," Iskandar answered, glancing over with a sigh. "What about them? They are already gone, kid. Dust and echoes."

  "I know them," Raito said. The words came out choked, painful.

  "This man and this woman," Raito added, his finger tracing the contours of their faces on the cold glass of the screen. "I know them."

  "I said they were gone, a hundred thousand years ago!" Iskandar snapped, losing patience with the boy's fixation. "There is no way you know them! You weren't even a thought! You are a product of the New World!" He snapped. But, this boy, he does seem to….

  "Right... logically that makes no sense," Raito muttered, rubbing his temples as a migraine spiked behind his eyes. "But I know them. I know I know them. I'm sure. But when? Where?"

  Flashes of memory—not from the mentalscape, but deeper, coded into his very marrow—assaulted him. The smell of sterile air. The warmth of a hand. A lullaby hummed in a language he didn't speak.

  "Even if you know them, it still doesn't answer why you had Void within you from the start," Iskandar dismissed the tangent, turning back to the group. "And what is Silux's purpose."

  He spread his arms. "I have told my tale. I gave you all my truth. Now it's up to you all to do what you want with it."

  "Even so," Yukari questioned, stepping forward to shield Raito from the scientist's dismissal. "What do you want us to do? Start a rebellion?"

  She gestured to the room, frustration bleeding into her voice. "No one in Calvenoor even knows Silux exists. It's all just a bunch of fairy tales to them. We will be a laughingstock. Not to mention, you saw what happened against the mechanical beasts."

  "Chimera model," Iskandar corrected automatically.

  "Chimera, whatever!" Yukari shouted. "Even the most veteran adventurers have no way of fighting Silux's creations! We are ants against a god!"

  "That... is true," Iskandar admitted, looking down. "But I have waited for a hundred thousand years. I cannot wait any longer. The mainframe cannot handle my data for another millennium. I am degrading. My memory sectors are failing."

  "How about weapons? Do you have any?" Bob asked, looking around the lab hopefully. "Some of that fancy Old World tech?"

  "I already gave my last hope in distributing the leftover Cores, only to later know you guys are not compatible with them," Iskandar sighed. "So, what do you think? The armory is empty."

  "Then there really is no choice," Zhu said, her voice steel hardening over her fear. "The Lords must face Silux. One way or another. We were made by it; perhaps we can unmake it."

  "But you can't," Iskandar said sharply. "I know it for certain when I scanned you. Silux has branded you. There is his coding left deep within your essence. The fact that you are capable of autonomy is a miracle in itself."

  He looked at Zhu with pity. "It will retake control over the six of you if you get too close. You will become its puppets again. You will turn on your own children."

  "Then what should we do?!" Zhu shouted, slamming her fist against the console in frustration. "Die waiting?!"

  Zhu and Iskandar started arguing, their voices rising in volume, echoing off the metal walls.

  Yukari, overwhelmed by the shouting, began retreating back to Raito's side.

  Raito hadn't moved. He was still weirdly fixated on the picture, leaning heavily against the console as if it were the only thing holding him upright. He was staring at Luth and Charlie with a desperate intensity.

  "Hey... hey," Yukari tugged his shirt gently. "Raito?"

  "What?" Raito asked, not looking away. His voice was hollow.

  "Why are you still looking at that picture?" Yukari asked softly.

  "I don't know," Raito murmured. "I feel like I know them... but don't know from where. It's like... a memory that isn't mine. It hurts, Yukari. It physically hurts."

  He started tapping his forehead against the console in frustration. "Where. Where. Where."

  He leaned back, his body sagging.

  BEEP.

  His lower back accidentally pressed a large, flashing red button on the console panel behind him.

  BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.

  Loud, urgent alarms began to sound, drowning out the argument. Red emergency lights bathed the room in the color of blood.

  "What? What did you press?!" Iskandar asked, spinning around, panic on his face.

  "I don't know!" Raito held up his hands, stepping away from the console.

  A recording started playing on the main screen, overriding the history lesson. The timestamp was ancient.

  "This is... Artemis," Iskandar whispered, his hand going to his mouth. "The final log."

  The screen showed chaos. Explosions ripped through white corridors. Debris floated in zero gravity. Silux was walking menacingly down a pristine white hallway, hunting the people inside with efficient, mechanical brutality.

  Then, the camera focused on a room. The escape pod bay.

  Luth and Charlie were there. They were frantic, pushing buttons, overriding safety protocols. Sweat matted their hair, and terror was etched on their faces—but not for themselves.

  They were looking down. Into a small, open stasis pod.

  They pressed a final button, just as Silux's shadow fell over the door. The metal bent as the machine began to tear its way in.

  But they smiled. They held hands and looked into the pod, smiling through their tears.

  "Goodbye, my love," Luth whispered, touching the glass. "Live."

  On the outside camera feed, the small escape pod launched from the station.

  It didn't fly toward Earth. It got caught in the gravitational field of the crack. It spiraled toward the violet fissure on the Moon's surface.

  WHOOSH.

  It was sucked in.

  As soon as the pod entered, the crack began to close. It sealed shut, vanishing from the lunar surface as if satisfied.

  BOOM.

  The station camera exploded. Static filled the screen.

  "That was the last recording of Artemis," Iskandar said, his voice hollow. "I never knew... they launched a pod."

  Raito, meanwhile, was crying. Silent, hot tears streamed down his face, dripping off his chin. He clutched his chest, gasping for air.

  "Why are you crying?" Yukari asked, concerned, reaching for his hand. It was ice cold.

  "I... don't know," Raito choked out. "I don't know. It hurts. Seeing that... it feels like my heart is breaking."

  "The boy who travels the stars," Yukari uttered the words, realization dawning like a sunrise.

  They were the words the voice within the mentalscape had said. The ones that didn't fit for both her and Raito. An unknown phrase. She didn't know why those words were uttered then, but now... the puzzle pieces slammed together.

  She hugged Raito tightly, anchoring him to the present.

  "Doctor," she said to Iskandar, her voice trembling but firm. "Is there a way to check the genetic data of those man and woman?"

  "I can try," Iskandar said, intrigued, sensing the gravity of her request. "I hope I have some data leftover on them... let me check."

  He moved his hands rapidly, manipulating the data streams. He pulled up Luth and Charlie's personnel files—Old World genetic markers—and overlaid them with Raito's scan.

  The bars aligned perfectly.

  "What?" Iskandar shouted, his hologram flickering with shock. "Impossible!"

  "I knew it," Yukari whispered.

  She turned to Raito, cupping his tear-stained face, wiping away the sorrow of a hundred thousand years.

  "The reason you know of Artemis. The reason why you know them. The reason why you look fondly at them."

  "The boy who travelled the stars," she said softly.

  The screen showed the results in bold red letters: GENETIC MATCH: 99.9%.

  "They were your parents," Yukari said, her voice thick with emotion. "And you... you are the boy who travelled the stars."

  The image on the screen froze on the escape pod as it was sucked into the crack in reality—a vessel carrying a child across a hundred thousand years to a new world.