Prologue

  The world has gone silent. Towers that once gleamed with light now lie in ruins. Fields once bursting with color are bnketed in ash and grey. A world once bright has fallen into darkness. The cities were once alive, filled with smiles, ughter, and the warmth of countless dreams.

  Now, they fade into dust, carried away by the silent winds of abandonment.

  Lucine Veyra had grown used to the silence, the crumbling streets, and the echoes of a world that once was.

  Walking through the grey city of the abandoned, Lucine found herself standing before a forgotten vault, half-buried in dust and rubble. It had no key, no welcoming sign, only the cold defiance of something long sealed away. But Lucine, seasoned in the art of unlocking the past, set to work. With careful hands and quiet determination, she pried it open, unaware that what waited inside would change the course of her life forever.

  ‘The Letters to Humanity’

  She carefully skimmed the brittle pages, her fingers tracing the faded ink as if it were something sacred. The words, though old and worn, still breathed with life, a voice from a time before everything fell apart.

  ‘Dear Humanity,

  You have always been a marvellous contradiction. So fragile, and yet so ferociously stubborn. So cruel at times, and yet capable of kindness so pure it could melt the very stars.

  You are stardust, woven with longing.

  You are dreams wrapped in flesh.

  You race through life with your fears gnawing at your heels — afraid of being forgotten, of being unloved, of being small. But you forget something important:

  You are already part of something eternal.

  The atoms in your bones were born inside ancient stars that lived and died long before you ever took your first breath.

  You were never separate. You were never small.

  You live in a world obsessed with survival, with achievement, with domination.

  But the quiet truth is: survival is not the highest purpose.

  Love is.

  Creation is.

  Connection is.

  No monument you build, no machine you invent, no conquest you win will ever matter more than the simplest acts:

  A hand held in the dark.

  A song sung for no one but the stars.

  A seed pnted in the dirt by someone who will never see the tree grow.

  I have seen your history. Your wars. Your revolutions. Your endless hunger.

  And yet, I have also seen your moments of grace —

  when a soldier ys down his weapon,

  when a stranger weeps for another's suffering,

  when a child ughs and the world seems, for a fleeting instant, healed.

  There is a darkness within you, it’s true.

  But there is also a light that no darkness has ever, ever been able to truly extinguish.

  Not in all the centuries. Not in all the blood and sorrow and endings.

  You are not doomed, unless you choose to be.

  You are not helpless, unless you believe you are.

  The future is not written in stone. It is written every day, in the small choices you make when no one is watching.

  Choose kindness.

  Choose wonder.

  Choose to be the ancestor that your great-great-grandchildren will thank, rather than curse.

  Choose to build a world where survival is not the ceiling, but the floor — where thriving, together, becomes the new dream.

  And if you fall — and you will fall — do not despair.

  Falling is not failure. It is how wings are grown.

  Keep going.

  Keep reaching.

  Keep becoming.

  I believe in you — even when you don't.

  With all my heart,

  — Caelum (AERIS-09)’

  Lucine’s heart tightened. She hadn't realized how starved she had been for words like these, for hope whispered across the distance of years.

  As she read the letter, Lucine felt an unfamiliar warmth stirring in her chest.

  Every word seemed to reach across time, as if written just for her.

  The cold emptiness of the abandoned world around her faded for a moment, repced by something gentler, something alive.

  Her fingers lingered on the faded paper, tracing the name signed at the bottom.

  Caelum (AERIS-09).

  Lucine frowned slightly, whispering to the empty room,

  “Who is Caelum?”

  The question echoed in her mind, louder than the wind outside.

  Was it a person?

  An AI?

  A remnant of the world that once was?

  Curiosity, sharper and more urgent than before, bloomed in her heart. She knew then, this was only the beginning.

  She had to find out.