Dimensional travel was not kind to physical bodies. The ancient texts described it as "having your essence unraveled thread by thread, then rewoven on the other side." A poetic but disturbingly accurate description. When my consciousness reassembled itself, I was face-down in damp soil, the scent of earth filling my nostrils.

  Earth. We were actually on Earth.

  I pushed myself up slowly, my small frame trembling with the aftereffects of the transport. Night surrounded us, but it was unlike the manufactured darkness of Nibiru's habitation domes. This darkness breathed. It pulsed with life. Insects chirped. Vegetation rustled. Distant animals called. And above, the sky...

  I gasped involuntarily, staring upward. Stars filled the view, not as the clinical navigation points we studied in Nibiru's educational modules, but as a vast mandala of light against infinite blackness. And there in the sky, two massive, luminous moons.

  "It's beautiful…" I whispered.

  A groan to my left reminded me I wasn’t alone. Qali was sitting up, her freckled face pale in the moonlight and her ginger braids disheveled from the journey. Beyond her, Enrosha's larger form was already standing, alert, taking in our surroundings.

  "Coordinates appear accurate, but…" Enrosha said, her voice hushed as if afraid to disturb the night. "According to the archival footage, we should be approximately three kilometers from where it happened. Gods, this is quite the battlefield."

  I finally took a good look at the landscape around us. What should have been pristine forest was instead a testament to cataclysmic violence. Ancient trees—many that must have stood for centuries—lay flattened in concentric circles, their massive trunks snapped like twigs. The destruction extended outward for what appeared to be miles, creating an unnatural, forced clearing in what had once clearly been dense woodland.

  The moonlight cast eerie shadows across the devastation. Trees hadn't simply fallen; they had been blasted outward from a central point. Some had been reduced to splinters, while others were bizarrely twisted, as if reality itself had momentarily warped around them.

  Where trees still stood at the far periphery, their bark was scorched with strange patterns. The ground itself was different too, the soil transformed in places to a glass-like substance that crunched beneath our feet.

  "The archival footage didn't capture this," I whispered, kneeling to examine a patch of earth that sparkled with an unnatural iridescence. "They must have edited the records."

  Despite the devastation, life had begun to reclaim the battlefield. Insects chirped from the undergrowth, small nocturnal creatures scurried across moonlit clearings, and saplings pushed through the wreckage. But even this regrowth seemed altered as plants were growing in patterns too regular to be coincidental, while flowers were blooming with colors that shouldn't exist in terrestrial flora.

  "Look," Qali pointed toward the horizon. There, silhouetted against the night sky, a mountain peak stood cleaved perfectly in two. The separation was so clean, so precise, it appeared as if some cosmic blade had sliced through solid rock from the heavens down. Between the divided summits, stars were visible, creating the illusion of a river of light flowing through the mountain itself.

  "That wasn't in the records either," Enrosha murmured.

  "Another lie," I said, rising to my feet. "Whatever happened here... it wasn't a simple execution. This was a battle between forces we barely understand."

  The air itself felt charged, as if the very molecules still resonated with the energies released during that confrontation. I could almost taste it—a metallic tang that reminded me of the rare times I'd witnessed my mother channel her full power. But this was different and older than her somehow.

  In certain spots, like visible streaks of shattered glass, time itself seemed to flow differently. Fallen leaves could be seen suspended in mid-air, and patches of ground could be seen where the regrowth was accelerated.

  "One being did all of this…?" Enrosha asked, her voice a mixture of awe and apprehension. "A lesser being my ass."

  "Not just any being," I replied, my eyes drawn back to the cleaved mountain peak. "An awakened Sovereign."

  We stood in silence for a moment, absorbing the implications. The records we had stolen from Nibiru's archives had only hinted at the true nature of what had occurred here. The reality was far more profound. This wasn't just the site of a failed rebellion—it was proof that the Anunnaki could be challenged. That their control, for all its apparent totality, had major vulnerabilities. And it seemed this prince was practically at the crux of all of their problems.

  "If one Sovereign could do this," Qali whispered, "what might all twelve accomplish together?"

  The question hung in the night air, unanswered but resonant with possibility.

  In the far distance, we sensed something large moving through the damaged forest, disturbing the pattern of shadows. A reminder that we were strangers here, in a world both familiar from our studies and utterly foreign to our experience.

  "We should move and find the megalith," Enrosha said, her eyes tracking the movement.

  As we gathered ourselves to begin our journey, I took one final look at the devastated landscape. What appeared at first glance to be random destruction revealed itself, upon closer inspection, to be something else entirely—a message written in toppled trees and scarred earth, in cleaved stone and altered time.

  A promise of what was possible. And a warning of what was to come.

  "Any sign of pursuit?" Qali asked, checking the small devices attached to her wrist—specialized sensors she had modified from Anunnaki technology.

  Enrosha shook her head. "The transporter's single-use function should have overloaded after our departure. They'll come, but not immediately. They'll need to use conventional methods now."

  We moved in silence, our Anunnaki genetics allowing us to see clearly despite the darkness. Even at night, Earth was overwhelming to senses accustomed to Nibiru's controlled stimuli. The ground beneath our feet constantly changed texture, and the air temperature fluctuated as we walked, cooler in low areas, warmer as we climbed slight inclines.

  There was still life, everywhere. Larger forms watching warily from shadows. Plants growing in patterns that defied the strict geometric arrangements of Nibiru's agricultural sectors.

  After about fifteen minutes of walking, we arrived. Enrosha held up a hand, signaling us to stop at the megalith’s boundary.

  There it was, a massive, untouched, solitary stone; an enormous megalith gleaming silver-grey in the moonlight.

  The stone seemed to pulse with energy—or perhaps that was my imagination, my mind trying to process the enormity of what had happened here. This was where everything had changed. Where a being considered inferior had proven that the Anunnaki were not invincible.

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  "We're not alone," Enrosha said suddenly, her voice dropping to the barest whisper.

  She was right. Now that we were still, I could sense the subtle shift in the ambient sounds and the feeling of being observed. Not with the cold, calculating assessment of Anunnaki surveillance, but something different.

  "We come seeking knowledge," I called out, my voice sounding small in the vast clearing. "We come in the name of the great Hero-Prince who fell here."

  Silence stretched for several heartbeats. Then, from the shadows beyond the megalith, a figure emerged.

  The atmosphere changed instantly. The night air, which moments before had felt alive, grew heavy and still. A presence washed over us like a physical wave—an aura so vast and overwhelming that I instinctively took a step back.

  It began as a creeping sensation along my spine, ice-cold fingers tracing each vertebra. Then came the pressure—not just against my body, but against my very consciousness. A rich, horrifying malevolence that seemed to seep into the air itself, making it difficult to breathe. My skin crawled as if a thousand insects were moving just beneath the surface.

  Qali gasped beside me, her hands flying to cover her mouth. Enrosha's massive frame went rigid.

  As the figure moved closer, the sensation intensified. Shadows appeared to bend toward him, stretching and twisting in unnatural patterns. The moonlight revealed a tall, grotesque form draped in what appeared to be a simple black cloak, but as I watched, the edges of the garment seemed to ripple and morph, occasionally taking the unmistakable shape of vast bat wings before settling back into cloth.

  The being was not as tall as an Anunnaki, but his presence made such physical distinctions utterly irrelevant. There was a bone-deep certainty that radiated from him—an absolute confidence born of experiences and power beyond my current comprehension.

  My vision began to distort at the edges and dark tendrils crept inward. Within those shadows, I caught flickering glimpses of terrifying scenes—cities burning, beings screaming, cosmic horrors beyond description. I couldn't tell if these were hallucinations induced by his aura or actual memories somehow being projected into my mind.

  His presence was paradoxical. It inspired absolute primal terror while simultaneously conveying absolute authority, as if nothing could defeat this being. These feelings were so overwhelming that it bordered on absolute certainty.

  When he stepped fully into the moonlight, I finally saw his face, pale as death itself. But it was his eyes that held me transfixed—ancient, knowing eyes that seemed to peer directly into the depths of my soul, stripping away all pretense and laying bare every thought, every fear, every secret I had ever held. They were the deepset black of interstellar space.

  "The daughters of the enemy come to the place of their victory," the figure said, his voice carrying effortlessly across the clearing, each word bringing another wave of that overwhelming aura. "How curious. Three little half-breeds, far from home," his voice also carried subtle harmonics that made my skin prickle. "Daughters of Enzu, Nergal, and Ereshkigal, is this an unauthorized school trip? Or, perhaps, you bring something more sinister into my domain?"

  Again, that terrible, magnificent aura continued to crescendo outward from him in waves. Like a physical weight, it made breathing difficult, and clear thought nearly impossible. Even Enrosha, with her mighty stature, seemed diminished in his presence. Qali swayed slightly beside me, her freckled face unnaturally pale.

  I had read accounts of this phenomena in the forbidden archives—the unmistakable, unforgettable experience of standing in the presence of one of the most powerful beings on Earth. An aura so potent it could drive lesser beings to raving madness, pathological psychosis, and death. An aura that marked its originator as something beyond classification in the Anunnaki hierarchy of power.

  How could such a being serve under the Anunnaki?

  "True Lord Styx," Enrosha whispered in recognition, her voice barely audible even in the absolute silence that had fallen over the clearing.

  The ancient Vampire lord—ruler of his kind, and according to our stolen records, one of the few beings on Earth whom even the Anunnaki approached with caution—regarded us with eyes that had witnessed millennia of history.

  "We've come because we know the truth. About Tara. About the Symphony. About what Prince Trisananda and Princess Elizabeth discovered." I asserted, stepping forward despite Qali's warning hand on my arm.

  Styx's expression did not change, but the air around him seemed to darken, as if shadow itself responded to his mood. "High claims from the spawn of those who orchestrated their deaths."

  "We are not our parents," Enrosha said, exerting herself just to stand beside me. Her greater height would normally have made me seem even smaller by comparison, but in this moment, I felt our unity made us equals. "We reject their system."

  "We've seen the genetic evidence," Qali added, joining us. "We know what the Gibillu truly are. What we truly are."

  True Lord Styx studied us with unnerving stillness. Then, in a movement too fast for even our enhanced senses to track, he was directly before us, close enough that I could see the faint network of veins beneath his sickly, scarred skin.

  "Knowledge is not understanding," he slithered.

  His aura washed over us again—a presence so overwhelming that I wanted to just shrivel up and die on the spot. It felt like standing in the path of a storm, or like being submerged in something suffocating and ancient and terrible and noble all at once.

  Most beings would surely have ended their own life on the spot at this point. Perhaps that was his intention.

  But we remained standing, meeting his gaze directly. "We seek the unified liberation of all consciousness on Earth embodying the love of the One Infinite Creator."

  For the first time, his expression changed—the faintest suggestion of surprise crossing his features before settling back into ageless composure.

  "Show me," he said, extending one long, pale hand toward my face.

  I understood instinctively. Access to my memories, my experiences—an intimate request, and something that would leave me utterly exposed if I was lying.

  Without hesitation, I leaned forward, allowing his cold fingers to brush my temple.

  The contact was electric, like a sudden rush of awareness that transcended physical sensation. I felt him moving through my memories—the years of humiliation, the careful gathering of forbidden knowledge, the discovery of our true heritage, our escape from Nibiru. He witnessed the demonstration at the feast, felt my rage as the human's essence was extracted, understood the depth of my determination to end the system that had created such casual cruelty.

  When he withdrew his hand, I swayed slightly, the intensity of the connection leaving me momentarily disoriented.

  "Yes." Styx rasped, lowly. "Indeed."

  He turned and walked several paces toward the megalith, his cloak moving around him like liquid shadow. When he spoke again, it was without looking at us.

  "The Prince and Princess uncovered truths that threatened the very foundation of the system your parents took part in creating. For their audacity, they paid with their lives." He turned back to face us. "But their deaths will not be their end."

  "We know," Enrosha said. "They will keep returning and fighting until the system is destroyed."

  Styx's eyes narrowed slightly. "How resourceful of you."

  "We didn't come here just to share information," I said. "We came to act. To find the surviving bloodlines. To prepare for what's coming."

  "And what, little daughter of Ereshkigal, do you believe is coming?"

  "Destruction. Near total annihilation," I replied simply. "My mother and her siblings know that what happened here was not an isolated incident. They're afraid, and the Symphony is approaching another reset point. But this cycle is different. Prince Trisananda's actions changed something fundamental in the pattern."

  True Lord Styx studied me for a long moment, his ancient eyes seeming to see past my physical form to something deeper. Then, extraordinarily, he smiled—a slight curve of his lips that transformed his severe features into something almost kind.

  "Correct," he said. "Though I suspect not even you understand the full implications." He gestured toward the megalith. "This stone marks more than a death. It marks a promise. A promise that transcends time and space."

  He stepped closer again, his attention shifting to include all three of us. "Your arrival was... unexpected. But perhaps not unaccounted for." He extended his hand, palm upward. "Come. Others have been waiting for a sign that the wheel is finally turning."

  Qali looked uncertain, glancing between Styx's offered hand and the dark forest beyond. "Can we trust him?" she whispered.

  I studied the ancient Vampire lord—a being who had witnessed the rise and fall of countless human civilizations, who had known Trisananda personally. In his ageless eyes, I saw something I had rarely encountered in my life: recognition. Not of my physical form or my hybrid nature, but of something deeper. The same spark that had led us to reject our heritage and flee to this blue gem of a realm.

  "We don't have a choice," I replied quietly. "And more importantly, we don't need one."

  I placed my small hand in his, feeling the cool strength of his grip. Enrosha and Qali followed suit.

  "The Drow King will want to meet you," Styx said, his voice carrying a hint of amusement. "And I suspect his reaction will be even more... dramatic…"

  As we prepared to depart, I looked back at the megalith one final time. In the moonlight, its shadow stretched across the clearing like a sword—a line dividing past from future. On one side, the world as it had been for millennia. On the other, something new and undefined.

  We had taken our first step across that line.

  What waited for us remained to be seen. But for the first time in my life, I felt something unfamiliar taking root within me.

  Hope.