The void parted without sound, as if the universe itself had inhaled and held its breath.
From the vast stillness between realities, a sphere of pale green shimmered into view—Tellurin, their first destination. It floated serenely in the cosmic dark, a planet so similar in size and color to Earth that Aouli's breath caught despite himself. Swirling clouds veiled its surface in delicate spirals. Irregular land masses stretched like fingers across sapphire oceans, and belts of mist wrapped around the equator, whispering of storms and life.
It was beautiful.
And wrong.
Even from orbit, Aouli could sense it—subtle dissonances that rippled through his form. The atmosphere trembled slightly. The electromagnetic field bent strangely. The rhythm of life was uneven, like a heartbeat stuttering out of sync. Tellurin was not dying—not yet—but it was wounded.
"This one hurts," he whispered, staring down at the world.
Elysia floated beside him, her eyes fixed on the same orb.
"It is on the cusp," she said. "The tipping point has not yet passed, but it is coming. One way or another."
Aouli turned to her, confused. "Then we help them. We stabilize it."
Elysia's glow dimmed slightly, and her voice softened into something dangerously close to stern. "No. This is your first immersion, Aouli. You are not here to save anyone. Not yet."
"But I—"
"You are here to witness," she cut in, her tone absolute. "To understand. Influence, especially by one who carries what you carry, is dangerous without perspective."
Aouli's form flickered slightly, the glow of his body shuddering with tension. He clenched his fists—not from defiance, but frustration. The memory of Earth was fresh, still searing. To see another world teeter on the edge and do nothing felt unbearable.
Elysia extended a hand, not to soothe, but to guide.
"Come. You must feel this world to learn it. The descent begins."
She gestured toward a ripple in space—an opening not unlike the Crossroads corridor, but darker, thicker, threaded with pulses of emerald and violet. Aouli hesitated only briefly before stepping forward. The fabric of space folded around them, and they plunged.
—
The descent was unlike anything Aouli had experienced.
He had no body in the traditional sense, but he felt it—pressure, heat, gravity slowly reasserting its dominance. Colors he couldn't name streaked across his perception. There was no cockpit, no craft—just his form streaking through clouds that tasted of ozone and minerals, his essence compressed into a falling point of light.
Air screamed around him, but it wasn't noise—it was memory. Tellurin spoke through the descent. It sang in data, emotion, atmospheric pressure. He felt its oceans below—deep and agitated. He felt its forests, pulsing erratically with biochemical confusion. He tasted its atmosphere, a fusion of nitrogen, oxygen, and something synthetic. Something invasive.
He understood what Elysia had meant. This wasn't observation through distance. This was contact. Intimate, overwhelming, and unavoidable.
A shockwave of information struck him as he passed through a jetstream that buckled unnaturally. In a blink, he saw snippets of local life: humans in environmental suits arguing in a decaying lab; mutated deer-like creatures feeding from glowing vines; a child drawing on a wall with soil and bioluminescent ink, sketching a spiral that matched the Crossroads corridor.
He collided with the surface—though there was no impact. His form simply passed into the terrain like a drop of water vanishing into a lake.
He blinked.
He was standing.
The jungle that surrounded him was stunning. Towering fronds shimmered in golden hues, their broad leaves etched with veins of electric blue. Insects the size of coins hovered with metallic wings, their buzzing harmonic and oddly melodic. The soil beneath his feet was soft and warm, humming faintly with stored energy.
Sunlight filtered through a high, gauzy canopy, casting prismatic beams that danced like spirits through the air. The air was thick with moisture and sweet, unfamiliar fragrances. It was a paradise—until he listened.
The hum was wrong. The resonance of life was off-pitch, wavering. Trees whispered with strained tension, their roots pulsing like overworked hearts. The insects flew in loops too precise, their movements calculated like algorithms, not instincts. And beneath the beauty, the soil hid something—traces of metallic residue, invisible wires, tiny machines decomposing inside the ecosystem like corpses in a shallow grave.
Elysia appeared beside him, her expression unreadable.
"Welcome to Tellurin."
Aouli turned in place, absorbing the details. "They terraformed it?"
"Yes," she said. "A world seeded by colonists from a long-dead cradle. Their technology merged with native biology to accelerate growth. At first, it flourished. Then it began to adapt. And then… it began to resist."
He knelt beside a root that pulsed faintly. A transparent membrane was embedded in its surface—tech grown like cancer into the bark. The root twitched under his hand, reacting not with pain or welcome, but confusion.
"Did they try to stop it?" he asked.
"They tried to correct it," Elysia said. "Which is not the same."
Aouli stood again. His body thrummed with empathic noise—the world was alive, but not coherent. It was struggling to remember itself.
He closed his eyes. The planet whispered again. Not in words, but in impressions. He felt a wound—a psychic fault line—running through the forest. Something was wrong at the core, and whatever it was, it was spreading.
"How much time do they have?" he asked.
Elysia was silent.
Aouli looked up.
Distant across the horizon, black clouds curled upward in slow, deliberate spirals. He recognized the pattern—engineered weather systems. They were failing. Beneath them, coastal forests had turned the color of rust.
His fists clenched again.
"I won't interfere," he said aloud, more to himself than Elysia.
He felt her gaze on him.
"Not today," she said quietly. "But you must learn why even interference born of kindness can collapse a world."
She turned, walking toward a ridge where trees thinned into mist.
"Come. The forest will show you more."
Aouli followed.
Not because he agreed.
But because he had to understand how beauty turned to poison—and how not to repeat it.