Chapter 2: The Echoes of Far land
Inside the chest, wrapped in red silk that had faded to the color of dried blood, lay a collection of books and manuscripts that took his breath away. Some were bound in materials he recognized leather, cloth, synthetic polymers while others were made from substances he couldn't identify. The languages were equally diverse: English, Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and several scripts that seemed to predate known human civilization.
For a long moment, Bhoumik could only stare, his breath caught in his throat at the treasure trove of history laid out before him. His eyes were drawn to one volume in particular.
But it was one particular volume that made his hands tremble as he lifted it. Bound in what looked like synthetic leather but felt strangely warm to the touch, it bore a title embossed in gold letters that seemed to glow with their own inner light:
"THE CATACLYSM OF EARTH: A FINAL RECORD"
With reverent care, Bhoumik opened the book. The pages were made of some kind of preservation material that had kept them perfect despite obvious age. The text was in English, but the author's name had been deliberately scratched out, leaving only the haunting subtitle: "By One Who Witnessed the End."
What followed was a detailed account of humanity's final war, written with the clinical precision of a scientist and the emotional weight of a survivor. Nuclear weapons deployed in numbers that defied comprehension over fifty thousand warheads detonated in a three-year period. Biological weapons that turned entire populations into walking corpses. Hydrogen bombs that turned cities into glass deserts. Chemical agents that made the very air toxic for decades.
The numbers were staggering, almost incomprehensible. Earth's population had been nearly twelve billion when the war began. By its end, fewer than three hundred million survived, most of them dying slowly from radiation poisoning or plague. The planet itself had been rendered uninhabitable, its atmosphere poisoned, its oceans turned to radioactive soup, its continents scarred by craters large enough to see from space.
But the most disturbing revelation came in the book's final chapters. The war hadn't been fought over resources or territory or ideology, as the children of Aethros Prime had been taught. It had been fought over something called "The Convergence"—a discovery that had revealed the existence of other dimensions, other realities that could be accessed through the manipulation of space-time itself.
Both sides had sought to control this power, to use it as the ultimate weapon. Instead, they had torn holes in reality itself, allowing something to seep through. Something that the author referred to only as "The Hunger."
The generation ship that had brought humanity to Aethros Prime hadn't been just an escape vessel. It had been a lifeboat, carrying the last remnants of a species that had literally torn their world apart in their quest for power. And the technology that had made their journey possible faster-than-light travel, quantum fold generators, dimensional manipulation had been developed in the final, desperate months before Earth's death.
Buried deeper in the chest were technical manuals and schematics that made Bhoumik's advanced education seem like a child's primer. Blueprints for engines that could bend space-time, theoretical frameworks for manipulating the fundamental forces of reality, and most remarkably, detailed plans for something called a "Quantum Fold Generator"—a device capable of creating stable wormholes through the fabric of space itself.
The implications were staggering. If humans had once possessed such technology, if they had been capable of achievements that made current native cultivation seem primitive by comparison, then why had they allowed themselves to become second-class citizens? Why had they hidden their true heritage, their real capabilities?
The answer came in the form of a personal journal, written in a woman's careful handwriting:
"We cannot allow them to know what we truly are. The natives of this world are powerful, yes, but they are also innocent. They have never known the horror of total war, the madness that comes from possessing ultimate power. If they knew what we had done to our own world, what we are capable of when driven to desperation, they would rightfully fear us. Perhaps they would even be wise to destroy us.
"Better to be seen as refugees than as the destroyers of worlds. Better to be pitied than feared. Our children will grow up thinking themselves weak, but they will also grow up without the knowledge that could lead them down the same dark path we walked. It is a sacrifice we make for their souls, if not for their pride."
The journal was signed with a name that made Bhoumik's heart stop: Dr. Priya Pal, followed by a date from over eight hundred years ago.
His ancestor. His family's legacy, hidden away like a shameful secret.
At the very bottom of the chest, nestled in a bed of silk, lay a pendant that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. It was shaped like a lotus flower, but crafted from some kind of dark metal that seemed to shift between black and deep purple depending on the angle. Seven petals, each one covered in microscopic engravings that seemed to move and flow when viewed directly.
The craftsmanship was beyond anything Bhoumik had ever seen, beyond what should have been possible with any known technology. Each petal contained what appeared to be entire galaxies in miniature, swirling patterns of stars and nebulae that seemed to pulse with their own inner rhythm.
Without fully understanding why, Bhoumik lifted the pendant and fastened it around his neck. The metal was warm against his skin, almost alive, and the moment the clasp closed, the world exploded into sensation.
Energy pure, raw, incredible energy—flooded through his body like molten lightning. His meridians, the pathways through which essence flowed, had been dormant since birth, sealed by the cruel lottery of genetics that denied most humans the ability to cultivate. But now they blazed to life, each one opening like a flower blooming in fast-forward.
The sensation was indescribable. Every cell in his body sang with power, every nerve ending burned with awareness. He could feel the essence flowing through him, around him, responding to his will in ways that defied everything he had been taught about cultivation. This wasn't the slow, careful accumulation of power that native children spent decades mastering. This was raw, primal force that obeyed his every thought.
But even as the power filled him, Bhoumik was aware that something was different. The energy didn't just flow through him it merged with him, became part of him in a way that even the most advanced cultivators rarely experienced. It was as if the pendant had awakened not just his ability to manipulate essence, but his very connection to the fundamental forces of reality.
As the initial surge settled into a steady, thrumming power that seemed to pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat, Bhoumik caught sight of himself in his parents' mirror. His appearance was largely unchanged, but his eyes... his eyes now held depths that seemed to contain swirling galaxies, just like the pendant's engravings. The icy black had become something deeper, more profound, as if he could see through the very fabric of space and time.
The pendant rested against his chest, warm and alive, its dark surface now pulsing with the same rhythm as his newfound power. Seven petals for seven levels of reality, seven dimensions of existence that humanity had once been able to access. Seven paths to power that his ancestors had walked before their civilization collapsed under the weight of its own ambitions.
Two goals crystallized in Bhoumik's mind with perfect clarity, burning with the intensity of newborn stars. First, he would master this power, learn to cultivate in ways that would make the natives' rigid hierarchy not just meaningless, but obsolete. He would show them that humanity's supposed weakness had been a choice, not a limitation.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, he would reclaim his species' true destiny. Not as refugees grateful for scraps from the native table, but as the inheritors of a legacy that had once reshaped the very fabric of reality. The generation ship that had brought them to Aethros Prime had been capable of traveling faster than light and creating holes in space-time itself. If their ancestors could do it once, he could do it again.
Earth was calling, across a hundred light-years of empty space and a thousand years of forgotten history. The world his ancestors had destroyed in their quest for power was waiting to be reclaimed, to be healed, to be restored to its former glory.
Bhoumik Pal, the human boy who had been denied his awakening, smiled for the first time in months. The expression transformed his face, turning the cold beauty of his features into something that was both terrible and magnificent. The pendant pulsed against his chest like a second heart, and in its rhythm, he heard the echo of dying worlds and the promise of new ones yet to be born.
The last son of Earth had finally awakened, and the universe would never be the same.
But even as the power settled into his bones, even as the pendant pulsed with the rhythm of dying stars and newborn galaxies, Bhoumik felt something else stirring in the depths of his consciousness. A presence, ancient and patient, that had been waiting in the pendant's depths for exactly this moment.
'Finally,' a voice whispered in his mind, its words formed in an archaic dialect he shouldn't understand, yet somehow did. It carried the weight of eons.
'After a thousand years of waiting, a descendant worthy of the true legacy has awakened. The blood of the Star-Breakers flows through your veins, child of two worlds. But first... you must survive what comes next.'
The pendant grew burning hot against his chest, and through his parents' window, Bhoumik saw something that made his newly awakened power recoil in instinctive terror. The crimson sun of Aethros Prime was flickering, its light stuttering like a dying flame.
And in that stuttering darkness between the flickers, shapes moved. Things that shouldn't exist, things that had followed humanity's scent across the void for a thousand years, finally catching up to their prey.
The Convergence was beginning again, and this time, there would be no escape to another world.
The hunt had found them.