The sky was not always this shade of pale blue. Long ago, before the great terraformers came, it shimmered in iridescent hues—violets and ambers swirling in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. The vast oceans, once a deep and luminous green, had lost their strange luminescence, replaced by a dull blue that mirrored the cold sky. Forests of spindly, translucent trees had turned to dust, their strange songs forever silenced. And the great cities, woven from the living roots of the ground itself, had crumbled to nothing, leaving behind no trace of the beings who once walked this world.
The world was Earth. But it was not always Earth.
No one alive today truly remembered the ones who came before. They were spoken of only in hushed whispers, their history buried beneath layers of rewritten truth. The official records, those maintained by the World Union, referred to them as The Predecessors—a vague and distant name meant to sever any emotional connection. But among those who still cared, they were called the Elders.
They were not human. But this was their home.
No one could say exactly how it happened. The first human ships arrived in the sky five hundred years ago, shining metal behemoths that cast long shadows over the land. They had come from the dying world of Nova Terra, a planet ravaged by war and greed, seeking refuge in the cold, endless void of space. And they had found it here, a planet rich in life and abundance. A perfect new home.
At first, there was peace. The Elders, as they were later named, had no weapons. They had no concept of war. Their civilization was built upon harmony, a deep understanding of the world around them. They communicated not through spoken words but through pulses of color along their bioluminescent skin, their thoughts flowing like water between one another. They were intelligent beyond human comprehension, but in the way of nature, not technology. They grew their cities from the earth, sang songs that bent the air itself, and lived in a balance that humans could never hope to understand.
And so, humanity feared them.
It began with accidents—small conflicts, misunderstandings. A human settlement unknowingly poisoned a river sacred to the Elders, disrupting the delicate ecosystem upon which they relied. The Elders retaliated, not with violence, but by refusing to interact. They withdrew into their deep forests and coral citadels beneath the sea, leaving the invaders to their machines and steel towers.
But humans are not content with silence. They demanded submission. And when it was not given, they took what they wanted by force.
The war lasted less than a decade. If it could even be called a war. Humanity’s weapons were designed for conquest, for destruction, for wiping out anything that stood in their way. The Elders had no defenses, no armies. They had spent millennia perfecting their connection to the world, never needing to raise a hand in anger. Against fire and metal, they had no chance.
The last of them disappeared two centuries ago. Some said they were eradicated, wiped from the face of the planet like a sickness. Others whispered that a few had escaped, fleeing to the deep caverns where no human would dare follow. But as the years passed and the world continued to reshape itself in humanity’s image, even those rumors faded into myth.
Now, the Earth belonged to the invaders.
Jaren Voss stood at the edge of the ocean, his boots sinking slightly into the wet sand. The air smelled of salt and wind, and the waves lapped at the shore in a rhythmic pulse, the same as they always had. But something was different. He could feel it.
The dig site behind him stretched for miles. Great machines, their towering frames cutting jagged shapes against the sky, were at work pulling something ancient from the ground. Fragments of what the historians believed to be Elder ruins. It was rare to find any trace of them now. Humanity had been thorough in its cleansing of the past. But every so often, something remained—bones, tools, strange relics that no one could decipher.
Jaren was one of the few who cared.
He was an archaeologist, but more than that, he was a seeker of truth. And the truth of what had happened to this world had been buried deeper than any ruin. The official records called the Elders an unfortunate casualty of progress. That humans had “assimilated” them, that they had “moved on.” But the artifacts told another story. The shattered remains of their cities, the burn marks in the earth, the hidden skeletons—evidence of genocide, not coexistence.
And now, as he stared at the horizon, he felt that truth pressing against him like a weight.
Then he saw it.
A shimmer in the air, just beyond the waves. A flicker of green against the blue of the water, so faint that for a moment he thought his mind was playing tricks on him. But then it came again—an iridescent glow, pulsing softly like a breath.
Jaren’s heart pounded. He stepped forward, the water lapping around his ankles. The glow remained, steady, waiting. He knew what this was. He had seen the old recordings, the ancient texts. The Elders had glowed like that, their bioluminescent skin shifting with their emotions.
It was impossible. They were gone.
Unless they weren’t.
The glow moved, just slightly, and Jaren realized it wasn’t coming from the water itself, but something beneath it. His breath caught as he dropped to his knees, reaching out. His fingers touched the surface, the cold shocking him, and for a moment, he saw something—
Eyes, black as the depths of the sea, staring back at him. A face, strange and beautiful, framed by flowing tendrils that shimmered with color. Not human. Not dead.
Alive.
Jaren gasped, stumbling back, his mind racing. They had survived. After all this time, they had survived. He wanted to shout, to tell the world, to change everything. But even as he opened his mouth, another thought struck him.
If the world knew, what would they do?
He already knew the answer. They would finish what they had started. They would not make the same mistake of leaving even a handful alive. Humanity had rewritten history to suit its narrative. The truth was an inconvenience.
The being beneath the water tilted its head, watching him. And then, slowly, it sank back into the depths, disappearing into the darkness below.
Jaren stood there for a long time, staring at the empty waves. His hands trembled. He had come here to uncover the past, but he had found the future. A secret that could change everything.
If he dared to keep it.