Jessica smiled, her form warping into thin whips of blued air and sweeping past his crimson locks. Cyrus reached out in horror, worried that she had left, only to listen as the woman's chuckles echoed against the walls. He sighed deeply, listening as the woman's voice and light filled the room once more and set flame to the darkness.

"It's easier to conserve energy when I don't have to take on a form," she started, her voice sinking into the cave's basin and washing over in waves. "Maybe it'll also be less scary, sir."

His cheeks burned in response. "I-I appreciate it," he muttered, as the woman's voice, cadenced and blued, snickered. He bit his tongue, looking up in slight annoyance. "Shouldn't you get started on the story?" He asked with his arms crossed.

"Yes, of course, sir," she started, and Cyrus could have sworn that she was standing next to him, frosted air against his ear like hot breath. "There's not much time, but I should be able to retell a portion of it."

Cyrus did not comment, choosing instead to sink to the floor and cross his legs comfortably. He chased away the images of Jimena and the books she read lovingly to both him and Logan, staring off into the unknown in passivity. While the ice simmered along his legs and bottom, he waited for the woman's voice to pick up once more with hardened eyes. "Tell me everything, or at least, as much as you can."

"Very well," she responded, "I will start from the middle then, sir."

"The middle?"

"Yes, the middle," she said, and Cyrus could sense the hitch in her breath. "the middle is more important than the beginning. Honestly, it might as well be the beginning."

"I was six years old when I saw a meteorite blazing its path, slipping from its throne and tumbling across the world as I knew it. I thought it was a regular shooting star, the ones my father told me about in his stories. I remember raising my hands in prayer, smiling as I muttered my wish under my breath," Jessica explained, her voice trembling slightly. "Over the next few days, groups of stars, known as constellations, would follow after that meteorite, dethroned and wiped from the skies. Astronomers could only watch on in horror as they tried to comprehend what was going on in the worlds above, scrambling to find answers through elaborate debates and long, heated discussions between the world's renowned astrophysicists. It seemed that no matter how much they hypothesized, there was no answer."

"I'm sorry to interrupt, but stars?" Cyrus questioned. "What are they exactly? Do they serve a particular purpose?"

At that, Jessica hesitated, sharply inhaling. "That was insensitive; I completely forgot that you've never seen them before, sir."

"If I had to describe them, I would say that they are like lanterns that light up the deadened night. In actuality, they are condensed forms of highly concentrated natural elements that, under the forces of nature, coalesce and react to form bright, ball-like figures that light the heavens," She explained. "Astronomers and astrophysicists, if you were wondering, are researchers that study the worlds above, both of whom work together to come up with answers for why the universe behaves as it does."

"Ah, I see," Cyrus hummed, looking off to the side in wonder. "I've never seen anything like that back home in Lenlyo, so I was just curious. You come from an interesting place, huh?"

"Yeah, I suppose so, sir." She answered a few beats later, saccharine words turning somewhat bitter. "It's a shame that it fell to ruin."

"What happened?"

"That's the next part in this story," Jessica responded. "Turns out that there was an entirely reasonable explanation for why the stars were disappearing, but we were just blind to the possibilities."

"Possibilities?"

"Let's just say that we were incredibly shortsighted to think that we were the only intelligent creatures in the cosmos, and because of that shortsightedness, we paid in blood."

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

Security Council, United Nations, August 2031

"Would the delegate from Mali please stand?"

"Thank you, Honorable Chair," replied Moussa Traore. His honeyed gaze scanned the room, a frown pulling at his lips. "The Republic of Mali, with support from the Algerian delegation, would like to bring attention to the disturbances in our borderlands, namely the Tanezrouft Basin." He slowly reached for the stack of papers on his desk, raising them halfway up into the air as if the white pages were signs, blacked ink carrying the future of everyone in that very room. "Following the Year of Fallen Kings, our country's scientists have been concerned with abnormalities in our changing landscape and environments. The Tanezrouft Basin, characterized by high-speed, constant sandstorms, virtually no water or vegetations, and vast salt flats, is a well-known deadland, fittingly called the "Land of Terror." Moussa explained, his grip on the papers tightening. "These papers are readings conducted by top scientists of the Malian and Algerian Governments in this particularly basin, specifically records of the frequency of wind speeds, and in turn, sandstorms in the area. Recently, our scientists have come back with startling data finds," He explained, eyes darkening as he addressed the entire room. "The wind speeds in this area have dramatically decreased by nearly 80 percent just in the month of July."

An outcry swept over the chamber, a mixture of groans, gasps, and active whispers sending the room into disorder. A swift call for decorum silenced the crowd, but the validity of the work—no, the sheer preposterous nature—had delegates from all nations simmering in their seats.

"The Malian Delegation understands the impossibility of the research and would like to comfort delegates by ensuring that these results are the conclusions after multiple tests, picked up by several monitors and by the Algerian government as well," Moussa continued, looking towards the Algerian delegation, both members nodding in affirmation. "Our delegations brought this attention to the floor as a precaution, and of course, for insight," he said, his eyes roving across the room, finally stopping on the council chair. "That will be all, thank you, Honorable Chair."

And as Moussa sat back into his seat and wrapped his arms over the arms of his chair; as he closed his eyes and embraced the whispers and absurd claims; as his mind raged on with confliction and questioned his actions; his heart sputtered.

Even if every other person in this room damned his conclusions with blasphemy and lies, he knew that this information was the truth. The impossibility had fragmented the light of revelation, and in that fragmentation, in the prism of what could be fact or hearsay, there is no answer. No answer that a normal man—or society—could accept or would be willing to prove.

In the pursuit of truth, his reputation would sour and fall considerably. He would be considered demented, his intentions perverted in the face of uniformity. There was no winning against the tides of society, a force that swept his sandcastles with little to no remorse.

He sighed, listening as the French delegation spoke, bits and phrases slipping through his ears. Talk of terrorism abroad and the fallout from the Year of Fallen Kings—how conventional. His questions and concerns were dead in this room, the quiet work and diligence of his people lost to the voices of the upper echelons of this dreadful system.

When a country of supposed importance speaks, the room salivates, gripping their seats in anticipation. God forbid a man from a lowly nation, a man of his upbringing, stand in front of them, demanding they listen with their ears and not alongside incessant chatter.

He realizes that even as the chamber moves onto other topics, discussing solutions for the thousands of other issues plaguing the surface world, there will be a day where they will finally come full circle. There will be a day where they will rifle through their sheets and scream at their advisors and peers, watching as events unfold before their very eyes, their powerlessness becoming more and more evident with each passing second as the world burns. Moussa wonders if then, by any chance, they would come before him, hailing the same papers he waved at them today, teary and regretful.

He imagines that they will come and ask, "How long has this been true? How long has this been an issue?"

And that will be the day when society will finally choke on the fatality of uniformity, the bitter aftertaste of truth seeping into their palates like spoilt pomegranates.

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

"They called it The Bloodletting," Jessica explained, looking towards Cyrus. "Over 70% of the human race was decimated in an all-out war that ravaged my world. The elderly, women, and children—the war effort spared no mercy or lives." She clenched her jaw tightly, trying to prevent her face from showing discomfort, but the tremble in her lip was very telling. "People that would have never dreamed to band together joined forces in an attempt to squash the opposition, but it was a fruitless endeavor. We were no match from the beginning, and there was no way we could have pulled together a strong enough front in time," she cried out, the pain in her voice unmistakable and surprisingly, the most human she had sounded the entirety of her stay.

"Was it a matter of time, maybe even misinformation?" Cyrus questioned quietly, worried his questions would aggravate the woman more. He watched as she sniffled, the pigmented red cheeks barely showing up in the hologram, but still, remarkably, there.

"T-there was no time, Sir," she breathed, voice teetering on the line of coherent and unclear as emotion—the worst, most heartwrenching form of melancholy—wracked her ghostly form. "They were...living with us—hell, they had practically melded themselves to the framework of society and our way of life like tar, sinking their claws into whatever they could use against us in the years to come."

Cyrus watched as the woman's form sunk slowly to the ground, falling like a boneless heap. She looked so small, he realized, the concerned thoughts from before finally fading away as he inched closer to her. As he listened, her broken cries echoing off the chamber walls, her form curled up and her face hidden in her arms as if reality was unbearable, Cyrus could only watch her glowing form with a slight frown.

"Jessica, is someone watching you right now?" He finally asked, waiting as the woman slowly picked her head up from her arms, her pretty eyes unbearably lifeless, staring in his soul as if she could convey with feelings, not words.

"No," she whispered, and Cyrus leaned in, stopping until his face was practically level with her own, noses barely touching.

"Why lie?" He asked quietly, and the silence that followed carried more questions than answers. He pulled back slowly, resting on his legs once more as he watched the woman's pupils dilate, heavy breaths causing her entire body to heave in exhaustion. She sounded sickly, to say the least, her ghostly form seemingly a tinge lighter than it was just moments prior, brightening the room like a stuttering flame crackling in the night.

"It isn't your worry," she eventually responded, cutting the thickening silence with the sharp edge of her tongue. "There are more important things for you to worry about, sir."

"Do tell," he said, choosing not to pry. There was something incredibly off about the entire situation, Jessica's mannerisms being the icing on the cake—artificial and thick on his tongue and leaving him with all sorts of bad aftertastes. She was hiding something, and Cyrus was starting to suspect the superiors she mentioned at the start of their encounter.

The question, however, was no longer why her superiors were watching. There are more reasonable explanations for why they may keep an eye out for a subordinate, he realized, but the reasons behind all that are still murky. The possibilities for 'how' can sometimes be more complex than the 'why,' surprisingly, and Cyrus had a gut feeling that it was just one of those cases.

"I'm afraid I don't have much time left, sir, so I'm simply going to have to rush your instructions," Jessica said, jerking Cyrus from his thoughts.

"Instructions?"

"You didn't think I came all this way just to tell you about a war that you don't remember, do you?"

"I suppose so—wait, what? Remembered?" Cyrus repeated, slightly dumbfounded.

"I'll explain next time. That's another story for another day," she said, quickly standing up. "Sir, there's going to be a lot of things changing in your hometown, and you need to stay on guard. I can't exactly explain why right now, but I'll be sure to the next time we meet."

"You don't think you should've done that this meeting instead of giving me a history lesson?" Cyrus grumbled, looking at the woman in annoyance.

"Trust me, knowing about the war is far more important than learning about what might happen in Lenlyo," Jessica smiled. "It is, after all, the first step towards Recollection."

"Ya know what, I'm not even gonna question it anymore."

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

Standing by

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Name: Cyrus Greene

Age: 19

Height: 5' 10"

Weight: 70 kg

Background: Unknown

Condition: Stabilising

Data Transfer: Initializing

Partner: Logan O' Donnell (see next for details)

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System cleared for Ȩ̸̛̠̮͇͈̠̺̙̯̯̘̲̩̳̳̫̙̪̱̝̖̝̽͒͜͜Ẻ̵̛̛̪͖̙̗͚̻̓̐̐̒̓̈́̌̓̈́́͆̋̓̋̃̄͛͜͝͝Ȩ̴̫̦͓̪̱̪͇͈̟͖̙̅͒͂̏̉̄͌̂̒̃̿̚͘͘͘͝͠E̴̡̢͙̲̜̫̦͔̘̬̻̜͚̩̯̖͆̈̈́̃́̇̄͜͠͝E̷̮̣̺̜̊̈̏̆̒̑̋͑̑͐̍̏̂̏͑͆̏̂͛͐͘̕Ẻ̷̢̨̧͚̠͓͉̭̠̟̝͓̗͚̑͂̓̓̃̍͑̓̃̄͐͋͘̚̚͝͝Ĕ̴̛͇̰̽͋̆̀̿͒̕͠Ẻ̷̡̡̬̥̦̗̩͎̜̫̩̯̻͍̫͓̖̗̟͈̳̦̰̠ͅE̷̡̛̗̻̭̹͇͖̳̬̻̰̥̓Ę̸̧̡̛̲̲̹͓̝̬͚̠̦̣̥̪͇̙̭̠͙͇̰̣͓͉́̍̐̀̅̉́͌̃͌̀̔̈̽̄͑͗͗̾̐͛̚͝͠Ȩ̷͈͎̞̳̦͔̖͕̟̱̥̟̼̱̩̼̺̠̭̺̳͂ͅẺ̶̡͙̗̤̩̯̗͚̦͛̉͆̈́̀̓̅̍̚͠Ȩ̵̗̗̱̯͚̉͊͗̄̈̓̃͒̉̈́̉̄̀̑̈́̑̄̈́͒͊͌̈́̐͠͝Ẻ̷̢͔̥͚̞̭̭͙͇͇̳͕̪̣̞͎̘̻̺͔̩̠͙̻̄̒̍̈́͂̆̀̌͌̓̆̽̓̊̋̌͆̓̀̕̚͝͠ͅE̴̛̗̺̓̈́͛̒̽̌́͛̒͌̏͗͂̕͝E̷̡̢̧̬̻̠̣̻͕̦͈̼͚͉̭̠͓̜̮̐̈́̀̒̀͛͊̒̂͝

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