The marble towers of the Britannian capital still shimred with the morning dew, but the great spires now bore unfamiliar banners—sleek black and silver insignias of the Bernard Empire fluttering in the wind. The air slled of both fresh parchnt and iron. Gone were the fire-breathing drakes that once circled the city sky; now the hum of Bernardian air-shuttles filled the horizon.
The halls of the Royal Athenaeum—now renad the Imperial University of Britannia. The banners of the Bernard Empire fluttered over dos that had once belonged solely to Britannia's royalties. Change was not coming. It had already arrived.
Princess Elina walked the corridors in a simple grey robe, her once-golden gown and silver crown now tucked away in a trunk she no longer opened. Her hair, once styled in braids thick with jewels, now fell naturally down her back. She didn't walk with guards. She didn't need them. Among the bookshelves and the hum of quantum lecture devices, she was no princess. She was a student.
She stepped into Lecture Hall IV, a vaulted chamber with arched ceilings made of darkwood and obsidian glass. The Bernardians had installed holoprojectors in the ancient chamber, their futuristic hum a strange harmony with the scent of old parchnt.
At the front of the hall stood Instructor Halver Wynne, a tall, lean man of the Bernard Empire, clad in a simple gray uniform marked with digital sigils. Bernardian, clearly—taller than most Britannians.
He adjusted his glasses—and looked out over the room.
"Good morning," Halver said. His voice was calm but resonant. "Today, we begin with the universe. Not just your skies. Not just the sun, the moons, or the spirits your scrolls na. The universe. Everything."
The room quieted. Even the breath of nervous wonder was silenced.
Halver tapped the air. A holographic sphere appeared above his palm—spinning slowly. It looked like their world, blue and green, floating.
"This," he said, "is your world. Your ho. You call it Proxima Center. But it is not the center of creation. It is not the first world. Nor the last."
Gasps whispered across the crowd. One boy, dirt still on his boots, raised his hand.
"But… if this is not all, what else is there?"
Halver smiled. "A worthy question. There are stars beyond your sky. You call them the Eyes of the Ancients, or the Tears of Serath. But in truth, they are suns. Like your own sun. Massive, burning spheres of plasma, far away. And around each of them—worlds. Billions."
A girl with a braid of amber feathers question. "You an… there are other lands? With people?"
"Yes," Halver said. "Not just lands. Entire planets. Realms. So with cities made of sound. So with oceans of liquid tal. So barren. So teeming with life so alien it cannot be described in your tongue."
The room was utterly still. Elina felt her spine tingle.
"This is what we call the observable universe," he continued, gesturing to the expanding star map that blood from the ceiling. Galaxies spiraled in a cosmic dance. "It stretches 93 billion light-years in diater. And that is just what we can see."
A boy with a stitched leather cap frowned. "What is a… light-year?"
Halver turned, nodding. "Another good question. A light-year is a asure of distance. Light, the fastest thing we know, travels about nine and a half trillion of your kiloters in one year. So, when we say the observable universe is 93 billion light-years across, we an that is the distance light has had ti to travel since the beginning of all things."
Another hand shot up. "The beginning? You an when the gods made the stars?"
Halver paused, then paced slowly across the platform.
"Let us speak of gods."
The room tensed.
"In your legends," he said gently, "gods descend from the sky, wielding lightning and shaping fate. But in our studies, we find no evidence of omnipotent beings who created the universe with intent. We find instead the Big Bang—a singular event of infinite density and heat, expanding space, ti, matter, and energy in all directions."
"Then… who made the Big Bang?" Elina asked, her voice thoughtful.
Halver turned to her, his eyes soft.
"That, Princess—" he caught himself, "—Elina, is the very question at the heart of cosmological philosophy. What preceded the beginning? Was it chaos? Was it law? Was there a creator, or rely a cause?"
He gestured again. A projection appeared of the universe's tiline—a bright burst followed by cooling, stars forming, galaxies spiraling, and eventually the present.
"We search for answers not in temples, but in particles. Not through miracles, but through mathematics. Yet even now, with all our machines, we do not know what ca before ti. We call it the singularity. So believe it was born from a collapsing universe before ours. Others think it is one of infinite such events."
The braided girl spoke again. "So… the gods we worship—Serath, Luna, the Flafather… they aren't real?"
"There are at least two hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. Each galaxy with hundreds of billions of stars. Many with planets. So with life. Maybe even minds like ours—or vastly beyond ours. In this scale, what is a god? A being who can cast lightning from their hands? Who can change form? Who can cheat death?"
"But Professor," Elina said, her voice firm, "we've seen them. The Fla Warden of the Northern Peaks. The Moon Sisters. They've ruled our myths and lands for centuries."
"Power," Halver said, stepping closer, "is not proof of godhood. It is proof of control. Of knowledge."
The room was silent.
Another student asked. "So you're saying the gods are just... strong creatures?"
"Precisely," Halver said. "They are anomalies. Biological, technological, or psychic entities that possess attributes that dwarf human normatives. But they are not omniscient. Not omnipotent. Not eternal."
Elina leaned back. The air felt heavier.
"But what of creation?" she asked. "Who began it all?"
Now, Halver paused. His tone softened. "That question," he said, "is not beneath you. It is above us all. We do not know."
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