The screen flickered again, its dim, ghostly glow casting shifting shadows across the darkened chamber. It illuminated the tension in Alex’s face, the rigid set of his jaw, and the subtle tremor in his fingers as he stared at the woman on the screen.
The silence around him was absolute, save for the faint hum of the transmission, a relic of the past clawing its way into the present. His mother’s image, slightly grainy from ti and compression, was still achingly clear.
Then, her voice filled the void.
Soft. Gentle. Yet laden with an unfathomable weight, like a whisper from the past threading its way through his ribs, tightening with every breath.
"It’s not that we didn’t try, darling."
Alex’s breath caught.
There was no anger in her tone, no desperation—only exhaustion, woven into every syllable like threads of inevitability. It was the voice of soone who had fought until her bones cracked and struggled against fate until nothing was left to give.
His hands clenched into fists, his knuckles going stark white as he braced himself for the truth that would follow. The air in the chamber suddenly felt heavier, pressing against his chest, suffocating yet compelling him to listen.
"It’s just that after every solution... there was a counter to it. Every ti we thought we had found a way out, it was as if the universe itself conspired against us."
Her words settled over him like iron chains, tightening with every syllable. He could see it—the years of searching, the endless calculations, the sleepless nights spent deciphering the fabric of space itself, only for each breakthrough to be t with an impassable wall.
Hope given. Hope stolen.
Over and over.
He could picture his parents hunched over glowing screens, tracing endless pathways to salvation, each failing. The frustration, the anger, the sheer, crushing helplessness. They had been the brightest minds of their generation, yet even they had been reduced to desperate drears grasping at the impossible.
"And so, we decided to let it be."
A shudder ran through him.
Not because of the words themselves, but because of the quiet resignation behind them.
His mother—the woman who never accepted defeat, and defied logic in pursuit of salvation—had stopped fighting.
His breath hitched, his chest tightening with unbearable pressure. A scream built in his throat, but he swallowed it down. He wanted to reach through the screen, grab her by the shoulders, and demand why—why did they stop when he was still here? When he would have done anything, given anything, to keep them from vanishing?
But then, her voice shifted.
And sothing in her tone sent an icy shiver crawling down his spine.
"That wasn’t the worst of it."
A pause. A silence so thick it felt like the universe itself was holding its breath.
Alex’s heart pounded, his pulse a slow, thunderous beat against his skull.
"In the end, we dood this world, Alex."
The chamber felt smaller. The air felt thinner.
The words pressed against his lungs, smothering, inescapable.
"Because of the inter-planet travel... we made our presence known."
A sharp, searing pain twisted in his gut.
The screen flickered, and his mother’s calm expression, shadowed by sothing far more profound, burned into his mind.
"Even though your father destroyed the portal the mont he returned—sealing off the path, making sure no one could follow—it didn’t matter."
A breath.
A slow, unraveling realization.
"For a world as advanced as Eloria, it took them less than a year to find our planet’s coordinates."
Alex’s throat went dry.
A year.
That was all it took.
A work that took his mother years to build.
Destroyed in a fraction of that ti.
"They began sending scouts," she continued, her voice steady despite the storm of emotions lurking beneath it.
Alex’s nails dug into his palms.
"At first, we weren’t sure how advanced their spatial travel had beco. But we quickly realized sothing—our world hasn’t evolved to the extent that they could send Legend-rank entities or above. The interdinsional rift was too unstable for them to push through anything stronger."
"And it seems the distance to travel the universe to get to ours was one of imnse distance"
He stiffened, his mind racing.
That ant...
"So they only sent Grandmaster-rank entities and below."
A wave of nausea surged through him.
A foreign power had already infiltrated their world.
The weight of the revelation crashed down on him, unraveling every assumption he had ever held.
And yet...
There had been no whispers of it.
How?
His mind scrambled, clawing for answers, for any mory, any hint that sothing like this had happened right under their noses.
But there was nothing.
Nothing except...
His mother’s voice cut through his spiraling thoughts.
"But we were ready."
The steel in her tone was unmistakable.
The voice of a strategist. A tactician.
A queen on a chessboard where no one knew the ga had begun.
"Knowing fully well they would co for us, I had already created a system that could detect any spatial breach anywhere on the planet," she said.
Alex’s pulse quickened.
"The mont they attempted to enter, the system would alert us. And I built another safeguard to make any lifeform in the portal area detectable."
He felt the weight of what that ant.
A system like that...
"So each one was hunted."
The words were spoken.
But they carried the weight of countless silent battles, shadows moving in the dark, and enemies erased before they could even take their first breath in this world.
"Secretly. Without the other Higher Clans knowing."
Alex exhaled shakily.
His mother’s face remained composed on the screen, but he saw past it now.
He saw the sacrifices.
The impossible choices.
They had already been fighting even before their destruction.
And despite all of it—
Despite the brilliance of their defenses, the precision of their strikes—
They had still lost.
Alex’s hands trembled as he stared at the flickering image, the last remnants of his mother’s words echoing in his mind like the tolling of a bell.
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