When I first opened my eyes beneath that fractured sky, I thought I was still dreaming. The heavens shimmered like a cracked mirror, splintered pieces of light dancing over dunes of pale sand. Every fragment seemed to reflect a different version of the same sun — too bright, too alive. I blinked hard, but the vision didn’t fade.
The last thing I remembered was the ship. A school expedition, they said — a chance for promising students to see the colonies of Solara, the “garden planet.” I wasn’t anyone special, just a quiet kid from a mining moon. But I’d won the lottery to join the voyage, and that had felt like fate. Now the ship was gone, and the only sound was a thin, whistling wind that carried whispers I couldn’t quite make out.
I stood, dust falling from my uniform, and saw them.
Children — dozens of them — walking in pairs along the horizon. They were dressed in white garments that caught the light, almost glowing. Their faces were calm, blank, and far too still for their age. When they saw me, the line halted in unison. One of them, a tall boy with silver eyes, raised a hand. The rest obeyed, dropping to their knees like soldiers awaiting command.
He approached me. I couldn’t have been more than a year older than him, but the way he moved — deliberate, unhurried, certain — made me feel like I was shrinking.
“You’ve come from the sky,” he said. His voice carried a strange harmony, as though two people spoke at once. “You are young, but not one of us. Not yet.”
I stammered something about the crash, about needing help, but he only smiled — faintly, almost pitying. “Adults cannot speak here. They have no voice.”
I didn’t understand until I saw them.
Behind the dunes, half-buried in the sand, were people — grown men and women, motionless, their faces turned upward. Some were breathing, some not. Their mouths were open in silent screams, their eyes glassy. They wore the same emblem as my expedition crew.
I felt my stomach twist. “What… what happened to them?”
“They forgot,” the boy said simply. “They tried to remember what they were. We helped them forget again.”
He gestured, and a few of the other children lifted their hands. The air shimmered around them, like heat rising from the ground, and one of the adults twitched — then went still once more.
I backed away. “Stay away from me.”
The boy only tilted his head, curious. “You’ll understand soon. You’re still a child, and that makes you special. The world still listens to you.”
Then, as if remembering something sacred, he extended his hand toward me. “Come. The Council of Youth will want to see you. They decide what becomes of the new arrivals.”
I should have run. Every instinct told me to flee into the dunes, but something about his voice — the tone beneath the tone — made my limbs heavy. When he spoke, the air seemed to bend toward him.
As we walked, I saw more of their strange world. Towering structures made of translucent stone rose from the sand, glowing faintly from within. The architecture was delicate, almost childlike, as if sculpted from imagination rather than design. No vehicles, no machinery — yet everything thrummed with hidden energy.
The boy, whose name I learned was Cael, led me through an archway carved with symbols that shimmered when I looked at them too long. “This is Haven,” he said. “Our home. A place without age, without rules, without lies.”
Inside, hundreds of children played — if you could call it that. Some levitated stones with their minds. Others drew patterns in the air that materialized into shapes, alive for a moment before dissolving. I stared in awe and horror. They wielded power like it was a game.
And then I saw the adults again — tending to the children, cleaning, serving, their eyes blank.
“Where did they come from?” I whispered.
Cael’s silver eyes gleamed. “They were us. Once.”
A cold wind swept through the glass towers, carrying laughter that wasn’t laughter at all — just echoes of joy stripped of warmth.
For the first time, I realized I hadn’t escaped a crash. I’d landed in a world where childhood never ended.
And in that world, growing up was the greatest sin of all.
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
