Children of Solara - Chapter 3: The Voice Beneath the Glass

Night on Solara is not dark. The sky glows faintly, like embers under ash, pulsing in rhythm with something I can’t quite name. I tried to sleep on the glass platform where Cael left me, but the surface thrummed beneath me, sending small vibrations through my bones. Every few moments, I thought I heard a whisper just under the hum — not in the air, but inside my head.

At first it was only static, fragments of words that made no sense. Then a pattern began to form. A voice — low, smooth, comforting. It sounded young and old at once.

“You are one of us. You have not yet forgotten.”

I bolted upright, heart hammering. The square was empty. The children were gone, the playground silent, its crystal slides reflecting the dim light like teeth.

“Who’s there?” I whispered.

“Listen,” the voice said. “Don’t speak. Just listen.”

The glass beneath my hands rippled. For a moment, I saw shapes moving inside it — shadowy figures drifting below the surface, reaching upward. I leaned closer, and one of them almost touched the barrier from beneath. It looked like a child at first, but its face changed as it moved — eyes hollow, mouth wide with silent words.

Then it vanished.

I stumbled back, but my reflection didn’t follow. The surface stayed empty.

“Am I dreaming?” I asked.

The voice chuckled softly. “Dreaming? No. You are remembering. You came from the stars. The others forgot, but you still hold the pattern of what you were. That is dangerous here.”

The words vibrated through me. I thought of the adults — the empty ones who served silently — and a terrible thought bloomed in my mind. Were they people who had remembered too much?

I covered my ears, but it didn’t help. The voice wasn’t coming from outside. It was inside the glass, or maybe inside me.

Then footsteps approached. I turned, and Cael stood in the archway, his silver eyes faintly glowing.

“You heard it, didn’t you?” he said. “The Voice.”

I said nothing.

He stepped closer. “Don’t be afraid. It speaks to us all in time. It helps us keep the world pure. The adults call it madness, but they’re the ones who broke it. They tried to change the Voice, to silence it. That’s why they became hollow.”

He reached out and touched my temple with two fingers. The contact was like ice and fire at once. Images flashed in my mind — cities burning, children laughing amid ruins, a giant figure of light hovering above a cracked planet.

When I pulled away, I was trembling. “What did you just do?”

“Showed you what we saved,” he said calmly. “Before Solara, our worlds were dying. The Voice gave us this place — a world ruled by the young, uncorrupted by age and deceit. Don’t you see? We are its chosen.”

I wanted to argue, to scream that this wasn’t salvation, but the words stuck in my throat. Something in his gaze held me frozen. For a second, I almost believed him.

Cael smiled. “You’ll speak before the Council tomorrow. They will awaken your gift. You’ll finally understand what it means to listen.”

He turned to leave, then paused. “Sleep now. The Voice will guide your dreams.”

When he was gone, I collapsed onto the platform again, shaking. I tried to fight sleep, but the air itself felt heavy, drugged with sound.

And then I dreamed.

I was back on the ship, drifting above a golden planet. My crewmates laughed, their voices warm, familiar. But when I looked closer, their faces began to blur — eyes melting into light, smiles turning wide and unnatural. One by one, they vanished, leaving only their laughter.

Then the sky cracked, and I fell through it into glass. Beneath me were hundreds of faces — children, adults, all fused together, their mouths open in the same silent scream.

Lira appeared among them. Her hand pressed against the barrier. “Wake up,” she mouthed.

I did — gasping, sweating, my reflection staring back from the translucent floor. But this time, my reflection was smiling.

I scrambled to my feet and backed away. The reflection mimicked every motion — until I stopped moving. Then it kept smiling.

A faint voice, not the same as before, whispered through the glass: “We are learning your shape.”

I ran. Through the silent playground, past the lifeless adults, down corridors of shimmering stone that pulsed like veins. The whole city seemed alive, watching.

At the edge of Haven, I found a stairway descending into darkness. The air was cold, heavy with dust — the first place on the planet that didn’t glow.

I hesitated only a moment before stepping down.

As I descended, the whispers faded, replaced by a faint heartbeat — slow and steady. The ground trembled with each pulse.

And then I saw it: a massive chamber filled with glass pillars. Inside each one floated an adult — motionless, eyes closed, hands pressed to the barrier.

Their faces were peaceful, almost content.

The heartbeat grew louder.

And beneath it all, a faint laughter began to rise.

Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model