The Shell

The sky had turned the color of broken circuitry—grey veined with green pulses. Above Skarn, the ancient swarm-city, storms coiled like insect wings caught in frictionless time. Kael stood atop the Aetheric Spire, wind slicing across his skin like shards. Around him, the Myrminians were retreating from the exposed outer shell, murmuring warnings in scent-runes.
The Pulse had stopped.
But what replaced it… was worse.
From the western horizon, a shape unlike anything they’d ever known was falling—a sphere wrapped in fractal geometry, descending without propulsion, as if it decided to defy gravity. It hit the ground without impact, landing with silent force and folding open like a flower made of gods.
Inside was a man.Or what once was one.

---
The being stepped from the sphere, armored in translucent carapace that shimmered like a million insect eyes. His movements were fluid—too perfect. His voice resonated in Kael’s mind without sound:
> “You are not the first. You are not the last. This is a recursion.”


The Myrminian sentries prepared their venom-rifles. Antares Rex dropped from a nearby ledge and pointed a lance at the intruder.
“Name yourself, shellborn!”
The being turned, eyes glowing like captured black holes. “I am the carrier of OBLIVION-9. I have touched the axis between extinction and genesis.”
Kael felt a stab of recognition. This wasn’t just a messenger.
It was Dahlia.
Not his sister—but his sister’s echo. A temporal afterimage woven from the lost protocols of Earth’s failed salvation mission. She had uploaded herself into the God-Shell before the final catastrophe.
“Dahlia?” he whispered.
Her voice rippled in response: “What is left of me… is for you to awaken.”

---
Deep within Skarn’s Memory Core, the Myrminians revealed an ancient chamber sealed since the Insect Ascension—a vault made from pre-Chitinian alloy. Kael, escorted by Chrono-Moth Oracle and Rex, entered it with Dahlia.
Inside, there were names etched in cryo-steel. Hundreds. All human. All part of Project Chrysalis—an abandoned plan to merge insect resilience with human adaptability.
Kael’s own name was there.
So was Dahlia’s.
And at the very end of the list:OBLIVION-0: PRIMARY SEED
“What is this?” Kael asked, his voice barely holding.
Dahlia turned toward him. “You’re not a survivor, Kael. You’re a prototype. Your body, your mind—they were rebuilt using bio-data harvested during the final war. The insects didn’t evolve past humanity... they were designed to replace it.”
The realization crushed him. His entire rebellion… his memories… all orchestrated?
The God-Shell stepped closer. “You still have choice. You are still human—because you question. But soon, something older than time will arrive. The Pulse was its knock.”
“What is coming?”
The vault lights dimmed.
Dahlia answered:“The thing that eats stars.”

---
Far beyond the sky, in the black tide of deep orbit, a mass of chitin and void began to uncoil—a planetary parasite known in ancient tongue as:
> K’zzorrath.


Not just the end of Earth.
But the end of questions.