The Citadel Beyond Mercury

The airlock hisses open and you step into a cathedral of impossible geometry. Obsidian pillars rise into a vault of glowing glyphs, and at its heart spins a lattice of golden rings — a sun-engine, vast and patient, drinking the light of a star not yet born when humans first walked the earth.

Your spectrometer screams. The core is waking on its own, drawing tendrils of plasma across the void in arcs that will soon devour the sun itself. The flares scorching Earth are merely the citadel clearing its throat.

You stand alone on a walkway of singing metal, the controls trembling beneath your gloved hand. Two cables hang exposed: one severs the core, one diverts its harvest homeward. Whatever you choose, the solar system will remember.