Morrow's Solar Forge

The reconnaissance pod shudders as you dock against a soot-blackened station orbiting perilously close to the sun. Heat shimmers warp the viewport. Inside, beneath a ceiling of cooling pipes that weep condensation, you find Dr. Cassius Morrow — gaunt, scorched, and very much alive.

"You think I did this?" he rasps, laughing without humor. He gestures to walls covered in frantic equations. "I came to stop it. The citadel woke on its own. I've been bleeding off its surges, buying Earth weeks." His trembling hand hovers over a brass detonator. "But I'm one man, and I'm dying. You decide now — silence it forever, or seize what it offers."