Descent into Ash

The Return vote passes in a fever of cheers and trembling hands. Your lander screams through atmosphere, and when the hatch hisses open, the air is sharp, alive, real. Grass. Wind. A sky too wide to hold.

Then the horizon flashes white. The Perennial's reactor blooms above you—a brief, terrible star—and everyone still aboard becomes silence. Figures emerge from the treeline, rifles raised, eyes hard with a history you were never told.

You stand on Earth. You are breathing. You are alone in a way no human has ever been.