Prologue

Hellio Tellus

The kind of silence left behind when war is over leaves nothing to spare. It is the absence of life. The sound of no one left to cry for those who are gone. This was the melody heard for decades after the Trinity Wars buried the world in smoke.

No one remembered how it came to that day. Some said it started with a beam of light, a bright explosion that stretched east to west gathering dead souls like a weeping mother. What had begun as an age of revolutionary intrigue ended in riots, executions, and civil injustice that carried through year 2052. Nations disbanded. Treaties were broken. Missiles launched. Ashes bloomed up like flower fields over graves. War stayed with us, long enough for us to forget the light of day.

Then he came. In the final hour of our darkest days, he came. The Nazar, a man who did not see the ruin of the times, but the renown of times to come. He took up the throne of the world and ushered in a new future, a new age of science, established the great Hellio Tellian state. But there were small dark signs that made one realize that the new era was not so innocent. Those who revolted were oppressed, scattered, or exiled to the “other side”—to Sion. We realized then that while the earth had changed, we had not. But that did not mean that there was not something out there that couldn’t. Something above us and far greater than us, moving and altering the universe beyond our power.

As we waged war down on earth, the galaxies around us began to shift, entire planets and stars falling out of orbit. Some returned. Others journeyed far out into space and vanished completely. The Murmuration Phenomenon, even the greatest minds could not explain it. With no answers thus far, Earth has been rather fortunate. Seventy years have passed since it first began, and the moon still shines. The sun still rises. But time runs its course for all living things that fail to adapt. That very fear seemed to have now faded from us. But in the hollow of our hearts, no one has truly forgotten it. Nor the restless feeling that the Murmuration Phenomenon was somehow because of us, waiting for us. A part of us.