Chapter 46
FORTY-SIX
ELAINA
Elaina had half-expected the ship to shatter beneath them after everything it had just been through, but Gaia welcomed them with a surprisingly smooth landing. As they descended into the atmosphere, her eyes widened at the shifting hues of the planet below. Vast swathes of deep green mingled with blues and browns, while patches of cloud cover drifted lazily across the surface. It had an untouched quality, wild and untamed, as if the land had grown freely for ages, unbound by human hands.
Except they all knew what Gaia’s history was—how much this place had been through.
Soon the viewport darkened, and Elaina could no longer gauge how close they were to the ground or where they would land.
“It’s normal,” Cyan reassured her, but she knew that. She’d traveled between plenty of stations and planets before, just never this far, through a wormhole.
The ship touched down with a muted thud, landing gear absorbing the impact. It settled with a heavy sigh, the vibrations gradually fading into a stillness that felt unnatural after so much chaos. When the last systems went silent, she glanced at Cyan, but he was focused on the controls, his expression unreadable.
Elaina unclasped her harness and rose, too fast. She grabbed the armrest of her seat as her head spun in a brand new kind of gravity shift. She was denser here, every muscle straining to keep her upright. She took a cautious step—like dragging her foot through sand. Her ribs were tight, as if compressed by a formal tunic.
“You all right?” Cyan asked behind her.
“Yeah.” Elaina fought the vertigo. She’d been through this before. This was just a little heavier than she’d been used to in her quadrant.
Slowly, she moved toward the exit hatch, taking each step carefully, her hand outstretched toward the shuttle wall.
“Take it easy,” Cyan was behind her, a stabilizing hand on her arm. “Takes time to adjust.”
“I want to see…” She knew she should take it easy, but she also knew that just outside that hatch was the birthplace of humanity, and she had to see it now.
“Wait a few minutes,” Cyan muttered. “I’ll get Priad.”
She watched him as he retreated to the other part of the ship, where Priad would be suspended. Vigilant, she didn’t miss the distant air around him. The way his movements held an efficient, clinical practicality, and the way his eyes weren’t really there when he looked at her.
Something had shifted in him again. Elaina took a deep breath. She’d known returning here would be hard for him. Everyone he knew would be dead. As was everyone she’d left behind. The thought hadn’t really hit her before. A century in that wormhole. Mia, Tuskin, Lance, Konstantin… All aged and gone.
And how far had the Architect gotten in its quest? What would the world outside look like when they stepped into it?
Cyan emerged with Priad. He ran an absent hand across her waist as he leaned over her to disengage the locks.
“Stay back for now. Yes?” he said quietly.
“Okay.”
The hatch slid open, revealing a widening strip of bright light that Elaina had to avert her eyes from. Cyan stepped out first with his hand on the hilt of the sword, silhouetted by the brightness all around as he scanned the surroundings. Eventually, he turned back to her, nodding for her to follow.
The moment Elaina’s feet hit the soft, moss-covered ground, something washed over her. She had never been to this place and had never in a million cycles thought she would go. But her kind came from here. She came from here, this place she’d never known. Gaia felt alive under her feet in a way that Earendel never had—a vibrant lifeline running through the ground, as if the planet itself recognized her presence.
“The port is that way.” Cyan placed a gloved hand on the small of her back, urging her to follow with a light tap.
Elaina stared up at a towering canopy, her breath catching. They were in a clearing surrounded by brown and green behemoths. After Earendel’s endless dunes and sparse vegetation, the sheer density of life overhead was overwhelming.
“The port?” Elaina frowned. They didn’t look to be anywhere near civilization.
She followed him into the trees.
“How do you navigate without clear sight lines?” she asked as they trekked through an unworn path. She tried to orient herself in the green maze. On Earendel, you could always spot Chevron’s lights, use the dunes as markers .
“You learn to read the trees,” Cyan said from up ahead. “Each one’s unique.”
Elaina touched the rough bark, so different from Earendel’s smooth sandstone. It was moist. “There’s so much water in everything.”
She’d known trees existed, of course, even if she’d never seen anything past low-lying shrubbery in person in her quadrant. Nothing had prepared her for a world where they dominated the landscape—where you couldn’t see the horizon through their branches. They even smelled wet, rich with decay and growth and moisture that were so alien after cycles of filtered air and desert winds. There was a heaviness to it, like the scent had actual weight—something dark and breathing and old .
Elaina inhaled more deeply, trying to separate the layers. Sweet rot from fallen leaves. Something green and sharp from the moss. A mustiness that seemed to seep up from the ground itself. The trees added their own notes. Not the astringent sap of Earendel’s hardy scrub bushes, but something resinous and complex that made her think of eons of patience.
It should have felt alien, threatening even. But there was something oddly comforting about it, like her body recognized these scents from somewhere deep in her genetic code.
At some point Elaina’s next footstep was not onto dirt but onto a paved, cracked road. As they walked out of the trees she was almost relieved at the space opening up before them, and the structures in the distance. She grasped for the familiarity of it after the hike had overwhelmed her, fried her senses.
The port itself was a relic of what Gaia might have once been—a half-ruined city in the distance, crumbling towers overgrown with vines. Ancient roads, cracked and broken, were barely visible under thick carpets of moss and grass. Here and there, she could make out rusted vehicles, long abandoned. And yet there were signs of life—small electric transports buzzing along the less dilapidated roads, solar panels still standing like forgotten guardians, their edges swallowed by greenery.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered to herself.
Cyan glanced at her, a small smile twitching his lip.
They walked in silence to the transport station. Priad padded happily beside them, his nose buried in overgrown grass, taking in the same wild scents that were so alien to Elaina and that to him surely felt like home. Eventually, they reached a block that was more cleared out, with actual people and what looked to be storefronts.
As Cyan was negotiating a vehicle rental in Gaian, Elaina glanced up at the holographic news feeds over the counter. She nudged Cyan’s side, muttering quietly in his ear, “Can you ask him about Earendel?”
Cyan’s expression darkened as he nodded up at the feeds and said something more to the other man. Elaina didn’t really understand much, but their demeanor was enough. She steeled herself.
As they stepped outside with the vehicle’s access dongle, Cyan paused in the street, running a hand through his hair with a sigh.
“Just tell me,” Elaina said, ready for the worst.
“Earendel was wrecked by a series of storms and quakes almost seventy years ago. Those who left could.”
“How many could?” Elaina asked quietly.
“Not many.”
“Okay.” Elaina nodded numbly and pulled away, walking aimlessly toward what looked like a collection of waiting vehicles. Presumably that was where their rental was .
“Elaina,” Cyan called after her.
Tuskin. Mia. Lance. Konstantin even, though she always had a feeling he wouldn’t be staying around on Earendel for long.
They must have been terrified. Did any of them make it out? She tried to visualize their last moments and evoke something in herself. She should be in pain.
Shit, her parents would be gone too. How had that been the last thing to come to mind?
“Elaina, are you okay?”
“What else?” she called back to him as she walked. “There must be more.”
“The sun died out faster than anyone expected. There are new anomalies spreading from the edges of the four quadrants. Earendel’s whole galaxy’s gone dark.”
A lifeless husk of a place.
“Guess you got me out of there just in time then, huh?”
The vehicle Cyan rented had been new, supposedly. The vendor had said it was last year’s model. But as they got in and spun it up, Elaina marveled at the vintage tech. She was a century in the future, yet as far as her surroundings, she may as well have gone back in time. It was quaint, almost charming.
But Cyan barely seemed to notice. He stared at the road ahead. He had been quiet ever since they landed, as if the very act of returning here had pulled him deeper into himself.
The drive was long, winding through terrain that looked like it had reclaimed the land centuries ago. Those massive trees arched over the road, drooping branches casting shadows onto cracked asphalt. Remnants of human civilization lay hidden beneath the greenery—faded signs, the skeletal remains of buildings, flux lines tangled in ivy. Priad had his head out of the window, ears flattened in the wind.
“This was all in use when I left,” Cyan said next to her, his jaw set and his eyes dark.
“I’m sorry,” Elaina reached over to touch his shoulder. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
She looked back at the road. She could feel the distance growing between them, again. She understood it, of course. This place had been his home. Everyone who had mattered to him down here—they were all gone. But watching him close off like this, again, not only hurt... It frightened her.
“No, you’re not,” she said bluntly. “You’re doing it again. And I get it. And I can be patient. But, Cyan…” Elaina shifted to face him.
He glanced at her sideways, then quickly back at the road.
“You promised. Not to disappear again. Remember that. Okay?”
He sighed, reaching out to put a warm hand on her thigh. “I remember.”
His touch always made everything feel safer, grounding her in a way nothing else ever had. Yet despite his reassurance, Elaina still half-expected him to run.
Gaian hours were shorter than those on Earendel, as was the sol. By the time they arrived at their destination, the unfamiliar sun had nearly finished its arc.
The house was small, tucked away in a valley surrounded by mountains on three sides and the edge of a forest on the fourth .
Vines crawled up the sides of the building, and the roof sagged ever so slightly under the weight of airy moss. But Elaina could tell it was taken care of. She could picture Cyan here, as a kid.
“Is this it?” Elaina asked when he had turned off the car.
Cyan nodded, his gaze sweeping over the house, though he still didn’t look at her. “The one and only.”
“It’s beautiful, Cyan. You grew up here?”
“I did,” he said again. “And that’s the Old World Forest.”
Elaina peered into the darkness of the trees. “I can’t wait to see it.”
Their boots crunched on the gravel path. Cyan moved with purpose, scanning the surroundings, always on alert.
Priad bounded ahead, sniffing at the door, his tail wagging furiously. At least one of them was excited. At the door, Cyan hesitated.
Elaina listened to the rustling of life in the darkness all around them as they stood there, waiting.
“Do you… want to go inside?” she asked gently.
For a moment it was as if he had remembered that she was there. He took her hand, putting it to his lips. Elaina’s shoulders loosened. He was still there.
“Yes,” he muttered against her palm. “Let’s go.”