After finishing training with my brother, I went to my room to rest, as I had gone several days without sleeping in a comfortable bed—only the hard ground of Luminus and the uncomfortable but practical cockpit of the Epsilon-03. The contrast was almost shocking: from constant survival to the controlled luxury of Helion.
I asked Omega to play some music with a soft, relaxing rhythm, something to help my mind disengage from the maximum alert mode I had kept active since landing on Luminus. A few seconds later, an ethereal melody, composed of crystalline tones and deep bass that seemed to vibrate in the very air, filled the room.
It had no lyrics; it was pure sonic atmosphere, designed by Helion composers to induce states of deep calm in psychologies like ours. So I could fall asleep faster.
And it worked. I collapsed onto the bed—not a primitive mattress, but an intelligent gel surface that adapts to every curve of my body, distributing pressure, correcting posture—and sleep came over me like a gentle tide. There were no nightmares of primordial tentacles or devouring swarms. Just a dark, restorative void.
I slept for three hours. When I woke up, it was without a start, emerging slowly into consciousness. All the residual pain from the training—the bruises, the muscle tension, the cut on my cheek that had already closed thanks to my accelerated metabolism—was gone.
My Helion body had done its work while I rested: accelerated cellular repair, lactic acid clearance, neural realignment. Sometimes I wonder if we are more machines than organisms, but then I remember that even machines need maintenance.
I stretched, feeling every joint crack satisfyingly, as if I had slept for many hours instead of just a handful. The room was in semi-darkness, illuminated only by the faint glow of Nairo's plant and the bluish light filtering in from the window. I got up and headed toward it.
The window was made of smart, one-way glass: I could see everything outside with perfect clarity, but from the outside no one could see me, not even as a silhouette. A privacy bubble in the middle of a tower of thousands of people.
And outside… the spectacle of Astra Helion in full operation.
I saw ships. Many ships. Small ones, the size of cars, gliding between the skyscrapers like silver fish in a crystal reef. Medium-sized ones, for cargo or personal transport, following perfectly outlined aerial routes marked by guide light beams.
Large exploration-class ships like my Epsilon, or massive transports, entering and leaving the orbital ports at the tops of the tallest towers.
But no colossi, no war monsters. Those stayed in the orbital shipyards, out of sight, out of mind in daily life. Helion was a civilization that hid its claws beneath a layer of elegance.
Further down, surface vehicles flew at low altitude, their translucent hulls showing occupants reading, talking, working on floating interfaces. Among them, Helion birds—natural animals and bioforms designed for urban ecological balance—crossed the sky in perfect formations, their iridescent feathers capturing the light of the three suns. They were beautiful, almost too perfect.
And the clouds. Ah, the clouds. On Helion, even the weather is a form of art. Cloud masses, chaotic vapors that sometimes took geometric shapes, other times resembled mythological creatures in silhouette. I saw one that looked like a dragon of constellations, another that resembled an expanding fractal. Very amusing, indeed.
And above all, I was seeing my own reflection in the glass. Not a perfect reflection—the glass was treated to minimize it—but enough to see myself: black hair with those orange highlights that seemed to capture sunset light even under artificial illumination, green eyes that no longer shone with the intensity of activated Helion, but with the calm of someone who is home. A face bearing the traces of Luminus—slightly more weathered skin—but still clearly Dorian Astra. Not the boy who left here cycles ago, but not a stranger either.
I stood for a good while looking out the window, just observing things. As if I were a tourist visiting for the first time. The irony didn't escape me: this was my home, the place where I grew up, and yet, after every mission, I felt like an outside observer, someone studying a fascinating anthill but no longer fully part of it. Exploration changes you. It makes you see even the familiar with new eyes.
I'd like to be or visit another beautiful planet, I thought, like some parts of Luminus, but with truly intelligent creatures. Well, they're all intelligent in their own way—the Apex was a brutal strategist, the Guardian a planetary collective consciousness—but their intelligence was one of brute force, of instinct elevated to martial art. I'd like to be on a planet where they think at least a little like us. Where there was philosophy, art, conversation that wasn't an exchange of threats or tactical analysis.
Though I say that, I know I would get bored very quickly. Prolonged peace unsettles me. Controlled danger is my element. But if there was some fun to it—an intellectual challenge, a mystery to solve, a strange culture to decipher—maybe not so much. Maybe.
There are so many worlds beyond here. Although I've been traveling since I was young, first with Nairo on reconnaissance missions, then alone in the Epsilon-03, even I know that what I've seen is only a minuscule part of the universe. A speck of dust in the vastness. And in that vastness, many strange races and strong creatures, waiting. I'm not saying for me, as if the cosmos had a personal agenda with Dorian Astra, but if I encounter them, it will be as if they were waiting for me. As if the universe puts challenges in your path not to destroy you, but to see what you are capable of becoming by overcoming them.
Since I spent several hours walking on Luminus, and six hours in a jump to get to Helion, took a bath, and also had a fight with my brother. After that, I slept for three hours. And now, looking out the window, I realize it's already getting dark.
Though it shouldn't be getting dark. We have three suns orbiting around us in a perfectly choreographed dance: Helion Prime, the bright yellow one; Secundus, the blue dwarf; Tertius, the distant red giant. In theory, there should always be at least one in the sky, providing light. But the night here is artificial, though I'm not sure if that's the right word for it.
When the first Helion—not the ones of today, but the ancestors, those who barely mastered interstellar jump, but didn't need them—visited other planets, they saw something they found strange and beautiful: cycles. The sun would set, and another, smaller, paler star would rise, illuminating with a cold, silvery light. They called that phenomenon "night," and the small star "moon." It wasn't out of necessity that they created the artificial night; it was out of aesthetic envy.
There are other planets with technology like ours, advanced civilizations, and when the sun sets, their cities look more beautiful at night. Their own lights shine, colors deepen, life becomes interior and intimate. The first Helion saw that and thought: "We want that too." After some cycles of debate and design, they created the artificial night.
Because our ancestors weren't satisfied with the logic of their world. They pursued beauty.
It wasn't technology. Not orbital screens or directed darkness fields. That would be… too simple.
It was Helion in its purest, most ancestral, most monumental expression.
Millennia ago, when the first Helion awakened to their power—not like us, who barely use fractions, but like cosmic titans aware of their place in the fabric of reality—they looked at their world, scorched by three suns, and said: "This isn't living. This is surviving. And we deserve more, like the others."
They were called "The Twilight Weavers." They weren't scientists. They were artists. Poets of physics. And their masterpiece was rewriting the rules of their own sky.
With an act of collective will that resonated in the fundamental laws of the universe, they did the impossible:
1. They attenuated the solar fury. They didn't block it. They persuaded it. They used variants of Helion that we have forgotten—tones of golden yellow and pure white that manipulated radiation itself—to compel their suns to lower their intensity in regular cycles. It wasn't violence. It was a cosmic order.
2. They wove the night. From the debris of an asteroid belt, using a Helion of gray and purple tones that handled gravity and matter on a planetary scale, they created our moon. They didn't place it there. They sang it into existence, grouping stellar dust and rock until they formed a celestial body that orbited in perfect synchrony, reflecting the attenuated light of the weakest sun.
3. They imprinted the rhythm. They established the 24-hour cycle—not because their biology needed it, but because they found the aesthetically perfect proportion between light and darkness.
They didn't use tools. They were the tools. Their bodies were the conduit, their will the hammer, and Helion the chisel that sculpted a better world onto the very face of reality.
And it worked. Because now, when I look out the window, I see Helion's night—authentic, I should call it that, not artificial. The moon they created shines with a cold, silvery light, casting long shadows on the blue crystal skyscrapers. The three suns are there, but in a "persuaded sleep" phase, their fury tamed by an ancestral pact that still endures.
We should have burned. But we didn't. Because our ancestors changed the rules of the game. They didn't just adapt their biology with Helion—they made us resilient—they adapted their own stellar environment to make it worth living in.
And indeed, Helion's beauty is at night. It's when the living legacy of the Weavers' power reveals itself in all its splendor. The moon they sang into existence shines over the crystal seas and those we later created, their weaker but still ambitious descendants. The city lights flicker in response, like a technological echo of that act of pure creation.
Luminus.
Why am I thinking about Luminus?
I rested my forehead against the glass. The moon, our moon, hung huge and serene in the sky. It wasn't a projection. It was a cosmic sculpture. A reminder that Helion power, in its fullest expression, isn't just for destroying our enemies.
But also for creating beauty.
And for a moment, just a moment, I wished I had that power. Not just to dominate, but to make something equally beautiful.
Omega spoke softly in my mind, without interrupting the flow of my thoughts, like a whisper in the current.
—"Sir, your brother is preparing dinner. There is also a message from the Exploration Council: your report on Luminus has been received and classified. They have rated it as 'High Risk Mission / Total Success.' There is a recommendation for a medal."
A medal. A piece of metal and energy for having survived, for having purified a corrupt fragment, for having named a planet.
—"Would you like to see the full message?"
—"No," I replied mentally. "Tell Nairo I'll be down in a minute. And the Council… tell them I appreciate the consideration, but they should keep the medal. I prefer my next mission."
Because that was the truth. I belong to the space between stars, to the worlds yet to be discovered, to the races yet to be encountered—be they elves, vampires, demons, or things for which we don't even have names yet.
And as I went down to have dinner with my brother, I already knew my stay here would be short. That soon I would be back in my ship, looking out another window, toward another world.
But for now, there was dinner. And Helion's night, beautiful. Waiting outside.