"Achoo!"
The sneeze echoed across the quiet park. Aster Collins rubbed the bridge of his nose with an annoyed expression before glancing upward toward the sky stretching over Luna. Everything was perfect according to his calculations when he terraformed the moon with his homunculus. The pollen count was within acceptable limits. The humidity was balanced. Temperature sat comfortably at twenty-three degrees Celsius.
"...Really?" He sniffed once. "...Of all the things to happen."
Behind him, several tourists looked over before quietly laughing among themselves. One little girl tugged on her father's sleeve.
A nearby little girl noticed the sneeze before quietly tugging at her father's sleeve, pointing toward Aster with innocent curiosity. He simply followed her gaze, chuckled to himself, and watched the young man standing alone in the park. It was oddly reassuring in a way. The man responsible for creating an entirely new world still managed to sneeze like everyone else. Aster rubbed the underside of his nose with a quiet frown. He doubted it was allergies... though, considering he had built an entire ecosystem from scratch, he couldn't completely rule it out either.
The park around him had become one of Luna's most visited destinations. It had started as little more than an experimental garden where different plant species were observed during the earliest stages of terraforming, but over the months it had expanded into a vast public park stretching across several square kilometers. Towering trees cast cool shade over winding footpaths, flower gardens bloomed beside crystal-clear lakes, cafés overlooked open fields where children ran freely, and everything existed beneath a sky that had never belonged to the moon until recently. What still caught Aster off guard wasn't how extraordinary it looked, but how ordinary it had become. Birds drifted through the air, families enjoyed quiet afternoons together, students gathered beneath trees to study, and couples strolled beside rivers that had once existed only as lines on a blueprint before being carved into the land by construction spells and countless homunculi. If someone had arrived without knowing Luna's history, they would never have guessed they were standing on what had once been nothing more than a lifeless sea of gray dust.
Aster quietly watched the steady stream of people passing through the park. Tourism had grown far beyond anything Lumen Enterprise had predicted. Hotels originally built to accommodate researchers and engineers had long since become fully booked months in advance, while new restaurants, cafés, and small businesses appeared almost every week throughout Luna's growing settlements. Entire neighborhoods continued expanding as more and more people stopped seeing the moon as a place worth visiting and started seeing it as somewhere worth living. Some kept homes on Earth while purchasing vacation houses overlooking Luna's coastlines, but many eventually made the move permanent. It wasn't difficult to understand why.
Compared to Earth, Luna felt... cleaner.
The air carried none of the lingering pollution found in many of Earth's great cities, every forest had been carefully planned alongside expanding settlements, the rivers remained crystal clear, and even the busiest streets lacked the endless noise and congestion people had grown accustomed to below. It felt fresh, almost untouched, as though the world itself had only just awakened. The thought still amused Aster. Humanity had spent centuries dreaming of reaching the moon. Less than a year after it became livable, people had somehow managed to turn lunar real estate into an argument on the internet. Some things, it seemed, never changed.
As construction expanded, what had once been considered a single continent had gradually been divided by enormous inland seas and engineered waterways until two massive landmasses remained.
The western continent had been named Procellaria, after discussions between Lumen Enterprise, NASA, and several international geological organizations. The eastern continent became Apollonia, honoring humanity's earliest steps upon the moon while giving the new world an identity separate from Earth's satellite.
Between them stretched an immense ocean whose tides were carefully maintained through the gravitational spells designed during Luna's later construction phases using Aether to strengthen the moon's gravity. Ships powered by aether already crossed those waters. Fishing villages had begun appearing along the coasts. Several beaches had become surprisingly popular despite existing on another celestial body.
Farther inland, cities continued growing. Unlike most of Earth's modern skylines, Luna's settlements had been planned from the beginning. Forests were never cleared simply because buildings needed space. Roads curved naturally around existing ecosystems. Entire neighborhoods were designed alongside rivers rather than replacing them with concrete canals. Every expansion project required approval from both engineers... and druids. It had become one of Lumen Enterprise's stranger regulations. Nobody complained. After all… The man responsible had literally built the planet.
Back at Lunarium, life had changed just as dramatically. The academy had grown alongside Luna itself, with applications arriving from every corner of the world. Barebloods, supernaturals, and even Fae sought admission, all hoping to study under Charlotte Sweeiz. At some point, the title of Headmaster had lost its original meaning. To most students, Charlotte was no longer simply a teacher. She had become the woman responsible for so many impossible achievements that her lectures occasionally felt less like classes and more like glimpses into the future. As the Lunarium expanded, it quickly became obvious that three disciples were no longer enough. After months of observation, Charlotte quietly selected several additional students whose growth had exceeded even her own expectations. True to form, the announcement lacked any sort of ceremony or grand speech. She simply chose them during an ordinary day and informed them that they would be working under her from now on, leaving half the classroom confused and the other half convinced she had planned it that way.
Amelia had been the first. Her mastery over restorative magic had advanced to a level that even veteran healers struggled to understand, and she continued discovering new applications for healing spells at a pace that bordered on absurdity. The magical community responded by giving her a title almost immediately: The Undying Witch. Amelia despised it. Not because it sounded threatening, but because it inevitably led to the same misunderstanding. No matter how many times she clarified that she specialized in healing rather than necromancy, people continued asking whether she could raise the dead. Eventually, other students began answering those questions on her behalf. Isla's reputation spread just as quickly, though for entirely different reasons. Once known simply as a talented werefox, she had pushed her transformation abilities so far beyond traditional Beastfolk techniques that older werefox clans quietly admitted they no longer understood how she was doing it. Her transitions between forms became so seamless that they appeared almost effortless, earning comparisons to the mythical fox spirits found throughout ancient folklore. Before long, the name Kitsune followed her everywhere. Unlike Amelia, Isla secretly enjoyed her title, though she would never admit it aloud.
Selene's appointment surprised almost nobody. If anything, most people wondered why Charlotte had waited so long. Valeria's selection, meanwhile, required one final conversation with her grandmother, who spent most of the meeting staring suspiciously at Charlotte over a cup of tea before finally realizing the discussion was, in fact, about discipleship and not something considerably more alarming. The misunderstanding nearly caused Charlotte to choke on her drink. Looking back, even moments like that had become fond memories.
The same could be said for the world itself. Earth prospered. Luna flourished. Lunarium continued expanding, while Lumen Enterprise released new technologies often enough that people had largely stopped reacting with disbelief. Revolutionary medicine, advanced transportation, and even planetary terraforming had somehow become part of everyday life. The impossible had become routine. Standing within the park, Aster watched children running beneath trees that had never existed a year ago while an elderly couple fed birds beside a fountain nearby. Music drifted through the air from somewhere in the distance, mixing with laughter and conversation beneath a sky that should never have existed above the moon. For the first time in a very long time, everything felt peaceful. The world no longer felt like it was struggling to survive or racing toward the next breakthrough. It felt complete. Almost. Because even as he stood there enjoying the moment, Aster could already feel his mind wandering toward the next impossible idea. Some habits were simply impossible to break.
Far beyond the park, preparations for another historic announcement were already underway. Lumen Enterprise's newest recruitment program had attracted applications from nearly every nation on Earth. They were not searching for astronauts, soldiers, or researchers this time. They were searching for adventurers, people willing to leave humanity's cradle behind and venture into the unknown, charting worlds no one had ever seen before. The opening ceremony was scheduled to begin within the hour, and representatives from governments, Lunarium, the Witching Hour, and countless organizations had already gathered in Luna's central assembly plaza. Humanity stood on the edge of another new beginning, completely unaware that history was about to take a far darker turn.
Aster had barely taken another step when every phone, tablet, television, and public display around the park chimed simultaneously. The ceremony had begun. He turned toward Luna's skyline as enormous holographic screens flickered to life above the capital, broadcasting the event across both worlds. People naturally drifted toward the displays. Children climbed onto their parents' shoulders for a better view, tourists raised their cameras, and conversations slowly faded beneath the growing excitement. It felt like every other celebration Lumen Enterprise had hosted over the past year, another milestone in a future that seemed limitless.
Then someone looked up.
It was only one person at first. They stopped walking and pointed toward the sky, drawing a few puzzled glances before others instinctively followed their gaze. One by one, more heads tilted upward until the movement spread through the crowd like a ripple across still water. Beyond Luna's atmosphere, far past the blue sphere of Earth suspended against the endless darkness of space, a single point of light had appeared.
It wasn't moving.
It wasn't flashing.
It simply... existed.
With every passing second it grew brighter, shining with an intensity no ordinary star could possess. The live broadcasts continued in the background, though almost no one was paying attention anymore. Conversations died away. The ceremony faltered as officials and cameras alike turned toward the same impossible sight. A strange silence settled over the plaza, heavy enough that even the laughter from the park seemed to disappear.
Aster stopped walking.
His eyes narrowed as he stared at the distant light, every instinct telling him something was terribly wrong. Before anyone could understand what they were witnessing, the light changed. It did not spread in every direction like an explosion. Instead, it surged toward Earth, as though something unimaginably distant had fixed its gaze upon the planet and decided exactly where it wished to arrive.
Then, without warning, a blinding flash swallowed the world.