The World Begins to Shift
The auroras returned that night, pulsing across the sky like something alive. Waves of colour—green, violet, deep indigo—folded into each other, moving in patterns that felt deliberate, almost sentient. They weren’t just lights. They were something more.
The air hummed, thick with static, and then the earth trembled again, a low vibration that echoed in their bones.
Jas took a slow breath, grounding themself, but instead of fear, they felt something different. A connection. To the sky. To the trees. To the animals huddled near the clearing’s edge, their wide eyes reflecting the shifting lights.
Ivy Mae stepped forward, gripping The Alchemy of Transformation tightly in their hands. They opened it, fingers brushing over the delicate pages, and read aloud:
> “In moments of great change, look within.
The alchemy begins not in the world around you,
but in the heart of those who witness it.”
Roman exhaled, their posture relaxing for the first time in days. They had spent so long fighting, bracing themself for whatever came next. But now, standing beneath the glowing sky, they felt something shift inside them.
“That sounds like a powerful moment—this sense of awakening to something greater, a shift that has been building for decades but is only now truly understood. If the troubles began in 2025 and they’re in 2090, there’s a long stretch of history filled with hidden events, lost knowledge, and buried truths waiting to be uncovered.
Forgotten Events, Unfolding Revelations
Ivy Mae traced a finger over the page, its words etched in a script older than she expected. It wasn’t just poetry. It was a record. A warning.
Jas knelt beside her, tilting the book to catch the aurora’s light. “Look here,” they murmured, pointing to a date. 2025. The beginning of everything.
The world had fractured in slow, almost imperceptible ways. It hadn’t been one great disaster, but a series of moments—ignored, dismissed, rewritten—that had reshaped history without anyone realizing it. Until now.
Roman, still watching the sky, spoke without looking down. “What if the collapse didn’t happen the way we were taught? What if it wasn’t sudden?”
They turned the pages together, revealing fragments of the past:
The Silence Protocol (2032): Governments had sealed away vast amounts of knowledge, not to protect people, but to control them. The first hints of the coming storm—the solar instability, the shifting magnetic field—had been known for decades. Those who spoke too loudly were erased, their warnings buried beneath propaganda.
The Digital Purge (2041): A catastrophic loss of digital records. Officially blamed on a cyberwar, but whispers suggested otherwise. Entire histories, medical advancements, independent research—all gone overnight. Only those who had kept physical records, hidden archives, retained the truth.
The Unseen Exodus (2057): Millions disappeared, but not all in the way history claimed. Some had been lost to disasters—floods, fires, quakes—but others had left by choice, seeking refuge in places where the old world’s rules no longer applied. Underground sanctuaries. Remote colonies. Entire societies built on knowledge no longer accepted.
Jas exhaled. “We weren’t just left to survive in the ruins of a broken world. We were meant to forget why it broke in the first place.”
The auroras pulsed, and for a moment, the sky itself seemed to respond.
Ivy Mae turned the page, her voice steady. “Then it’s time to remember.”