"Whoa— So this is Earth? It really doesn't look as pretty as the pictures sent back..."
Upon the boundless, white wasteland, three solitary figures stood silently.
Only by witnessing this desolate landscape firsthand, by seeing what lay above them with their own eyes, could one truly comprehend the insignificance of humanity.
And... the eternal loneliness of the cosmos.
A loneliness so profound... that even the faintest, brightest colors seemed afraid to exist here.
Just like the planet hanging before them. Ever since humanity first captured its image here nearly a century ago, it had always been presented as a vibrant blue sphere in photos.
"That's just the effect of post-processing colorization after the photos were sent back to Earth," Michael explained matter-of-factly through the mental communication network they shared.
"It's not just Earth. Those nebula images from even farther away? They're all colorized before being released."
He continued, "Think about it—standing on a mountain five thousand meters high at night, looking up at the stars, can you really see that kind of brilliant, colorful galaxy with your naked eye?"
"No. What you see are just salt grains scattered across a black curtain."
From the perspective of Michael, Elysia, and Mei, the so-called Earth currently looked like a simple doodle Griseo might make by mixing black and white paint.
Vast stretches of gray dominated the view—lighter gray patches were clouds, slightly darker ones were seas, and the darkest shades represented land. Occasionally, hints of yellow desert peeked through.
As for the vivid blue and vibrant green... perhaps the first humans who landed on the Moon decades ago truly saw them. But today, at this distance, from this angle, such colors were ghosts, no longer visible.
"Let's go. Time to get down to business."
Of the three, only Mei wore a bulky spacesuit. She too had gazed silently at Earth for a long moment, her thoughts hidden behind her visor. Saying little more, she turned with a hint of listlessness and began hopping forward like a kangaroo across the low-gravity surface.
Michael and Elysia naturally fell into step behind her.
"Michael, what do you think... Mei suddenly brought us all the way to the Moon for?" Elysia's voice echoed directly in his mind, bright and curious as always.
Even though Michael himself had set up this mental communication network, the sensation still felt unfamiliar—like someone running a fine-toothed comb directly over the surface of his brain.
Crystal clear, but slightly unnerving.
"As far as I know," Michael transmitted back, "after the United Government was formed, they briefly restarted the old 'Star Wars' defense program. But just a year later, the First Honkai Eruption occurred, and the project was terminated. But get this—it wasn't because of the Honkai."
"Then why?" Elysia asked instantly.
"Ah, it sounds like something out of a bad sci-fi flick," Michael projected, a hint of amusement in his mental tone. "Because they got curious and took a peek at the far side of the Moon."
"And then? What did they find?"
"Aliens, maybe?" Michael offered playfully.
"Michael, you're teasing me again!" came Elysia's laughing mental reply.
He mentally shrugged. He only knew something significant was hidden on the far side, but the specifics were hazy.
Based on Sirin's fragmented memories, perhaps ruins left by a previous civilization?
No, that wasn't quite right either. That would be the civilization before Sirin's time... meaning, paradoxically, the one humans of the current era, their era, had left behind somehow.
Despite the hushed whispers and rumors, the primary human lunar base was still firmly planted on the familiar near side.
Compared to the sprawling, domed "lunar cities" depicted in countless science fiction movies, the actual setup—two squat, functional iron cubes and a few large, awkward-looking greenhouse modules—looked rather pathetic.
The trio didn't linger. Lacking the precise coordinates of their mysterious destination, they commandeered one of the base's rugged exploration rovers.
The rover's standard solar-powered battery banks weren't nearly sufficient for the immense journey ahead, deep into the lunar night. Luckily, they had Michael – a walking, talking Herrscher power bank.
Mei, taking the driver's seat, casually pressed the autopilot button, entrusting their navigation across the treacherous, dark terrain to Prometheus's meticulous calculations. She slightly reclined her seat and began briefing Michael and Elysia, who were settled in the back, about the far side.
"Actually, what Michael said earlier was essentially correct," Mei began, her voice calm and measured over the rover's internal comms. "Because of a... unique discovery on the far side, the United Government abruptly halted their large-scale lunar development plans. Instead, they quietly granted Fire Moth exclusive authority to explore whatever was back there."
"So, that's why Uncle Ato was spending, like, eleven months out of the year stuck on the Moon a few years back?" Elysia chimed in, connecting the dots.
Mei nodded slowly, then shook her head slightly.
She suddenly turned, her gaze in the rover's dim interior light finding Michael in the back seat, her expression filled with genuine puzzlement. "You really don't know about this, Michael?"
He shrugged again, a touch of irritation creeping into his mental reply. "My connection to... future echoes isn't the same as Aponia's 'Discipline'. I can't possibly know everything, especially classified Fire Moth operations from before my time."
As he spoke, Mei's gaze lowered, her brow furrowed in thought. She seemed lost in contemplation for a long moment before resuming her explanation:
"Actually, according to the original strategic plans, much of the exploratory work Ato eventually undertook should have started right after the Second Honkai Eruption. If your memories serve you well, you might recall the common slang within Fire Moth back then... the talk about 'going to the Moon' versus 'staying on Earth'."
Michael mentally rolled his eyes, sifting through his own archives. Though it felt like a lifetime ago—six years, in fact—the power of the Eighth Herrscher allowed him to retrieve the relevant, albeit fuzzy, memory almost instantly.
But strangely, Elysia accessed her memory even faster than he, the Herrscher of Sentience, could. Probably because I rarely talked to anyone back then, so my memories of casual base gossip are pretty thin, he mused wryly.
"Oh! Right!" Elysia exclaimed mentally, her thought bright with recognition. "I heard those phrases from Mobius and Uncle Ato loads of times! But as far as I knew, they weren't meant literally, were they? 'Going to the Moon' meant new recruits getting assigned to the cool aerial combat units or the mech divisions, while 'staying on Earth' meant joining the ground-pounder Rapid Response Teams."
Michael searched his own memories again and confirmed Elysia's understanding – he'd heard the terms, but never grasped their original significance. He decided to keep his mental mouth shut and just listen.
Besides, Mei wasn't even in Fire Moth during that specific period, was she? She must have pieced this together later from Ato, Mobius, and classified mission files after taking charge.
"Correct, the terms eventually took on those non-literal meanings," Mei confirmed. "But do you know the real story behind how they originated?"
"Eh? It must have something to do with Uncle Ato being Uncle Ato, right?" Elysia guessed playfully.
"Mm-hmm." Mei's voice held a definite hint of suppressed amusement now. "Ato and Blanka had apparently scheduled a rare date, but both ended up having to cancel last minute due to separate operational emergencies. Afterward, Ato was quite... disgruntled. He took out the fancy bottle of red wine he'd apparently bought for the occasion and ended up sharing it—and getting thoroughly drunk—with the logistics squadron leader who had been supporting his unit during the emergency. While intoxicated, he started spouting some rather revealing nonsense... Oh, right," Mei added, as if remembering a crucial detail, "that logistics squadron leader? It was Elvin."
"Pfft!"
This time, the sound of suppressed laughter echoed not just mentally, but audibly from the back seat, Mei joining in with a quiet chuckle.
Just hearing Elvin's name painted a hilariously vivid picture.
Undoubtedly, a thoroughly plastered Ato had accidentally slurred something potentially compromising like "Guess I went to the Moon tonight after all," while complaining about how "Blanka had to stay on Earth."
Then, through the unparalleled rumor mill that was Elvin—Fire Moth's undisputed champion of gossip and exaggeration—the cryptic phrases "go to the Moon" and "stay on Earth" were inevitably twisted, misinterpreted, and spread like wildfire throughout the entire organization practically overnight.
It was almost painful to imagine poor Uncle Ato's state of mind the next morning: likely dragged out of bed while still brutally hungover by a grim-faced Commander Phamas, demanding a formal written explanation for his 'inappropriate conduct and breach of operational security'. Ouch.
"Afterward," Mei continued, the smile still lingering in her voice, "to quickly quash the real meaning and cover up Ato's drunken slip-up, the leadership hastily assigned the terms those official, mundane meanings: new recruits assigned to aerial/mech forces, or ground-based rapid response teams."
"But in reality," Michael interjected, the pieces clicking into place, "Ato was actually involved in preliminary lunar missions even back then. I remember he kept disappearing for weeks at a time, seemingly at random, especially after the Second Eruption. When I used to visit Mobius's lab around that period, I often overheard Blanka complaining to Mobius right before clocking out about Ato being 'off-planet again'... Urk, cough cough!" He caught Elysia's pointed mental gaze. "Ely, don't look at me like that... I wasn't eavesdropping! Much."
Michael mentally shrank back slightly, absently plucking at an imaginary whisker, then suddenly slapped his forehead in realization. "Oh! Oh! Mei, you just said 'much of the work Ato did later should have started after the Second Honkai Eruption.' Could it be because I... uh... inadvertently interrupted the far side investigation when I kinda... blew things up during the Third Honkai Eruption?"
"Not entirely," Mei replied thoughtfully. "That caused delays, certainly, but the bigger issue was internal politics. After Commander Phamas died in battle, Fire Moth became deeply fractured. The only goal everyone could consistently agree on was fighting the immediate Honkai threat on Earth. Most other long-term, 'non-essential' research projects, like the lunar investigation, were quietly shelved or had their funding drastically cut and postponed indefinitely." She paused, a wry note entering her voice. "Come to think of it, a significant chunk of the budget I eventually secured for upgrading the Hyperion and the other Fire Moth warships was probably siphoned directly from the original lunar investigation project's allocation."
"..."
Michael's budding sense of guilt instantly evaporated without a trace. So it was mostly political infighting and her battleship budget! Not entirely my fault! Phew.
"Anyway," Mei went on, steering the conversation back on track, "it wasn't until I personally took charge of restructuring Fire Moth's research divisions that the lunar far side project was finally put back on the active agenda. And the primary discovery they made there... well, let's just say it resonates rather disturbingly with some of those... strange things Aponia mentioned, the ones you relayed to me a few days ago, Michael."
"A few days ago? What did you tell Mei a few days ago?" Elysia immediately asked Michael directly via their mental link, her curiosity instantly piqued.
"Hmm..." Michael hesitated, glancing towards Mei. "Just... just some of Aponia's usual cryptic pronouncements about fate and predetermined outcomes." He deliberately kept his mental tone light.
Mei caught his glance in the rearview mirror. She had perhaps assumed, given his obvious closeness with Elysia, that he would have already shared the full, terrifying weight of Aponia's 'predictions' with her.
But seeing Elysia's perpetually bright, carefree smile reflected dimly in the rover's window, Mei felt a pang. It was only natural he hadn't burdened her yet.
Thinking about Elysia's ultimate, prophesied fate... Mei admitted to herself that even she, known for her cold logic, couldn't bear to reveal such a devastating destiny to the vibrant woman beside her.
It wasn't just out of simple compassion... though perhaps that was part of it.
More importantly, if, if events truly had to culminate in that tragic sacrifice, Mei sincerely hoped, with all her being, that the final decision would stem purely from Elysia's own uncoerced will. It shouldn't be a choice made simply because she knew her fate in advance and felt obligated to deliberately walk towards it, to fulfill a script written by an unseen hand.
But... the doubt lingered, cold and sharp.
As she had once bluntly told Kevin Kaslana—a person's fate is their intrinsic character.
Fatalism, in its most pessimistic interpretation, dictated not just the final outcome. It suggested that even the motivations behind choices, every nuance of personality, every pattern of thought, were all meticulously arranged by fate long before the players even took the stage.
So, could it be? Was a "decision made entirely of one's own free will" ultimately just another illusion? Merely the actor flawlessly delivering the lines fate had already written for them?
Perhaps it was precisely because of these seemingly immutable, pre-set personalities that the changes Michael desperately tried to force upon the timeline always seemed to snap back, inevitably returning the flow of events to fate's original, cruel track. That felt like a plausible, and deeply unsettling, conclusion.
Mei, who wouldn't even turn twenty-three for another month, felt the familiar weight of that cosmic uncertainty settle upon her again.
She remembered something Michael had said long ago, back during the chaos surrounding the R'lyeh incident, or perhaps sometime shortly after. A simple sentence that had nevertheless etched itself into her memory—
"If you truly desire to know the truth, Mei, you must be prepared to bear the pain that inevitably comes with it."
For Mei herself, perhaps due to her inherently analytical and pragmatic nature, she hadn't been overtly shocked when she first grasped the true, chilling implications of Aponia's words about fate.
There had even been a fleeting, almost dismissive "Is that all?" kind of feeling. A sense that destiny was just another complex variable to be factored into her equations.
However, one shouldn't dwell too deeply on such existential enigmas. The more she dissected the concept, the more a profound, soul-deep sense of powerlessness threatened to overwhelm her meticulous calculations.
What felt most unbearable, most insidious, was the creeping realization that even her current feelings—the fierce reluctance, the desperate urge to struggle against this predicted future—were likely just predetermined responses, emotional tones set by fate from the very beginning of the symphony.
After prolonged, intense reflection, while she could never truly agree with his methods, Mei found she could finally understand Michael's seemingly erratic, almost self-destructive behavior during the agonizing period between the Sixth and Seventh Honkai Eruptions.
When faced with a destiny that seemed to constrict tighter the more desperately one fought against it, it was indeed tragically easy for the human spirit to succumb to despair, to lash out, or even to simply give up.
Thoughts, dark and unwelcome, had even flickered through Mei's own hyper-rational mind—Since fate relentlessly points towards that one, specific, catastrophic result... does it even matter whether I actively resist with all my strength, or just passively lie down and accept the inevitable? The final outcome remains unchanged.
She wasn't Michael. She didn't possess his bizarre connection to the timeline, his Herrscher powers, not even the potential to directly influence or derail fate's grand design!
Yet, the ultimate, cruel irony—the cosmic joke that made her want to laugh bitterly even now—was that she also knew herself. Intimately. Both the predetermined outcome whispered by fate, and the unyielding, pragmatic, relentlessly determined personality bestowed upon her by that same fate, dictated one absolute truth: she would never truly accept defeat.
She would never choose the path of passively waiting for destruction. Fight, calculate, struggle—that was her nature, fate-given or not.
"Hey, by the way, Michael," Mei suddenly spoke up again, her voice pulling him from Mei's heavy thoughts and interrupting the pink-haired Herrscher who had started leaning her head sleepily against Michael's shoulder in the back seat. "Isn't your birthday coming up very soon?"
"Uh..." Michael mentally cleared his throat, gently nudging Elysia upright. "Cough cough! Yes, it is. But wait, aren't our birthdays actually less than a month apart?" He couldn't quite figure out where Mei was going with this sudden change of topic, so he just played along.
"Huh, is that so? When exactly is my birth— hmm..." Mei trailed off, seeming to genuinely blank for a moment, perhaps lost in calculations or memories unrelated to her own natal day. She then spoke again, a slight, knowing smile entering her voice.
"Well, regardless. What's waiting for us on the far side of the Moon... I guarantee it will absolutely blow both of your minds. Considering the timing, I think it's quite suitable as an early, shared birthday present, don't you?"
As her intriguing words faded, the rover finally, fully, transitioned onto the geographical far side of the Moon.
According to the traditional lunisolar calendar meticulously maintained back on Earth, it was currently mid-February. This meant the vast majority of the far side was plunged into the deep, fourteen-Earth-day-long darkness of lunar night.
Instantly, their already limited visibility plummeted. Everything visible through the rover's reinforced, double-layered windshield dissolved into an oppressive, profound blackness.
Even with the rover's powerful, high-beam headlights cutting through the void, they could only illuminate the barren, gray ground three to five meters ahead. Driving under such treacherous conditions would be utterly impossible for baseline humans, relying solely on Prometheus's constant sensor feeds and navigation calculations.
And Prometheus's autopilot wasn't magic. It relied entirely on the painstakingly mapped routes established over years by the tireless efforts of Ato and countless other unnamed soldiers and surveyors, who had literally walked this treacherous terrain foot by agonizing foot during the brief windows of lunar 'daylight'.
They only had incredibly brief periods—a few Earth days every half-month—when the far side was illuminated enough for safe surface exploration. The deeper they ventured into the unknown territory, the greater the inherent danger. If a team deviated even slightly from the established, mapped paths and couldn't make it back to the relative safety of the near side before the crushing lunar night fell...
Their only recourse was prayer. A desperate hope that their comrades, arriving weeks later during the next lunar 'day', would be able to locate their frozen, lifeless bodies.
The standard-issue oxygen tanks and battery power carried by the lunar rovers were nowhere near sufficient to sustain occupants through a single, unforgiving, two-week-long night on the far side.
Perhaps deploying MANTISes, with their enhanced endurance and resilience, instead of regular human explorers could have significantly reduced the casualties out here.
But deploying large numbers of invaluable MANTIS assets for such protracted, slow reconnaissance missions was strategically unthinkable. And sending Michael himself—the Herrscher of Sentience—to personally map the moon was laughably impractical.
Besides, prior to the Eighth Honkai Eruption and the subsequent surge in MANTIS numbers, Fire Moth possessed only a small handful of these elite warriors in total—far too few in number, with absolutely no time to waste on what was deemed a secondary, long-term survey project.
Moreover—and this was a cold, hard reality of their desperate war—problems that could, tragically, be solved with the expenditure of ordinary human lives were often not considered critical problems demanding the risk of irreplaceable assets.
It was a brutal calculus. Just like how a thousand baseline human lives might be deemed an acceptable, though regrettable, cost to secure a single, vital vial of Honkai sickness cure serum.
In this savage era, the strategic value of ten thousand ordinary people simply couldn't compare to even one MANTIS, not even the weakest, mass-produced psionic support type.
And Michael knew, with a chilling certainty gnawing at his core, that if the future unfolded as Aponia predicted, if the Honkai threat continued to escalate exponentially, it wouldn't be long before even the lives of MANTISes became tragically expendable—resources to be "squandered" wantonly in the face of annihilation.
Mei had already issued the general mobilization order a week ago, hadn't she? Selecting nearly a hundred thousand psychologically and physiologically suitable candidates from the dwindling pool of two billion-plus survivors scattered across the globe.
Based on the grim 'success' rate observed following the Eighth Honkai Eruption's MANTIS conversions, Michael bleakly calculated that perhaps in less than a month, Fire Moth (or would it be called Anti-Entropy by then?) would suddenly find itself needing to house, feed, and equip twenty to thirty thousand powerful, volatile, new MANTIS soldiers—an organizational expansion rate exceeding a mind-boggling 40,000%.
An influx of that magnitude would necessitate massive expansion of their headquarters and operational bases. After all, the entire Fire Moth organization, including all its global branches and support staff, numbered only about two hundred thousand personnel total before this unprecedented recruitment drive...
The rover bumped and jolted along in the disorienting darkness. The faint clunk... clunk... sound of impacts against the undercarriage occasionally reached their ears through the hull, each metallic thud feeling disturbingly like the heavy wheels rolling over the brittle, frozen bones of countless unnamed soldiers who had perished out here in the silent cold.
Michael stared blankly at the intricate frost patterns blooming like ghostly flowers on the window beside his face.
Almost involuntarily, compelled by a morbid curiosity, he pressed his right cheek firmly against the frigid, reinforced pane.
The instantaneous, biting cold was shocking. It made him instinctively squint his right eye shut. Where his skin touched the glass, it rapidly turned a sickly, unnatural bluish-gray, the flesh underneath numbing almost instantly, protesting the extreme cold. It was a chilling preview of frostbite, the tissues rapidly necrotizing, losing even the basic ability to tremble in response to the assault.
He could have easily prevented this self-inflicted discomfort. Whether by subtly manipulating reality with his Herrscher powers, or simply circulating a thin, insulating layer of Honkai Energy just beneath his skin, he had ample means to avoid the nascent injury.
But he didn't. Stubbornly, perversely, he held his face there. He wanted to feel it. To experience, just for a fleeting, painful moment, the soul-crushing coldness and profound, terrifying loneliness that those long-dead explorers, whose path they now followed, must have endured in their final, desperate moments.
---||---
Amidst an almost maddening, oppressive silence, punctuated only by the rover's hum and the occasional external clunk, they traveled onward through the endless night.
One hundred and fourteen hours crawled by. Nearly five full Earth days spent traversing the blackness.
Michael shifted uncomfortably in the cramped back seat, stifling a jaw-cracking yawn. The monotony was grating, even for a Herrscher.
Beside him, Elysia murmured softly in her sleep, her pink hair fanned out against the seat back. Glancing towards the front, Michael saw via the dim reflection in the forward console that Mei had, at some point, removed her cumbersome helmet visor, revealing the deep, undeniable lines of exhaustion etched onto her usually composed face.
"Yawn... Hey, Mei," Michael transmitted gently through their mental link, trying not to startle her. "Let me undo that metabolic restriction I placed on you. Seriously, come back here and get some proper sleep for a few hours. I'll watch the road, keep Prometheus on track, and maybe give the rover's main batteries another boost while you're out."
Just a few days ago—or had it been longer now? Time felt distorted in this perpetual darkness—Mei had playfully called this deep-space detour an early birthday present for him.
Calculating the elapsed time, Michael realized with a jolt that his actual birthday had already slipped by, unnoticed, while they were still crawling through this desolate, lightless expanse.
Even though the ever-reliable Prometheus AI handled the intricate details of driving and navigation, protocol still demanded a human (or Herrscher) remain vigilant, constantly monitoring the instruments, sensor feeds, and the immediate surroundings for unforeseen hazards.
They had been taking turns these past few days, rotating shifts. While Herrschers like him and Elysia didn't strictly need food, air, or sleep due to their fundamentally altered metabolisms, the mental fatigue from prolonged sensory deprivation and hyper-vigilance was still a very real, grinding burden.
Speaking of altered metabolisms, Mei was truly something else entirely.
She hadn't just allowed Michael to help; she had specifically requested—no, instructed him—to use the subtle reality-warping aspects of his Sixth Herrscher authority (Death) to nearly suspend critical biological functions in certain non-essential parts of her body. All to conserve minuscule amounts of onboard resources and stave off physical fatigue for longer.
As for the potential, horrifyingly permanent physiological consequences of such an extreme, untested measure? Mei had waved them off with a chilling pragmatism that bordered on recklessness:
"The absolute worst-case scenario is simply inconveniencing you to construct a new biological vessel for me later, Michael. Then we perform a high-stakes consciousness transfer using the still-immature Project Stigma technology. A gamble, yes, but one I believe I won't lose. Consider it one of the few... positive aspects of accepting fatalism, I suppose. My destined role in the grand cosmic drama isn't finished yet. How could I possibly permit myself an early exit from the stage?"
Her unwavering resolve, her willingness to sacrifice even her own physical integrity for the mission, was both awe-inspiring and deeply terrifying.
But a mortal body, even one pushed far beyond its scientifically recognized limits by sheer willpower and Herrscher intervention, still had fundamental limits. Mei's current mental state, the profound exhaustion visible even through her forced composure, was deeply worrying to Michael.
Besides, so much time had passed. They'd already performed one risky Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) out in the crushing vacuum and lethal cold, swapping out depleted oxygen tanks and allowing Michael to directly channel Honkai Energy to recharge the rover's external backup batteries.
He estimated they had to be getting close to their enigmatic destination now. Another couple of Earth days at most, he figured, and the fourteen-day lunar 'dawn' would finally arrive, potentially complicating their stealthy approach or revealing them to whatever awaited in the ruins.
"It's fine, Michael, I'm still..." Mei started to protest, her voice thick with fatigue, but her words stopped abruptly.
She stared straight ahead through the windshield, her eyes widening, utterly transfixed by something beyond the reach of their headlights.
Even though she had meticulously studied Ato's detailed mission reports, had mentally visualized this precise moment countless times based on sensor logs and blurry reconnaissance photos, the reality unfolding before her now was clearly beyond anything mere words or data could ever adequately convey.
Michael instinctively followed her stunned gaze.
There, slicing cleanly through the oppressive, seemingly infinite ink-like darkness ahead, was a shimmering, impossible arc of pure, vibrant purple. It hung in the void like a colossal, luminous wound torn across the fabric of the night sky.
As the rover crept closer, the strange purple light grew thicker, brighter, pulsing with an almost palpable energy...
Pop—
It wasn't an actual sound that registered in their ears. It was more like a sudden, distinct pressure change felt deep within their eardrums, a subtle shift in the very fabric of reality around them.
Though the sun remained hidden, still weeks away from cresting the lunar horizon here, the surroundings abruptly, impossibly, brightened. Not daylight, but a soft, ambient, purplish luminescence now filled the landscape.
The rover seemed to push through some kind of invisible, almost negligible barrier, like effortlessly piercing the delicate surface of a soap bubble. It passed through without resistance, but immediately afterward, its forward momentum began to noticeably, inexplicably, decrease.
At first, Michael thought he was imagining the deceleration, perhaps a trick of the strange new light distorting his perception. But then, driven by curiosity, he cautiously, manually cracked open his armored side window just a fraction.
Instantly, a strong gust of wind—real, tangible wind—howled into the rover's sealed cabin with a loud, startling "WHOOSH!"
It caught Elysia's and Mei's unbound hair, whipping the long strands into a sudden frenzy, pink and black locks flying everywhere in the confined space—
"Ah! Mmph—" Elysia yelped, getting an unexpected mouthful of her own vibrant pink hair.
"Michael, you bit my hair!" she accused him playfully through their mental link, even as she sputtered.
"Hey! Wasn't it your hair that just slapped my face?" he retorted, grinning mentally despite the chaos.
"Elysia... Mei... Our hair is completely tangled together now!" came Mei's slightly exasperated voice from the front.
"Idiot Michael, close the window, quickly!" Elysia demanded amidst the sudden, localized hair-nado.
Momentarily blinded by flying strands of pink and black, Michael fumbled with the manual window controls until he managed to seal the cabin once more. His cheeks stung faintly with thin red marks where the whipping hair had lashed him.
The rover continued its slower, almost hesitant crawl forward into the strange luminescence.
Mei and Elysia spent the next few minutes patiently, painstakingly untangling the impressive knot their combined long hair had formed, carefully pinning it up securely afterward.
Yet, despite the chaotic (and slightly comical) interruption, an undeniable buzz of sheer wonder and excitement filled the rover's cabin. Their expressions, reflected dimly in the purplish glow filtering through the windshield, were alight with shared astonishment.
There was wind here. Actual, moving air. On the supposedly airless Moon.
Which meant... there was atmosphere. Breathable air. Here, on the far side of the Moon.
And not just air, but the temperature... it felt... moderate? Normal, almost comfortable. Just moments ago, mere meters outside the rover's hull, the ambient temperature had been a lethal, cryogenically cold minus 183 degrees Celsius. Yet the air that had rushed in felt like nothing more than a strong, cool night breeze back on Earth.
But... how? How was any of this remotely possible?
Mei, having poured over Ato's classified reports, intellectually knew about this bizarre, localized phenomenon. But knowing abstractly and experiencing it firsthand were two vastly different realities.
Seeing the ambient light, feeling the impossible wind, realizing they were breathing lunar air... it was far more stunning, and infinitely more baffling, than any dry, second-hand description could ever convey.
"No wonder... no wonder..." Michael muttered under his breath, staring out at the softly glowing landscape, a sudden, chilling realization dawning in his mind, connecting unspoken dots.
When Mei and Elysia turned to look at him questioningly, sensing his sudden shift in mood, however, he just offered a blank, slightly forced "What are you looking at?" expression, not ready to voice his dawning suspicion just yet.
The rover soon ground to a complete halt, its forward progress blocked by the terrain ahead. It could go no further by wheel.
While Mei took the opportunity to finally close her eyes and enter a proper, deep recuperative state in the driver's seat, Michael and Elysia carefully cycled through the rover's airlock and stepped out onto the lunar surface to scout the area on foot.
Strangely, the moment they stepped outside the protective shell of the vehicle, the wind seemed to die down almost completely. The air here was still, quiet, carrying only the faint, metallic scent of ozone and something else... something ancient, dusty, and deeply unsettling.
Before them stretched an enormous impact crater, easily vast enough to be classified as a geological basin. Its scale was staggering.
And nestled deep within that colossal basin, revealed by the soft, ethereal purple glow that seemed to emanate from the very ground, lay the breathtaking, impossible ruins of a magnificent, sprawling city.
Even from their vantage point high on the crater rim, they could immediately tell that its overall architectural style was exceedingly ancient—visibly older, somehow, than even the oldest pseudo-medieval and early modern styles found scattered across the fragmented remnants of the Mu Continent back on Earth. This place felt... primordial.
"This... this wasn't really built by aliens, was it?" Elysia whispered, her voice filled with awe. She perched boldly, perhaps unwisely, right on the precipitous cliff edge, dangling her legs over the dizzying abyss, her mouth slightly agape in sheer, unadulterated astonishment.
"No," Michael stated firmly, his own gaze sweeping analytically across the vast, ruined panorama below. "This was definitely built by us. Humans. From Earth."
His conviction wasn't a guess; it was a certainty based on the visual evidence.
Based on his admittedly limited grasp of architectural history, several key elements scattered throughout the ruins screamed 'human origin' loud and clear.
Among the crumbling structures, whose weathered surfaces shone a ghostly grayish-white eerily tinged with the pervasive purple energy, several prominent, step-pyramid-like towers were undeniably reminiscent of the styles left behind by ancient Mesoamerican civilizations – Aztec or Mayan, perhaps. Definitely not the smooth-sided Egyptian style.
Other fragmented elements – shattered columns here, broken pediments there, the proportions of certain archways – hinted strongly at classical Greco-Roman influences, evoking images of ancient ruins from Attica or the Italian peninsula.
And those bizarre, almost ethereal "ribbons" that seemed to float impossibly in mid-air, gracefully arcing between taller structures? They looked disturbingly, uncannily like the graceful lines of ancient Roman aqueducts, somehow constructed here and still defying gravity after untold millennia.
These weren't just random similarities. These stylistic markers, blended together in this impossible location, pointed towards an undeniable, staggering conclusion: the builders of this ruined lunar metropolis originated from their specific branch of intelligent life, from Earth.
Unless, of course, by some ludicrous cosmic coincidence, every sentient species across the vastness of the universe just happened to develop identical, complex architectural tastes across thousands of years of independent cultural evolution.
Which was, quite frankly, statistically and logically absurd.
The silent, invisible winds of unimaginable time had blown over this city, scouring its surfaces smooth in some places, pitting them deeply in others. Although breathable air still somehow circulated within the confines of the basin, and the soft, ambient purple light provided more than sufficient illumination, Michael felt a terrifying truth solidify in his mind.
He had previously assumed—perhaps even subconsciously hoped—that these ruins were built by the "Previous Era," their current civilization, maybe during some forgotten, secret project initiated by Mei's future self or someone else from their time. A forward base, perhaps?
But no. The evidence etched into the very stones refuted that comforting notion. The crumbling walls, the advanced state of decay, the sheer scale of the weathering... they screamed of immense antiquity.
This city hadn't stood here for mere centuries, or even millennia. It had stood here, silently bearing witness to the void, for at least fifty thousand years. And likely, far, far longer.
Signs of a cataclysmic battle were everywhere. Laser scores on impossibly hard materials, shattered ferrocrete, impact craters overlapping older impact craters... a scene of utter devastation, frozen in time.
And even after fifty millennia or more, virulent, angry purple Honkai Energy still visibly corroded the very soil beneath their feet.
Lunar regolith, the normal soil of the Moon, should be utterly dead, gray, inert. But when Michael knelt down again, pushing aside the thin surface layer, and scooped up a handful of the deeper soil, it felt unnaturally warm to the touch.
And its color... it was stained an irredeemable, sickening, vibrant purple. Honkai corruption, seeped deep into the bedrock itself.
This finally, horrifyingly, explained the massive purple arc they'd seen from a distance as they approached, the one that sliced through the darkness like a cosmic wound. It wasn't some strange atmospheric light show. It was the collective, baleful glow of Honkai corruption radiating from the entire basin on an unbelievable, planetary scale.
Thinking about it now, the sight wasn't magnificent or mysterious. It was horrifying. A chilling testament to unimaginable loss, a festering scar left behind by a war fought on the Moon in the impossibly distant past.
At the very heart of the sprawling, ruined urban complex yawned a truly massive hole, a gaping, ragged wound torn into the lunar surface, easily visible even from their current position tens of kilometers away on the crater rim.
Logically, the inner walls of such a colossal impact crater or excavation pit should be composed of shattered, grayish-white lunar rock.
But instead, everything within its shadowed depths was shrouded in an unnatural, absolute, light-swallowing black—the unmistakable visual signature of Honkai Energy concentrated to an almost impossible, terrifying extreme.
Large, jagged chunks of shattered rock, likely remnants of whatever structure once stood there, littered the pit's ragged perimeter. Their freshly broken edges, even after all this time, still emitted a faint, ominous purple glow, like the dying embers of some ancient cosmic catastrophe.
"With this concentration of Honkai energy radiating from that central pit..." Elysia murmured, her usual bright expression clouded with worry as she glanced back towards the distant rover where Mei was resting. "Can Mei really handle being this close to it? Even with her natural resistance?"
"It's alright." Mei's voice suddenly came over their private comm channel, steady and reassuring despite her obvious fatigue. She was already climbing out of the rover, having apparently cut her rest short. "My innate adaptability to raw Honkai Energy is actually quite high, higher than most baseline humans. It was just the specific genetic manipulations involved in the MANTIS surgery itself that my body violently rejected."
To be safe, however, she had donned her full spacesuit helmet again, its reflective visor hiding her expression as she began the careful trek towards them. In her gloved hand, she clutched the familiar, phone-sized device—a temporary wireless interface terminal for Prometheus, likely feeding her real-time environmental and tactical data.
Michael glanced at his internal chronometer display. She'd slept for maybe two hours, tops. Probably less.
But knowing Mei's iron will and unwavering focus once she'd set her mind on a task, arguing or trying to persuade her to rest longer would be utterly pointless. Her determination was absolute, bordering on terrifyingly self-destructive at times.
"Let's go," Mei declared as she reached them, her voice firm and businesslike, betraying none of her exhaustion. She gestured towards the sloping path leading down into the ruined city. "Time is a luxury we don't have. We need to begin exploring these ruins immediately and determine their origin and purpose."
In that final moment, just as they were about to turn and begin their descent into the eerie, silent basin, a strange feeling prickled at the back of Michael's neck. A sudden, inexplicable premonition, a sense of wrongness. Compelled by instinct, he abruptly turned back one last time.
He looked up, towards the black, starless sky above the far side of the Moon... the sky where Earth absolutely should not be visible from this location.
His eyes widened instinctively, his silver-gray pupils contracting, then dilating rapidly in disbelief.
A sharp gasp escaped his lips, loud in the thin, alien air.
"Elysia... Mei..." he breathed, his voice tight, strained with utter shock and a dawning, terrifying understanding. "Turn around. Look at this— Now!"
Hanging high in the impossible sky above the Moon's forbidden far side...
Was Earth.
But it wasn't the pale, gray, distant, washed-out sphere they had observed from the near side just days ago.
No.
This was a vibrant, stunningly beautiful, achingly familiar azure planet. It hung huge and close, marbled with brilliant swirls of pure white clouds, continents clearly visible in shades of vibrant green and earthy brown, vast oceans shimmering with reflected light.
It was the Earth of idealized photographs, the Earth of humanity's collective dreams—impossibly vivid, impossibly close, impossibly here, dominating the sky above the ruins.
Completely, utterly different from the faded, distant reality they had witnessed before embarking on this journey into the lunar night. Something was terribly, fundamentally wrong.