Lumo
The black of space stretched forever, a velvet void punctuated by distant pinpricks of ancient light. Around the gas giant Kha’ra, whose swirling violet storms churned like the breath of a dying star, a lone satellite hung motionless. Its solar panels, dulled by micrometeorite scars, caught the faint glimmer of distant suns, while a single, elongated antenna—thin as a spider’s leg—shivered in the thin wind of ionized particles, catching whispers that no human ear could hear.
The rain hammered the glass towers of New Avalon like a thousand tiny fists, each drop echoing against the endless lattice of holographic billboards that flickered with crimson warnings: “WATER CONTAMINATED – DO NOT DRINK.” The city’s arteries—its massive, interwoven water mains—glowed faintly beneath the streets, a network of veins pulsing with a liquid that had once been the lifeblood of billions. Now it carried something else.
The backstage was a cavern of shadows, the kind that seemed to swallow sound as readily as light. Heavy velvet drapes hung like bruised skin, forever drawn, their folds muttering against the cracked plaster with each draft that slipped through the ancient vents. The air smelled of dust, old perfume, and the faint metallic tang of rusted rigging—a perfume that reminded anyone who lingered there of forgotten applause and the ghosts of applause that never came.