Long ago, before modern maps etched names onto the wilderness, a meteor streaked across the night sky and fell into the deep, ancient forest that now lies within the borders of present-day Russia. It cleaved silently through the heavens, its descent unnoticed by the world—except by one man.
He lived alone in the woods, far from the murmurs of civilization. When he saw the burning light fall from the stars, he felt no tremor in the earth, heard no startled cries of birds, not even the whisper of wind through leaves. The forest remained eerily still, as though nature itself dared not speak.
The meteorite struck the earth with the gentlest of sighs, landing upon the grass as if it had always belonged there. Intrigued and apprehensive, the man crept closer. His feet rustled the underbrush, the only sound in a world suddenly mute. As he approached the smoldering rock, he paused, glanced around, then looked up at the moon—a pale guardian in the sky—its light casting a long shadow behind him.
He hesitated. Something felt wrong. But curiosity prevailed.
With a deep breath, he extended his hand. The moment his fingers neared the stone, the surface shivered. Dust and shards flaked off. The man stepped back.
Lines of white light spiraled from the meteorite, wrapping it in a vortex of ethereal energy. The lights converged, collapsing inward—until the rock cracked open like an egg. A figure emerged, rising into the air.
He was not human.
His upper body was lean and muscular, his chest bare beneath the moonlight. A long, dark ponytail trailed down his back. A curling mustache adorned his face, and from the waist down, he had no legs—only a swirl of mist and shadow that kept him floating above the earth like a specter.
The man in the forest gasped, his scream caught in his throat. His vision blurred, knees buckled, and darkness claimed him.
But before he hit the ground, the entity raised one glowing hand.
"Awaken," he commanded.
Instantly, the man's eyes shot open. He was alert—fully conscious—standing without knowing how.
Before him hovered the being, regal and radiant, voice resonant as thunder echoing across mountaintops.
"You are in the presence of Hazmun von Mohamdan las Vestuji," the entity declared, voice imbued with power and sorrow. "First Monarch of Draja, grand elder of the Elquiem Alliance, hero of twenty timelines, conqueror of a hundred and five dimensions—and the most powerful being in the known universes."
The man fell to his knees, not out of worship, but sheer awe. Hazmun's very presence weighed on the air like a storm ready to break.
"I was betrayed," Hazmun continued, his voice dropping lower, tinged with ancient bitterness. "The very people I led—the alliance I once protected—cast me into the void between stars. There, I slumbered. And as fate commands, I now awaken, forever bound to the soul who stirs me from exile."
His eyes glowed with energy older than the Earth itself.
"You are my thirty-third master. As is tradition, I shall grant you three wishes. No more."
The man, trembling, slowly rose to his feet.
"I've heard legends," he said softly, almost to himself. "Stories of genies, wishes… I thought they were only tales from forgotten times."
"They were truths," Hazmun replied. "Tales spoken by those who once stood where you now stand. Now speak, mortal. What does your heart desire?"
Caught off-guard, uncertain and suffocating beneath the weight of Hazmun's presence, the man's mind raced. His heart pounded in his chest like a drum of war, his thoughts tangled in fear, awe, and disbelief. The silence stretched—heavy, expectant—as the celestial being hovered before him, waiting.
He didn't know what to ask. Wealth? Immortality? Power? None of it made sense in this moment. He hadn't lived a life of ambition. He had lived quietly, alone, surviving on what little the land could offer.
But he remembered the struggle—how the soil grew thinner each season, how the forests no longer teemed with game as they once had, how even firewood seemed harder to find. He remembered stories of wars over oil, water, metals—humanity bleeding itself dry in pursuit of vanishing things.
He wanted none of it. He didn't want to think. He just wanted this terrifying encounter to end.
And so, in a surge of panic and impulsive logic, he blurted the first idea that sprang from his weary, desperate heart:
"I… I wish for the Earth to be a thousand times larger in mass—with resources that never run dry, and energy in limitless abundance!"
His words rang into the clearing, clumsy and breathless. A wish born not of greed, but of exhaustion. Of a man who had lived close to the land and knew its limits. Who wished for a world that didn't teeter on the edge of collapse.
Hazmun stared, eyes unreadable, his expression caught somewhere between amusement and pity.
A long silence followed. Then the celestial being slowly lifted his hand.
"So be it," he said, voice like rolling thunder. "Your wish is granted."
The moment Hazmun spoke, the stars seemed to flicker—as if the cosmos itself held its breath.
Then it began.
The air around the forest shimmered like heat on pavement. A low, resonant hum pulsed through the soil, through the roots of trees, through the bones of every living thing. Time slowed. The moon above blurred and doubled. The constellations twisted like stirred ink. And Earth—without warning—expanded.
It was not a violent upheaval. There was no global shattering, no apocalyptic roar. Instead, it was as though reality folded outward, space stretching like fabric being unrolled from some divine spindle.
The Earth grew.
First imperceptibly, then monstrously.
Continents drifted apart, then reformed, tenfold in size. From the existing 7 continents became 16 of varying sizes. Oceans widened, deepened, swallowing old seabeds and revealing new ones. Mountains rose higher, their peaks piercing the clouds, their bases now anchored on tectonic plates thicker than any ever known. Volcanoes once dormant awoke—not in rage, but in song—as molten energy from deep within surged upward to fill the massive new mantle.
Cities crumbled under the impossible expansion, their foundations torn asunder or buried beneath layers of fertile new crust. But in their place, forests erupted overnight, vast and ancient, filled with species never before catalogued. Trees grew as tall as skyscrapers, their canopies wide enough to block out the sun for miles. Rivers turned into inland seas. Deserts became sprawling dunes that shimmered with crystalline sands.
And beneath it all—deep in the belly of the newly-forged Earth—resources multiplied. Metals once rare now gleamed in endless veins that twisted through mountains like arteries of light. Oil pooled in caverns the size of kingdoms. Geysers of pure hydrogen burst from geothermal cracks. Caves lined with glowing minerals pulsed softly, humming with energy untapped by science.
The energy was not just abundant—it was alive.
A new form of planetary current had been born, threading through Earth like ley lines, invisible to the eye but palpable to instinct. The Earth had become not just bigger, but awakened—a living engine of infinite fuel, boundless harvest, and ceaseless possibility.
The sky too was altered.
Gravity, rebalanced by arcane design, held the new Earth in perfect tension. Clouds floated in layers, stacked across levels of the stratosphere, some so high they shimmered with starlight even at noon. The atmosphere thickened, filtering harmful radiation and enriching the air. Oxygen levels rose. Life breathed easier. Creatures evolved overnight—birds with wingspans like gliders, insects that glowed with chemical brilliance, beasts in the oceans whose songs could be heard from shore to shore.
And the moon? It now had three smaller siblings—celestial orbs born from the gravitational upheaval. They spun gracefully around the Earth in synchronized arcs, trailing ethereal ribbons of silver aurora that rippled across the sky like divine brushstrokes. The night had become a painting in motion.
Then, impossibly, the Sun began to shift.
Where once Earth and the other planets had faithfully orbited the Sun, now the cosmos bent to a new order. The Earth—vast, swollen with energy—became the center. The solar system realigned around it, as if the laws of physics had bowed to the will of something far older, far more commanding.
Humanity—scattered, silenced—stood in a hush of awe and dread.
Then, without warning, a radiant light engulfed the world. It was not sunlight, nor fire, but something purer—divine and all-encompassing. Every living being, from the highest mountain to the deepest trench, was bathed in it.
For a moment, there was only brilliance.
And then… transformation.
Eyes once clouded with age grew clear and sharp. Hair long turned white regained its original color. The deaf began to hear whispers in the wind. Muscles long withered by time brimmed with strength. Men and women on the brink of death—bedridden, breath shallow—rose suddenly, some with gasps, others with laughter, as if startled back to life by the shock of renewal. Diseases vanished. Wounds closed without a trace.
Across the globe, people felt it in their bones: their time had stretched. Their lifespan extended—by five centuries or more.
It was as though the Earth itself had poured its new vitality into the veins of every human being.
For many, it was a miracle.
For others, a sign—ominous and unearned.
And in that moment of silent reckoning, one truth echoed through every mind:
The future had never felt so vast… or so close.