They still teach children about Earth.
Not because it matters—
but because loss has a weight that refuses to fade.
Kael Veyron stared at the holographic mural floating above the memorial plaza. A projection of the old blue planet shimmered, cracked down the middle like a broken marble. Beneath it, people walked with their heads low, too tired to mourn a world they barely remembered.
Planet Alpha, humanity's new home, flickered dimly in the copper sky above them.
A temporary salvation.
A failing miracle.
Kael tightened his gloves and muttered, "We traded home for a ticking time bomb."
Alpha's crust was thinning. Radiation pockets were rising. Terraforming engines screamed just to keep the atmosphere breathable. The scientists said it had fifty years left.
The pessimists said twenty.
Kael's father had said none.
> "Alpha won't survive. Find Neverland."
The last words he ever left behind.
Now Kael stood where thousands prayed the calculations were wrong, and all he could think was:
He wasn't wrong. Nobody listened.
Footsteps approached behind him.
Metal boots. Expedition-grade.
"Veyron," a familiar voice called. "You're not supposed to be this close to the memorial zone. Again."
Kael didn't turn. "Relax, Lira. I'm not stealing the planet."
Captain Lira Soren exhaled sharply. "You're supposed to report to Expedition Hub 4 in ten minutes."
He shrugged. "Tell them I'm grieving."
"You never even lived on Earth."
"Exactly. Imagine the trauma."
Lira rolled her eyes so hard he could feel the air shift.
But before she could drag him away, the ground vibrated beneath them—soft, steady, like a far-off heartbeat.
Kael froze.
Not again.
A pulse of light spread across Alpha's sky. A distortion—thin, shimmering, unmistakable.
Lira's expression twisted. "Ugh, these atmospheric glitches are getting worse."
Kael whispered:
"No. That's not a glitch."
His chest tightened; the same pressure he felt whenever the anomaly inside him reacted. The same reaction it had the day his father died.
He raised a scanner, its screen flickering with irregular spikes. Readings that shouldn't exist.
Lira grabbed his wrist. "Kael, stop. This is exactly why people think you're losing it."
"They think I'm losing it because they're blind," Kael snapped. "This is Neverland. It's real. It's right there."
"Neverland is a myth," she said firmly. "A bedtime story for scientists who can't accept Earth's death."
Kael turned, meeting her eyes—dark, tired, desperate.
> "My father died hunting this phenomenon. He wasn't chasing a fairytale."
Lira's face softened, just a little.
"Even if Neverland existed, why would it show up on Alpha?"
Kael stared at the distortion, which now pulsed like a living wound in the sky.
"Because Alpha is collapsing," he said.
"And something out there knows it."
A sudden shockwave tore through the plaza. Citizens screamed as the distortion widened—spiraling, bending light, warping the sky like reality was trying to fold inward.
Sirens blared.
"Kael—back away!" Lira shouted, drawing her sidearm even though weapons meant nothing to the impossible.
The anomaly in Kael's chest burned bright, visible through his skin.
The distortion cracked open.
A roar of cosmic energy exploded outward.
The plaza was thrown into chaos as dust, light, and sound fused into a blinding sphere.
Kael didn't run. He couldn't.
Through the storm, he saw something—
a shape behind the light, a silhouette of a place no human had ever reached.
A world untouched.
A world impossible.
A world calling him.
Never—
land.
Lira grabbed him, pulling him down as the shockwave hit.
Everything dissolved into white.
And Kael realized:
The universe had just answered him.
Not gently.
Not quietly.
But violently.
As if to say:
"You were right. And now you'll prove it."