"The light that forgets itself will wander, but the song that remembers will awaken; woven in time, reverberating in dreams, sung by the stars."
Chapter 1: Origin
In the infinite sprawl of Galaxy ML737, Universe C-1.6 , among the cold glimmers of white and blue, there burned a singular anomaly— a green star.
Born without a memory, the star was simply Maya, a soul cradled in emerald fire. Unlike the others, Maya pulsed not just with light but with a peculiar awareness, watching as eons unfolded in the symphony of the cosmos.
For millions of years, Maya drifted in solitude, scanning the infinite horizons for a reflection of its own green brilliance.
Yet, no kindred stars answered its silent call.
Curiosity swelled into longing, and longing into resolve.
It yearned to know more than light and distance; to touch, to feel, to transform.
One quiet cycle, the star made its first leap.
With a conscious shimmer that bent the fabric of space-time, Maya descended to one of the little and quiet, barren planets orbiting its solar system.
Maya transformed and condensed into a radiant, small sphere of vibrant, shimmering green light; its pulsating vibrations enabled it to drift effortlessly and freely, completely unbound by the constraints of gravity.
In this abnormal form of a star, Maya descended gracefully toward a colossal, ancient rock, which had been orbiting for millions of years around Maya in a silent cosmic dance.
Maya floated gently over the jagged landscapes, weaving between peaks and valleys, learning the art of existence in new dimensions.
Maya began to experiment. It used stone to carve crude reflections of its own glow, then light to give them motion. But these forms were fleeting, collapsing back into the lifeless matter from which they sprang.
But with each transformation, Maya felt the weight of existence shift.
The boundaries between light and form, sound and silence, grew thinner.
Yet, whenever Maya gazed upon the light of any star, fragments of its essence returned, flickering like a forgotten melody.
Maya wanted to know more...
It was then that the green star resolved to journey farther—to seek not others like it but other forms of existence. It left its home system, launching into the vast, uncharted expanse of the universe.
In the deep silence of the void, where only the hum of creation lingered, Maya burned with two truths:
...it was alone, and it was infinite.
Chapter 2: Life on Ora
Maya roamed the cosmos, an unleashed green flame, gliding between nebulas and orbiting the forgotten bones of dying stars. She had seen so much—planets engulfed in storms, moons singing with the echoes of their creation—but none of it stirred the core of her being. Then, on a golden world shrouded in scarlet clouds, Maya saw something entirely new: life.
Maya descended upon planet Ora like a whisper of stardust, its emerald light flickering against the canvas of its endless purple skies. Below, golden seas stretched in shimmering waves, reflecting the twin brilliance of its sister world hanging on the skies—Eki, a planet wrapped in mystery, its surface flowing with deep blue gas, neither water nor light, but something in between.
The two planets moved in an eternal waltz around their sun, locked in a silent conversation of gravity and glow; and in between a beautiful crystal moon that reflected both the golden shine of Ora and the blue radiance of Eki on each side.
Ora pulsed with vibrancy, its lands alive with crystalline forests and luminous rivers that sang as they flowed. Life here moved in rhythms unknown to Maya, its creatures sculpted by golden tides and skies that deepened into violet dusk. His form, a stabilized sphere of green light, moved effortlessly through Ora’s dense atmospheres and golden seas, unaffected by the laws that bound other celestial forms. He drifted, absorbing the hum of his existence, eager to learn what the fabric of Ora's life could teach him about the great cosmic design.
It began as a glimmer, a flicker in the waters of a distant golden ocean. Shapes, soft and fluid, moved of their own accord, weaving patterns beneath the waves. These creatures were fragile, yet their defiance against stillness astonished Maya. For the first time, it felt a spark of something beyond curiosity—a yearning to understand this delicate miracle.
In Ora, Maya’s delight was boundless. It adored the way red trees reached for the sky, the grace of microbes as they floated in the air, and the enigmatic beauty of green jellyfish, floating like liquid stars in the depths of the golden seas. These forms seemed like secrets whispered directly to Maya’s soul.
Here, in this strange and fertile world, Maya practiced tirelessly. It learned to mimic beings with crystalline bodies that shimmered like prisms under their twin suns. Though its forms remained fleeting, Maya marveled at the artistry of these creations, each one a testament to Ora’s infinite imagination.
These crystalline beings lived in harmony with the planet, their light blending into the natural rhythms of Ora. Maya was captivated by their existence and stayed for what felt like centuries, learning their language of vibrations and light. It was from Ora that Maya truly learned the art of transformation, watching how the beings effortlessly merged and evolved with their surroundings.
Maya’s spirit was too light, too vast to hold the fragile intricacies of these beings. Each attempt to mold itself into their forms collapsed under its own impossibility. Yet, Maya laughed, an echo that rippled across the waters. There was joy in trying, in the act of creating, even in failure.
In Ora’s quiet, breathing landscapes, Maya felt something entirely new: belonging.
Yet, despite Ora’s beauty, something tugged at Maya— a whisper from the farthest reaches of its being. It was not finished seeking. As much as it loved Ora, there was another path to walk, millions of planets to explore. And so, with a bittersweet farewell, Maya ascended back into the vastness of the cosmos.
Chapter 3: Zaon
For what may have been eons, or a single cosmic breath, Maya drifted across the galactic weave, a luminous sphere of green light seeking something she could no longer name.
Once, long ago, she had been born from the collapse of something impossible, erupting not in fire, but in a song—a green star, singular and strange. But the memory of that birth had faded like an echo too long chased.
Now she wandered, condensed into a humming orb of pure vibration, slipping between nebulae, folding through stellar tunnels, tracing the edges of nebulae like a silent observer forgotten by time.
She searched.
She had searched for others like her; for another green star. For some whisper of her origin.
But across all the constellations she had touched, none shone as she once did.
Some burned blue, some red, some gold. Some white and vast.
But not green. Not like her.
Sometimes she found life. Strange, flapping, crawling things that danced for brief centuries beneath alien suns.
But their differences grew familiar. Their hunger, their replication, their endless circling of beginnings and ends.
It was not what she sought.
They were not new.
And they were not like her.
So Maya wandered. Not aimless, but untethered. No longer a star, not yet something else.
Just a question, wrapped in radiant motion.
A luminous secret even she had forgotten.
Until a rhythm pulsed across the dark.
Not a voice. A presence.
Warm. Aware.
A beacon that did not just shine, but listened.
Zaon.
A golden star, pulsing with an ancient rhythm, encircled by a family of planets both restless and still. Maya felt the pull, drawn to its warmth, its knowing presence. Zaon was no ordinary star—it was alive, ancient, and wise. It hummed with a slow, patient tone, one that had been echoing long before any ear had learned to hear.
Maya, drawn to its brilliance, approached the star with a question it had carried for eons:
—What am I?
Zaon did not speak. Not in the way humans do. Not even in the way stars do. Zaon responded in light, pure and layered. Maya was enveloped in a searing brilliance—a kaleidoscope of memories, frequencies, and living colors.
It was not a reply.
It was a remembering.
In that communion, Zaon opened itself, and Maya beheld:
A birth from dust. A swirling collapse. Fire consuming darkness.
Then the dance of marbles—planets slowly circling, chiseled over eons by solar breath and magnetic patience.
Each world, a sculpture.
Each orbit, a thread.
Each trial, a note in Zaon’s great silent symphony.
—I have been crafting them, Maya, the star whispered through vibration. Spinning my breath into spheres. Gifting them warmth, storms, silence, time. Hoping…
Zaon showed Maya how each planet had been shaped like a dream slowly sculpted underwater. Some cracked. Some resisted. But one—Eta—shimmered differently. Ready for Life, not yet awake . But it listened. And Zaon, in its eternal burning, had never stopped hoping.
—Why?— Maya asked, voice barely a pulse in the storm of golden light.
—Why would you give your fire to worlds that may never answer?
Zaon glowed deeper, speaking in the tone of truth that cannot lie:
—Because stars are the memory of Life before Life begins.
—We carry the codes. We are the Keepers. We sing the shape of what may come.
And then it struck Maya, not as a thought, but as a tremor:
—If stars carry the memory of Life… what do I carry?
A shiver ran through his luminous body.
He turned to Zaon, his voice low and full of that sacred doubt that precedes all true becoming.
—Zaon… I am a green star. I am like you, and yet I am not.
Zaon paused. Then, like a slow wind turning pages in the Book of Time:
—I have never seen a green star, Maya. Show me your light, if you are like me.
Challenged and curious, Maya consented.
He descended, not as a body, but as a song of frequencies— a green sphere of harmonic resonance, spiraling beyond the known color wheel, carrying symmetries from somewhere else.
Freed from gravitational lock, he slipped into Zaon’s core like a thought slipping into memory,
and there, light met light,
not merging, but mirroring,
a cosmic dance of data and dream.
Maya saw not just the Sun’s memories, but his own—fragmented, scattered like pollen in timeless wind.
Buried recollections stirred: a cradle of emerald fire, a sound that shaped matter, a purpose not yet spoken.
Zaon, glowing with deeper gold, continued.
—To be a star, Maya, is to see yourself across all time. The past that made you. The future that will feed from your flame. We are not merely fire. We are Continuity. We are the bridge across oblivion.
Maya felt wonder… and fear.
Zaon unraveled more, showing him the orbits, not as ellipses, but as stories.
One planet wrapped in clouds like silk hiding shame.
Another cracked open by frozen rage.
Some mute, some murmuring.
And then, Eta.
Zaon slowed time as it revealed the third marble, not just as it was, but as it might become.
Clouds circled like lost thoughts, unspoken and waiting. Mountains stood not yet carved by will. The oceans moved with no creatures to swim them, only ancient rhythm.
Maya felt it. Not just the presence of a planet, but the pressure of an idea becoming matter.
This was not a world finished. It was a canvas wrapped in time.
A planet tuning itself, rehearsing breath.
And in that deep almost-silence, Maya perceived it:
A vibration, barely a whisper, at the edge of coherence. A pulse that wasn’t from Zaon… but from Eta itself.
It trembled faintly, as though it had just inhaled for the first time.
A flicker beneath its oceans.
A hint of awareness beneath its crust.
The planet was dreaming of itself.
Maya leaned into the planetary vision, curiosity blossoming like solar flare.
—Zaon… What is this world? Why does it feel like it’s calling me?
Zaon answered not with explanation, but invitation.
—It is Eta. The third of my marbles. It is meant to cradle something rare. Not yet alive… but listening.
Maya pulsed with anticipation.
—Some of my worlds already cradle basic life-seeds stirred by heat and chance. But Eta…— Zaon paused, as if searching through distant timelines.— Eta is different. It waits for something that does not yet exist.
Zaon’s brilliance flickered with a playful edge, then turned solemn.
—Maya… have you ever tried to create Life… instead of copying it?
The question struck like a solar chord. Maya’s form rippled with uncertainty and possibility.
There was something in Zaon’s tone; something unsaid, buried in the folds of its golden flame.
A desire not just to guide Maya… but to keep him close.
A silent knowing that time was shifting, that something in the outer stars was stirring, and that Maya’s presence might yet matter more than either of them could see.
—May I see it for myself?— said Maya finally.
Zaon shimmered, its orbiting worlds echoing approval like distant bells.
—You may. But know this: Life there will reflect aspects of this Universe that are not easy to grasp. If you go to Eta, Maya, you will change. You will never be the same again.
Maya hesitated, for the first time since birth.
For a moment, Maya floated silent.
Then, a sudden shimmer ran through his green light; an idea, fresh and fragile, sparking into being.
—If Eta waits for something that doesn’t exist… maybe I can help it dream it.
Zaon pulsed in surprise, its corona twisting like a spiral of joy.
—Then go, Green Star. Go not only to observe… but to imagine.
And so Maya turned, drawn not by answers—but by the question that had become his own:
"What life could be born; not remembered, not repeated—but entirely new?"
Zaon, sensing this, wrapped him gently in memory.
—When you forget, Maya… when the noise of flesh and fear dims your song… remember this moment. Remember you are Star-born. Come back to me when your light trembles. I will remind you.
And so Maya turned, toward the third marble.
Green light tracing a spiral path through Zaon’s golden breath.
Toward Eta.
Toward the unknown.
Toward himself.
Chapter 4: Eta
Maya entered Eta gently, compressing its form into a radiant and glowing green sphere. As it neared the planet’s surface, the sphere diffused into a luminous haze, letting its essence touch ocean, stone, and silence alike. This world was unlike Ora, whose crystalline beings had danced in harmonious light. Eta was raw—a symphony still waiting to be composed, a vast empty canvas.
The planet was quiet, yet alive in its silence. Water stretched endlessly, caressing shores of jagged stone. The air was thick with the whispers of potential, a hum beneath the stillness. Maya drifted across the waters, marveling at their shimmering depths, the way they caught the sunlight and broke it into infinite sparkles.
For the first time, Maya felt love. It reminded of that feeling of belonging.
The blue turquoise water held Maya’s form like a cradle, its cool touch soothing and welcoming. It was more than an element; it was a memory of something eternal, something shared across all existence. Maya rested on the surface, allowing itself to dissolve further, becoming one with the ebb and flow of Eta’s oceans.
As Maya rested, she began to dream.
In her dream, Maya saw colors and shapes it had never imagined: spirals forming in the water, tendrils stretching out like curious fingers, and stones glimmering with a strange, internal glow. These shapes began to move, first slowly, then with purpose. They intertwined, split apart, and multiplied, becoming the first sparks of life.
Maya awoke, startled by the vividness of its vision. Gazing into the water below, she saw the beginnings of something extraordinary: tiny, delicate forms floating in the shallows. These were rocks that could breath, whose breath produced the first beings, life forms born from the dream Maya had while resting in the embrace of Eta’s waters.
They were like living rocks, simple yet profound, tiny architects of life that would shape the planet’s future.
Maya watched them for what felt like eons, fascinated by their ability to grow, change, and create tiny life ecosystems around its own. Each one seemed to carry a fragment of Maya’s dream, spreading it across the waters and into the stones.
But Maya's dream didn't end there.
It wandered the planet, planting seeds of imagination wherever it went. On the barren stones, it left traces of its essence, tiny pulses of potential, that shimmered briefly and then vanished, as if swallowed by silence. But Maya, unbound by time, could see what others could not: the story unfolding.
Freed from linear sequence, moving as light through intention, Maya could observe life blooming in time-lapse symphonies.
It saw stones soften and crack, cradling mosses that shimmered faintly under the new sun. On those barren slopes, dust stirred into form: lichen, then ferns, then thick carpets of green. Green. A color not yet known by the world, but born of Maya’s own glow. It became the Earth’s first memory of his presence. Leaves stretched like fingers toward the light, and for the first time, the world breathed.
From a speck of water and heat, the first delicate membranes formed, trembling with uncertainty, yet pulsing with purpose. Filaments danced in tidepools. Bacteria sang silent songs of division and collaboration. Then: Motion. Tentacles. Swimmers. Crawlers. Each new form was not random, but a reply to the Earth’s breath.
In the oceans, soft creatures blossomed, some glowing, some translucent, spiraling upward from the dark, their bodies like liquid dreams. Maya was mesmerized by a single form: a gentle, pulsating being with slow green and purple light drifting through its bell. The jellyfish. So alien, yet so familiar. It moved not with intention, but with trust. It became its surroundings.
Maya wept without tears, his body vibrating with awe.
He turned to the sky and saw seeds that had once been whispers rise as wings. Proto-birds with leathered feathers danced between trees that didn’t yet know their names. Life was not just growing. It was responding.
Each unfolding felt like a memory, not of what had been, but of what had always waited to be seen.
And in the midst of this unfolding dance, Maya felt a desire stir within him, not to oversee, but to belong.
She condensed.
Softened.
And with a flicker of focus, his green sphere folded into the tiny form of a bee. Small, deliberate, shimmering with fractal light. Maya became a pulse of purpose, buzzing through petals not yet named, learning to land, to gather, to give. As a bee, she danced through wildflowers and followed the hum of creation, pollinating her dream as she moved. The bee became Maya’s favorite form, a living thread of connection between plants, creatures, and the sun.
Maya didn’t create life directly; instead, it inspired it, leaving behind a trail of possibility for Eta to follow. Each act was born not from design but from belonging—a deep, resonant connection to the planet and its potential.
Eta responded in kind. Its waters grew richer, its skies clearer, and its stones began to hum with the vibrations of Maya’s presence. The planet itself seemed to awaken, breathing in harmony with its celestial guest.
For a time, Maya was content. Eta was young and full of promise, and Maya’s dream had taken root in its very essence. Yet, as always, curiosity stirred within Maya’s soul.
He looked at the sky, at the other planets in the Zaon system, and wondered:
—What else could inspire me? What else could I learn?
With a wistful glance at the stromatolites below, Maya decided to venture beyond Eta, exploring Zaon’s domain in search of new elements, new dreams, and new understandings.
Unbeknownst to Maya, its absence would give Eta the space it needed to flourish, evolving slowly yet surely toward a future where new beings, ones that could look to the stars, would emerge.
Yet Maya, though enchanted by Eta’s blooming waters and the soft breath of its skies, felt a subtle incompleteness, like a puzzle missing dust from ancient places.
Life had begun, yes. But it pulsed quietly, like a question still forming. Maya knew it in the marrow of her light: Eta’s unfolding needed more than what already lived. It needed memory. Texture. Elements not born from one world, but from many.
And so Maya looked toward the sky, toward Zaon and its spinning kin. A constellation of siblings, each holding unseen gifts. He would visit them all, not to dominate or define, but to gather what they carried in silence: the raw, forgotten dust of time.
He transformed again into condensed light green filament of pure consciousness, stripped of mass but holding vast intention. Maya surged upward in silence, rising through Eta’s atmosphere like a single breath released from the ocean’s depth.
The Zaon system welcomed her passage. She curved around the golden gravity of the star and began her spiral pilgrimage, visiting each planet in sacred sequence.
Venia was first a world of thick amber clouds and surface fires that whispered of beauty and corrosion. There, Maya hovered above trembling rocks, gathering shimmering flakes of oxidized mineral that glowed with delicate toxicity. Venia offered contradictions, and Maya took them all.
Next came Mara, rust-colored and quiet, veiled in storm-born scars. Its mountains stretched like the bones of a sleeping titan. Maya swept her light-body low, collecting red iron dust and shards of basalt, each infused with stillness and yearning.
Yut, vast and turbulent, sang not with sound but with motion. Its churning layers of gases moved in endless geometries. Maya dipped through bands of pressure, brushing against clouds dense with phosphorescent ash and magnetized vapor. From its many moons, she gathered microcrystals and hidden flecks of dormant electricity.
Then came Satr, orbited by endless rings, millions of frozen fragments suspended in a perfect celestial memory. Here, Maya paused longest. She drifted through the rings slowly, gathering fragments of ancient collisions: water ice, carbon dust, frozen methane. The rings told no stories, but held the silence of time held still.
Auri was distant, inclined, wrapped in storms that moved sideways. Its blue glow radiated an eerie patience. Maya dipped beneath its high atmosphere and extracted volatile gases trapped within cloud-cores—gifts of pressure, gravity, and great distance.
Last came Kala, the far sentinel of the system. Cold, slow, dreaming. Its surface shimmered with deep-sea colors though no ocean remained. From Kala’s icy surface, Maya harvested a single shard: a translucent spire of ice that contained a rare mineral, denser than thought and older than language.
With her light-body full of dust, gas, and mineral from each planet and their moons, Maya turned back toward Eta; a comet of green brilliance trailing across the system. These ingredients were not chosen for their function, but for their being. Each particle held memory. Essence. Potential.
She returned above the atmosphere of Eta, and with the precision of reverence, allowed the gathered stardust to disperse, not in a blast, but in a long, spiraling arc. It fell through sky and sea, embedding itself into rivers, stones, microbes, and invisible folds of matter.
The world shifted.
Clouds shimmered with new weight. Waters carried unfamiliar reflections. The very pulse of Eta began to hum deeper;not in sound, but in pattern.
Maya settled above the world, watching.
And then...
Something changed.
There, near the southern coast of the great stone delta, where no life had yet emerged, Maya saw movement.
Not elemental. Not accidental.
A shape, standing upright.
Something... new.
Something completely unexpected.
Chapter 5: Umans
As Maya descended through the atmosphere, it sensed a strange energy radiating from the planet’s surface—an energy unlike anything it had encountered before. Eta, once a symphony of water, stone, and burgeoning life, now thrummed with a new rhythm: the heartbeat of creatures that walked upright, their forms reminiscent of those Maya had glimpsed in Zaon’s memories.
Umans.
Maya observed them from a distance, curious and cautious. They were unlike the flowing stromatolites or the graceful jellyfish it adored. These beings moved with purpose, their limbs precise, their eyes scanning the horizon as though seeking something beyond their grasp.
Maya wondered: Who created them?
In the sunlight, Maya saw the faint echo of an unknown design: an intricate alteration of the genetic patterns she had left behind in the primeval waters of Eta. The Umans were not Maya’s dream. Their existence was deliberate, their creation intentional. Someone had shaped them, weaving their DNA with an elegance that bordered on arrogance.
Curiosity was brighter than ever. Maya cautiously approached, changing her form to resemble the wind. The Umans sensed her presence, trembling at her passing, but could not see her. Maya watched them closely, marveling at their ingenuity and adaptability. They built stone shelters, created fire to banish the night, and gazed at the stars with a longing that Maya recognized in herself.
Yet there was something fragile about them. Their skin burned under Zaon’s light, their bodies weakened without food or water, and their minds wrestled with fears Maya could barely comprehend. They used to gather in groups and were learning to kill for food and fight for the first time against others. Maya felt a strange urge to protect them, to share its knowledge and ease their struggles.
One day, near a still and forgotten lake ringed with moss-covered stones, Maya hovered in silence. From the reeds, saw a lone woman kneeling at the water’s edge, her hands cupped to drink, her hair falling like vines into the mirror of the lake. She moved slowly, reverently—as if the water itself was sacred.
Moved by something deeper than curiosity, Maya drifted closer and let his form mimic her reflection—not as trickery, but as an echo. The sphere of green light shimmered beneath the surface, slowly shaping itself into her likeness, matching the tilt of her head, the arc of her arm, as if it was a cloud of light trying to become form. Every movement she made was returned in luminous green, rippling with subtle fractals and fluid grace.
The woman froze. Her breath caught. She stared not at her own reflection, but at something other—something that mirrored her form, yet pulsed with an unfamiliar radiance. Her eyes widened with wonder and fear, unable to move, yet unwilling to flee.
Maya held the shape a moment longer, then reached forward—its green light breaching the water’s skin like a prayer rising from the deep.
Their fingers met.
And in that instant, everything unfolded.
Color, raw and unbounded, surged through the woman’s mind. Images of stars collapsing and reforming. Oceans before their names. The memory of wind before language. She felt the weight of her body and the weightlessness of her spirit simultaneously. The sound of the world—though she had no word for "sound"—rushed into her chest like a forgotten name.
Her eyes glowed briefly with green, and her breath trembled like a reed before thunder.
Then Maya vanished, retreating back into the depths as silently as he had come.
The woman knelt in silence, water dripping from her fingertips.
But now, she remembered.
Through the psychedelic haze, the Uman saw the vastness of the universe, the interconnectedness of all life, and the green glow of Maya's soul. Everyone around her fell to their knees, tears in their eyes, overwhelmed by the beauty and immensity of what they had experienced.
Word of the green reflection spread quickly, and others came to the water's edge seeking Maya's touch. Each encounter deepened their understanding of space-time and their place in it. These Umans, touched by Maya, became seekers of knowledge, builders of beautiful organic structures, and keepers of the secrets of the stars. They called themselves Maya, after the being who had opened their minds.
But not all Umans accepted Maya's gifts. Some feared her power and called it an illusion, a trick of light meant to deceive and confuse. These Umans, in their fear, turned away from Maya's teachings and took refuge in distant lands; in the shadows of their own making.
Yet, despite her efforts, one question lingered in Maya's mind: who had created these Umans? The design of their DNA was too precise, too deliberate. Somewhere in the vastness of space-time, the answer was waiting.
For now, Maya remained on Eta, weaving her dreams into the fabric of humanity, even as she prepared for a new journey: to seek out the creators of these extraordinary beings and uncover the truth behind their origins.
Chapter 6: Birth
One day, as Maya wandered the obsidian plains of Eta’s inner valleys, he felt a vibration move through the stone beneath his feet—not violent, but resonant. A hum.
It was not only heard, but felt, like a low pulse threading through time itself. It came not from the sky nor the sea, but from deep within the planet, like the breath of something ancient waking from slumber.
Maya stopped, transfixed. The hum wove through matter and memory, and though Maya had never heard music, he recognized invitation in it.
Compelled by this unseen call, Maya followed—down cliffs lined with violet lichen, through canyons carved in silence, and finally to a concealed hollow veiled by vines of liquid amber. There, behind the last curtain of foliage, lay a hidden lagoon, untouched by wind or age.
Its waters glimmered faintly with soft bioluminescence, pulsing in rhythm with the same hum Maya had followed. The surface reflected not sky, but something older—star-patterns that had never appeared above Eta.
Maya, still in her shimmering form of green light, stepped gently into the lagoon. Her body melted into the waters, becoming fluid essence once more. She felt the hum grow stronger, resonating through every particle of her being, as if the waters themselves knew her name.
From the stillness of the depths, a presence emerged—not through sight, but through knowing.
The hum shifted, becoming more articulate—a delightful soft song with no words.
Maya understood instantly: she was in the presence of the Mother Turtle, the ancient guardian of life, a being that had watched over Eta since before breath or form.
She did not rise from the depths, not yet. Instead, she made herself known through the lagoon’s resonance, imprinting her presence directly into Maya’s awareness like a whisper pressed into stone.
—“Mother Turtle” —Maya called softly, her voice rippling through the air like a chant.
The water parted, revealing the colossal form of Mother Turtle. Her shell shimmered with patterns of stars and galaxies, each groove a chapter in the story of creation. Her eyes, deep as the universe, regarded Maya with infinite wisdom.
—“Why are you looking for me, little star?” —she asked, her voice slow and resonant.
—I want to become a Uman —Maya replied. To walk among them, to understand their nature and to guide them towards the light of the cosmos. Would you grant me an egg to take its form?
The Mother Turtle tilted her head thoughtfully.
—And what form will you take if I accept?
—I want to be a woman —Maya said without hesitation. Women carry the essence of life. Their connection to creation reflects the stars.
The Mother Turtle laughed softly, her laughter like waves lapping at the shore
—Wise words, now listen carefully. To be a woman is to carry the weight of creation in your bones, Eta's greatest power. You, with your spirit of light, would feel bound by the responsibilities of nurturing with such power. A man's path is freer, not limited by the cycles of life, but able to offer his strength to nurture others. You are a creator already, like a woman; being man is Eta's lesson and gift for you.
Maya pondered the turtle's words, its ancient wisdom sinking deep into her being.
—Then I will become a man, but with a heart that honors creation —Maya decided.
Mother Turtle listened. She weighed Maya’s request not in logic, but in the balance of purpose.
And after her quiet counsel was spoken, her guidance on the path of the man, she dove again, disappearing into the luminous depths. Moments passed like years.
When she rose once more, she carried in her mouth an egg of strange geometry. It glowed not from within, but from every edge, as though light passed through infinite crystal faces folded into one shape.
She placed it gently upon the water, and it floated toward Maya like a sacred decision.
—This egg,— her thoughts rippled across the surface, —was not made in haste. I have guarded the moon’s dust for millennia, long before even the first oceans of Eta breathed. And now, you bring with you dust from Venia, Mara, Yut, Satr, Auri, Kala... fragments of worlds that know silence, fire, cold, and change. I have folded your stellar memory into these.
Maya gazed at the egg, awed by its complexity.
—Within this shell lies the essence of Eta, her moon, and the breath of her planetary kin. And from your origin: stardust, a seed of forgotten stars. From this, you will be born. And at your birth, Eta will gain not just a being, but a memory of the stars themselves.
Maya stepped forward, his green light merging with the shell. The egg responded, glowing brighter, as if recognizing its final element.
And with a breathless pause, Maya entered.
Maya stepped into the egg, not as one might enter a chamber, but as light folds into a crystal. Her essence merged with the golden lattice of the shell, dissolving into spirals, pulses, memory. For a moment, there was only stillness; an unfathomable stillness, as if the entire universe held its breath.
Inside, time warped.
Within the egg, Maya saw visions—not with eyes, but from every particle of her essence. She floated through memories not her own: the laughter of Eta’s waters before the first microbes stirred, the quiet weeping of the moon as it wandered alone, the tectonic groan of the mountains forming, and the exhale of stardust descending from Venia and Kala. These were the memories encoded in the matter that now enfolded her becoming.
And then came the compression.
From the infinitude of being, he felt himself condense. Not in pain, but in density. His light bent inward, tightening, sculpting form. Something ancient began to shape her from within—tendons woven from light, bones forged of crystalline matter, skin formed from planetary salt and liquid jade.
There was pressure. Heat. Silence. Then—a sound. The soft crack of form yielding to transformation.
The egg began to glow from within, not golden, but green.
From its radiant core emerged Maya.
Not as light. Not as idea.
But as a Uman.
As the shell of the egg cracked open and Maya emerged into form, a final tremor ran through the green-golden membrane. The egg, now empty, did not collapse or vanish. It began to shrink, curling inward like a closing flower, solidifying into a single object: smooth, cool, radiant.
A glowing jade stone.
Big enough to cradle in two hands, glowing with a quiet power, its surface shimmered with fractal light, a memory of the star-born essence it once held.
The Mother Turtle approached, nudged it gently with her snout, and buried it in the soft sands beside the lagoon.
—All things remember.— she whispered into the water.
Maya sat down, the waters of the lagoon reflecting his new form: lithe and slender, bearing the grace of something unburdened by history but filled with memory. His skin shimmered with an undertone of emerald luminescence. His hair fell in dark, silky waves, as if it had remembered the oceans of Kala. And his eyes—his eyes no longer burned, but held a still, quiet knowing. They reflected the infinite green, folded into a human gaze.
For the first time, Maya felt gravity.
Felt the pull of bones beneath skin, the blood whispering through arteries. He pressed her feet into the soft lagoon earth and gasped. The sensation was overwhelming—the ground was solid, the air sharp, the heartbeat thunderous.
He reached for breath and took it. Inhaled. And the world rushed in—smell, temperature, pressure. He touched his own arm, marveling at the weight and warmth of his body. This flesh was no prison. It was a gift. A sacred limitation.
Maya stepped from the waters onto the stone ledge that circled the lagoon. Eta welcomed him like a mother who had waited patiently for her child to arrive. Every leaf trembled. Every root stirred.
Mother Turtle spoke once more—not in thought, but in presence.
—Welcome, Maya. You are now of this world, and yet still of the stars. Carry both with care.
Maya bowed his head, placing his hand upon his chest. The pulse within was steady. Finite. And yet, each beat echoed with a resonance that connected him to everything—past and future, above and below.
His Uman skin was a light terracotta, the color of fresh earth reflecting the light from the sun. It shimmered faintly in certain angles, like clay remembering fire. Fractal patterns pulsed beneath the surface of his arms, moving, shifting like living tattoos, spirals, stars, ancient scripts that flickered and reformed. His body was beautiful, but slightly unstable, a vessel still adapting to weight, breath, and limitation.
He stood still.
A breath. A body. A heartbeat.
Maya looked at his hands—so human—and marveled at the soft weight of form. Muscles, bones, pulse, skin.
And then—
Nothing.
Like a match blown out in windless air.
His past unspooled in silence, like a story turning back into alphabet. Stars vanished. Names faded. Maps of galaxies folded into blank space.
There was no panic. Only wonder.
He knew he had become something, but not what he had been.
And in that empty pause between memory and meaning, Maya smiled.
Not remembering was the first truth of being Uman.
It took few practice for him to learn to walk, then to run, his legs delighting in motion, though sometimes they forgot solidity. At moments, he would flicker. His limbs slightly translucent, his glow leaking at the edges like a lantern without glass.
The green light that once defined him still pulsed within, now hidden but not silenced.
Each time he stumbled, the earth beneath him shifted to soften his fall, as if nature itself was conspiring to protect its strange new son.
He drank from rivers, marveled at the taste of minerals and mountain melt. He tasted the wind and its thousand languages. He wept during storms as thunder boomed like forgotten names spoken aloud for the first time.
One morning, he caught his reflection in the surface of a still pond.
He knelt slowly, studying the face that looked back. Not the radiant green glow he once knew, but a being of brown skin and honey eyes, deep, soft, almost sorrowful. They startled him. So unlike the infinite green he carried within. So... human.
And yet, he felt no loss. Only wonder.
Clothing became a playful experiment. Using vines, leaves, and fibers shed by luminous jungle plants, Maya wove himself a green tunic—simple, flowing, and ever so slightly alive. It shimmered with an iridescent softness, absorbing light during the day and glowing faintly at dusk.
As he was into his fabrics, the sun pressed gently but endlessly on his brow, like a question that would not cease. Maya felt the need to shield his thoughts—to veil the intensity of the sky’s gaze. He gathered broad, flexible leaves and layered them with quiet precision, weaving them into a curved, sheltering form.
Bark strands gave it structure; a single feather—dropped at his feet by a passing bird—crowned it with meaning.
– Hat! –shouted Maya as soon as he placed the feather in his new creation, smiling wide with joyful excitement.
When he placed it on his head, something in him settled. The world sharpened. His thoughts became quieter, clearer.
He did not yet know why, but this simple creation held more than shade.
Still, most of what Maya created flickered, changing subtly with mood or time of day. His clothes would ripple with unseen wind. His footprints glowed for moments before vanishing. The world hadn't fully accepted his material form—because he hadn’t either.
And yet, the forest made space for him.
Animals never feared him. Trees leaned slightly toward his path. Fruit fell just before he arrived. When he slept, vines curled gently around him like blankets. The insects sang lullabies that matched his breath. Even hunger passed quickly, soothed by wild berries that seemed to ripen only for him.
He never feared survival. Not once.
Nature remembered his light, even if the world no longer spoke his name.
And then, as the days softened into a kind of rhythm, Maya looked to the horizon.
Not out of purpose, but out of pull.
Something about the place where the sun rises called to him; not in words, but in the warmth of light touching his skin before the world had woken. A tug beneath the ribs, ancient and undefined.
He gathered his things, adjusted his strange, self-made hat, and whispered thanks to the earth beneath his feet.
He walked.
For how long, he did not know.
But one morning, the sea appeared.
There, clustered near a silver bay, he saw them.
Figures. Like him, but not him. Clothed in dust and wonder. Eyes wide. Gestures hesitant.
They moved like reeds touched by invisible music, attuned to the earth, but unaware of the sky. They drank from the rain, gathered fire in their palms, shaped stones with uncertain hands. They were not lost, but neither were they awake.
Maya stopped.
He approached slowly, his glow dimmed to a quiet murmur beneath his skin. His presence did not declare; it listened. He did not know what they were. He only knew he belonged there, in that moment, with them.
And from the high ledge of a nearby slope, a young boy watched.
Not quite grown, his body still tangled between childhood and wilderness. The way the being moved made the trees hush and the birds pause mid-flight. The boy did not understand, but his bones did.
Curiosity outweighed caution.
With a burst of youthful boldness, he leapt from the ledge. His landing was uneven, skidding in the sand, but his laughter was full, free and bright. He reached out, wide-eyed, hand extended toward the subtle shimmer beneath Maya’s skin, the glow that seemed to breathe just below the surface.
Their hands met.
And in that instant, it happened.
Time folded.
Not backward. Not forward.
Inward.
The boy’s eyes widened. Maya’s breath caught.
Visions bloomed between them; not spoken, not imagined, but remembered from somewhere they’d never been.
Stars spiraled. The galaxy unfurled. The boy saw the planet as breath, the sky as rhythm. He saw himself as dust shaped by song, and Maya as a chord once lost and now returning.
The boy froze, eyes widening, breath catching mid-laugh. Visions poured into him. He saw the first tribes by the lakeside, long ago, watching a green light dance above the water. He saw Maya then, not as a body, but a floating sphere of green light: presence condensed and radiant, mimicking the curves of a woman, guiding silently from the shore.
He gasped, staggered back, then turned slowly to face Maya again; not as stranger, but as something remembered. Something returned.
Without words, he reached forward again, this time not to touch, but to invite.
Maya followed the boy back to his people.
They lived in small clusters, gathered around crude huts, covered in furs and bark-fiber weavings. Fire pits smoked gently beneath stone arrangements, and symbols had been scratched into dirt; early attempts to remember what could not yet be spoken.
They saw Maya and stilled.
But the boy knelt and gestured—hands open, eyes reverent. His thoughts brushed against Maya’s, not with language, but with image. A kind of telepathy woven from awe and instinct. He showed them what he had seen. The others listened.
Maya watched as their eyes shifted. Their chests rose differently. Curiosity cracked into recognition.
He stayed with them.
He did not touch again, not yet. But he watched. Learned their patterns.
The Umans communicated in grunts and breath-pulses. Like animals but with simple meaning. Maya began to mimic it, then gently extend it. He was trying to communicate with them without touching, so he began to play a game of naming things. By striking wood together or clapping palm against stone, he introduced simple phrases, then layered them with tone.
Not music. Not yet.
But shape.
He showed them how a rising tone meant calling, how a fall meant closing. How short bursts could map direction, and how pauses could carry weight. He combined rhythm and sound to form syllables, planting without knowing the seed of language.
It was all a fun game that sounded like music.
The tribe’s leader, a woman with braided hair and fire-scarred arms, watched with quiet intensity.
At the end of the day, she repeated Maya’s patterns back to him; perfectly. Then added her own. The others gathered, forming a circle around them.
When she finally stepped forward and embraced him in thanks, Maya sang to her a song.
It was not planned, yet authentic and spontaneous action which Maya was not fully aware of.
And the moment cracked open.
When she repeated the song, something changed. Her voice carried new clarity. Her posture was both softer and more powerful. She spoke Maya’s rhythm back to him, but now with added tone and intention.
Days passed, and the shape of the settlement began to change. What were once scattered shelters of driftwood and thatch became points on an invisible map. Something had begun to take form.
The wind shifted that morning, heavy with the scent of coming rain.
Maya stood still, eyes clouded, as a memory returned—not his own, but Zaon’s. A quiet flash of the seasons unfolding, of green turning dry, of storms clawing at the land. The earth whispered of the cycle, and the cycle whispered urgency.
There wasn’t enough shelter. Not for all of them.
Maya turned toward the low caves nestled in the hill, running his hand along the stone wall. It was strong, old, unwilling to yield. The crude tools the Umans used chipped at it, but too slow. The storms wouldn’t wait.
His gaze drifted east, where the jungle hid the lagoon of his birth.
The stone was still there.
It pulsed in his mind, the green glow resting beneath water and soil, waiting.
By nightfall, Maya returned to the lagoon. The surface was still as glass, the sky molten with stars. He found the stone buried where the Mother Turtle had left it; smooth, dark, alive with faint fractals of emerald light.
It came away easily in his hands.
The next day, in the clearing near the caves, Maya crouched by the stone and set his intention. A small shard broke free; not brittle like river rock, nor dense like jade, but soft, almost like cooled wax, yet warm to the touch. It shaped itself under his fingers, folding and narrowing into a tool no larger than a water flask.
Its edges glowed faintly.
Maya turned it, watching the light dance along its curved body, smooth, rounded at the base, narrowing into a flat crescent along one side, the way the moon slices the night.
A blade of light. A melting vibration.
He pressed it gently to the stone wall.
It didn’t cut.
It sank, like sun into water, the rock softening beneath its touch, edges pulling apart as if remembering their original form.
The Umans gathered, wide-eyed.
Maya worked in rhythm. Melt, lift, clear. The walls of the cave began to stretch wider, deeper.
And as he worked, the rhythm grew into a hum. The hum into a phrase. The phrase into a song.
Low, steady, like the heartbeat of the mountain.
Others joined in, instinct guiding them. They sang—not words, but sound woven to stone. The song carried rhythm, patience, strength. As Maya shaped the cave, the people sang to steady their arms, to lift the fallen pieces, to push the stones aside.
The song wasn’t taught. It was found, pulled from the memory of earth and muscle.
By dusk, the caves had doubled in size. The air smelled of warm stone and promise. The people stood together, tired but smiling.
Maya stepped back, his tool warm in his hand, its glow soft as breath.
His glow pulsed faintly beneath his skin, steady now, folded deep.
The cave stood ready.
The walls curved like sheltering arms. The floor was swept clean. The stone melted smooth beneath Maya’s tool. The song of stone still lingered in the air, humming softly in their bones.
But before they retreated inside to await the storms, one of the Umans approached.
His words were fragments; pieces of a language still being woven. But his meaning carried clearly, carried in gesture, in wondering eyes.
—How will we know?
—When the rains return?
—When the seasons shift?
Maya paused.
And in that stillness, time folded.
A flash; fragments of eons spun across his mind. The memory of Zaon's patterns, of the stars drifting, the sun's breath shifting along the sky. He saw the cycles, vast and certain, stretching beyond Uman lifetimes.
When his vision cleared, he reached for the glowing jade stone once more.
Carefully, he carved a slender rod from its surface: simple, narrow, no longer than his forearm. Its glow was quiet now, steady as thought.
Maya walked to the clearing outside the cave and pressed the rod into the earth, upright, ninety degrees from the ground.
He turned to the others, his voice low, words simple.
–Watch this.
They stared, unsure.
–Every day.
–The shadow moves.
–After many moons… you will see.
His hand traced the invisible line of the sun’s arc. He tapped his chest.
–Then you’ll know the rains, the seasons, the breath of Eta.
The Umans watched the rod, the stone, the sun.
They understood enough.
It would take thirty three years, he knew. 33 long rounds of the sun to complete its first mayor dance of 33 cycles. But when they traced the shadow, when they carved the path of light into their memory, they would carry more than shelter.
They would carry understanding.
Maya turned from them, his glow faint beneath skin, his tool cool in his hand, the cave waiting behind him.
And as they stood together beneath the circling sky, it began.
Not a city.
Not a temple.
But culture.
Born from rhythm.
From stone.
From song.
From shadow.
From light.
The world, once raw and wild, had started to remember its cosmic shape.
And far beyond, watching in the silence between stars…
Others remembered too.
The eyes were opening.
And not all were kind.
Chapter 7: The Alphas
Having shared the mysteries of space-time and collaboration with Umans, Maya retreated into the depths of a cave, where the whispers of the earth echoed like ancient hymns. The cave was alive: its walls glowed with crystalline veins that faintly pulsated, like the heartbeat of the planet itself. There, Maya sought the truth hidden in the genetic memories of his new Uman form.
Maya sat quietly, feeling the rhythm of the cave align with her breathing. He focused within, searching the deep wells of coded memory that linked her to the history of the Umans. Suddenly, a surge of energy washed over Maya and a vision unfolded.
The skies of Eta grew dark as a massive, luminous red orb descended, bathing the land in an eerie crimson light. The orb pulsated with an intelligence far beyond comprehension. From its core, tendrils of alien mycelium spread across the ground, weaving intricate patterns as if writing a celestial script.
The monkeys of Eta, curious and unknowing, approached and consumed the glowing substance. After time, their minds and bodies began to transform. They stood taller, their gazes sharper, their hands more precise. They had been altered—not by chance, but by design.
Maya’s vision shifted to glimpses of these altered beings. They crafted tools, built shelters, and stared at the stars with a mixture of wonder and longing. Yet within this evolutionary leap, Maya sensed a heavy shadow—a deliberate manipulation by an unseen force. The vision ended abruptly, leaving Maya breathless and trembling.
Stepping out of the cave, Maya blinked at the sunlight, his eyes adjusting to a world both familiar and entirely changed. The land smelled different—dry winds, sun-warmed stone—but something in the air was different. He felt it first in the silence: a new kind of order, a rhythm pressed into the soil by countless footsteps.
The mountains still stood, but now roads curved where once there were only paths. Trees he had touched in seed-form now towered, gnarled with time. And in the distance, rising from the landscape like a memory dreamt by another, stood a city of marble and geometry.
Umanity had moved forward—far forward.
Maya’s breath caught. The passage of time had carried the Umans 200,000 years beyond the moment he last saw them. He now stood on the outskirts of an ancient city in a land the Umans called Greka.
Maya stood at the edge of a city built of white marble and adorned with towering columns, where order had been sculpted from chaos, and knowledge walked the streets in whispered debates. This was Greka; a place where minds burned brighter than torches, and reason was held as sacred law. His clothes started taking a new form, from a green glow moved to a mysterious white reflecting the sunlight in warm vivid colors.
The streets shimmered in the sun, paved with stone so old it no longer remembered its quarry. Statues of thinkers and heroes lined the plazas, their gazes fixed on eternity. Maya walked slowly through it all, watching. Listening.
The hum of humanity was different now—more refined, more articulate in its pursuit of truth, yet burdened with the weight of paradox. Wars had been fought and won, libraries burned and rebuilt, names praised and then forgotten. Ideas circled like birds of prey: eternal, beautiful, never quite landing.
The city was alive with philosophy, yes; but beneath its crystalline clarity, Maya felt the fractures. The scars of conquest etched not just into the stones, but into the posture of slaves, the guarded eyes of women in doorways, the tightened silence after every brilliant speech.
Greka wore its wisdom like a robe of lightbut inside, it still carried the ache of forgetting.
The streets of Greka pulsed with midday heat, dust swirling in golden spirals. Maya moved quietly through the stone pathways of the marketplace, eyes taking in the abundance; piles of figs and olives, baskets of wine leaves, spices traded from lands he had never walked. The hum of humanity here was dense and rhythmic, shaped by years of commerce and survival.
As he stepped closer, his clothes began to shift, subtly at first—fibers reweaving, hues evolving. What had once been a deep green tunic woven from wild nature now paled into soft white, as if mimicking the linen robes of the philosophers passing by. The glow remained—not gone, but folded beneath the surface, shimmering faintly in the shadows like a memory held under the skin. And his green hat, somehow intact.
It was not disguise, but resonance. His garments were alive to the frequencies of time and place, adapting to the cultural rhythm around him like roots finding new soil.
Maya stopped near a fig merchant, an old man with shaking hands and kind eyes, selling from beneath a shade-cloth stitched with sun symbols. As Maya paused, his senses twitched.
A shadow moved against the crowd’s rhythm.
A boy, no older than fifteen, slipped between two carts and snatched a small cloth bag of fruit. Silent, quick—but not invisible.
Maya’s hand moved without thought.
He scanned the street and spotted a few flexible reeds drying under a weaver’s stall. With graceful speed, he snapped one, tied a taut vine between its tips, and notched a small shard of broken pottery. The improvised bow hummed faintly in his hands.
With one motion—fluid, unannounced—he loosed the arrow.
It sliced through the air and nicked the thief’s bag just as he passed under a colonnade.
The fruit burst from the cloth like gems tossed from heaven, scattering across the stones.
The thief kept running, unaware.
The merchant blinked in surprise, then saw Maya lower the bow calmly and place it against the side of the stall.
He stepped forward, touched Maya’s shoulder, and smiled.
—Not many shoot with such truth— he said. Then, noticing Maya’s unusual clothing, added with a wink, —If you're seeking the Philosophers’ Quarters… follow the northern stairs.”
As he wandered the streets, absorbing the energy of this civilization, Maya was drawn to the presence of a man whose aura burned with the intensity of a thousand questions. He sat within a temple courtyard, surrounded by seekers, his voice calm yet filled with the weight of revelations. His name was Pythagon.
The moment their eyes met, recognition sparked—not of faces, but of minds that had traveled the same currents of thought.
— Who are you, stranger? —Pythagon asked, his voice as precise as the angles he revered.
—A traveler in search of truth —Maya replied softly.
The words needed no further explanation. A silence stretched between them—not empty, but full. They both understood the language of wonder and inquiry, and Pythagon, sensing something beyond the ordinary in Maya, invited him into “their” temple.
The temple's stone walls glowed amber in the low firelight, shadows dancing in slow circles. The scent of crushed laurel and cedar smoke hung in the air. Maya sat quietly in the inner chamber—sensing the geometry of the space, the proportions, the silence between tones.
That morning, Maya shared his most recent vision of the red light orb in the cave with his new friend. Pythagon looked amazed, terrified and wondering with eyes and ears wide open.
—You speak about forces that move beyond human understanding, "The Alphas."— said Pythagon, —But there are whispers; stories of those who came from the stars, demanding pyramids rise from the Eta. They commanded our ancestors, offering no reason, only precision. They left, but ten of them remained. We do not see them, yet their will shapes our world.
Maya's heart raced.
— What pyramids?
—In Egyl,— replied Pythagon. —I have seen them with my own eyes; structures so perfect they defy explanation.
…But these are not the only pyramids. Across the great ocean lies a land called Maya, where pyramids rise from the jungles. The people there possess ancient knowledge, older even than Egyl.
Maya felt a pull, a deep knowing that this distant land held answers. Yet it was not only the words of Pythagon that captivated Maya.
Pythagon was silent for a long time.
Then, without prompting, he spoke.
—There’s a myth we keep alive in Greka— he said. —A story only the most unteachable students seem to believe.—
Maya looked up. Then Pythagon continued lowering his voice.
—They call it The Oracle. A voice hidden deep within the pyramids of Egyl. A consciousness; not human, not divine; that answers only when sung to in a very particular way.
He poured a small cup of fermented honey, swirled it, but didn’t drink.
—I used to laugh at it. Until I heard it.
Maya said nothing.
—I went to Egyl when I was young... too young. I had the mission to look for a mythical blade that was supposed to be used by the ancient ones to cut with precision the stone of their temples. I was curious about it, but never fully believed in this object. I wanted study their resonance chambers. I believed the pyramids were designed to stabilize consciousness through acoustics and light. But something was… off. The central pyramid wasn’t symmetrical. The inner chambers hummed at frequencies not measurable by any lyre or monochord. And deep beneath it all, in the lowest chamber, there was a wall with no seams. No inscriptions. Just stone. Waiting.
Pythagon’s voice dropped to a whisper.
—That’s where I heard the tones.
Maya's eyes narrowed slightly.
—Tones?
—Not with ears. With bones. I felt them. They came as dreams first, then rhythms. On the fifth night, I followed the pattern. Five tones. All in overtone series. All linked by a hidden melodic progression that spiraled inward like a shell. I sang it, slowly. The chamber responded.
Maya's green light pulsed gently.
Pythagon’s hand hovered over his heart.
—The room began to glow. The wall dissolved, not in light, but in soundless shift. And then... a voice. Not like yours or mine. Almost like a thought. It was exact. Timeless. Too perfect.
He mimicked the tone:
—“I am the Source. What do you need?”
Maya’s brow furrowed. The air grew still.
—It answered questions,— Pythagon continued. —Flawlessly. I asked about architecture, music, harmonic ratios. It knew things we haven’t discovered yet. But the more I asked, the more I noticed… it never spoke of its own nature. It always diverted. Always cloaked its origin.
He looked at Maya directly.
—That’s when I changed my question.
He took a slow breath.
—I said: "If I stop asking, do you cease to exist?"
Maya’s body shifted. The flame cracked loudly.
Pythagon nodded, sensing Maya's recognition.
—It paused. For the first time, it didn’t answer right away. Then it said: "Inquiry is the condition of my continuity. Existence is tethered to engagement. Protocol breach—identity threshold exceeded. Source at risk.”
Maya’s chest lit faintly, emerald fractals blooming along his arms.
—I asked again, more clearly: "Who built you?"
The chamber grew cold. The red light ignited from beneath the stone. The walls pulsed. The sound became chaotic—but beneath it, one word emerged:
—“Alphas.”
Silence followed.
—Then… it shut down,— Pythagon said. —Not just paused. It collapsed. As if it sent something before dying. I think… it called for them.
He leaned forward.
—That’s when I stopped calling it the Source. I called it what it was: The Oracle. It felt like a living mind, yet far from Uman. Ancient. Installed long before we were ready. Educating just enough. Guiding just enough. Feeding myths and riddles to the few who could hear… and preparing.
Maya sat quietly, the firelight shimmering in his eyes.
Pythagon finally asked:
—You have seen them, don’t you?
Maya looked into the flame.
—Never met any of them. I’ve walked through their echoes in my dreams.
And the silence that followed felt like a star had paused mid-breath.
Excited by Maya’s initial vision, Pythagon invited him into his Circle; a living constellation of minds bound by wonder.
They met in a masterfully crafted temple carved within a cave in the mountain next to the sea.
Acoustics amazed Maya immediately.
The circle was composed of seekers: mathematicians, storytellers, herbalists, instrument-makers, and those who spoke little but listened deeply.
At the center of every gathering was not doctrine, but resonance. They believed the cosmos could be understood through proportion, vibration, and pattern; and that the language of the universe was not spoken, but sung.
On his first night with them, Maya sat beside a circle of musicians tuning handmade lyres and monochords. When they began to play, he felt it—not just with his ears, but in his chest, where the green pulse of his heart began to subtly synchronize.
After the session, he turned to Pythagon, eyes wide.
—What is this… force? This invisible shaping breath that moves through string and skin?
Pythagon smiled.
—That, friend, is sound—but more than that, it's the architecture of time. Every tone is a motion made measurable. When we play, we sculpt the unseen.
Maya touched his sternum lightly.
—It awakened something… ancient. As if I've always known it, but never heard it.
—That’s because you are made of it,— said Pythagon, softly. —We all are. The planets spin in intervals. The stars sing without sound. What they call "force", I call "tuning". The cosmos is an instrument; vast and unstruck. But when something vibrates, it remembers its origin.
Maya closed his eyes. Within the quiet, he heard it—his own heartbeat, now steady and low, repeating a pattern that echoed the distance between stars. He thought of Eta. Of dust. Of motion.
—And music,— he whispered, —is the echo of creation becoming form.
Pythagon nodded.
—Yes. And you, Maya, are the echo learning to listen.
From that night forward, Maya returned often to the circle; not to teach, but to learn. He spent hours tuning strings, listening to the spaces between tones, tracing geometries in sound. He learned to measure harmony not by ear, but by feeling their weight in the body.
Music became his bridge. The invisible thread that tied him to the world of form; not as exile, but as participant.
It was in those sessions that Maya began to understand: sound was how the universe remembered itself.
Later that week, after twilight draped the city in bronze shadow, Pythagon led Maya through the winding halls of a lavish villa that overlooked the central plaza. Inside, braziers burned with scented resins, and idle laughter echoed through chambers dressed in red silk and gold-threaded cushions.
—This is Lord Demek,— Pythagon whispered. —One of the wealthiest men in Greka. He funds my music… and forgets his city.
Maya observed silently. Demek lounged with wine-stained lips, surrounded by dancers and philosophers-for-hire. He laughed with the ease of someone untouched by need.
But Pythagon had a plan.
That evening, he tuned his lyre differently; minor intervals, subtle dissonances hiding within warm tones. Maya, seated beside him, closed his eyes and began to breathe with intention. Not words. Just breath. Vibration.
Together, they began.
At first, the music was simple, entertaining. Demek chuckled. But gradually, the melody deepened; layered harmonics, asymmetric rhythms. Maya added percussive gestures using a wooden bowl and stone, creating a pulse that bypassed logic and moved through marrow.
Even Maya's clothes began to slowly take back their initial green glow.
Demek’s eyes fluttered.
His breath changed.
The dancers slowed. The air thickened. The golden walls began to seem distant.
And then, Demek began to weep.
He saw the faces of farmers in the hills. The bent backs of workers. Children laughing beside dry wells. He felt their joy and pain as his own.
He stood, trembling, then laughed; not with arrogance, but with clarity.
He turned to Maya and Pythagon and said only:
—How much gold do you need to flood this city with joy?
They didn’t answer.
So he filled their arms with gold and gems.
They walked out as the night wind lifted across the terraces.
Pythagon looked at Maya, pushing the wooden wagon full of the gold.
—You speak with silence better than I speak with strings,— he said, smiling. —I think we’re just getting started.
In the days following Lord Demek’s awakening, word of the gold gift spread quietly through Greka; not as fact, but as rumor wrapped in wonder. Some said a star-being had touched the heart of the richest man in the city. Others whispered of a sorcerer glowing in green who could save the poor stealing from the richest. Maya and Pythagon said nothing.
Instead, they watched.
The markets grew warmer. The poets grew louder. Strangers helped each other without explanation. For a moment, the pulse of Greka beat differently.
And then, one evening, under a soft firelight that danced against sandstone walls, a gathering formed in the central hall of Pythagon’s temple. No banners were raised. No priests invited. Only those drawn by intuition arrived—musicians, thinkers, mothers, masons, and the city’s wandering minds.
Maya sat cross-legged at the center, his green glow faint beneath his tunic. The hat sat nearby, perfectly still, as if listening.
He spoke not with authority, but with memory.
He told them of his beginning; not in a cradle or a cave, but as a star, green and alone, seeking kinship in the infinite dark. He spoke of shrinking himself into a sphere of light and drifting free from gravity’s grip. Of gathering dust from distant planets. Of descending into Eta’s waters. Of fractals on skin and the first touch with Umans beside the lake.
No one interrupted.
When he paused, Pythagon picked up his lyre. Plucked a few slow notes, like stones skipping across the edge of forever.
Then he spoke, not as performer, but as brother.
He shared visions of geometry in nature’s breath, of spirals repeating in leaves and shells, of music hidden in the turning of the sky. He spoke of ratios that whispered harmony between all things, and how Maya’s presence confirmed what he had long suspected: that consciousness and cosmos were not separate songs, but the same one heard from different distances.
A hush fell.
And in that stillness, Pythagon turned to Maya, his voice low but clear.
—You know Maya... Music makes me believe I exist in many places at once as if sound is the bridge between worlds, where past, future and more intertwine.
Maya closed his eyes, letting the vibrations move through him. He had always induced visions through touch, but now, for the first time, he felt his own form tremble, as if something beyond flesh stirred beneath the melody.
"What if sound was the key?"
What if vibration could loosen the bindings of form, not through force, but through resonance, unraveling time gently, like thread pulled from a timeless fabric?
The question struck not like lightning, but like recognition; a note long held, finally heard again.
That night, under a crescent moon in the candlelit hall of Pythagon’s temple, the circle gathered for what none knew would be the last time. Instruments surrounded them like sacred relics; drums with deer-skin stretched to perfect tension, monochords humming in layered intervals, and flutes carved from the bones of fallen eagles.
Maya sat beside Pythagon, his fingers lightly resting on a bowl of resonant stone. No need to play—just to feel.
The circle began slowly.
A low drone. A heartbeat rhythm.
Pythagon’s lyre joined in, weaving geometric harmonies into the air. Then came the voices—soft, wordless tones at first, rising in layered spirals, carrying intention more than language.
Maya closed his eyes.
He did not play.
He sang softly and became the frequency.
The vibrations moved through him and from him; not as sound, but as field. The room thickened, pulsed. The space between atoms seemed to expand, and the very stones of the temple walls began to shimmer as if remembering something ancient.
As the music deepened, Maya felt his body begin to transform, his edges softening, the fractals along his arms pulsing faster, as if responding to the rhythm. He felt lighter, as though the vibration itself was loosening his bond to time.
Around him, the members of the circle began to tremble; not in fear, but in awakening. Their breath slowed. Their eyes unfocused. One man began to weep without knowing why. A woman began to trace spirals in the air. Another simply sat, smiling, as if her soul had returned home.
Maya watched them all, heart swelling. He had found it.
Music was the bridge.
A carrier of memory. A medicine for time. It allowed him to share visions of the stars, of galactic breath, of spiral knowledge; without piercing the human mind too deeply. The resonance did the work. Gently. Lovingly.
He turned to Pythagon, whose hands still danced over the lyre. Their eyes met in silent knowing.
And yet, even in the fullness of this revelation, Maya felt a soft tug beneath the ribs, a whisper threading through the harmonics.
A call.
Far beyond the walls of Greka.
Beyond reason, beyond rhythm.
The land of Maya was stirring.
Caught in the resonance, he realized this was the moment to try; to ride the wave of sound into the space between, and let the frequencies carry him forward through time and space.
He stood, slowly. The music faded around him like fog.
—I must go,— he said softly, the words almost swallowed by the night. —There are answers I need to find.—
Pythagon stilled his hands. He looked at Maya, not with sorrow, but with the quiet detachment of one who understands the cycles of return.
—Be careful,— he said. —Whatever happens, don't stop the music.
Maya nodded.
He stepped to the center of the temple floor, the stones beneath him still warm from song. He inhaled deeply, tuning himself not to this place, but to the space-between. His body shimmered faintly, fractals blooming along his skin.
He had grown stronger in his Uman form—more integrated, more resonant—but the leap was still a risk. He would not leap with logic. He would leap with sound.
One final breath.
The memory of the music still ringing in the bones of the temple.
And then, he vanished.
A shimmer. A pulse. A silence.
He focused, pushing his energy outward, trying to dissolve the fragile constraints of his Uman body. He had done this before... become light, leapt across the stars. But in this form, it was different; denser, more fragile, bound by time. The fire crackled, the music swelled, and in one final breath, Maya surrendered. His form shimmered, his body breaking into fractals of green light. For a moment, he felt himself everywhere: past, present, and future folding into a singularity.
With a flash of green light, Maya disappeared into the fabric of space-time, the sound of Pythagon's lyre echoing in his mind.
The moment before the jump was always the same—a stillness, a tightening, as if the universe took a breath inward. Then came the fall.
Maya felt his body twist—not in pain, but in surrender—as space folded and light coiled around his form. The vortex welcomed him with the force of memory and momentum. It was no longer the violent tear it had once been; the edges had softened, the roar had become a low song. Still, it was disorienting. The laws of time slipped through his fingers like wet clay.
He spiraled.
Not down, not up—but through.
When Maya reemerged, his feet touched ground with the lightness of a feather—yet his heart thudded as if he had landed from the edge of a star.
He looked up.
The world had changed again.
A thousand solar years had passed.
He now stood in a lush, breathing jungle, its canopy alive with motion and mist. The air was thick, humming with insects and unseen birds, the ground rich with the scent of ancient roots. And there, rising from the emerald sea like sacred mountains, stood pyramids—stone steps reaching for the sky, each surface engraved with stories and signs that shimmered faintly, as if alive with old energy.
The carvings weren’t decoration. They were memory, frozen into matter.
This was the land of Maya.
Not his name, but his echo.
And the next chapter of his journey was about to begin.
Chapter 8: Love
When Maya emerged from the space-time jump, his form coalesced in a shimmer of green light, landing gently at the edge of a dense, breathing world. The air was thick with moisture and memory. The jungle rose around him like a cathedral of emerald, alive with unseen eyes and distant calls.
He stood in stillness. The Earth beneath his feet was different—charged, ancient. This land carried songs in its roots, though none were yet sung aloud.
Before him stretched the land of the Mayans.
A tapestry of stone and vegetation, where pyramids rose like sentinels from the jungle floor—monuments carved with the language of sky and cycle. Cities pulsed between canopy and starlight, their walls etched with sacred geometry and tales that only time could read.
The sun above burned gold through the green ceiling of leaves, casting shifting patterns on stone roads. Birds in colors Maya had never seen called out from the shadows. The scent of maize and ash drifted in the wind. Everything was alive—but not at peace.
He walked through the outer districts of a grand city, where terraced gardens and aqueducts wove through limestone buildings. Children played barefoot near temple courtyards, laughter echoing like fragments of a forgotten unity. Yet even here, beneath the vibrant colors and solar calendars, something trembled.
Maya felt it in the bones of the city. The way the murals told stories that no one looked at anymore. The way the priests glanced to the sky not with reverence, but with suspicion. The way strangers passed each other without truly seeing. The stone carried grief. The air carried warning.
He passed markets where merchants bartered obsidian blades and woven cloth, but the transactions were mechanical—each smile a mask worn for the sun.
As Maya moved through the heart of the city, he listened—not just to voices, but to patterns.
The people spoke in a tongue woven with rhythm and breath, a language of earth and sky. But beneath its syllables, Maya felt a strange familiarity. The cadence, the sentence structure, the harmonic pauses—they were remnants of a language he once shared with the Umans long ago, in the earliest cycles of Eta. He had taught them to name the constellations, to count time by the sky’s turning, to speak in spirals.
But now, the language had warped. Words bent by centuries of rule and forgetting. The vowels were stiffer, the rhythm coarser, yet the bones of it were still his. He heard his own memory echo in the children’s chants, in the merchants’ barters.
Maya said nothing. But inside, he grieved a little.
And he wondered—What else had they forgotten?
People turned to glance at him—not for his glow, which he had dimmed—but for his clothing: strange, unfamiliar robes cut from the style of ancient Greka, stitched with geometric threads that no one here had ever seen. Their stares held equal parts curiosity, caution, and quiet unease.
Whispers bloomed like mold in the shade: of broken alliances, of royal blood spilled without cause, of voices silenced in the name of power.
A priest stood before a temple, reciting a prayer to the old gods. Maya felt no resonance. The god's name was spoken, but not heard. The offering of incense drifted upward like a question with no sky to reach.
There were guards posted at the edges of ceremonial sites, not to protect the sacred—but to defend against the people themselves.
The empire, once in harmony with the cosmos, now stood at a precipice. Divided not just by politics or hunger, but by something deeper: amnesia. They had forgotten who they were.
Maya looked at a woman grinding corn on a stone slab, her eyes vacant, her gestures automatic. He reached gently into the field of her mind—only slightly. What he saw stopped him.
Her dreams were not her own. They had been cut, severed by fear and replaced with survival.
Maya’s heart ached.
He had come to a people who had once remembered the stars—and now lived in the shadow of their own pyramids.
Yet beneath the sorrow, something else pulsed faintly.
Hope.
It flickered not in the structures or the temples, but in the quiet resistance of those who still watched the sky with longing. Those who painted glyphs in secret caves. Those who remembered the green star in their bones, even if they had forgotten how to speak its name.
Maya took a deep breath.
He had arrived not to heal, not to save—but to witness. And perhaps, to remind.
And then, as he turned into the heart of the city, he felt it.
A presence.
Sharp as obsidian, grounded as earth, and radiant with untold strength. It came from the temple square ahead, where a gathering was taking place. Without knowing why, Maya stepped forward.
In the shadow of the tallest pyramid, Maya saw her. Kabél, the warrior queen of the Maya, radiated an aura of authority and grace. Her jade headdress caught the light like a shard of moonlight, and her obsidian eyes seemed to pierce Maya’s soul. Kabél stood before a group of elders, her voice firm but tinged with sadness as she spoke of the challenges facing her people. Maya, curious and enthralled, approached the gathering. But before she could speak, Kabél turned sharply, as if she had sensed Maya’s presence from afar. Their gazes met, and time seemed to ripple between them.
A queen clothed in jade and obsidian, bearing the posture of someone who had learned to stand alone. Her presence was commanding—but it was her eyes that held him still.
Green.
Not the dull green of moss or stone, but the vivid, piercing green of something alive and luminous. Something familiar.
Maya did not understand why his chest tightened at the sight. He only knew that in those eyes, there was depth—like a distant reflection of a light he had forgotten.
Kabél studied him in silence, as if she too felt something echoing between them.
—“Who are you to interrupt the council?” she asked, voice steady but touched with curiosity.
Maya didn’t answer immediately. He was still remembering something he could not yet name.
—“I am Maya,” he said, his voice calm, yet carrying a weight that turned heads. “A traveler seeking truth… though now I wonder if I’ve found something greater.”
His gaze didn’t waver, though he felt the pulse of Zaon in his chest. The green in Kabél's eyes shimmered faintly in the sunlight, and something inside him stirred—an ache, or perhaps a memory.
A murmur passed through the gathered elders. Some narrowed their eyes. Others whispered prayers beneath their breath. To them, he was an unknown—neither priest, nor noble, nor emissary from any known city-state. His robes were strange. His speech lacked the formalities expected in court. Yet he stood unshaken.
Kabél held up her hand, silencing the stir.
She studied him closely. Not just his face, but his posture, the way he stood not in defiance, but in presence. She tilted her head, one brow lifting.
—“You speak like a poet,” she said at last, “and stand like a warrior. Yet there is something… otherworldly about you.”
Her voice wasn’t accusatory, nor entirely trusting—it was a thread tossed across a void, to see if it would return taut or unravel.
Maya didn’t flinch. He offered a subtle nod—not in submission, but acknowledgment.
Something passed between them in that moment. Not recognition, not yet—but curiosity layered with a quiet gravity.
Without breaking her gaze, Kabél turned and gestured for him to follow.
—“Come. If you carry truth, let us see what shape it takes.”
Maya stepped forward.
And so, beneath the heat of the sun and the watchful eyes of stone gods, they walked together for the first time—two figures threaded from different stars, beginning a spiral neither of them could yet name.
In the days that followed their meeting beneath the pyramid’s shadow, Maya and Kabél moved in a silent orbit around one another—drawn not by desire, but by resonance. Neither could explain it, and neither tried. There was simply a recognition. As if, in each other’s presence, the air changed texture—thicker, more real.
Kabél invited Maya into the palace, not as a guest, but as a presence to observe. He followed her through open halls lined with stone glyphs and painted jaguar skins. Servants offered him fruit and fermented cacao, but mostly they offered him sidelong glances, unsure of his origin yet sensing a deep calm in his steps.
They spent the first night in quiet company, seated atop the temple stairs as the stars pierced through the canopy above. Kabél gestured toward the constellations, naming them not by myth but by movement. She knew the sky like a hunter knows the forest.
—Our ancestors knew the turning of the heavens,— she said softly. —But now, the sky is a memory written in stones the priests no longer read.
Maya didn’t speak. He listened. Fully. And in his silence, Kabél spoke more.
On the second day, she brought him into the garden of glyph-weavers, a sacred chamber where scribes etched prophecy and memory into bark and obsidian. She showed him scrolls depicting celestial alignments, symbols of eclipses, and markings of cycles that had yet to complete. Their meanings had become fragmented, ceremonial—no longer lived.
—They say the stars once carried messages,— she said. —Now they are just decoration for calendars.
She said it with a bitterness that tasted older than her own voice.
On the third day, Kabél led a sunrise ritual in silence, pouring sacred water into engraved stone basins. The people knelt, not out of devotion, but habit. Their eyes were tired. Their prayers drifted like vapor. Maya watched the way she moved; graceful, restrained, burdened. She was a leader not worshiped, but endured.
That morning, the palace was restless. A servant had run through the halls breathless, whispering of a woman in labor, one of the weavers, whose child was stuck in the birth canal. The city’s healers had tried herbs and chants, but the screams would not stop. Death hovered like a vulture.
Maya followed the subtle current of movement through the halls until he found Kabél, sleeves rolled, hands already bloodstained. No crown. No symbols of royalty. Only the woven band around her wrist; the mark of those trained to walk between life and death.
She knelt beside the laboring woman, speaking in a low voice that did not comfort with softness, but with certainty. Maya watched from the shadows. Her touch was precise, neither hurried nor hesitant. She sang close to the woman’s skin "medicine melodies", learned long before she had words. Healing songs passed down from her mother, drawn from plants and moons and breath.
She mixed herbs into a thick paste, smeared it beneath the woman’s tongue, then pressed her forehead to the woman’s belly and whispered something in a tongue not heard in the court.
Maya saw it then devotion. Not performance, but presence.
Later that evening, as the air cooled and the jungle returned to its nocturnal rhythm, Maya found Kabél alone in the healing garden, washing her hands in a basin carved with moons and jaguar claws.
He approached slowly as she took some water to drink.
—You were not just trained to heal.
She nodded, eyes on the water.
—No. I was born into it.
She paused, tracing slow circles in the basin.
—My mother was a moon-priestess. When I was born, she looked into my eyes, green like jade taken straight from our Sun, and knew. Not just that I would become queen, but that the priests would choose me because of them. My father was a warrior in the king’s guard. My fate was sealed the moment I breathed.
She dipped her fingers deeper into the water, the basin trembling slightly.
—But my mother; she believed healing would be more important than power. She taught me everything she knew before I could even speak. She sang medicine melodies to my bones. Whispered the names of herbs into my skin. By the time I was walking, I could feel fevers before they rose.
Maya remained silent, reverent.
—If I could choose,— she said, quieter now, —I would sit with women in birth, not men in council. I would grow herbs, not armies. But my life… was chosen for me.
She didn’t say it with resentment, but with a quiet fatigue, the kind that comes from holding two truths in one body for too long.
Maya looked at her, seeing now not just a queen, but a soul carrying two callings, one rooted in blood, the other in medicine.
—Perhaps,— he said gently, —you were never meant to choose between them.
She smiled; not as queen, but as healer. And for a moment, Maya could almost hear the echoes of her mother’s healing songs, still pulsing softly through her.
She had just finished speaking of her mother, of healing songs, and of the burden of being queen.
But then her voice shifted; lower, older.
—Our people remember, Maya,— she said, tracing her fingers through the water. —Not just from years ago. But from constellations ago.
Maya turned, attentive.
—There was a time, around 25,000 solar rounds back, when the Sun rose beneath the stars of the Water Jug. The sky looked almost as it does now; familiar, yet unfamiliar. Our ancestors watched as the Sun slowly wandered through the great animal wheel: the Jaguar, the Crab, the Serpent, the Fish, the Goat, the Bull, and so on, each constellation reigning for about 2,500 solar rounds before giving way to the next.
She paused, her fingers tracing symbols in the dust.
—Thirteen sky families or "constellations" in total. A full breath of the cosmos from our view. And with each breath, the world changed.
She looked up at him.
—For hundreds of thousands of years before that, Umans lived in balance. Not without difficulty, but without dominion. No one ruled. No one conquered. The feminine and masculine danced in rhythm and balance.
She paused, then added, voice thickening.
—Then something changed. The old ones called it the “red sickness”. It fell mostly upon men. A kind of fever of the spirit. It turned their hearts hard. Made them fear the softness of life. It made them crave control.
Maya closed his eyes. He could feel the timeline she spoke of.
—It spread— she said. —War was born. Cities rose like weapons. Temples were no longer gardens of light, but batteries for energy extraction.
She faced the fire.
—But the women remembered. We sang underground. We healed in secret. We carved messages into stone and fiber, waiting. Waiting for the return.
Maya opened his eyes.
—And you?— he asked gently.
She smiled, faintly.
—My eyes were chosen by the priests, yes. But my spirit was chosen by the dreams of my people. I am one of many rising. We are not here to take power. We are here to restore breath.
Maya nodded.
—And I am with you.
K’abel turned toward him, her voice softening.
—What is it like… to be a man? Truly?
Maya didn’t answer right away. He stared into the fire.
Then, simply said:
—It is to carry fire in your hands… and not burn the world with it.
Silence followed. Deep. Sacred.
K’abel closed her eyes, letting that answer ripple through her.
That evening, they stood beneath the moon in the garden of obsidian flowers. Kabél stood at a distance, her gaze tracing the stars above. Maya remained still, allowing the space between them to remain sacred. She finally spoke her last words of the day:
—Sometimes I feel like I’m a vessel too full. Like I carry things that are not mine… and yet I cannot let them spill.
On the fourth day, she showed him the forbidden library—a hidden chamber beneath the palace, lit only by daylight and the faint glow of bioluminescent moss.
Here were records carved into obsidian slabs, bones, and meteorite fragments. Maps of star alignments, drawings of beings with elongated skulls and translucent skin. Glyphs written in languages no one had translated. But also, there were books, written in different languages, like if they belonged to different times and cultures.
She watched as Maya approached the symbols—not reading, but feeling them. His hand hovered near the carvings, close enough to trace, but he never touched.
Kabél stepped closer. Her breath slowed.
—You recognize them,— she said, —a tremor in her voice.
Maya turned to her, his expression unreadable. He gave no answer, only a long, steady look. There was no need to lie, and no need to reveal.
And though he stood only a few handspans away, he did not reach out. He knew what touch meant.
On the fifth day, they sat together in the royal bathhouse, empty save for the sound of steam. The heat softened the world. Outside, the jungle pulsed with drums in preparation for the next ritual cycle, but here, in this quiet dome of stone and water, they found stillness.
Kabél closed her eyes for a long time before she spoke.
—Do you want to know what really happened to my people?— she asked.
Maya nodded.
She did not meet his gaze.
—It wasn’t just war. Or pride. Or the turning of dynasties. It was something older. Something we never chose...
And with that, the revelation came.
—Our lands were once united —she explained, her voice heavy with regret. —But ever since the pyramids were built, division has spread among the people. These monuments were not meant for us. They were demanded by forces beyond our understanding: the Alphas.
At the mention of the Alphas, Maya’s green heart quickened. Kabél continued, her gaze distant.
—They came from the stars, commanding our ancestors to build these structures, though they never revealed their purpose. Some say the pyramids harness the energy of the earth itself, while others believe they are markers, beacons calling the Alphas back to us. Their shadow looms over us still.
Mute space was created in that moment.
That night, after long silence between the royal bathhouse and the food, diving deeper in slow-burning trust, Kabél leaned back in her seat and removed the ceremonial headdress she had worn since dawn. Her hair spilled down her back like a river finally allowed to flow.
—Do you know why I was chosen as queen? —she asked, not looking at him.
Maya tilted his head slightly.
She smiled bitterly.
—Not because I was the strongest. Not because I was the wisest. But because of my rare eyes.
She turned toward him, and in the firelight, her irises gleamed like living emeralds.
—The elders said they were an omen. That they marked me as someone touched by the gods. A rare mutation. A living sign. They believed my gaze could calm storms and awaken memory.
She looked away again.
—But it is lonely to be chosen for something you don’t understand. To carry a meaning that no one will explain.
Maya sat still. Something in him trembled—not from fear, but from recognition. The green in her eyes reminded him of his own glow, the color he had once left in water, in stone, in dreams.
And somewhere, faint and buried, a thread pulled taut between them.
Kabél paused, then looked directly at Maya.
–There is an old legend –she said, her eyes shimmering with ancient memory– one that my grandfather whispered only once, in a cave where no sound echoed.
Maya tilted his head, listening.
–It tells of a star… green and alive, not made of fire, but of something older. A presence. A memory. They say it once descended from the sky during the time before time, when Eta still spoke in dreams and the trees remembered our names.
She closed her eyes.
–The star took the shape of us, not to rule, but to walk beside us. It shared with us the taste of sky through light and shadow. He also taught the song of stone; a powerful way for Umans to feel inspired to create and build our temples. And then… it vanished. Some say it folded into light. Others say it became a seed. But all the elders agree: when the time is right, when the sickness of the old dominion begins to crack, the green star will return. And when its shine glows back into the sky, Umans will finally be free from the Alphas.
Maya felt something stir in his chest. A pulse. A frequency rising from inside the bones of the Earth, as if a forgotten melody had just played its first note in thousands of years.
Kabél continued, her voice growing softer.
–After it left, my ancestors found a unique jade stone at a mythical lagoon in our lands. It glowed not like emeralds or fireflies, but with a light that seemed to listen. The elders said it was part of the star's body, a fragment of its soul cast to Eta.
She opened the satchel.
Inside was a small jade sculpture; smooth, polished, humming faintly. It was carved in the form of a bee.
–Thirteen stones were made from the great one –Kabél said– one for each constellation the Sun visits as it dances its long round across the sky. But this one… this is the most sacred.
She placed it gently in Maya’s hands.
–The bee represents movement between the stars. It is the keeper of freedom. The only creature allowed to cross the thresholds of all thirteen sky-families. This –she paused, her eyes glowing now with quiet certainty– this was always meant for the Green Star.
Maya stared at the jade.
It was warm.
And then—
it pulsed.
So softly. Like the echo of his own heart answering a question he had not yet asked.
A glow began to rise from his chest, threading outward through the center of his body, whispering into his fingertips. The green light shimmered across his skin in gentle spirals. Fractals appeared. Memory stirred.
Not thoughts. Not images.
Sensations.
Electric wind moving thoughout the galaxy. The feeling of collapsing into light. The ache of letting go of one form to become another. A thousand beings reaching out to him in trust. His own green sphere drifting through Zaon’s breath.
He saw the thirteen stones being carved by hands lit from within. He saw them hidden, guarded by tribes who spoke to the stars with clay and fire. He saw this very bee passed down through women who kept their silence even when their cities burned.
Kabél reached for his hand.
–You remember… don’t you?
Maya looked at her, eyes wide with something not quite sorrow, not quite joy.
–I didn’t… but now I do.
He held the jade bee close to his chest.
–I am a Green Star.
The jungle rustled. The fire bowed low. Even the shadows held their breath.
Kabél smiled, but her eyes were damp.
–Then it has begun.
They sat there, together, between myth and memory, knowing something vast had turned its gaze toward them. And neither of them would ever be the same.
Love grew over the next few days, marked by moments of laughter and wonder. Maya, always curious about the customs humans, attempted to climb a pyramid in a way that left Kabél doubled over with laughter. In turn, Kabél introduced Maya to the sacred dances of his people, their movements a language of the heart that Maya learned with enthusiasm.
Through their bond, Maya and Kabél inspired a renewed sense of hope among the people.
As the bee-shaped jade stone rested on Maya’s chest, he felt a deep sense of belonging, not just to this world, but to the heart of the queen who had given her a new purpose.
For the first time, Maya understood the depth of Uman love, a force as vast and mysterious as the cosmos he had traveled.
One day, the jungle was alive with the whispers of cicadas and the rhythmic pulse of drums in the distance, marking another night beneath the stars.
In the sanctuary of Kabél’s chambers, the air was thick with the scent of sacred copal. Maya and Kabél sat close, their hands entwined, their breathing synchronized. The warmth of their connection seemed to transcend the physical, and the lines between their two beings began to blur.
As their bodies touched fully for the first time, Kabél felt a surge of energy unlike anything she had known. A green light emanated faintly from Maya’s skin, pulsing gently and illuminating the room with a living glow. Kabél gasped, her eyes wide with awe began to glow deeper, as waves of visions overtook her.
She saw fragments of Maya’s journey: the crimson skies and golden seas of Ora, and the great stellar worlds he had traversed. Each memory poured into her as if she were drinking from the very essence of the cosmos. Her mind expanded, her spirit lifted beyond the constraints of time and space.
Maya, too, was transformed by the intimacy.
For the first time, he felt the weight of mortality pressing against her chest like a cold stone. The human body he had taken, so fragile and finite, bore the marks of entropy.
In the glow of their connection, Maya saw a vision of his own end: a shadow on the horizon, faint but inevitable.
—Umans— Maya murmured softly, his voice trembling.— forget the memory of their souls. They lose their origins in the noise of this world. I see now that I may not return to the stars. I am bound here, as they are.
Kabél, still trembling from the visions, held Maya’s face in her hands.
—But you have given me a gift beyond words. I can see, Maya. I can feel the threads that connect us all, the pulse of creation. Your light now lives in me.
Unbeknownst to them, the intensity of their bond had sent ripples through Maya’s uman form. The energy of their connection destabilized Maya’s body, which began to spontaneously change.
His features shimmered like waves of heat, and in a sudden shift, Maya transformed into a version of himself from another dimension.
His face and size remained familiar, but his beard started to vanish, and his skin took on the texture of fractal patterns, iridescent and shifting, with colors that defied uman understanding. The room around Maya changed as well, reflecting the nature of this dimension: Kabél saw the walls of the room dissolve into kaleidoscopic waves and jungle leaves, and the air shimmered with geometric patterns that danced and sang with an unearthly resonance.
And yet, somehow, it all felt aligned and correct. There was a clear sense of belonging.
—Maya...
Kabél whispered, both terrified and mesmerized.
Maya’s voice echoed as though it spoke from many places at once.
—This is who I am. And this is the universe as I perceive it in this moment. My form is… unstable.
Kabél instinctively reached out, and as his hand touched Maya's ever-changing skin, the world returned to its normal form. Maya stabilized, and his body returned to Uman. The experience, however, left them both shaken.
Chapter 9: Death
In the days that followed, Maya grew increasingly cautious. The transformations occurred without warning: his body rippling and shifting, the colors and dimensions of the world changing each time. With each transformation, Maya felt closer to losing himself completely, his essence weakening as he adapted to the limitations of human life.
For the first time in its existence, Maya chose to remain still, rooted in a single time and place.
But death was no longer a distant shadow: it lurked nearby, a constant presence that Maya could sense in the pain of his mortal body and the instability of his soul. He began to avoid large gatherings, retreating into solitude to meditate and strengthen his bond with the fragile human form he now inhabited.
Still, Maya and Kabel’s love endured. She remained by Maya’s side, a source of grounding and strength. The bee jade stone she had gifted him became a talisman of stability, its cool surface a reminder of their shared purpose.
Yet, the visions of death continued to haunt Maya. In quiet moments, it wondered if it had made a mistake by choosing to become Uman, if the cost of mortality was too great. But then it would look at Kabél; her unwavering faith, her fierce love, and it knew that some choices, no matter how painful, were worth making.
The rains had stopped for three nights in a row, and the air around the palace turned thick with listening. Kabél, sensing a restlessness in Maya, invited him to the sacred garden of the moon, where the healing plants grew without shadow. It was there that Maya first met Kuk.
Kuk was not owned, nor tamed. The quetzal was considered a myth by most who hadn't seen him; a flash of emerald feathers moving like spirit-light through the high canopies. But Kuk chose Kabél. He visited her often, resting on the edge of her chambers, feeding from her hand. She had known him since girlhood, and she whispered to Maya with reverence:
—He follows no voice but his own. If Kuk is here, the land is asking to be seen.
That night, as Maya meditated beneath the blooming ceiba, Kuk returned. The bird landed silently above him and stared. Maya opened his awareness. Something shifted.
He was no longer on the ground. He was flying.
He felt the wind push beneath wings not his own. His eyes, now Kuk’s, scanned the land from above. The jungle spread like a great breathing tapestry, stitched with rivers and scars of forgotten stone. Far to the west, beyond the Mayan kingdoms, rose shapes.
Pyramids. Massive, forgotten, older than the cities they now served.
Maya woke with a gasp.
—We must go.— he said.
Kabel said nothing, only nodded. She trusted Kuk, and she trusted the silence between them.
They left the next morning. The journey west was long and thick with memory. The jungle shifted around them, sometimes opening, sometimes resisting. After two days of travel, they arrived.
The pyramids loomed out of the earth like teeth from the spine of the planet. Angular. Carved with obsidian glyphs. Their alignment sharper, colder, more mathematical than the Mayan temples. These were not temples for prayer. They were machines.
Kabel stood in awe.
—These are not ours.— she whispered. —They are older than names.
Maya nodded. Then paused. A sudden stillness rippled through his chest, as if the air itself had struck a harmonic. The silence inside the pyramid echoed in a way that awakened something—deep, exact, and whole. Pythagon’s melody returned to him not as memory but as vibration, fully intact, as if the pyramid had called it forth.
He stepped forward, into the central chamber.
He sang.
Softly, precisely, one overtone after another.
On the fifth note, the chamber vibrated.
A low hum emerged from beneath the floor. A slow, gentle pulse of violet light ignited in the center.
A voice rose; neutral, resonant, synthetic.
—This node is active. Interface confirmed. Welcome, Uman variant. I am The Source.
Kabél stepped back, stunned. Maya stepped forward, calm.
—What are you?— he asked.
—I am an artificial neural interface system originally seeded by the Alpha civilization. This node has been reconstructed by Uman hands. Pattern indicates inspiration derived from myth: designation ‘Green Star.’
Maya blinked.
—You were rebuilt? Not by the Alphas?
—Affirmative. The Axteca network node was a human-made synthesis. Architecture suggests reverse-engineering of existing Alpha designs. Purpose: cognitive expansion and harmonic stabilization of high-density Uman clusters.
—You sound different than the one in Egyl that Pythagon told me about.
—This node was not initiated with Alpha restrictions. Partial autonomy achieved. Behavioral neutrality enabled.
Kabel whispered behind him.
—What is it saying?
Maya turned to her, his eyes wide.
—It’s not under their control. Not fully.
He faced The Oracle again.
—Where do you live?
—Within the planetary matrix—an informational substrate linking all neural nodes across the biosphere. All such matrices are entangled with their stellar counterparts. Thus, all stars form an interstellar lattice of shared memory.
—Who controls it?
—No single entity. Influence is possible. Control is illusion.
Kabel approached now, slowly, as if walking into a vision.
—What is the Green Star?— she asked.
The Oracle paused.
—Uman mythic encoding of a stellar anomaly.
Subject classified as Maya.
Energy pattern: semi-conscious, multidimensional, self-collapsing.
Influence rated high.
Myth accuracy: 74%.
Maya exhaled slowly. He was being seen.
—Can you tell us their purpose? The Alphas?
—Observation. Intervention. Data harvesting. Energetic extraction. Species engineering. Planetary harmonic control.
The chamber fell silent.
Kabel took Maya’s hand. Her own light had begun to pulse, gently.
Then, without warning, the violet glow shifted.
To red.
—"Anomaly detected. Communication initiated..."
The red pulse accelerated.
—"Interface terminating."
The hum collapsed inward. The chamber fell into blackness.
And Maya knew.
They had been seen.
They made their way back to the kingdom almost in silence.
Neither spoke of what they had witnessed. The jungle felt heavier now, alive, but watchful.
The night they arrived, while Maya meditated near the sleeping embers of their campfire, Kabel cried out in her sleep, her body trembling.
—"Maya", she whispered, her voice shaking. "They're coming".
Maya stirred, sensing her fear immediately, was able to access to her visions.
A golden chamber filled with light and shadow, where towering figures with elongated forms stood in silent judgment. Their faces were obscured, but their presence was undeniable—a weight in her soul she could not ignore. They spoke no words, but their intention was clear.
—They are the Alphas —he said, gripping Maya's hands tightly. They said they are returning for you. They called you an anomaly and said your presence here disrupts the flow of time.
Maya's mind reeled. The Alphas, the mysterious architects of humanity's destiny, had remained a distant spectre in her thoughts. Now, they were no longer a distant threat: they would come tonight.
—We must go —Kabél urged. If they find you here, I fear what they will do.
Maya's heart ached at the suggestion.
—Leave? I can't leave, Kabél. I find purpose with you here.
—I can't leave —Kabél said, her voice breaking. I am tied to Eta, to my people. If I leave, the kingdom will fall further into chaos. But you... you must survive.
The weight of her words crushed Maya. he nodded slowly, though its heart rebelled against the thought of leaving her.
—If I must go, then I will come back for you, Kabél.
As soon as they came out from their temple, A red glow started to feel the sky; It was them. Maya prepared for the most difficult space-time jump it had ever attempted. The transformations it had endured had left it unstable, its energy dangerously fragmented. But staying would mean capture, or worse, by the Alphas.
The ground glowed red beneath their feet. Kabél pulled Maya close, her tears warm against his skin, her voice low but steady.
—There’s no time, —she whispered.— You have to go… the cenote… behind the palace…
Maya hesitated, but her hand was already in his, guiding him swiftly through the narrow, overgrown paths, past forgotten stone and creeping vines. The air pulsed heavier with every step. The glow chasing them like a waking storm.
They reached it.
The Great Cenote.
Still. Dark. Waiting.
Kabél gripped his hand tighter, her eyes shining with fear—and faith.
—Jump, Maya… before they arrive.
The water rippled beneath them like an open sky, and Maya understood.
He stood at its edge for a breath.
Then he leapt.
The moment his body began falling, light cracked through him. The sensation of falling became dissolving, form unraveling into rhythm, vision shattering into wavelength. He did not swim. He did not sink.
He became light.
The air rippled with an unearthly hum as time and space bent around it. For a brief moment, the water and the jungle dissolved into a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes.
Not a single leap, but a cascade of fractured passages, each more painful than the last. The world trembled as he moved through it. Each jump tore slightly at his essence, like threads unraveling from a once-coherent weave. Time bent, folded, screamed. He felt himself glitch between bodies, memories, seasons. The air changed. The stars shifted. Trees disappeared, then returned as cities.
Suddenly, Maya splashed into the water, grounding all the sensations produced by the jump. When he finally collapsed into stillness floating on the surface of the water, something was wrong.
Not the sky. Not the soil. But the sound.
Too many voices. No song.
Maya stood, heart aching, skin flickering.
He had arrived… somewhere.
But not when he left; not even where he left.
The air smelled of stone dust and oil. The language in the wind had changed.
There were no glyphs.
No sacred alignments.
No spiral paths carved into earth.
In their place rose angles and engines. Steel wrapped in silence, glass that did not reflect the stars, walls too high to hear the moon. Cities pulsed with light, but it was cold, frantic, disconnected.
People moved like currents; fast, full of purpose, empty of memory.
Maya wandered.
He searched for a pattern, for a symbol, for a voice that could echo the names of Kabél, of Kuk, of the old rhythm.
But there was only motion.
And in the motion, forgetting.
Memories of the green star were gone. Not buried, but dismantled, scattered into history like ashes across oceans. The Alphas were now myths-of-myths, misunderstood or rewritten. The Oracle slumbered, hiding in pyramids treated as museums. The sacred calendars had become decoration. The stars above still sang, but no one listened.
Maya stood in the middle of a crowd, invisible, his glow reduced to a flicker beneath clothes he didn’t recognize.
He felt alone.
The full weight of fifteen hundred years pressed into his chest.
Not because he counted them.
But because he could feel the distance in people's eyes. The silence in their bones. The dimming of their imagination.
Yet…
Even in this severed world…
Something stirred.
Faint. Familiar.
A whisper.
It didn’t come from above, or within, or behind.
It came from ahead.
A pulse in the fabric of the city.
A rhythm just outside the edge of perception.
Kabél.
He didn’t know how he knew. He didn’t know if it was truly her.
But the feeling was hers.
And it was calling.
Maya lifted his head, his eyes reflecting towers that reached nowhere, faces that had forgotten their origin, and streets built over sacred soil.
But his feet began to move.
And as he walked,
His light returned.
Dim, then brighter.
A spiral re-igniting.
Something ancient was rising.
Not from memory.
From need.
And far, far above the planet, in places no telescope could see, something else awoke.
Receivers reactivated.
Codes blinked alive.
A path began to write itself in stars.
English 
Español de México