Prologue
588 Words
The Book of Lux
They say the Book of Lux was never meant to be found.
Bound in mahogany-dyed leather, the tome breathes with age—its spine cracked, its edges worn from hands long turned to dust. The pages within aren’t paper, but fabric, woven from something older than linen, something living. With every flick of a page, it exhales the scent of old magic, deep earth, and ocean salt.
The script inked across each threadbare page is not one known to the common eye. It is an ancient language—fluent only to the High Alpha, passed down through bloodlines and dreams. To others, the text appears as a swirl of dancing runes, meaningless yet hypnotic. But for those born with the gift, the Book reveals a collection of stories… or so they're believed to be.
Stories of dying stars and reborn galaxies. Of civilizations lost to time, thriving in silence on distant planets—each tale stranger and more haunting than the last. Myths, legends, warnings. Depending on who you ask.
But there is one story… one entry etched deeper into the binding than the rest. A tale that refuses to fade.
It speaks of Athenia—a world veiled in water, luminous and untouched, suspended in the cold cradle of space. Its oceans shimmered like liquid gemstones, a swirling opalescent blue that seemed to pulse with the heartbeat of the planet itself. Sunlight would hit the waves, and the surface would spark with color—topaz, sapphire, violet—as if the sea were dusted in powdered stardust.
But it wasn’t the beauty above that made Athenia legendary.
No, it was what lived below.
Beneath the surface, in the stillness of the deep, dwelled a race of breathtaking beings. Ethereal in form. Half-flesh, half-fin. Eyes like polished pearls, hair drifting like kelp in the current, voices capable of making the sea itself hush to listen. They were not merely beautiful—they were brilliant. Healers, engineers, scholars. Their cities glowed with bio-luminescent spires, their medicine could regrow limbs, and their communication spanned vast oceans without sound.
The Athenians were one of the first to develop a written language—symbols etched into coral tablets, passed from tide to tide. Knowledge was their treasure. Curiosity, their religion.
But that same insatiable curiosity turned on them.
They began to strip their oceans for advancement, harvesting bio-luminescent cores and thermal pockets from beneath the crust. Their innovations grew faster, wilder, without restraint. They were no longer content with what was. They wanted more. Needed more.
And the ocean… gave less.
The seas began to dim. The once-turquoise waters thickened with waste, shimmer dulled into sludge. The Athenians—once peaceful and united—fractured. Rival houses hoarded technology. Wars erupted in the currents. Blood tainted the tides.
And then came the silence.
No storm, no warning. The core of Athenia—its lifeblood, its warmth—cooled. In a single year, the planet froze over. Glaciers swallowed cities. Whole kingdoms entombed beneath walls of ice. Not even screams could escape the Freeze.
They say Athenia was lost that day. Not just a planet—but a way of being. A dream.
The Book of Lux ends its passage there. No epilogue. No survivors.
But in the margins…
…scrawled in fresh ink…
…in a language not native to the page…
“The bloodline endures.”
And if that’s true…
Then somewhere—beneath ocean or moonlight—
The last of Athenia still waits.
And he’s not alone.
- Writer
