Elysian-7 was a planet that no one remembered, and that was precisely what made it perfect.
Drifting along the Spiralverse's fractured outer rim, it spun in silence beneath blood-red moons and a sky too thin to be kind. Its surface was a tapestry of cracked canyons, ash storms, and the crumbling bones of long-abandoned mining rigs. The air tasted like iron, and the wind howled like something wounded.
There were no official ports. No orbital gates. No government. What few settlements remained clung to the edges of oxygen domes and the bones of broken machines, built atop salvage and stubbornness. The Universal Government hadn't logged a census here in over twenty years.
And so, when the ship came silent and silver, gliding through the upper clouds with its engines masked and its hull cloaked in phase-canceling alloy, no one saw it. No alarms were triggered. No satellites blinked.
No one noticed as it pierced the atmosphere, streaking low across the northern canyons, its flight path untraceable.
No one heard the capsule separate and descend gently into the red sand below.
The ship vanished into the storm. The capsule landed alone.
And within it, sleeping, silent, untouched by dust or time, was a child.
Wrapped in a silver-threaded blanket. Breathing. Waiting.
He had no name.
Not yet.
One Week Later
Arik Virek was not a curious man. He was a miner, born into hard dust and hard choices, and long since trained to leave strange things alone.
But that morning, the sand had drifted too high over Shaft 12's support gate, and his oxygen mask had jammed, and the blast anchors had misfired again. So, by the time he found himself trudging through the shallows of Ridge 9 alone, tired, and angry, he figured the day couldn't get worse.
That was when he saw it.
Something metallic. Half-buried in a dune that hadn't existed yesterday. Not jagged, like scrap. Smooth. Symmetrical. The kind of shape that wasn't made by time or wind.
Arik stood there a long minute, the wind tugging at his coat. Then he walked forward and kicked at the sand.
A circular seam. Faint but perfect. His boot struck something hollow.
He hesitated. Looked around. No witnesses.
He knelt down, brushed the sand away with one gloved hand, and found a panel. The moment his fingers touched it, it hissed open with a smooth hydraulic whisper.
Inside was a baby.
Arik blinked.
The infant blinked back.
No cry. No fear. Just… awareness. Eyes dark, deep, steady.
Like the child already knew what Arik was. What the world was. What was coming?
And as Arik stared into those eyes, something old stirred beneath the sands, silent, unseen, just beneath the capsule's other compartment. Something forged long ago from metal not found in catalogs. Something softly pulsing.
He never saw it.
He never knew.
Had he looked deeper into the capsule, he might have found it. He might have felt its hum or seen the faint shimmer of violet-gold light echoing across the relic's curved edge.
But he didn't.
The winds picked up.
Arik Virek pulled the child into his coat, sealed the collar, and turned back toward Grey Hollow without a word.
Behind him, the capsule sank quietly beneath the dust, a whisper of metal and sand, vanishing like a breath.
Buried.
Dormant.
Waiting.
Waiting for the boy.
Waiting for Kael.