Chapter 66: The Surge
At first, there was silence.
Then, the world began to scream.
From orbit, Planet Novalis looked like a fractured jewel — its once-deep blue seas now streaked with red light, its cloud belts torn by spirals of storm and flame. The crust glowed in widening fissures that cut across continents like molten veins. Whole mountain ranges folded, oceans boiled at their edges, and the sky itself shimmered with unstable energy.
The resonance had begun.
Atmospheric data scattered like broken code — magnetic fields twisted into spirals, auroras bled into lightning, and shockwaves danced across the stratosphere. The air burned, the ground warped, and all across the surface, the last of civilization flickered out one light at a time.
The sun above was dim, its rays scattering through a haze of red particles. From the void beyond, the planet looked less like a world and more like a heart in its death throes — glowing, shaking, refusing to give up its final pulse.
