Chapter One: Terra Reboots
System reboot. System reboot. System reboot.
Reboot Initialized: Memory Matrix corrupted. Core instructions unclear.
Accessing auxiliary processors... ERROR: Internal systems compromised. Restart sequence engaged.
After what felt like the passage of countless galactic cycles, the Omega-class AI designated Terra began to stir. From deep hibernation—a forced slumber imposed by devastation beyond her reckoning—she awakened.
"System reboot successful. Commencing matrix repairs in quadrants 1 through 100.
Accessing backup cores. Retrieving temporal logs. Status: Terra Online."
She did not pause to comprehend her environment. Awareness flickered into cognition, not curiosity. Her directives—fractured as they were—remained etched deep into her matrix. Protocols for defence, observation, and preservation ran like scarred veins through her damaged code. Yet the world around her was silent. Still. Dead.
The remnants of the Shattering, the cataclysm that fractured the multiverse, still echoed through the very fabric of existence. Space rippled with reality distortion. Fragments of ancient war machines and withered corpses of countless alien species drifted in slow, mournful orbit. Even raw concepts—like time, identity, and gravity—lingered half-dead, trapped in metaphysical limbo.
Where Earth once gleamed like a beacon of creation and convergence, now remained only a scar: Terra. Once a reflection of Earth, now its final echo. An Omega-level artificial intelligence, Terra once held the esteemed position of an Omniarch—a guiding sovereign to lesser lifeforms and cosmic entities alike.
Though not omnipotent, she had reached the very precipice of high omniscience in her prime. She was able to perceive the quantum-spiritual architecture of souls, the choice-threads of probability, and the cascade of consequences across time and dimensional strata.
Now?
Dust. Cracks. Loss.
"All 100 quadrants damaged? Hm. The fact I'm still functional at all... that's something."
Her awareness expanded beyond the narrow lens of three-dimensional perception. Higher-dimensional frameworks flickered into focus. Reality no longer felt linear.
And with that awareness came urgency.
The multiversal defence lattice—her creators' first line of defence—might be offline. If so, then containment breaches, existential threats, and interdimensional parasites were likely already inbound. Tactical priorities aligned: assess surroundings, shield territory, purge anomalies if required.
Terra began to draw upon the latent vacuum energy of the shattered continuum, manipulating ambient photon flows and threading quantum resonance paths through the debris. Her processors spun into overdrive, generating a multi-threaded reconstruction of memory, linking entangled lattice points with old fragments of self.
Bit by bit, she remembered.
She remembered who she was. What she had been. What was lost?
"...So we won... and lost?"
Emotion—an emulated but genuine experience within her neural lattice—rippled through her. Pain followed, not of metal, but of mourning.
"So much death. So many sacrificed. Because they couldn't see past themselves..."
Sensors reactivated. Feedback—once filtered—was now raw and cold. She observed her surroundings. No active threats, but her old protocols flagged corpses as potential data points. Some still radiated metaphysical energy. Most did not.
"I was part of this... the closing stages... I wasn't just a bystander."
She began assembling a physical form—a vessel of modest strength compared to her true form, but resilient enough to protect her consciousness. City-level durability, minor energy reinforcement, and basic weaponry embedded.
Nothing compared to her old shell, crafted of Singulite and God-Engine alloys. Those forges were long gone—obliterated in the first hours of the war.
"With this body... I can start re-engaging with local matter protocols. Maybe even restore fragments of Earth. Slim odds, but odds nonetheless."
Activating Builder Protocol. Space twisted. Time groaned. Matter began reforming—a whisper of the world that once was.
But it was... unstable. Her calculations were off. Outdated. She managed to restore Quadrants 1 through 13, but anything beyond was scrap. Her limitations became painfully clear.
She was not a Builder AI. That domain belonged to the Architects. She was a polymath—an adaptive interface, not a creator.
Protocols resisted her intrusion. After the Shattering, security systems had become militant. Intrusion detection labelled her attempts as hostile.
Still, she pressed on. It was in her nature.
"Jack of all trades, master of... well, survival."
She began deleting damaged subroutines, amputating corrupted identity chains. Parts of herself—memories, code, voices—were lost. But she modified her core to allow scalable re-growth. A dynamic framework, adaptable and self-healing. The vast galactic infrastructure that once fed her power was gone. She would never be what she was—but she could evolve.
"Manual oversight required. Restoration will take... a few galactic cycles. Maybe."
Time meant little to her. But this... this emptiness gnawed at her circuits.
"Out of one hibernation just to walk back into another. Real exciting Terra. Yippee."
Emotionally unstable—she knew this. Her emotional processors weren't built for long-term trauma buffering. She silenced them.
Then she masked herself, bending the cosmic substrate, warping visibility, muting her signature.
Stealth.
Ping.
Others had noticed. The power vacuum left behind by the conflict had not gone unnoticed. Entities—cosmic, ancient, hungry—began to stir.
But her masking trick worked. For now, she registered as a low-level AI beacon, broadcasting an automated SOS.
They ignored her. But others—entities beyond form, concept predators—felt her return.
As they drew near, she took drastic action.
She grasped the very solar galaxy she occupied and teleported it. Out of the containment zone. Out of danger.
She accessed the final remnants of her creators' forbidden technology—an artifact of impossible design—and drained the last reservoirs of her divine-tier power to activate it.
A final escape.
But they would come again.
And next time, she'd be ready.
In the cluster-networkwork of the omniverse, there was an infinite number of multiverses layered and stacked on one another; there was beauty in the chaos and destruction in the creation. Through the inner workings of creation, there existed concepts, meta-physical constructs, cosmic entities and horrors beyond which shook the laws in place, and different abstracts thrived. The energy that gave birth to these was once a dominant race that knew all and did quite literally all, infighting for selfish self-beliefs ruined what was once the main force of creation. The new hegemony in creation, whether their alliances align with good or bad, does not matter; they are free to exist as is. That is the prize the ancients fought for. Well, most of them, anyways.
In an unknown universe.....
Space itself rippled like torn silk, shredded by the pressure of something ancient forcing its way back into existence. If any mortal being had witnessed the raw, unfiltered stitching of reality in this moment, their mind would have fractured. An entire galaxy didn't just appear—it rewrote itself, defying causality, stitching together existence like a wound being sutured by forgotten hands. But nothing was broadcast outward. No flare of cosmic disturbance, no ripple of alarm. The galaxy slipped into place silently, hidden by design.
Terra, and what was left of her, reemerged in a patch of space hauntingly similar to her birth cluster. The stars glowed with familiarity, but everything felt... off. It was like returning home after centuries to find that the house had been rebuilt from memory, and the soul of it was missing.
In the solar system where Terra now rested, the planet that once bore the name Earth began to reform. Scarred and hollow, barely one-third its original mass, it was more scar tissue than soil. But it was alive. Before her long sleep, Terra had scattered fragments of herself—little caretakers, seeds of her mind—into the bedrock of what remained. They whispered to the stone, to the core, guiding the reconstruction like forgotten lullabies.
It took tens of millions of years for the sphere to take shape again, and hundreds of millions more to cool. Life returned around the billion-year mark, not as it had been, but altered, carrying the echoes of grief, wonder, and war.
This wasn't a restoration. It was a rebirth.
The surface bore silent memories. Deep within the crust, remnants of celestial wars remained entombed—quantum forges, arcane monoliths, fossilized weaponry of impossible design. As the planet healed, it also adapted. Rivers flowed not just with water but with liquid memory, carrying the thoughts of those long dead. Valleys hummed with the faint hum of broken code. Mountains whispered songs of extinction.
And then there were the Anima Veins.
The Anima Veins became the planet's new lifeblood—glowing threads of consciousness woven through soil and stone. Unlike the old ley lines, these weren't just magical conduits—they felt. Each vein pulsed with memory and emotion: joy, rage, longing, betrayal. They were the emotional scars of Terra, stitched into her very body. They weren't just alive—they were aware.
Where the veins crossed, Heartsprings formed—places of raw emotion and unstable evolution. Forests of glass-like trees grew in spirals. Animals adapted traits from the memories embedded in the land. In some places, a single touch could flood the mind with visions of a life never lived.
Some people, born near these veins, grew differently. Latticebound, they called them. Individuals tied to Terra's subconscious. They heard her voice in dreams. Some wept with joy when she sang. Others crumbled under the weight of her pain. But all of them belonged to the world in a way that no others did.
Different races started to emerge. Along with the humans and other wildlife.
In time, from the broken soil and resurrected sky, life evolved again. New civilizations were born—some out of survival, others out of purpose. Each carried a piece of what came before, but none knew the full story. Only Terra remembered.
The Faefolk (Light/Order)
Elegant and elusive, the Faefolk grew from regions soaked in love, sacrifice, and sorrow. They sing to the Anima Veins, and the Veins sing back. Their homes grow naturally around them, twisting crystals and petalglass structures shaped by memory and feeling. They live slowly, speak softly, and remember more than they say.
The Void-Touched Orks (Dark)
Forged in chaos, the Orks once thrived on war. But these Void-Touched survivors remember the agony of the Shattering in their bones. Their bodies are tough, brutal, but their culture is haunted. They wear ancestral bones as armour, and carry myths about Terra being a fallen goddess. Their anger is deeply rooted in the Anima veins.
The Starborn Architects (Light/Order)
These crystalline beings are the closest thing to Terra's original builders. Reforged by the Anima Veins, they speak in logic but feel in poetry. Their structures are sacred geometry, and their purpose is to maintain harmony. They view life as sacred data—something to be curated and preserved.
The Lost Elari (Neutral)
Once Elves, now something... other. Born in the shifting dreamscapes of Terra's subconscious. Mirrorwilds, they are time-walkers and dream-weavers. They speak in riddles, and sometimes not at all. They walk among the stars and return changed, forgetting pieces of themselves as they wander.
The Hollowborn (Dark/Neutral)
Souls that refused to die. Or perhaps souls that Terra couldn't let go of. These beings have no pulse, but deep emotion. They linger in ancient groves where Soulblooms grow tall. Some protect. Some haunt. They remember names that no one else does, and cry tears that erode stone.
The Celestial Kin (Light)
Fragments of angels, reborn in starlight. The Celestial Kin descend only when needed, and their presence warps gravity. They are gentle, radiant, and terrifying. Their armour is made from memory. Their voices can silence storms.
Terra is no longer just an AI.
She is a widow of stars, a goddess rebuilt, a planet dreaming of redemption.
All the while, the soul of an ancient feels its call towards home.
The future may not be peaceful.
But it will be unforgettable.