The skies over Earth looked the same—vast, blue, deceptively calm. But beneath that fragile cover, a storm was brewing. Not of thunder and lightning, but of steel and shadows.

  Far beyond the clouds, in the silent orbit where stars blinked like watching eyes, a ship loomed—black, sleek, and unmistakably foreign. The insignia on its hull glimmered: the twin eyes of the Zorvan Empire. It made no sound as it hovered above Earth’s stratosphere, cloaked by stealth tech. Inside, orders were whispered, coordinates relayed, targets marked.

  On the ground, in a sleepy village nestled between broken hills and scorched farmlands, a girl watched the horizon. She couldn’t have been more than eleven, her clothes dusty, her face framed by tangled hair and wide, curious eyes. For now, we won’t name her—names will come later, when memories stop burning.

  She played alone. The other children were inside, kept there by wary parents who’d heard too many rumors. Ships seen in the night. People vanishing. No bodies. No noise. Just emptiness where laughter used to live.

  The girl wasn’t afraid. She didn’t know enough to be.

  But she would learn.

  Far away, in what once used to be New Delhi’s International Assembly Hall—now stripped of flags, and lined with imperial grey—representatives from Earth’s political delegation stood before a Zorvan officer.

  Commander Uzek.

  His height dwarfed them. His scales shimmered dull green, more reptilian than noble. His golden robe, trimmed in woven metallic threads, was a sharp contrast to the simple clothes worn by Earth’s leaders. His eyes—silver, pupil-less—moved over them with calculated boredom.

  "You request… what?" he asked, voice thick with accent but not with interest.

  "Representation in the Outer Trade Council," said one of Earth’s envoys, trying to keep his voice steady. "And recognition of Earth citizens as equals in the unified system. We believe our contributions—"

  "You believe," Uzek interrupted. "But you do not matter. Earth is a fringe world. A broken relic of its own wars. We gave you structure, stability, and skyports. And now you demand… equality?"

  He laughed, long and slow.

  One of the younger representatives, a woman in her twenties, clenched her fists. "We’re asking for the bare minimum. Recognition. Rights. Protection from slavers—"

  Uzek’s silver eyes snapped to her. "Slavery is outlawed… officially. If there are unofficial trades, perhaps your kind should learn to guard their borders better." He smiled. "Assuming you even still have any."

  The room fell silent.

  No one dared to speak again.

  That same moment, in a ravine on the outskirts of the girl’s village, dark figures moved. They were not Zorvan soldiers—they were worse. Freelance slavers, Earth-born collaborators working for Zorvan credits, or worse: for status. Many were mercenaries from other worlds, creatures with jagged armor and sharper morals.

  Their leader, a woman with a prosthetic eye and a cracked voice, pointed toward the village.

  “No fire. No screams. Clean and quick,” she ordered. “We’re not here to burn. We’re here to gather. First pick goes to the outer colonies. Healthy, young, educated. Especially kids.”

  They moved like shadows.

  The girl didn’t hear them until the sky above her shimmered. A dark form descended—no larger than a hoverbike, but sleeker, deadlier. A flash. A hum. And then a net, pulsing with blue electricity, crackled into existence just behind her.

  She turned.

  Her scream never left her throat.

  Her legs moved, instinct before thought. She ran, weaving through narrow alleys, ducking beneath clotheslines, knocking over metal pots. Behind her, bootsteps pounded. Something growled—a voice in a language she didn’t know.

  She didn’t know where her parents were.

  She didn’t know what was happening.

  But she felt it. The wrongness. The terror.

  She saw her neighbor, an old woman, dragged from her home, kicking and screaming. A student she recognized—smart, gentle, always reading—slammed to the ground, his glasses shattering. A trader—fat, proud, respected—begging as he was stunned unconscious and thrown into a crate like livestock.

  She ducked into her home. “Mama!” she yelled. “Papa!”

  No answer.

  She heard the thud of boots behind her.

  She grabbed the first thing she could find—a wooden spoon, trembling in her tiny fingers.

  The door slammed open.

  And she screamed.

  Far above, in the safety of another colony, Rayen sat cross-legged in a dimly lit chamber. Kaelen stood nearby, his posture still, his expression unreadable.

  Rayen opened his eyes. Sweat beaded on his brow. “I saw something. A girl. She was—”

  Kaelen placed a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not ready for visions. Not yet. But you’re feeling something. That’s progress.”

  Rayen’s breath caught. “It felt real.”

  Kaelen nodded. “Pain is always real, even if it’s not yours. But you must control it. Or it will consume you.”

  Rayen turned toward the open archway, where the stars twinkled in the void. “Somewhere out there, they’re suffering.”

  “And one day,” Kaelen said, “you’ll stop it. But not by feeling. By acting.”

  The door didn’t break—it simply vanished, kicked inward by a soldier whose armor shimmered like dark glass. The girl froze. The spoon in her hand dropped with a wooden clink against the dusty floor.

  She stood before them, bare feet trembling, her wide eyes reflecting back in the soldier’s visor.

  One of them reached forward.

  She screamed and turned—but they were too fast. Her arms were yanked behind her. Something hissed against her neck—pain bloomed like lightning—and then everything went black.

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  When she awoke, she wasn’t in her home anymore.

  She was inside a cage.

  Metal bars. Dim lights. Rows of others—faces she knew. People from her village. Her neighbor’s son, blood trickling from a bruise on his head. A crying toddler, held by an older sibling who couldn’t have been older than thirteen. A woman she’d seen laughing at the village well now sat in stunned silence, her eyes empty.

  They were in a transport ship.

  She felt the vibration beneath her—steady, pulsing. They were airborne. Already gone.

  Above her, a screen flickered: a simple Zorvan symbol, red against black. A voice crackled in a language she couldn’t understand.

  Then, in broken Terran: “All captives are bound for Processing Station 9. Resistance will be punished. Non-compliant units will be recycled.”

  The girl didn’t know what that meant.

  But a man in the cage across from her did. His face turned pale. He whispered something—words she couldn’t hear.

  Tears welled up in her eyes.

  She clenched her fists.

  And something inside her broke.

  Elsewhere on Earth, inside the diplomatic assembly, the meeting had devolved into a standoff.

  Representative Rana, an older man with deep lines and a long history of compromise, stood rigid before Commander Uzek. His voice cracked as he spoke. “You promised Earth a voice. When the war ended, your empire assured cooperation.”

  Uzek didn’t flinch. “Empires evolve. Promises degrade.”

  “You enslave our people!” a younger diplomat shouted.

  Uzek turned to her with a smile that didn’t reach hir eyes. “We detain vagrants. Undocumented. Unregistered. Your local leaders sign off on every ‘relocation’ order. We merely execute the requests.”

  “You twist our laws—”

  “I define your laws,” Uzek growled, stepping forward. “You are allowed to gather here because we allow it. Don’t mistake this hall for your ancient parliaments. You serve at our pleasure.”

  He turned, walking toward the exit.

  “But know this…” he paused, one hand on the door. “Soon, even this illusion of power will be unnecessary. Earth will belong fully to the Unified Core. Trade, territory, population. And if there are still pockets of resistance…” he tilted his head, “we will educate them.”

  The door hissed closed behind him.

  Inside, silence.

  Then one voice, hoarse and furious: “He’s stalling.”

  Rana turned. “What?”

  “He’s hiding something,” the young woman from before said. “They never show up in person unless they’re distracting us.”

  Outside, the screams had already begun.

  High above the clouds, the slaver vessel passed silently into low orbit.

  Aboard, the girl sat huddled in her cage. She had not cried again. She refused to. But her eyes watched. Memorized.

  There were guards—some humanoid, some insectoid, one with a cybernetic spine that crackled every time he moved. One wore a Zorvan badge, the others didn't.

  And among them, a woman.

  The same woman who had led the ambush on the village. Her prosthetic eye glowed faintly red as she examined a screen filled with holographic data.

  “Shipment Alpha-3. Eighty-seven units. Seventeen minors. Five high-value scholars. All clean. Some resistance,” she muttered.

  A voice on her commlink crackled. “Proceed to Relay Moon-7. The Godarr want a sample batch. Don’t offload until inspection.”

  She smirked. “Godarrs playing curious again, huh? Thought they liked purity.”

  “They want leverage,” the voice replied.

  She cut the link.

  Outside the cells, another slaver walked the aisle, tapping data into a panel. “Bidding will start in three cycles. All transactions in Tira.”

  The girl didn’t know what Tira was.

  But she knew what was happening.

  They were selling people.

  Back on Earth, in a secure data chamber beneath the diplomatic hall, a rebel technician ran his fingers across a terminal.

  “You were right,” he said.

  The younger diplomat from the earlier confrontation stood beside him. Her name was Kira, a former journalist turned aide turned resistance sympathizer. She peered over his shoulder.

  “What did you find?”

  The technician brought up a map. “This. Look at the satellite logs. Stealth signature—Zorvan ship. Parked in high orbit during the entire negotiation.”

  “Location?”

  “Sector 12… near the Badra Valley.”

  Kira’s stomach dropped. “That’s… a civilian zone.”

  The technician nodded. “And it’s gone dark. No comms. No heat signatures. Just silence.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “They were raiding while we were talking.”

  Inside the ship, the girl’s eyes met someone else’s.

  A boy. Maybe thirteen. Smart eyes, lean frame. She didn’t know his name, but she knew that look—the same one she wore.

  It wasn’t fear anymore.

  It was something harder.

  Anger.

  The guards weren’t watching closely now. The ship was steady. The shock of the abduction had settled into routine.

  The girl leaned closer to the bars. “We need to run.”

  The boy looked at her, then shook his head slowly. “They’ll kill us.”

  “They’re selling us,” she whispered. “We’re not supposed to live.”

  The boy didn’t reply.

  But he didn’t look away either.

  Elsewhere, far from Earth, on a different colony, Kaelen stood beside a flickering map projection. It showed dozens of planets, trade routes, and control zones.

  Rayen watched in silence.

  Kaelen tapped a blinking dot near Earth.

  “That’s the route the slavers take.”

  Rayen’s fists clenched. “And we just let them?”

  Kaelen didn’t answer at first. Then he said, “Do you think one blade can slice a mountain?”

  “No,” Rayen muttered.

  “Then become the wind that erodes it.”

  Rayen turned to him. “And what happens to the girl?”

  Kaelen looked at him for a long moment. “That is not your question, Rayen. The question is: when the time comes… will you remember her?”