Transcription of the st diary entry of Dr. Boris Chen, Xenoarchaeologist. Near South Volker. September, 2607 AD...

  "Bring them back." Those words echo in my mind. It's like a fucking whisper that grows louder with every passing second. Fireflies in an endless darkness. Their glow, I don't know what it means—Salvation? Damnation? I still don't understand a thing, but the weight of its meaning presses on my skull like invisible metal straps, threatening to split my head open like a rotten fruit.

  Of all the colonists of Lohengrin, why did it have to be me who heard them first? What makes me special? Or maybe vulnerable? The truth is, it took me a while to realize, and when I did, I couldn't stop doing so.

  Since I was a child, I was obsessed with the Farmers, maybe like someone in the past would have been with dinosaurs. I spent endless hours watching Holodocus about our mysterious forerunners. They shaped the gaxy 500 million years ago, while life on Earth was just beginning to flourish in the Cambrian oceans. They sowed the void of thespace and worked hard to turn it into a garden. And just as they arose, they disappeared in the blink of an eye, more or less within the same time frame.

  I saw myself as a great explorer, uncovering the secrets of that ancient alien civilization, whose name would be enshrined in history reccords.

  But I grew up and discovered that Lohengrin was a wastend. Another remote mining colony on the literal edge of explored space. There were no ruins or Farmer artifacts. Just iron oxide, rare earths minerals, and ice crystals trapped in permafrost, dragged by blizzards that cut like knives. Disappointment settled in my stomach like an anvil. I tried to hide it, to be grateful because I was part of the vanguard and that, in some way, I was mirroring what the Farmers did. A sad copying mechanism, for deep down I felt frustrated as hell.

  I resigned myself to living among dusty files, reviewing second–hand findings, writing papers, and analyzing data from real expeditions, light–years away from here. I would talk about discoveries I could never see with my own eyes, transformed into a mere witness of the great human adventure.

  Any real exploration was out of my reach. Those who threw themselves into the void did so because they had nothing to lose, or they cked the instinct for self–preservation. Besides, I was incapable of seeing myself inside a cooler, traversing the abyss of space inside a chisel–shaped bolide, older than any of our colonies. An eye and a kidney barely covered the travel expenses. It was like mortgaging your soul to the Nightflyers Guild.

  I convinced myself that I had made peace with this life. I had my job and a small team of researchers. We worked slowly but surely, leaving footnotes in the grand narrative of human knowledge. It was enough, or so I thought.

  But then, we found them. The ruins. Everything changed from that point on.

  It started harmless, even innocently. An anomalous reading from the Volker pteau, 27 kilometers southeast of a mining excavation. I rolled my eyes when the report nded on my desk. Another false positive. Another mirage, the dead pnet mocking us. Maybe some deposit of rare minerals, or some anomaly in the magnetic field causing interference. It was always the same. We felt hope only to be disappointed. There was a 99.9% chance it would repeat. But against all odds, we stumbled upon the statistical aberration.

  I still remember the first glimpse. The satellites detected a vein of a mineral that could only be described as Unobtanium. Stainless like gold. Ductile like copper. More resilient than anything we had seen before. The prospectors threw thermonuclear loads, those capable of erasing mountains, to see what we had found.

  And then we saw them, as the heat and mushroom cloud fade over the hours. My heart raced. My palms were sweaty, and I must say that for the first time in my 54 years, I felt truly alive. The structures were beautiful. Also terrifying, yes, but beautiful in a way that defied human nguage. Geometries that shouldn't exist. Materials that mocked our physics. Not a single burn. It was as if they existed in a different reality that was interacting with ours.

  A first heuristic analysis was enough to define their origin; they were Farmers, without a doubt, but nothing like what we had found in the 25 explored systems. They were not remnants of cities or settlements. For the first time, we knew it was technology, but so advanced that it could very well be divine. So advanced that we didn't even know how it worked and could only theorize that it was some kind of factory. We called the complex the "Tree of Life," for from orbit, that's exactly what it looked like. A massive Yggdrasil of metal, extending its roots into Lohengrin, and its branches toward the stars.

  We should have noticed. Something was wrong. However, I was blinded by ambition and the intoxicating promise of making history, being remembered, and above all, making my inner child happy, trapped in this shell of a resigned adult.

  And with that, the nightmares began.

  A forest, dark as a singurity, except for glowing yellow points fluttering around me. Living consteltions that looked like fireflies. Their glow became horrendous, sickly, revealing that something was wrong. With their appearance, the air grew thick, oppressive, alive, as if the forest itself were breathing.

  And then I saw her. Dipa. My dear Dipa, dead for years now. She looked like the day we met. Young. Alive. Her smile could light up entire worlds. But then I realized when I saw her eyes. They shone with a yellowish glow that were not hers at all. It was as if some kind of entity had taken her body, ripped out all the organs inside to transform her skin and flesh into a kind of unholly suit, making her a sort of sinister harbinger.

  Then she spoke to me. An order, with words that were not hers, neither by her tone nor cadence. Simple, brief, decisive.

  —. Bring them back. — she said. Always before waking up. It repeated like a mantra from a chorus of voices that emerged from her lips.

  —. What do you mean, Dipa? Who should I bring back? – I found myself whispering upon waking, covered in cold sweat and with my heart in my throat. I wish they had just been dreams because the horror that awaited me pursued me even upon opening my eyes.

  The runes came afterward. They burned in my vision, like spiral–shaped patterns twisting like living creatures. Circles within circles. Fractals of an impossible and sickly complexity that overwhelmed every corner of my brain. They started as residual images, like when you look at a bright light for too long. But little by little they began to make sense, and every time I closed my eyes, they deprived me of rest.

  I had no choice but to draw them. I did it obsequely and not from memory. It was more like my hand was guided by an invisible force. Hour after hour. Night after night of insomnia, I filled page after page with alien glyphs. In total, there were six notebooks crammed in every corner, making the most of every space. And then I hid them. I couldn't let anyone else see them. They would think I was crazy. Although maybe, I was.

  There were moments of brief crity, where I would step back and suddenly be aware of what I was becoming. Sunken, lifeless eyes, embedded in a gaunt face, stared back at me through the reflection. My hands trembled, and I jumped at sounds. I thought I should seek help because without a doubt, I was not well.

  But then the whispers began again. Dipa's voice, the fireflies, the forest, and the Tree of Life itself spoke to me. They offered me their help, and then I realized, and I couldn't stop doing so. They were not random symbols. They are instructions. The key to unleashing the true and overwhelming potential of that machinery, forgotten and buried.

  I glimpsed what I could do. Terraform entire worlds in the blink of an eye. Decades instead of millennia or centuries. Rugged, lifeless deserts transformed into gardens with just a thought. Transmuting elements at will. Gold from hydrogen. The end of material scarcity. Resurrect the dead, recreate their synapses, transforming the soul into a tangible concept. And much more, so much that it hurts my head to imagine. How to create God, for example, or rather, bring them back.

  It may sound insane, but I'm not lying. I finally understood what Dipa and the voices were referring to. A bunch of individual, chaotic, and disordered minds are not enough to build an empire like that of the Farmers. Instead, they became a hivemind of synchronized thoughts, each acting as a neuron of an impossibly rge organism. It grew, thought, and finally gained consciousness. An entity of such magnitude can only be defined in one way: God.

  And yet, they died. We are on a skeleton. The entire Milky Way is one. A massive decomposing corpse. Every organism that has emerged is a product of that cosmic rot to feed on its remains, like vile scavengers. But soon it will end, and then we will die too. Our existence will be a whisper in the void. The decaying legacy of a forgotten divinity.

  But it is in our power to bring him back. The tree showed me steps on how to restart his heart, and how little by little, to build his body, in order to bring his light to this dark, cold, and indifferent universe.

  The rest does not see it. In fact, how could they? Their minds are small, insignificant, trapped in the mundane routine of our poor colony. My students, my team, suggested waiting for the arrival of the Chronos, in three months, and for the Nightflyers scientists to take a look. That way we can share this discovery with them, with humanity.

  But I know the truth. They are going to steal it. They will take credit for my discovery. They will dissect the Tree of Life, profaning its sacred purpose with crude instruments and limited vision. I cannot allow that to happen.

  That's why the Tree of Life spoke to me. However, it wasn't words, but concepts that shone directly inside my head, blooming like alien flowers. I understood that it was hungry. It needed calibration. Small sacrifices to align that imposing cosmic machinery.

  That's why I killed them. I didn't want to. Please, you must believe me. I loved my team. They were like family. We worked together for years. We shared triumphs, failures. But the fireflies demanded it. It was a vital step. Sometimes a miracle is as frightening as a nightmare when you're not prepared. The return of God could not wait. So I did it for a greater good. For humanity. For them, who awaited to emerge.

  The Psma Saw did it quickly, painlessly, or so I wanted to believe. As I sliced through the facility like animals in a sughterhouse, I whispered apologies. I cried and puked more than once inside my own suit, wondering and screaming at the tree if that crime even made sense. But I did it, and in the end, there were nine bodies, just as the runes said to me. I stripped their suits. I moved their naked, mutited bodies to a chamber and positioned them with extreme care. A door closed, darkness fell, and then I waited.

  How much time has passed? Hours? Days? Time loses meaning when you're on the brink of divinity. I feel as if I'm floating, disconnected from my own body. The chamber hums with a thunderous power. It's like a subsonic vibration that makes my bones rattle and sends chills down my spine.

  And then the machinery roars. It's a sound beyond sound. It passes over my ears and penetrates directly into my brain. My teeth grind. My eyes vibrated like a gong within their sockets. I tasted colors and smelled equations. Reality itself seemed to bend and warp around the Tree of Life.

  I fainted, and when I came to, everything had changed.

  A slot had opened in the wall of the chamber. A vessel emerged from within, elongated and bcker than the space between the stars. The moment I touched it, it opened. And from it emerged life. Pure, undiluted. Potential taking shape. Its body resembled that of a centipede, but it was translucent, like a jellyfish, and the pseudopods moved rhythmically. Its interior glowed with a yellow radiance that hurt to look at directly and pulsed like the beat of my heart.

  Now I hear them. The extraction team. They have found the crime scene. Blood. Stained suits. Runes. They are screaming, calling for security. Words like "crazy" and "murderer" echo throughout the complex. It doesn't matter. None of that matters anymore.

  I have done it. I have created life. Or... have I returned it? Am I God now? Or simply his humble servant?

  The worm, no, it's not a worm, something much more—A spawn of God themself? An Abyssal Seed? I don't know, but it speaks to me. Not with words, but with concepts that bloom directly in my mind. Images of a reborn universe, of transcended humanity, of a restored cosmic order.

  Let me in, they said to me. This is just the beginning. The next phase of the pn. We will bring everyone back. God will return. They will return, and there will be no darkness. And without questioning it, I allow them. It wraps around my arm, slowly, and pierces through the thermogel to enter my body. I don't know what awaits me, but it is surely something divine.

  Now I understand. Why the fireflies chose me. Why Dipa's ghost haunts my dreams. I was always destined for this. Every decision, every failure, every triumph, all led me here, to this moment.

  If anyone hears this, I'm sorry. And you're welcome. Because soon, we will all shine. We will all be fireflies. Our bodies mere vessels for that sacred and foreign light. Soon. Very soon.

  God is coming.

  And we will all burn in their glory.