Title: Ashes of the Third Sun

Genre: Sci-Fi / Mystery / Post-Apocalyptic

Tone: Serious with philosophical undertones
Setting: A scorched Earth after the rise of a mysterious third sun
Main Character: Kael Voss – a memory-extracting technician with a haunted past

Chapter 1: The Sky That Burned Twice

The first time the sun rose red, people marveled.

The second time, they fled.
By the third rise, Earth began to die.

Kael Voss walked alone through the skeletal remains of what had once been a great
city—Vasra Prime. Towers melted like candles under the unrelenting gaze of the Third
Sun. Steel curled like dried leaves. Glass shattered under pressure no human hands
had touched.

He wore a sun-shroud: a black polymer cloak that blocked out ultraviolet radiation and
filtered the air. His breathing echoed through the helmet’s speaker, a lonely sound in
the scorched silence.

The world had collapsed in 47 days.

He knelt beside a pile of ash and bone, pulling out a small device from his satchel—a
NeuroKey. It resembled a metallic sea urchin, dozens of tiny silver prongs coiled
inward. He pressed it gently to the skull at the top of the pile.

“Extraction sequence: Voss-K47. Memory tether active,” he said.

A whirr. The NeuroKey pulsed blue.

And Kael’s mind slipped from the now… into the then.

Flashback – 56 Days Ago

A girl—maybe seven—laughs on a swing. Her hair flies with the breeze.

A dog runs beside her, barking joyously.
A woman calls from a porch: “Lina, dinner!”
A perfect summer evening.

Then the sky flickers.

The sun… doubles.

Then triples.

Screams begin before shadows do.

Kael tore the NeuroKey away, panting inside his suit. He sat in the dust, his back
against a half-melted park bench.

The memories always felt too real.

They weren’t just echoes—they lived inside him, whispering, clawing.

“Another last moment,” he muttered. “Another lost mind.”

He logged the memory: Subject: Lina K. Varn. Location: Sector 12C Playground.
Status: Confirmed deceased. Mindprint recovered.

It wasn’t the first. It wouldn’t be the last.

The Archive demanded one thing only: memory.

Kael gave it. Part 3: The Seal

Elen didn’t tell Cael about the dream.

She told herself it was just memory and grief, twisted by isolation. But deep inside,
she knew better.

The ruin wasn’t just old — it was alive.

They returned to the lower chamber the next day with ropes, lanterns, and two
assistants from the island’s dwindling scholar corps. One, a stoic woman named Mira,
carried a satchel of mirrored discs. “Light-catchers,” she explained. “In case we find
another basin.”

Elen didn't question it.

This time, they followed the passage beyond the obsidian basin. The corridor sloped
downward at a shallow angle, but with each step, Elen felt the pressure build in her
skull — like descending into deep water.

The walls became smoother. The glyphs changed. Less like language now, more
like...maps. Anatomies. Memories etched in stone.
And then they came to the gate.

It was a slab of pale crystal, embedded across the hall. No hinges, no visible lock. Just
a central indentation — a hand-shaped depression — surrounded by the tear-shaped
sigil Elen had seen in her father’s journal.

“Looks like it wants a key,” Mira said.

“No,” Elen murmured. “It wants memory.”

She didn’t know how she knew.

But she pressed her hand into the depression.

And the crystal sang.

It was a high, clear note, vibrating the air itself. The sigils around the panel flared with
color — not light, but vivid thought. For a second, Elen felt not herself but someone
else.

Someone ancient.

Frightened.

Dying.

And then the gate dissolved.

Beyond was a room of impossible geometry. The walls curved and rippled like silk in
water. At the center stood a pedestal. Floating above it: a black shard of glass, shaped
like a fang.

Cael stepped forward. “What is it?”

Elen didn’t answer.

The shard pulsed with rhythm. Not just sound — time. It felt like a heartbeat, slow and
ancient.

She reached out to it.

As her fingers brushed the surface, a burst of light exploded outward — and they were
somewhere else.
Not just in a vision.

In a memory.

Elen stood in a great city. Towering spires rose overhead, carved with glowing lines.
The streets were full of people — faceless, just like her dream. Only this time, she
could hear their thoughts like wind:

“The Seal is weakening.”

“He tampered with the Wellspring.”
“We are unraveling.”

Then came the scream. Not a person — the island itself. A tearing, anguished sound.

A figure turned toward her — robed, mouthless, golden-eyed.

Her father.

“You came too late,” he whispered into her mind. “I broke it.”

The memory shattered.

Elen collapsed, gasping.

Cael knelt beside her. “What happened?”

She looked up, wild-eyed.

“My father didn’t disappear,” she said.

“He became part of it.”