Exodus + 5,000 years
Vortexia

The ruins of Vortexia were blacker than space. What had once been buildings, bright and coral-like in the Vortexian style, were now charred corpses resting under the stars. Trees were bitten by rot, as if the air itself had turned foul, eroding nature with its corrupted touch.

The ocean had dried up. Only splotches of blackened liquid remained, alternating with rot-tinged holes leading to nowhere.

Captain Desiris hadn't come home for this. He'd come home to see the familiar aquamarine waves, the sandy shores bright with birdsong, and the reef-like city he'd grown up in. He'd come to see his family. His colleagues. His friends. Were they all gone?

He looked to the stars for answers. They remained silent.

He looked to the rot around him, and it told him the answer. The Vortexians were gone. The race that had climbed out of the oceans to build cities on land, then propelled themselves past the very sky above, was gone. They'd left nothing to remember them by. Only blackness, nothingness, nowhereness.

And insects.

Winged insects as black as the rot, crawling along the edges of destruction. Not feasting. Not hiding. Just existing, as if they were a part of the trauma itself, an outgrowth, an evolution.

Desiris had never seen the creatures before. They fluttered in the air, sometimes by themselves, other times in groups. He wondered where they'd come from.

The last he'd heard from Vortexia, everything was fine. They had discovered a debris field deep in space. The stones making up the field were like nothing anyone had ever seen. They were clear, pure things, with centres that glimmered with flame. A field of sleeping fire, his commander had told him.

Their beauty itself would have led to a lucrative trade deal, but there was more to them than that. The stones were holding magical energy inside them.

There was nothing on Vortexia capable of storing magical energy. If there was, Vortexia would have harnessed magic, and they would be unstoppable. Cities, powered by the stones, would reach fingers into space. The ocean's underwater towns would greet the treetops. The heavens would become earth, the oceans would swallow stars, and dreams would fly. Vortexia would be immortal.

Desiris never saw any glimmering stones on his way to Vortexia. Instead, there were empty crystals where his commander had said the debris field would be, reflecting only the blackness around them.

They could not be the stones he'd described. Had they seen a dream? Had they chased a nightmare?

Those stones, mysterious as they were, could not have caused this destruction.

Could they?

Desiris had heard rumours of planets meeting fates such as this. Mother devoured all that was good. He'd never believed, but now, surrounded by something that lacked the mercy of death, he believed.

A winged insect alighted on the charred statue behind him. The statue was - had been - of the many-tentacled Amphibius, who first led the Vortexians out of the sea. Desiris willed the statue to react, but it remained stony. Legends didn't cry, unless their tears had black wings.

Where would Desiris go now? Were there others like him who were off-planet when the darkness came? Could he find them? Could he take the memories of his loved ones and make them immortal?

Yes, he decided. He could. He would. He would rise from his tears like Amphibius, and take to the night sky. He would gather the pieces of what was lost. He would build tomorrow. Despite Mother and her crawl of destruction, Vortexia would be forever.

Author's Note: If you want to know the story of what happened to Vortexia, and find out whether Desiris reaches his goal, head over to the short story Vortexia. You can find it on this profile, in the reading list "Witch Doctors Inc Legends".