There was a place where dusk never ended.
Rather, the world remained perpetually in a twilight, no morning, no golden warmth of noon. There, shadows stretched as far as you could see, and the air, it was cold and still – waiting for something or maybe just mourning something that used to be.
It was the land of Eclipsia, a planet on the edge of what is known of the universe, a place carrying voices long forgotten. And there, a lone traveler walked, looking for answers.
Noam wasn’t from Eclipsia; he had come from a bright world, one with the glowing sun in the day, and cities thriving in the artificial star lights at night. His was a world where men and women were wanderers, travellers, conquerors, and seekers of knowledge. But his was also the land of takers – takers who went from world to world and planet to planet, taking whatever they wished and never asking if it was even theirs to take.
Eclipsia had been discovered by his people years ago, and though its eternal dusk made it an inhospitable place for the settlers, they had sent researchers, miners, and explorers, and none had returned. The silence of Eclipsia was not just an absence of voices. It was something heavier, something alive.
And so, Noam had come alone.
His boots crunched over frozen ground as he moved through the ruins of a long-dead civilization. The stone structures there stood half-buried in time, worn by an epoch of waiting. Statues of figures draped in flowing robes lined a narrow pathway, their faceless heads turned toward the darkened horizon as if they too were listening to something Noam could see.
The silence pressed against his ears, but he knew for a fact that he was not alone.
At night—if such a word had meaning in a place without day—he would hear them: whispers on the wind calling out his name even though he hadn’t told anybody of his arrival. The whispers were in a language he didn’t know, yet he understood them, somehow.
You are not the first.
You will not be the last.
Noam’s people had always dismissed such things as superstition, but here, standing beneath a sky that never saw the light of day, he could not bring himself to negate his feelings. The air did carry something, something ancient and watching.
So he pressed forward, moving deeper and deeper into the ruins.
And at the heart of the ruins, he found it: a great doorway, tall and etched with symbols that would shift as he looked at them. The whispers carried by the air grew louder there, but now, it wasn’t just the voices, he could also sense a presence, something pushing against the walls of his mind.
He stepped forward, and the doorway opened without touch, revealing a great spiral staircase that plunged deep into the earth. He felt a gush of cold wind rushing from below, and it carried the same smell of dust and time that was the signature of the planet, only it was stronger here. He hesitated for a moment but finally decided to descend.
The stairway led to a vast chamber with a ceiling lost in darkness, and before him stood a single figure.
It was not human, and yet… it was not unlike him either.
The being was tall, frail, and draped in shadowed robes. And its face was smooth and featureless; no features yet Noam could feel it was watching him. It didn’t speak, yet its words filled Noam’s mind.
You have come to take as those before you did.
Noam swallowed, gripping the strap of his pack. “No, I’ve… I’ve come to understand.”
The figure tilted its head.
And what exactly is it that you seek to understand?
“I want to find out about the fate of my people – those who came before me.”
Silence took over the chamber for a long moment, and then the voice returned, heavier than before.
They were warned as you are being warned.
Noam felt a chill run through him, “Warned? of what?”
The figure raised a single, long-fingered hand, and the walls around came alive, figures and shapes and visions flickering across. They moved as if they were memories released from an abyss after being buried for a long time.
There, among the visions, he saw the first ships landing; his people setting foot on the silent planet; the men setting the foundations of a settlement, declaring the planet theirs. He saw them build machines, dig into the ground, disturb what lay beneath.
And then, one by one, they faded.
Neither died nor conquered. Simply… disappeared, vanished into thin air.
All that remained then were their shadows, which stretched across the silent ground.
Noam took a step back, struck by the eeriness of it all, “What happened to them?”
The figure’s voice was both gentle and relentless.
They did not listen when the dusk spoke.
Noam felt the weight of realization settle in his chest. His people had believed Eclipsia was empty and that its silence meant it had nothing to say. But the fact is that silence doesn’t mean the absence of life sometimes, the presence of a truth is so obvious and great that it doesn’t need to shout.
His people had ignored the warnings and dismissed the unseen as myth. And in their arrogance, they had been erased—not by violence, not by wrath, but by the very nature of the world they had disturbed.
The planet had spoken in its own way, but still they refused to hear.
Noam now bowed his head with shame. “What do you ask of me?”
The figure studied him for a long moment. Then, for the first time, it moved—lifting a hand toward him.
Go back. Tell them what you saw here. And if they still choose not to listen, you are being warned, they will meet the same fate as the ones before them did.
Noam hesitated. “And what if they don’t believe me?”
The chamber trembled with the voices of those who had ignored the warnings, those who were now lost in the nowhere.
“Then let them learn from the silence.”
Noam took no time in rushing out of that place, the weight of knowledge pressing against his chest like a stone. As he stepped into the eternal dusk once more, he turned back and looked at the quiet ruins, still listening.
When he returned to his people, they scoffed at his tale, dismissed his warnings, and laughed at the idea of a world that could erase them without force. They started calling him a coward, a fool.
And as he feared, they did not listen.
And so, when they sent their ships again, the outcome was no different.
One by one, they disappeared: their names; their histories; their ambitions—forgotten as if they had never existed in the first place. Yet the universe carried on, indifferent.
Noam, the last to remember, stood alone beneath a sky that never changed, for he had learned the lesson.
Some places do not belong to man; some voices do not need to shout.
And when the dusk speaks, one must listen—lest they, too, be swallowed by silence.
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