25
25
Bruce read in the ruins:
The gods destroyed those civilizations.
"Faith that is not nurtured turns against man."
Moving on to other worlds, they had relics that he had collected.
4\. Sirath , the World of Immortal Shadows
In Sirath, nothing ever truly died .
The inhabitants discovered the secret of immortality.
But the price was high — the soul was falling apart.
They lived forever, but without memory, without emotion.
Empty houses, hollow stares.
Petrified zombies, another wandering aimlessly, rolling remains, strange creatures, like legs, walking trunks.
Bruce spent a hundred days there, preparing his food, watching lifeless zombies wandering through those ruins. Everything was falling apart; every now and then ruins would collapse on some unsuspecting person. They didn't even flinch, but their remains continued to move, trunks walking, heads rolling.
Nobody saw him.
Nobody listened to him.
Just bodies walking, without a destination.
They didn't care, if they were conscious, but apparently, they didn't discover immortality, but death in life. Looking around, he picked up some objects, technologies that would no longer be used; he saw bodies floating far from the system, from gravity, in space, eyes and mouths flying.
"There is no worse hell than living without time."
He was walking around there when he got back into the ship and got out before he became part of those creatures.
5\. Ilarion , the Kingdom of the Eternal Waters
An endless ocean, covered in floating islands.
The Illarians mastered the climate and the tidal cycle.
But his arrogance drained the strength of the waters.
When the final vortex closed, the planet dried up like a desert.
Bruce found the last submerged temple.
The walls chanted a mantra:
"Everything that flows must also depart."
6\. Orthea , the Kingdom of the Two Suns
Two suns illuminated that world,
and two species were fighting for the same paradise.
For millennia they waged war, believing that victory would bring balance.
But when one won, the planet tilted.
The heat melted the north, the ice swallowed the south.
The balance lay in the opposites.
And they destroyed it.
7\. Vahran , the World of the Infinite Library
Bruce found this world in the midst of a void.
It was simply a city—an infinite one—made of books.
Each soul, upon dying, was written.
But nobody read it.
The accumulated knowledge grew so much that it became a mass of knowledge.
And the mass collapsed under the sheer weight of the information.
"Knowledge without wisdom is the ruin of the wise."
In fact, the people were books, books that he took with him, he would have a place to keep them.
8\. Dreth , the Kingdom of Voices
Dreth was a planet of living thoughts.
Everything that was said took shape.
An insult creates monsters.
A poem, flowers.
Until fear took over — and nightmares won.
Bruce walked among creatures made of guilt.
The Dragon warned him:
"The word is the seed of reality."
9\. Tyrian , the World of Golden Ashes
Tyrian burned in glory.
Cities of gold, palaces of sun.
The inhabitants believed themselves to be children of fire.
But when the fire answered them,
It even tarnished their reputation.
Today, Tyrian is a gray sphere.
where shadows move like warm breezes.
10\. Eshara , the Kingdom of the Stone Queens
Twelve petrified queens guarded the entrances to the temple.
They were entities that maintained the flow between worlds.
When the men decided to free them, time ran out.
The hours tore apart.
The days began to dawn before the nights.
Then Eshara disappeared.
11\. Aion Prime, the World of Suspended Cities
A technological planet that has mastered the vacuum.
The cities floated above the abyss, moved by crystals of temporal energy.
But each leap through time cost a life.
Aion disappeared in a final leap, a collective leap, in search of an eternity that never arrived.
12\. Thalar , the Last World
The saddest of all.
A world that survived.
But upon learning of the fate of the other eleven, he decided to erase himself by choice.
"We don't want to be the next mistake."
Even so, they tried, that's what they did, in what was a planetary suicide, silent and serene.
Bruce watched the star fade, bringing tears that he couldn't tell if they were his or the Dragon's.
The Guardian of Echoes
Now, when he closes his eyes, Bruce doesn't fall asleep when he listens.
The voices of every lost world.
Every mistake.
Every regret.
He studies them, records them, and keeps them.
Not as a god, but as the ultimate archivist of creation.
On windy and silent nights, in the City of Lovecraft, whoever passes near its tower will hear ancient echoes whispering between dimensions:
"Here lie the kingdoms that dared to conquer time."
The 20 Legends of the Lost Worlds
(Recorded by Bruce, the Guardian of Echoes)
"No planet dies from a single mistake."
They die like gods: slowly, silently, believing they are eternal.”
— Codex of Aion Prime, fragment 0032.
1\. Orum — The World That Stopped Spinning
Orum revolved under two suns until one of them died.
The gravitational balance was broken, and the planet ceased its rotation.
One side was burned in eternal flames, the other plunged into absolute ice.
The inhabitants-built cities on the twilight line, between fire and shadow, but the twilight moved slowly, millimeter by millimeter, and no wall was fast enough.
"A world cannot survive standing still. Neither can a heart."
2\. Veldara — The Planet of the Glass Rain
Veldara orbited a blue star that was too hot.
The winds were so fierce that they carried particles of molten silica across the skies, where it rained glass — transparent sheets falling like sharp flowers.
The cities lived under mirrored domes.
An error in global temperature disrupted the balance, and then the sky became a single blade.
"They dreamed of beauty, and created the cut."
3\. Arkhon — The World Swallowed by the Sand
Ancient and vast, Arkhon was covered by ever-expanding deserts.
The machines that controlled the weather malfunctioned.
The air grew thick, and the wind began to move mountains.
The planet was slowly buried under golden dunes, until even the oceans disappeared.
In the end, only the sound of the wind remained.